The never ending antics of the Marxist Clown Rowan Williams have come full circle. In a Church split by his dogmatic attachment to Marxism he questions if the Catholic Church has lost its authority due to the pedophilia scandals.
There was a problem in the Catholic Church. It was inexcusable, but being dealt with. One can readily find similar stories of abuse by public school teachers. However, the feeding frenzy in the media is absurd. The Church does great work for millions and is a credit to the community. I am amazed at the brilliant and dedicated work that goes on each and every day in my community.
Perhaps caring for the poor and troubled and providing some excellent legal services is lost on media Marxists.
Rowan Williams has suddenly gotten around to the plight of persecuted Christians. Of course he does not get around to explaining who is doing the persecution and why. If Christians are being persecuted in Egypt and Nigeria who is doing it? Perhaps it is martians??? Williams also should be asked why his peers are supportive of a movement that has historically persecuted Christians. What did Williams say or do for persecuted Christians in Cuba, China and the Soviet Union?
Williams is and always will be a Marxist Clown who is a disgrace to his Church. Perhaps Williams should dedicate himself to his actual Church instead of making a series of idiotic political statements that are often on a par with the worst of Hugo Chavez. If he were not Marxist he would be as lampooned as Pat Robertson. What ever ails Pat Robertson is not attributable to adding a genocidal manifesto to scripture.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
33 comments:
Almost every day, local media carries stories about pedophile teachers (male and now a shockingly high number of females.} However, after the sensational Debra LaFave story broke nationally in 2006, the topic of female teacher/male student sex, has dropped from national media radar.
Interesting that the media will single out the Catholic Church for the problem of pedophile priests while ignoring the ignoring pedophile teachers in the public school system. Where is the hue and cry for reform in schools? If the Church "loses credibility" because of this issue, then why don't our public schools suffer the same?
Well, public schools are government run and we sure wouldn't want to embarrass the government. And the media has a double standard.
Gator
The Church does wonderful work in so many areas. Of course Public School Teachers are backed by far left politicos. The media never seems to get around to holding them accountable to the levels we see with the church
I don't know anything about Rowan Williams, but I do know a thing or two about the Catholic Church, and I have limited sympathy for them. Yes, the pedophile priests are no doubt a minority, yes, its wrong to judge all priests and bishops because of them, and yes the church does good work.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church is by and large a leftist organization. That's where you're missing in your analysis. If communists and Nazis are rival leftists, the same is true when it comes to communist and Catholics, or Nazis and Catholics.
Catholics tend to be pacifists, and believe in most social welfare programs, and tend to advocate for government socialist experiments. Just look at their record. A good many of them probably support gun control, they are almost all against the death penalty, and for the most part, they are in favor of the type of immigration reform favored by the likes of George W. Bush, John McCain, and the vast majority of Democrats. If anything Catholics probably would say that was a moderate policy, and that our immigration policies need to be much more liberal than that.
Of course, what they are doing in that regard is trying to attract more Catholic adherents and Priests to the ranks of the American Church, but at the same time I have no doubt they sincerely believe in this immigration liberalization.
They are anti-big business and pro income re-distribution. Although I don't know for sure, I would be willing to bet they are mostly in favor of Cap-and Trade, and I have no doubt that the majority of those who are against the current Medical Reform fiasco are those Catholic hospitals who understand how they will be negatively impacted by it. What other ones are against it are probably basing their opposition solely on concerns about abortion and the potential for euthanasia at some future date. Otherwise, I have no doubt the majority of Catholics-priests and laity-would be solidly in favor of it.
By and large they range from center-left to far-left in their ideology, with a marked minority of actual conservatives.
Once you make allowances for anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia policies, and their stance against gay marriage and stands on some woman's issues, there isn't much daylight between the Catholic Church and your typical communist or socialist.
And that would include their record of dealing with dissent when they were the ruling power of the western world.
Pagan
I am not opposed to classic liberalism. I am opposed to the procommunist current version. The Democratic Party never recovered from the infiltration of Michael "the Commie Stooge" Harrington.
Classic liberalism was anticommunist but understood that every now and then the government needs to step in. In the economic disaster steps were taken to avoid
serious problems.
In general sane liberalism understands the need to create jobs
and understands dependence.
Onto the Catholic Church, much of the media scorn directed at this Pope is because of his role in dealing with liberation theology.
Glen Beck may be off the wall at times, but his comments about Churches preaching social justice are true.
Helping the poor for their own sake is quite different from promoting communism. Poor people may need a hand and some guidance but are not oppressed.
People who live under communism are oppressed.
The leading German forensic psychiatrist says that a child is statistically thirtysix times more likely to be sexually abused by anybody else but by a Catholic priest. I'll shortly blog about it.
"Onto the Catholic Church, much of the media scorn directed at this Pope is because of his role in dealing with liberation theology."
I think its more to do with the abortion issue, when it comes to the media, and also their stand against gay rights, including but not limited to gay marriage. That's why this priest pedophile scandal is being ratcheted up. It gives the church's enemies the opportunity to paint them as hypocrites, perhaps with good reason. This crap has been going on for centuries, it didn't just happen over the last three or four decades.
"Glen Beck may be off the wall at times, but his comments about Churches preaching social justice are true."
There's nothing wrong with churches helping the poor and dispossessed and encouraging church members to help the poor, its when they start veering into government policy that it starts to be a problem. They have no place encouraging governments to impose taxes on wealth in order to fund social service programs, for example. If they want to help the poor, by all means they should do so, but they should kindly donate their own time and money, not mine.
It wouldn't be so bad if they would devote half their time and effort to making sure those government programs are run efficiently and effectively, since they want them so badly. Unfortunately, they don't seem to really give as much of a shit about the poor as they like to brag they do. It just sounds good to insist on those things, why should they worry about whether they are actually run as well as possible? Could it be they want to make sure there is always a steady stream of poverty-ridden populations? Why is it these kinds of things never seem to actually help anybody but the people who run them and promote them?
"Helping the poor for their own sake is quite different from promoting communism. Poor people may need a hand and some guidance but are not oppressed."
You'd see things a lot differently if the church ever rose to the level of power and influence it once enjoyed. I rather suspect you would see there would be very little difference between they and many communist regimes. Maybe not as bad as Stalin, Pol Pot, etc., but probably more like Tito on a bad day.
"People who live under communism are oppressed."
So were people who lived under the thumb of the Catholic Church.
"I am not opposed to classic liberalism."
Classic liberalism is Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. I'm having a hard time seeing them in this mess.
"I am opposed to the procommunist current version. The Democratic Party never recovered from the infiltration of Michael "the Commie Stooge" Harrington."
Harrington, while his influence overall was negative, was not quite as bad as you paint him. For example, he was anti-Stalinist to such an extent he was a strong supporter of cold-war era communist containment policies. He also supported the US involvement in Vietnam.
Bottom line, Michael Harrington entered the party because it welcomed his type. He didn't change that much, he just strengthened the faction in which he found a natural home.
If you want a whipping boy for the current state of the Democratic Party, Harrington makes a convenient scapegoat, but your real perpetrators are the Kennedy's, especially Robert F. Kennedy. He's the one who made it cool at the time to be a bleeding heart leftist liberal.
"Classic liberalism was anticommunist but understood that every now and then the government needs to step in."
I agree with you here. I have nothing against reasonable social safety nets, so long as they are not managed in such a way as to encourage bureaucratic growth and generational dependence. That's just the problem though with government involvement in such things. That almost always turns out to be the case.
"In the economic disaster steps were taken to avoid
serious problems."
See above. There are things they could have done that would have been positive steps towards helping the economy recover.
Then there is what they actually did.
"In general sane liberalism understands the need to create jobs
and understands dependence."
Sane liberalism died with Harry Truman. And he was by no means perfect, but at least he had a functioning brain and some common sense. He was wrong about some things, but he was honestly wrong, the way a man with integrity can be wrong. Today's liberals have no common sense or integrity, they are just capricious. That's the difference.
If he were not Marxist he would be as lampooned as Pat Robertson.
Exactly.
Why does Rowan Williams have any credibility? The leftist media, of course.
PT,
On the other hand, the Catholic Church is by and large a leftist organization. That's where you're missing in your analysis. If communists and Nazis are rival leftists, the same is true when it comes to communist and Catholics, or Nazis and Catholics.
Spot on.
PT
Harrington switched his stance on Vietnam in 69. He also was influential in pushing the war on poverty.
You are largely correct in that the Kennedy family deserves much of the blame. However, it was Harrington's example that allowed garbage like Hayden and other SDS imbeciles into the Democratic Party
where they remain a pox on society.
Harrington's role with the SDS should also not be understated. He also was apologetic for his comments about Hayden and other loons.
I don't know much about Harrington, just there wasn't much difference in him and your typical mainstream liberal democrat at the time, at least not at first. Hayden and his ilk are not mainstream liberals. No one listens to or supports them in any significant numbers, even within the Democratic Party.
The Kennedy's, on the other hand, are especially pernicious in their influence, and they are that part of the left that has the most influence. They are the ones responsible for the wayward lurch to the left of the mainstream of the party, more than any other single person or group of people.
Robert Kennedy in particular, I can't stress nearly enough, has had the most deleterious effect on Democratic Party policy. He was a craven hypocrite who railed against the very things he originally championed wholeheartedly. Vietnam War, for example. He was an opportunist who would do anything for power, as witness how he short-circuited Eugene MacCarthy's presidential primary campaign by practically stealing it out from under him.
If you could turn Robert Kennedy's political career into a television show, the tag-line would be "you got punked".
Try this experiment-name me one New England Mafia don or capo who was brought down by AG Kennedy's war on organized crime. That whole fiasco was nothing but a way to eliminate his base's mob rivals.
The man was a serious asshole. Michael Harrington is a footnote.
I just re-read this thread more carefully. How did a topic about the CoE Archbishop of Canterbury end up in Catholic bashing?
I guess recently everything ends up as Catholic bashing. It's easy, cheap, non-hazardous and shows what a great critical thinker one is.
Pope Bendict was involved in liberation theology?
Beak, you really are an ignorant moron. Benedict and John Paul II were violently opposed to it.
Not that you have any concept of what it involved. You manage to make stupid look well informed.
Editrix
Rowan Williams the circus clown and freak decided to question the moral authority of the Catholic Church. As Williams was praising Marxist tyranny in Russia and Cuba those states were oppressing Christians.
The Catholic Church made dreadful mistakes but they are being dealt with.
Ducky
This Pope was the brains behind crushing Liberation Theology. For this feat the Bolshevik media has a Nixon type of fixation with him.
I guess recently everything ends up as Catholic bashing. It's easy, cheap, non-hazardous and shows what a great critical thinker one is.
I can give you Catholic bashing if you want it. All you gotta do to set me off on that is confuse Catholicism with Christianity.
As for critical thinking, let me lnow when Mr. Ratzinger tells you it's okay to laugh off geocentric theory.
"Beak, you really are an ignorant moron. Benedict and John Paul II were violently opposed to it."
That is what Beak said, you dolt. What do you think "dealing" implied? Revering it?
Beamish, it will never cease to amaze me what Beak sees in you. But after all, he even thinks those tits on two legs are an intellectual because they don't like "Commies". Even the Duck is a more independent and un-clichéed thinker than you. I'll ignore you from now on.
Editrix-
There is little doubt the Catholic Church is mostly leftist. They encourage peace, practically at any cost, regardless of the circumstances of conflict. They promote social welfare programs, which would be fine if they just managed their own, unfortunately, they also try to influence government policy. They encourage liberal immigration reform and leniency towards illegal immigrants. Just let anybody come in that wants to come.
Then there's their stand on the death penalty. Most priests and bishops oppose it vociferously, regardless of how heinous the crime involved.
Take any leftist, liberal policy that you care to name, and if the Church as a whole were given a rating the way American Senators and House members are, regarding their conservative/liberal stands, I have no doubt the Catholic Church, as an organization, would rank way up in the higher seventy percentile range.
There is a very good reason Catholics tend to vote Democratic. What ones vote Republican tend to be one or two issue voters, and that generally boils down to abortion, one of their few core conservative issues.
That is not catholic bashing, that's just recognizing the modern history of the church for what it is.
And by the way, as far as I'm concerned, their stand on abortion is actually not really conservative from a truly American perspective. A truly American conservative view would be to overturn Roe v Wade and allow the states to make their own abortion laws. Catholics want to outlaw abortion across the board, regardless of the circumstances, and they want to do so at the federal level. The states would get no say so.
So even there, they are not conservative. In fact, I could make the argument that if a woman were forced to give birth to a baby known to have no brain and little chance of survival past its first year, even if it is clear the birth would leave her paralyzed or dead, would owe a hell of a lot more to a leftist philosophy, regardless of how "conservative" it might seem on the surface.
Beamish, while you decide who is or isn't Christian, why not go get biblical and do a little snake handling?
Yes Editrix, sometimes I only catch a phrase in Beaks rants. It is tough to read them through. However, his sense of why there is resentment toward the Pope is completely lacking and his idea that "revolution theology" was ever a major revolutionary force in the church is simple minded enough to be worthy of Yeagley.
Beak sees the world in very primitive terms. Everything is a battle against the dark forces of the far left and he is concerned primarily because he sees the left in opposition to the only thing in the world which is of any importance, Israel.
Its a severely debilitating tunnel vision. Everything must be seen through the lens of Israel. I'm not sure if you're an end timer or not but you may suffer from the disease.
Duck, you obviously think that it was a compliment when I rated you marginally less arseholey than Beamish. Rest assured, it isn't.
Beamish, while you decide who is or isn't Christian, why not go get biblical and do a little snake handling?
Ducky, why don'y you "get biblical" and explain how it is no one in the New Testament books knew Peter was the Pope, not even the Romans that crucified him upside down.
My cat recently dropped a Mary-shaped turd in the litter box. Should I build a shrine and charge Catholics admission to kiss it?
Editrix,
You're not the first Catholic to think me an asshole. I take much pride in the fact that you won't be the last.
Beamish-
"My cat recently dropped a Mary-shaped turd in the litter box. Should I build a shrine and charge Catholics admission to kiss it?"
LOL I've been wondering how long it would be before you said something like that.
PT,
Catholicism is a rather target rich environment for parody.
Usually I don't care what anyone religiously believes, but confusing Catholicism with Christianity is as offensive to me as confusing baloney with a porterhouse steak.
Wow, this is really getting interesting over here at The Beak Speaks. I liked that part about Ms. Sonia, that home schooling innovator. Mr. Beamish doesn't think Catholics are Christians? What ever happened to spirit of ecumenism? And I had thought the 30 Years War was over long ago. He seems intent on resuming the cease fire. Such civility of discourse. Not that a good smack down isn't warranted on occasion.
"Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."
Talk about offensive!
The early church fathers actually predicted that the Church would be corrupted by pagan and hedonist influences. It would have been obvious to them, as they would have seen it all unfolding before their eyes. The Roman Catholic Church is simply the unfolding of all those things they talked about viewing in their time in the course of the progression of history. The infiltration by pagan cultists, the blending of pagan rituals and holy days into the Christian observances, etc. Most importantly, the political influences, the marriage to state interests, etc. The Orthodox Church might be even worse in that regard.
It's actually somewhat to be expected, when you get right down to it, that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches would owe as much to ancient pagan beliefs and rituals as it does Christianity. All of those important, powerful, influential pagan priests and their more devout followers didn't just fade into the ether when Constantine made Christianity the official state and soon only legal religion.
"Fr. Firefly,"
Syncretism is not ecumenism. Romans adopting Jesus into their "catholic" pantheon does not make them the custodians of Christianity anymore than their adopting Brigid the Celtic goddess of fire and poetry as a canonized "saint" makes them the custodians of Druidism or their adopting Bacchus the Roman god of wine as a "saint" makes them the custodians of Dionysian cultism.
Catholicism is a religion some 300 years younger than Christianity, but the syncretic Roman imperial impulse of it is older than Christianity. The god-emperor has been replaced by a "pope" but the imperial structure and offices remain the same.
Biblical Christianity is egalitarian. Catholicism is organizationally heirarchical.
They really have nothing in common at all.
PT,
...when Constantine made Christianity the official state and soon only legal religion.
Er, no. Contantine made Roman Catholism the official state and soon only legal religion.
The Christian "ekklesias" (Greek word for "assemblies" or "congregations" mistranslated as "churches") that didn't sign on to Constantine's "Council of Nicea" to be subsumed to a Roman-dominated hierarchy were just as persecuted and fed to lions for entertainment by them as they were before Constantine took his imperial "godhood" to the step of calling himself "pope" (because God's the Father...) and taking on the pretentious title of "Vicar of Christ" (vicar, vicarious - in substitute of... Constantine was the "God-the-Father-Emperor substitute of Christ," or in Greek, "anti-Christ")
Check out the history of Anabaptists and their 1st Century Christian origins. Christianity was not totally hijacked by the Roman Empire, but dissent was trampled mercilessly.
Catholicism is not Christianity, and never was.
Wow. History in a nutshell. Thanks for that. It saved me a lot of reading.
Beamish-
Constantine didn't even become a Christian (or Catholic) himself until he was on his death bed, and then he converted, or at least that's the way I've heard it. He was never the Pope, at least not officially. Originally, the Pope was nothing more than the Bishop of Rome. Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, and there were others after him, but the office in later days became magnified to where it was considered the head of the entire Catholic Church.
Constantine's actions were more political than religious. Most of the poor, slaves, and civil servants at his time were Christian, or at the very least they made up the largest plurality of people. These were the people who were responsible for the day to day running of the Empire. They made it functional. He wanted the masses on his side.
The early church was probably already infiltrated and influenced, and to an extent corrupted, by pagan and political influences, before Constantine ever got involved. He just helped by giving them the official stamp of state approval and patronage.
It was a way of promoting unity and cohesiveness within the empire.
PT,
Actually, there is no Biblical basis for believing Peter was ever in Rome, much less "Bishop of Rome." The idea is rather ludicrous when you consider the prerequisites for the position of "bishop" in a Christian congregation are laid out by Paul in 1 Timothy 3:2-7. Paul, as you know wrote an epistle to the Roman congregation administering lessons in the faith (in the book of Romans) without personally addressing or even mentioning Peter as he did with friends and family in the Roman congregations. Surely Paul would have known Peter was the leader of the congregation of the church he was sending advice to. One step further, surely Paul wouldn't have sent advice to the church led by the "first pope."
Catholicism doesn't have a darned thing to do with Christianity. Never did, never will.
Beamish-
You've inspired me to do something I haven't done in years-read the Bible. I wouldn't swear that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome or that he was even in Rome, I just take their word for it (Paul was certainly there).
Paul and Peter never really liked each other that much. They had different ideas about how the church should be run, who should be allowed to join, and so on. Peter eventually adapted Paul's ideas, but I still think they were rivals. Paul especially seems to have dislike John Mark (the Gospel writer Mark, who was a disciple of Peter).
It might be you should read Romans with an eye to reading between the lines. Just because Peter's name isn't mentioned doesn't mean he was not being addressed. The exclusion of his name might even have been intentional.
Also, of course, there is another explanation which is even more likely, which is, Peter did not go to Rome until after the epistle by Paul was written.
You did miss my point though about the office of Bishop of Rome. It was originally just that-Bishop of Rome. It had no particular authority over any other area. For example, James being the Bishop of Jerusalem would not have been subordinate to the Bishop of Rome. It was just another office.
The whole idea of how Peter and Paul died was probably made up to mirror the executions of Jesus and John the Baptist. If Peter was there and executed, he probably would have been thrown from the Tarpeaian Rock. Paul probably was either thrown to the lions or ended his days as a human torch. (then again, he might not have ever been killed, if he was, it was never mentioned in the Bible).
Paul does not address Peter in his epistle to the Romans because as Peter writes in his own epistles from where he was at in Babylon.
Like many things Catholic, the tradition of Peter being a "bishop of Rome" has no basis in Christian theology or history.
Post a Comment