Isn't the Church's mission to call people to conversion to Christ from which all else flows?
Are we heading back to a time when "Vatican II" is turned into an idol, replacing conversion to Christ?
Are we heading back to a time when "ecclesiology" is turned into an idol, replacing conversion to Christ?
Are we heading back to a time when liturgical renewal is turned into an idol, replacing conversion to Christ?
I could go on.
Don't get me wrong. It would be well and good that salvation in Christ means taking care of both the body and soul in a holistic way in this life. Just as we should not disfigure the earth, so too the Church might focus on how so many today disfigure their bodies with tattoos, piercing and the like.
And for the most part, individual Catholics can doing something about these things, whereas we are pretty much at a loss as to how to stop governments from burning down the Amazon rain forests.
I think the Church should preach caring for the physical as a sign of eternal salvation in Christ. But I haven't really heard much about eternal damnation only that we will be damned in the here and now if climate change ruins people's lives, especially the poor (as though the middle and upper class lives don't matter that much in this scenario! Typical Latin America crap).
I can remember as a child a friend of mine telling me that when his mother told him to go out and get a switch so she could beat him with it as punishment, he brought back a switch that had new buds on it.
She told her son that you never break off a switch that is budding, never. Now that's ecological conversion! So he got beaten with a belt and its buckle. That taught him!
The bishops at the synod seem to be full of themselves. In the USA they can't get Catholic politicians, let alone non-Catholics to promote the right to life of the innocent unborn. For so many, abortion is a secular sacrament. And the Church's bishops are too feminized or impotent to actually introduce some excommunications and censures against these Catholic politicians.
God is teaching these bishops that even a person like President Trump can be pro-life and the best pro-life person, as it concerns the completely innocent unborn, that the presidency has ever seen.
What about Catholic Beto O'Rouke? He wants to take away the Church's tax exempt status if it stands in the way of LGBTQ ideologies. Got that? A Catholic wants to do that. Of course, he's not really Catholic or is he. Once a Catholic always a Catholic. Not a peep out of the bishops on that one. Interesting, no?
So bishops of the Amazon, how are you going to force politicians to do your bidding when bishops can't even get Catholics to obey Holy Mother Church about abortion?
6 comments:
With Bishops' like these, who needs enemies?
Only when the Church acknowledges that the implementation of Vatican Disaster II was an error of monumental proportions will the Church recover. The Church's salvation will come when Bishops who are now in the 40s and 50s become cardinals and begin to elect the Pope. We will probably have another disaster or two once PF has departed the scene
As Karl Rove does, call him "Robert Francis" O'Rourke. That helps emphasize his Catholic roots---and betrayal. The scary thing is how close he came to beating Ted Cruz in Texas last year, part of the "blue wave" engulfing parts of the South, like Chatham County (Savannah) and metro Atlanta. I wonder if the churches would also lose their tax exemptions if they fail to allow polygamy? Or if their schools fail to pass out birth control to their students? Maybe if they don't allow anyone to take communion, Catholic or not?
Martin Luther King Jr. was known for practicing "civil disobedience." Maybe the Church will have to go down that path too if a Democrat is elected president next year.
I hear that government leaders in the Amazon region are not happy at all with this synod. They are afraid that the world is going to tell them what they can and cannot do with their own land.
This is NOT the best way to promote Catholicism in the region. I wish they would just focus on Christ.
The Church needs to look into some environmental saints. Perhaps Saint Johnny Appleseed, or Saint John Muir. However, given the recent emphasis on indigenous peoples, I think the best would be Saint Crying Indian Guy in the Litter Commercial.
The patron saint of ecology is St. Francis, and I do think there is a certain Franciscan spirituality connected to the environment. It isn't based on liberalism or on garden statues, but on St Francis's life and writings. I would also guess it is integrated with that saints tradition of holy poverty. Years ago I recall some non political books on St Francis and the environment. Unfortunately I could not locate them, and I doubt any of those attending the conference compiled any of the writings concerning that academic branch of Catholicism. John Paul II wrote about the environment, and so did pope Benedict. The leaders at the Amazon conference sound more like a collection of NGO's looking for funding, or liberal idealists trying to promote an agenda.
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