Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts gives us the latest installment of the ongoing debate between Mark Shea and Mark Shea:
Mark Shea defends and praises George Soros
Declaring criticisms of Soros by conservatives the stuff of lies and evil which, to Mark, the captain of the Calumny for Christ brigade, is all that exists to the right of the political center. I was going to go into some detail, trying to express my continued shock at the depth to which Mark is sinking into those things he once declared an affront to goodness, truth and the Gospel, but why bother? Here is Mark, 2010, pinning Soros for what Soros is, not praising him, as Mark now does:
Speaking of the Soros payroll, you got your Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good disappearing without a trace now that their only real mission—snookering suckers into thinking that supporting a guy who favors sticking scissors in a baby’s brain is some glorious expression of Catholic social teaching—is accomplished. Being a wholly-owned subsidiary of George Soros, they were, in fact, as real a Catholic social teaching apostolate as a Potemkin Village is a real city. Mark Shea, 2010.
Compare to yesterday:
Yeah, Soros is wrong about abortion like every other lefty. But then, he’s Jewish, not Catholic, and his tradition has never taught him to believe what the Church teaches. But with regard to the rest, he seems to be doing a reasonable job with his wealth, which is more than you can say for many billionaires. Mark Shea, 2018.
Yeah, abortion and all. You know. Stuff and things. That’s it. So abortion is now just one of those things, especially if you’re not Catholic. Wrong maybe, but no big deal unless you’re Catholic? The New Prolife Movement in action.
Go here to comment. The crazy thing about Shea is that he very rarely acknowledges having written something that he wrote yesterday which completely contradicts what he wrote today. Unfortunately for him, the internet is forever, at least until Soros and his ideological think-a-likes get their mitts on it. That Shea has a strange new respect for Soros under the current pontificate is no surprise. Go here and here to understand why. When it comes to Soros, Mark is simply in the useful idiot category. There are darker forces however working ceaselessly during this pontificate to transform the Bride of Christ into the Whore of the Left.
Shea v. Shea, the ultimate Battle of the Blowhards.
Truly, a battle of wits wherein both antagonists are unarmed.
T.Shaw, I think the battle would go something like this…
“Yeah, Soros is wrong about abortion like every other lefty. But then, he’s Jewish, not Catholic, and his tradition has never taught him to believe what the Church teaches.” If you’re not Catholic you are not required to think abortion is evil? You just have to be a decent human being to see the evil in abortion and to sweep that concept away so easily is deceitful and evil.
True. In regard to Jews the Orthodox tend to be pro-life.
Apparently, for better or worse, Mark further explains Catholic teaching regarding abortion in response to a complaint about the above post:
“Like it or not, Catholic moral theology recognizes that there are different levels of culpability for sin. When a person’s religious formation teaches them, as Judaism often does, that abortion is permissible under certain circumstances, they do not have the same culpability as Catholics do. That does not make them right, but it does make them less culpable. Meanwhile, in the places where his tradition lines up with Catholic teaching, he seems to me to be trying to do his best. Instead of making him the bogeyman, Catholics should be trying to see his actions charitably as much as possible rather than routinely anointing him the Great Satan. Your remark, “Whether his detractors are indulging in calumny or not is besides the point: the fact is that men like Soros are neither friends nor allies of the Catholic faith” comes down to “Who cares if we commit slander. We need to do whatever it takes to win.” That is why the Catholic Christianist Freak Show is now a freak show.”
Actually, Soros has been a big supporter of the gay rights movement and gay marriage:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/11/george-soros-the-money-behind-the-transgender-move/
For Mark to claim that Soros is only off track from a Catholic standpoint due to his being a pro-abort is simply intellectually dishonest. As to culpability for sin, Soros was raised at a time when abortion was outlawed throughout most of the world, and the Judaism he learned as he was growing up would certainly not have been abortion friendly. Of course this also is intellectually dishonest. Mark has never given the slightest hint, for example, that racists might have less moral culpability for their racism due to how they were raised. The simple fact is now that Mark is a raging Leftist and thus he makes excuses for Soros.
and the Judaism he learned as he was growing up would certainly not have been abortion friendly.
‘Soros’ is a manufactured name. His father was promoter of Esperanto and contrived a new family name per the principles which went into constructing Esperanto. The family were also kapos during the war (or, more precisely, the equivalent thereof among those outside the camps), paid commissions by the state for services rendered during the ‘aryanization’ of Jewish businesses in Hungary. I think secularism was quite prevalent among bourgeois Mitteleuropean Jews and I doubt he had any religious instruction.
Instead of making him the bogeyman, Catholics should be trying to see his actions charitably as much as possible rather than routinely anointing him the Great Satan.
This from Shea. We often do not see ourselves as others do.
Soros is an evil, manipulative puppet master. I would guess he is amoral or if he has morals they are based on what is good for or amuses George Soros.
It has been remarked.
http://www.mcall.com/opinion/white/mc-bw-george-soros-20170823-story.html
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2013/01/center-for-american-progress-uses.html
“and I doubt he had any religious instruction.”
Well, I know that George Soros had his son Alexander bar mitzvahed, so I assume there is at least that level of ceremonial attachment to Judaism.
“Like it or not, Catholic moral theology recognizes that there are different levels of culpability for sin. When a person’s religious formation teaches them, as Judaism often does, that abortion is permissible under certain circumstances, they do not have the same culpability as Catholics do.”
Now I don’t remember such a comment when the torture debates were going on. After all, neither Bush nor Cheney are Catholics. I must have missed that exoneration by Shea.
In Shea’s world:
(1) Waterboarding an Islamic terrorist who decapitated innocent Christians
OR
(2) Executing a sadistic psychopathic murderer of women and children
OR
(3) Using a gun to defend innocent Protestant church goers on Sunday morning
Are all worse than a Democrat exercising her choice over her body to:
(1) Kill her unborn child in the womb by dismemberment
AND
(2) Having that child’s internal organs be sold to the highest bidder by Planned Parenthood.
While I know there are a lot of cultural Jews around, and some groups as loosy-goosy as various Christian groups on abortion, as best I can find Jewish teaching is only slightly less strict than Catholic– you can abort to save the mother’s life, with the technical classification of the baby in those cases being the same as an attacker (“rodef,” an pursuer). If there’s any way to save the mother’s life otherwise, including maiming the baby, you’re supposed to do that.
Biggest difference seems to be that most teachers classify the unborn child (unborn until either the head or most of the body is delivered) as an almost person, while Catholic theology holds they are people from conception.
But yeah, this is pretty dang insulting– you’d think someone being Jewish would be a bit more likely to get antsy about classifying some homo sapiens as non-people. (Same thing that gets the agnostic/atheistic pro-lifers going.)
Shea murders reasonable logic with: “Like it or not, Catholic moral theology recognizes that there are different levels of culpability for sin. When a person’s religious formation teaches them, as Judaism often does, that abortion is permissible under certain circumstances, they do not have the same culpability as Catholics do.”
Since when was Soros a practicing Jew? Before or after he helped the Nazi’s kill his fellow Jews in the extermination camps?
And why stop at personal religious conviction? Why not just expand the lack of culpability to each individual’s own personal feelings on the matter: If you merely feel that abortion is moral permissible – then you’re really not culpable of its intrinsic evil. Yes?
And now let’s also extend that same moral pass to others, eh Mr Shea? Like gun owners, and pro-death penalty advocates, and waterboarding advocates and anyone and everyone who is even slightly right of center to your unhinged Leftist demagoguery?
Mark now has no god but Caesar. Such is the goal of the Christianity of the Left. He has drunk deeply of their Kool-Aid. All for the mess of pottage of money from Patheos and the feel-good self-righteousness of modern materialism.
People should be advised that the bloggers at patheos get paid by the number of clicks on their page, so just going to it gives whatever amount of money to him. I even wonder whether he says some of the things just for shock so that people will visit his page.