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Sunday, January 27, 2019

I WOULD AGREE--BUT LET'S CALL IT PROTESTANT AND BLAME ECUMENISM FOR CATHOLIC INVOLVEMENT



I have to agree with the article I link below with a couple of excerpts I have chosen. Press the title for the complete article.

However, the complaint is against Christianity that becomes too involved with the Political Right and weds it.

Catholicism cannot do this in the political realm although our moral teachings on sexuality are certainly to the right politically speaking, but not our teachings on social justice, welcoming the stranger (i.e. aliens) and the like. We fall to the left politically speaking.

But Catholicism is about the splendor of truth regardless of any political implications. The Church's splendor of truth speaks either of confirmation or challenge to the political right or left!

This article is not about Catholic orthodoxy or orthopraxis. It is not about good liturgy or bad liturgy.

It is about politics and politics using religion for its own purpose and religion allowing itself to be used in the pursuit of political power--a corruption of Christianity in general and Evangelical Protestantism in particular.

Is the Religious Right to Blame for Christianity’s Decline?

The movement is one of the most dramatic failures in American political history.


As the number of Americans that identified with no religion began increasing in the 1990s, scholars and journalists began to look for explanations. Especially among pundits, these explanations typically favored their own cultural, theological, and political prejudices. To lay my own cards on the table, I am persuaded that fertility rates are one of the best predictors of a Christian denomination’s long-term health. That said, it would be remarkable if politics did not have any effect on religious trends, given the degree to which American religion has been so politicized since the rise of the Religious Right in the late 1970s.

8 comments:

johnnyc said...

Politics is a necessary instrument in spiritual warfare. Our Lady said the final battle will be the attack on the family. When you have two political parties and one of them, the liberal left democratic party, lays waste to the life teachings of Jesus as depicted in the five Catholic non negotiables then it's pretty obvious how a Catholic should fight this battle.

Gene said...

There is also Christianity that weds itself to the political Left and that is far too prominent in modernistic liberal theology. Christianity should be apolitical; the Faith speaks to political parties and factions from without, or above, as judgement upon both liberal and conservative. The Christian should be wary of any political caveat or inducement. Remember, when Satan took Jesus into the Wilderness and offered Him rulership over all the kingdoms of the world, Jesus never questioned Satan's right to offer them...Satan's ownership.

Charles G said...

I don't know why you bother to pick on the tattered remnants of the "right" at this point when the leftist forces of immorality have overwhelmingly won the culture war and, not taking yes for an answer, are in the process of intolerantly grinding cultural traditionalists under their feet and destroying all vestiges of beauty, goodness, truth and Western Civilization. The leftist long march through the institutions is complete. Trump is just a temporary holding action. Look at the people voting for Pelosi and brain dead Marxist Occasio Cortez...

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

I read the article. You suggest that the article is "...about politics and politics using religion for its own purpose..."

I would suggest that the author's position is, rather, that religion has used politics for its own purposes and that that has caused disaffection.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Yes that is true and certainly in the case of Falwell. That is why I say that it is ecumenism that has opened the doors of Catholic clergy and laity to use similar tactics or join forces. But this opens the door oF politicians to use the Church got political gain.

Gene said...

...and there you will be, writhing in the flames of Hell, and you will look around you and you will see the cracked an pus-ridden skin of a Democrat, the blistered and bloody skin of a Republican and, all around you, the cries, groans, and screams of agony of politicians and members of political parties of all kinds...Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals consigned to the abandonment and despair, the torments of the darkest corners of Hades. And, then, you will look up to Heaven and see God staring at you over the great precipice of Paradise and plead and cry, "But, Lord, we didn't know!!" Then, you will hear the creaking of the hinges of the great forged door of eternity, the rattle of the chain, and the snap of the lock and God's last words to you, "Well. you know now!"

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

Allan, blaming ecumenism for the involvement of the Catholic Church in politics is ahistorical.

Long before the ecumenical movement and the engagement of Catholics with other Christian denominations, our Church through her leaders, was very involved in politics.

For centuries the Church was directly allied with European political leaders. With the colonization of the New World, the Church helped those powers, largely Spain, to maintain dominance of both the political powers and the Church's position.

You've probably seen the movie "The Mission," an excellent film about the Jesuit "reducciones" in South America. While seeking to convert the natives, teach them better farming techniques and crafts, the Jesuits ran afoul of the political powers of Spain and Portugal. Once a native person as baptized, he/she was no longer fair game for the slave hunters. This led to a massive political reaction against the Jesuits and their suppression in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV.

Influential cardinals and bishops in the United States have had, at times, very close relationships with political leaders. At other times, the hierarchs and the politicians were at loggerheads.

No, ecumenism isn't to blame. We figured out how to be too intertwined with political matters long before ecumenism came on the scene.



Dan said...

The Church WAS the politics at one time.