Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 7:39am

PopeWatch: Seamless Garment Take Two

Pope Francis resurrects the moth eaten seamless garment:

Pope Francis’ remarks on the issue appear in paragraphs 101-102 of the exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate reproduced in full below:

101. The other harmful ideological error is found in those who find suspect the social engagement of others, seeing it as superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist. Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend. Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.

102. We often hear it said that, with respect to relativism and the flaws of our present world, the situation of migrants, for example, is a lesser issue. Some Catholics consider it a secondary issue compared to the “grave” bioethical questions. That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children. Can we not realize that this is exactly what Jesus demands of us, when he tells us that in welcoming the stranger we welcome him (cf. Mt 25:35)? Saint Benedict did so readily, and though it might have “complicated” the life of his monks, he ordered that all guests who knocked at the monastery door be welcomed “like Christ”, with a gesture of veneration; the poor and pilgrims were to be met with “the greatest care and solicitude”.

Go here to read the rest.  The Pope thus gives political coverage to his Leftist pro-abort buddies and neuters the fight of the Church against abortion.  May Christ forgive him.

 

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Don L
Don L
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 7:12am

Welcoming the stranger–no matter whom?
“…And if anyone will not…heed your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.…”

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 7:14am

Priorities. (?)
The poor we will always have with us, and they have a future. We help them to learn to feed themselves, hence they can help teach to feed others.

The stranger. Once vetted they too have a future. Hurdles they clear as they too make their dreams come true.

The elderly. They have lived and we do our utmost to respect their dignity and respect their end of life.

The unborn.

No future.
No rights.
No glorification of God through the dead fetus.

Until LIFE is a priority in our time the decay of our National treasures and Global ones will continue. That decay has reached biblical proportion.
Sixty million reasons why I can say that…and that’s only in our land of the “free.”

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 7:27am

Worse, he builds a strawman– a form of false witness.

Texas Thomist
Texas Thomist
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 7:32am

Francis Fatigue is beginning to reach the point of actual physical illness, such as I now feel whenever I so much as see him, much less listen to or read his inane blather. The only differences between PF and people like M. Shea are the former’s slyly coded insults and white clothing. At least Shea is open about his detraction and calumny.

Pat
Pat
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 7:42am

Kumbahya!
Oh please, Francis, bring back all of the sjw cr@p from the 70’s that so thoroughly devastated the church, we miss it sooooo much.

news flash – someone please inform the pope that the church has had social doctrine for 2000 years. It just hasn’t always been taken from the DNC platform.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 8:35am

“Migrants” aren’t an issue at all except in crises. And the crises can almost invariably be addressed by caring for refugees proximate to the zone of conflict. The response to public health problems in refugee camps is to build latrines and sewers, not resettle the refugees in Finland. The poverty of the ‘stranger’ is derived from the deficit of human capital in the homeland of the stranger, as well as institutional deficiencies. The stranger’s homeland needs a proper land registry, a proper court system, a proper police force and tax collection service, regular standards and practices to allocate common property resources, primary schooling, and agricultural extension. Trained personnel from the occident can assist the locals in building these things, but ultimately the locals have to operate them. No one can pee for you. Resettling a selection of ‘strangers’ in occidental countries does bupkis toward any of these ends. It’s a reasonable wager that Francis understanding of the economy is that a bunch of Scrooge McDucks have a lot of treasure they won’t share with ‘strangers’. It doesn’t occur to him that the treasure is a medium of exchange and a store of value for actual productive resources, and that those resources are deployed in societies which have some measure of stability and comity because they aren’t horribly culturally fissured. The man knows nothing.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 10:50am

Art Deco wrote, “And the crises can almost invariably be addressed by caring for refugees proximate to the zone of conflict.”

Since 1949, the population of Palestinian refugees has increased from about 650,000 to over 5 million, mostly in UNRWA CAMPS IN the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

Would not dispersal and resettlement have better served, not only the refugees themselves, but the cause of peace in the region?

After all, we do not have refugee camps filled with Sudeten and Volga Germans or Pieds-noirs from Algeria.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 11:20am

Would not dispersal and resettlement have better served, not only the refugees themselves, but the cause of peace in the region?

Do you ever tire of playing these games? No, there are not “5 million refugees”. There are 5 million people registered with UNRWA, and that includes the great-grandchildren of people who resided in the former Mandate of Palestine for some period of time up to 14 May 1948. It can be as little as two years.

The camps have been located in sections of the old mandate, in the Transjordan, in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Egypt. Who lives in the West Bank, on the Gaza Strip, in Lebanon, and constitutes about 1/2 the population of Jordan and about 70% of the population of Syria? That’s right, Arabs who speak vernaculars on the Levantine spectrum. While were at it, do you recall where Edward Said (b. 1935) and Yasir Arafat (b.1929) grew up? E-G-Y-P-T. Those Arabs are already re-settled in and among people whose cultural distance approximates that between St. Louis and Calgary. There are two differences: the UNRWA registrants are the beneficiaries of international aid flows and (2) many have a truncated civic standing in the countries in which they live.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, April 10, AD 2018 11:23am

After all, we do not have refugee camps filled with Sudeten and Volga Germans or Pieds-noirs from Algeria.

Did anyone suggest ‘resettling’ any of these populations in public housing projects in Istanbul? Just asking…

stilbelieve
stilbelieve
Wednesday, April 11, AD 2018 2:12am

“Can we not realize that this is exactly what Jesus demands of us, when he tells us that in welcoming the stranger we welcome him (cf. Mt 25:35)?” Pope Francis.

My answer is long, but worth reading because the meaning of Mt 25:35. for that matter, the entire vrs 31-45 of Mt. 25, is critical in knowing what those verses mean, and they don’t mean what the bishops are “teaching,” Who IS that “stranger?”

Whose “responsibility” is it to welcome the “stranger” which is a teaching from Jesus that comes from Mt 25, 35: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me.” And that verse comes out of Mt 25, 31-46 which is entitled “The Judgment of the Nations.” I question Pope Francis’ implied statement – “our moral duty is to welcome the stranger.”

The footnote in my Catholic bible ask this important and enlightening question about “The Judgment” in Mt 25, 31-46, and specifically v 40:

“The criterion of judgment will be the deeds of mercy that have been done for the ‘least’ of Jesus ‘brothers’ (40). A DIFFICULT AND IMPORTANT QUESTION IS THE IDENTIFICATION OF THESE ‘LEAST BROTHERS’ (my emphasis). Are they all people who have suffered hunger, thirst, etc (v35, 36) or a particular group of such sufferers? Scholars are divided in their response and arguments can be made for either side. But leaving aside the problem of what the traditional material that Matthew edited may have meant, it seems that a stronger case can be made for the view that in the evangelist’s sense the sufferers are Christians, probably Christian missionaries whose sufferings were brought upon them by their preaching of the gospel. The criterion of judgment for ‘all the nations’ is their treatment of those who have borne to the world the message of Jesus, and this means ultimately their acceptance or rejection of Jesus himself: cf 10, 40, ‘Whoever receives you, receives me.'”

To me, things have to make sense, and that footnote makes a lot of sense. Remember the bible passage where Jesus, for the first time, sent out 72 disciples in pairs and instructed them to take nothing with them? He did so that they would have to depend on help from the people in those various countries and communities. And those people who felt the need to help them, and did so, were listening and responding to God.

There are other passages where Jesus teaches who his disciples are; one being when his mother and “brothers” were outside calling him to come out. When told this, Jesus said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Mt 12; 46-50

And then there is the footnote for Mt 10, 40-42, entitled “Rewards:” “All who receive the disciples of Jesus receive him, and the God who sent him, and will be rewarded by everlasting life in the kingdom.”

And footnote for Mt 10, 41: “A ‘prophet;’ one who speaks in the name of God, here, the Christian prophets who proclaim the gospel. ‘Righteous man;’ since righteousness is demanded of all the disciples, it is difficult to take the ‘righteous man’ of this verse and ‘one of these little ones (42) as indicating different groups within the followers of Jesus. Probably all three designations are used here of Christian missionaries as such.”

The word “little ones” is in Mt 10, 42: ” And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple – amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”

“Strangers” flooding Europe, and soon America, are not Christians coming to spread the message of Jesus. And neither are those coming into the U.S. illegally from Spanish speaking countries of the south

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, April 11, AD 2018 4:09am

Art Deco wrote, “[M]any have a truncated civic standing in the countries in which they live.”
Precisely. They are regarded as political refugees, with a right of return to their home country (Palestine), when conditions in that country permit.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, April 11, AD 2018 6:26am

Precisely. They are regarded as political refugees, with a right of return to their home country (Palestine), when conditions in that country permit.

There’s a distinction between actual goals on the one hand and artifice on the other. Except for some dogfights with the Syrian air force, Israel hasn’t come to blows with any of the Arab states since 1973. The very oldest flag-rank officers in the U.S. military – men whose service was extended by presidential directive beyond the standard retirement date for 4-star officers – were 1st and 2d year cadets at that time. I doubt it’s any different in any of the Arab militaries.

Jordan actually granted the Arab refugee population citizenship. West Bank Arabs used to hold Jordanian passports. The Gulf emirates didn’t grant the Arab refugees citizenship because they naturalize very few people of any description. In Kuwait, to hold citizenship requires your pedigree include someone provably present in Kuwait in 1920 or requires you be one of a discrete few naturalized since then. The government naturalized (IIRC) 6,000 or so Bedouin in 1966. Otherwise, the number naturalized each year can be enumerated with two digits. The same deal applies all over the Gulf. Lebanon was disinclined to naturalized UNRWA dole recipients because the country was fairly evenly divided demographically and passports for the refugee camps would have upset the balance. All political offices were allocated by confession according to methods and formulae worked out between Lebanon’s political bosses in 1943 and reblanacing was a horribly contentious issue and only undertaken (in a partial way) when they’d spent 15 years shooting the whole country to pieces. Syrian law did not naturalize UNRWA registrants, but it left only a residue of civic disability adhering to them, which didn’t inconvenience them practically. Yes, the population and politicians on the West Bank and Gaza chuffer about a ‘right of return’. The implications of that are obvious, but as you’re scamming around here, you’re not inclined to acknowledge them.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, April 11, AD 2018 6:30am

Funny, the million Jews expelled from Arab nations they had resided in for centuries, with their property usually stolen from them, have not been perpetual refugees.

And, closer to home, the Greek Cypriots formerly resident on the north side of the island aren’t either. Some people are just better at what they do than others.

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, April 11, AD 2018 8:11am

The “Palestinian Refugees” are still refugees because their Arab brothers truly do not give a damn about them, blind hatred of Jews and because they have the worst leadership since Pharaoh sent his chariots into the Red Sea.

Also a nasty habit of terrorism when they are settled in other Arabic countries.
That is where some of the population increase came from.

Basically the “Palestinians” are those groups that couldn’t play nice with anybody else– they’re only useful to have elsewhere, annoying other enemies.

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, April 11, AD 2018 8:14am

The response to public health problems in refugee camps is to build latrines and sewers, not resettle the refugees in Finland.

Also to enforce basic human rights like “not being raped by the ‘aid workers'” or “not being murdered by the Islamic refugees” and “not be openly kidnapped from the camps for sale” at the refugee camps.

Basically, improve the location, don’t spread the problem.

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