I wonder how Jesus will fill his days

Now that President Biden has been sworn in.   Why, even Pope Francis, in stark contrast to his ripping into Trump, has been all grins, smiles, giggles and laughs with his helping hand extended to the new administration.  Thank goodness the Vatican and right thinking Catholic leaders stepped in to mitigate any damage caused by USCCB president Gomez's all too harsh statement on Biden's pro-abortion/sex culture priorities.  Whew.  That was close. 

Remember all those old books and movies about how Catholic bishops and popes ever and only cared about sucking up to the powerful lords, princes and kings back in the day?  Remember all the stories about how the Catholic leaders preferred a world where God made kings and bishops and oppressed peasants to grovel before them?   Remember all those tales about how Catholic leaders were willing to turn a blind eye to, or heck, embrace, the evil as long as they got invited to the next big feast? Yeah, so do I.  

I think I'll go and watch The Mission.  It's a reminder that only fools trust Catholic leadership when it comes to meddling in the rock'em, sock'em world of earthly politics.  Especially during tumultuous times such as these. 

More on the sex abuse scandal latest

Rod Dreher takes a more mature and balanced look.  At the end of the day, it's looking ugly.  Pope Francis is still innocent.  But there is certainly reason for a full investigation.  Not an investigation that promises to drag anyone and everyone over ten miles of broken glass if they dare point to Pope Francis.  But one that seeks the Truth.  Most I hear are in two camps: they want the truth, or they're desperately trying to protect homosexuality, Pope Francis, and the status quo when convenient.  I'm going with the first camp.

What happened to Jesus?

So everyone was abuzz last week about Pope Francis and Donald Trump.  True, people have parsed the Pope's statement just about every way you can parse a statement.  Whether or not he was saying 'Donald is not a Christian' is up for grabs.  And to be honest, it depends on how charitably you are willing to interrupt the Pope's statements.

For the sake of charity, I'll give you that he didn't specifically say Donald Trump is not a Christian.  He did, however, say that anyone who builds walls instead of bridges is not a Christian. And that is worth pondering, since it's so vague and so shallow (sorry, it's a shallow statement more at home on Positive Attitude Posters than a theological treatise) it doesn't really mean anything.  Is the Pope, by saying Isis can be dealt with through violence, not building a bridge?  Does that even count?  What does he mean?  Does he mean anything?  Or is it like so much in modern Catholic unspeak, that the words are vague enough that Catholics - and anyone else - can run with them in whatever direction they want?  I don't know.

Nevertheless, as the firestorm spread and everyone either jumped on Pope Francis or defended him, I noticed something.  Much of the criticism of the Pope was centered around the fact that this is the first time he really came out and, focusing on the context of a single individual, linked our eternal destiny to what that individual advocated.  Like this article notices.  The criticism is that he has met with political leaders and world leaders who have pushed gay marriage, abortion, assisted suicide, the assault on religious liberty, and even the torture and murder of their own people, and silence.  If he had anything negative to say, it was behind closed doors.  There were no public pronouncements that you can't advocate for abortion rights and be a Christian.  Or you can't support gay marriage and be a Christian.  Or you can't enact policies that attack Christ's Church and be a Christian.  Or you can't torture and murder your own citizens and be a Christian.  Again, if theses things were said, we didn't hear about them.  Or at least I didn't hear about them.

But he picks this.  This one subject to throw down the fence between the sheep and goats.  So people fired back that there are other issues he should have picked, like those above.  But what I wondered in all this is just where is Jesus?  I mean, heaven and hell seems to be based on a variety of social and political policies or agendas, not on a relationship with Jesus.  I know that in Catholic and Orthodox circles, the phrase 'relationship with my personal lord and savior' is not used, but only because of the connotations of the phrase.  It's not like they don't believe it.  They actually do believe you must have a relationship with Christ.  They actually do say that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. 

So where was He in these conversations?  I mean, Pope Francis has even said that atheists and non-Christians all are heaven bound if they follow their consciences or the path to God in their traditions.  Jesus, in an actual relationship, seems to have no bearing at all.  Especially when the first time the idea of an individual not going to heaven is floated it has nothing to do with a relationship to Jesus at all, but simply a political policy issue. 

I know that the Church allows for salvation outside of the Church and outside full knowledge of the Gospel.  I get that Jesus is the judge through which we can have salvation; the advocate for humanity.  I get that God so loved the world.  I understand that our pilgrimage is more than just claiming relationship to Christ via the Sinner's Prayer. 

But in all the kerfuffle from last week, by the Pope's defenders, detractors, and apparently the Pope himself, the issue of what one thinks about Jesus or not, or whether one believes in or rejects the Gospel of Christ or not, never came up in the discussions.  It's also worth noting that when  the Pope said this, there was great cheering and dancing in the streets by Catholics who once condemned traditional Catholics for wanting the Pope to call out different people over various sins.  There was not, as far as I saw, a single call to pray for Trump's soul among them.   If we have come to the point where Jesus is no longer more than a figurehead to which we can appeal for ideological validation, I guess I can see why.

I will wait and see

At this point, where we have come to expect our leaders to go from one religious shrine to another, there might not be anything worth worrying about.  The old boundaries between religious belief and practice are quickly melting away.  Even if we downplay Islamic terrorism, we can't ignore the results.  Islam has managed to force the world into setting a growing list of distinctions aside and trying to embrace one global religious belief.  Which would suit most modern liberals just fine. 

Exactly how other religions see it, I don't know.  My guess is they are split between traditionalists who see something unique in their own religious tradition that is simply incompatible with other faiths, and those who see refusing to completely embrace other faiths as the only incompatible belief.  After a century of genocide and global war, Cold War and borderline nuclear annihilation, followed by a wave of tens of thousands killed in the name of religious extremism, we shouldn't be surprised that there would be some form of reaction on the part of the major world religions.  Especially since radically anti-religious advocates have seized on the extremism to condemn all religious beliefs.  Given the disproportionate level of influence such secular voices have in our modern academia and media, religious leaders had to act.

So we'll see.  I try not to jump to conclusions.  But based on what I've seen, I doubt I'll be surprised by what happens, one way or another.  

Apparently Pope Francis made some folks mad

When he spoke about China.  I figured there would be some kerfuffle over it all.  The biggest problem, of course, was his not calling China out on the carpet over its deplorable human rights record.  I know, I know.  Liberals will immediately fire back with the millions we've killed in the Middle East, the millions of American Muslims living in fear of rampant Islamaphobia, and for good measure will remind us of the slaughter of Native Americans, slavery, Japanese interment camps, Hiroshima, Jim Crow and Dred Scott.

Nonetheless, the most we can say is that China is no better than the horrors of America and the Dying West.  And since we know Pope Francis is willing to call us out on such things, it does make you wonder why he did nothing but heap praise and adoration on Communist China.  For me, it's what you do when you are negotiating from a position of weakness.  And that's where we are.  We're a dying civilization and just about everyone knows it.  Those in charge, like Pope Francis, must find ways to move us forward into a world where the civilization that Christianity built no longer calls the shots.  And for that, I'm willing to pardon the pontiff. 

Pope Francis and the Irish Vote: An Alternate Perspective

Interesting.  In most of American Catholic apologetics the message is clear: the Church can never be wrong, we are now at the pinnacle, the latest pope is the most awesome example of awesomeness in the awesome history of awesomely defining the awesome word awesome, now shut up and obey!  But there are other views out there.  And one thing we know from history, in fact the biblical witness, is that we should be careful about dismissing the other views.  Here is one.  Read it as an alternative viewpoint.  Not saying it is right.  But not saying it is automatically wrong because conservative Catholics who love liberalism say anything short of declaring the last three popes a new Trinity is therefore hating the Church.

Pope calls to end life sentences?

Catholics pining for an end to the death penalty have put almost all eggs in the 'life sentence' basket.  That's because we're not prepared to say 'just let the criminal go, and if he kills, we'll try again.'  That was common among the liberal attitudes of the 70s, because the idea was that there were not criminals, only victims of cruel and unjust, oppressive societies.  And those who were part of those unjust societies?  Well, it was never said, but I always got the impression that there was a sort of 'serves them right' attitude whenever an innocent was killed by a released prisoner for whom rehab hadn't taken hold.

The Death Penalty, in the end, is part of the realization the Church had ages ago that we not only live in a fallen world, but are called to be in the fallen world.  Unlike the Amish or monastic communities, most are called to be in this fallen world a light to the world.  Salt of the earth and all.  Because of this, our heavenward focus had to be tempered with concessions to living in light of the way it is.

Hence, Just War.  Hence, the Death Penalty.  Hence putting an end to that idealized Church of Acts 2, where all share and none are in need.  Some Catholics will have millions.  Some will starve.  And like the Death Penalty and Just War, this was simply a fact of life.  We could try to do it in light of endless layers of Christian teaching.  But we had to accept the realities.

Now we have the Church, in light of endless assaults by the post-Christian Left, and to be fair, some left over barbs from Protestants and non-Catholic Christians, trying to revise its old teachings to conform to the expectations of the post-modern world.  Just War is almost - almost mind you - a thing of the past.  Likewise, the  Death Penalty has been under assault for decades.

But now Pope Francis throws in the gauntlet against not just executing prisoners, but imprisoning them for life.  In fairness, advocates of the Death Penalty have used this very argument.  How is imprisoning a person for life, with no hope of escape but death, any different than executing them?  For Catholic legalists, of course, there is a world of difference.  In that particular branch of the Church, you can indirectly cause the death of millions, as long as you don't directly cause the death of one guilty person to save them.

But for most, that's not the way it should be.  Something about throwing someone into prison for life isn't much better than executing them.  Assuming the generally implicit universalism in the modern Church, there is no concern for saving the prisoner's soul. So no real reason to execute, and yet how to validate keeping them in prison for life?

Enter Pope Francis.  Not just do we ban the Death Penatly, but we ban life sentences, too.  Which is, in fairness, consistent.  But it opens up a problem.  Are we advocating the old liberal notion that if a person kills again, we'll just try again?  We have loved Bonnie and Clyde, but have hated Ozzie and Harriet?

And if not, how do we reconcile the radical discipleship that says 'if the innocent be like to die, then so be it, we'll just try again', with a Church that still allows us the creature comforts and luxuries of commercialism and affluence while our fellows starve in the mud around the world.  That, to me, is the challenge.

For if the Church builds a radical discipleship on 'by the degree to which I'm willing to let others die so I can live in comfort have I displayed my righteousness', then I can't help but think we're entering into a new period of history destined to once more give Jesus a couple black eyes and take the Gospel, yet again, down a notch or two in the eyes of the world.

The good news is that Pope Francis may be pushing for a completely radical discipleship that will soon challenge the non-Acts 2 approach of living out the faith in addition to such favorites as capital punishment and Just War.  Whether Catholics will hear all of it, or just the portions that help them win arguments on the blogosphere, has yet to be seen.

Dealing with ISIS: A Catholic Perspective

Well, a different viewpoint.  If you visit some Catholic sites, or pay attention to the media, it appears that Catholics agree: all religions get you there, Islam really just wants to give peace a chance, and if there are problems it's because of the Great Satan's foreign policies.  

Nonetheless, difficult as it is to believe, not all Catholics see it this way.  The post is by a priest who reminds us there is another side to history that doesn't always fit with The Narrative.  Take it for what it's worth.  I'm leery of any too simplistic assessments of a complex series of events.  Still, to go into a problem with the somewhat excessive guilt cum narcissism view that it's all our fault, is of no value whatsoever.  If this article isn't a completely unpacked version, it's at least worth looking at to remember the rest of the story that all too often we want to ignore.  

All bigotry is racial

In America at least.  Because of the terrible legacy of slavery that we inherited from the British, and more than that, the horrible screwing that we gave the Native Americans throughout the 19th century, Americans typically see evil in two ways: Racially or it isn't evil.   So it is that in America, homosexuality as a race issue is more common in the arguments than you will find in other parts of the world where folks are pushing for gay rights.  A few years back, when I still went to the Huffpost, I got into a debate with another fellow who was from England.  I brought up the idea that there was no proof whatsoever that homosexuals were the same as Blacks or Asians, and therefore it was ludicrous to base support for the cause on that argument.  The fellow responded that I was loony for even going that direction.  It was England, not America.  Though I wonder if, seeing its success in America, using 'Gay equals Race' will become more common internationally.  Don't know.

Anyway, Americans typically see evil as that which is racial.  So we are keenly aware of the Holocaust, but not overly knowledgeable about the slaughter of Ukrainians under Stalin.  We know all about African slavery, but sometimes are shocked to find out that Africans practiced slavery themselves.  When Bill Clinton said we had to go in and stop the ethnic slaughter of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian Christians, he got the world, and America, to support him.  When George Bush said we had to stop Saddam Hussein from terrorizing and slaughtering his own people, not so much.

We know of our decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, and many assume it's because of our racist hatred of those slant eyed types.  We also lament the rounding up of Japanese citizens in WWII.  Less well known is the xenophobic genocide visited upon the Asian peoples by Japan, and even less than that, the fact that we rounded up German and Italian citizens as well.  Forget the fact that while most Americans are aware that Americans rushed in and razed more than one Indian village, but are usually ignorant of, or don't care about, the fact that Indians did the same to American settlements with women and children just the same.

We don't even bother with mass butchery and killing over political, social or national ideology.  So again, we all know what those Nazis did in the Holocaust.  But that tens of millions have been killed or butchered under the Communist ideology elicits everything from denial to casual dismissal.  We are keenly aware of the atrocities committed by religious fanaticism, but usually only if that was done by Christians against people of other faiths.  If other faiths did it to Christians, or others, we assume it was particular or unique, or we just don't mention it.

With the exception of Christian atrocities visited on other people, for Americans, the only real sin is racial.  And that usually means White, Europeans oppressing non-White, non-Europeans.  Christians always get bonus points in the evil category if they're part of the mischief which, by default, they usually were.

So I'll bet your average American would be shocked to find out that Scotland has an anti-Catholic problem.  Really.  A newspaper from Scotland calls out the crisis here.  Think about that. America has a race problem we're told.   Deep in our culture there is still a racial injustice problem. Possibly.  But apparently, Scotland has a similar type of anti-Catholic problem.  Imagine that.  It's almost like all the evil in the world doesn't necessarily stop at America's shores.  Sometimes, other countries might be capable of things just as evil, even if they don't look like the American version.  Sometimes that might be true in America, too.  Whether Americans will ever care remains to be seen.

It's America's fault

What's America's fault?  Well, just about anything these days.  So the Patriarch of Antioch of the Syriacs is saying that the violence in Syria, and the slaughter we see on our televisions, is - you guessed it - because of America, as well as Europe, and also the Gulf States.  Who knows?  Maybe it is.  I don't know.  I don't reckon myself an expert in Syrian foreign relations.  I just notice the ease with which just about anyone can blame the US for almost anything today (and in some parts of the world, Europe gets lumped in as well).  I'm reminded that, while America more or less is willing to admit America sucks and it's all our fault, most of the rest of the world is willing to chime in with the same viewpoint.  Catholics around the world, being products of their own cultural heritage, are no doubt willing to chime in as well.  For that matter, Catholics in America make some of the loudest clanging when it comes to criticizing the US.  Nothing much to comment on.  Just an interesting look on how easy it is for other countries to blame other countries, while in the US, the only segment left that dares suggest other countries could be the blame is the gradually shrinking American Right.