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Title: US and Catholicism in Crisis
Source:
VDare
URL Source: http://www.vdare.com/articles/us-and-catholicism-in-crisis
Published: Sep 22, 2015
Author: Pat Buchanan
Post Date: 2015-09-22 01:15:27 by nativist nationalist
Keywords: None
Views: 1549
Comments: 24
During the 1950s, the twin pillars of worldwide anti-communism were Dwight Eisenhower’s America and the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Pius XII. During the 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan and the Polish pope, John Paul II, were the pillars of resistance. When Pope Francis arrives in Washington on Tuesday afternoon, the country he enters will be a very different one from Eisenhower’s America or Reagan’s America. And Catholics will be welcoming a new kind of pope. In America 2015, homosexuality, abortion on demand and same-sex marriage— shameful crimes in Ike’s America, mortal sins in the catechism of Pius XII— have become constitutional rights. These represent the values that define Barack Obama’s America, the values our officials defend at the United Nations, the values we preach to the world. What Ike’s America saw as decadence, Obama’s America calls progress. And among its noisiest celebrants are our Catholic vice president, Joe Biden, and the Catholic leader of the Democratic Party in the House, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Since Eisenhower’s time, Christianity, the faith that created the West, has been purged from American public life. The Bible, prayer, and all Christian art, books and symbols have been expunged from the public schools as they were in Cuba when Fidel Castro took power. Our cradle faith cannot be taught in our public schools. America is a different country today, a secular and post-Christian nation on its way to becoming anti-Christian. Some feel like strangers in their own land. And from the standpoint of traditional Catholicism, American culture is an open sewer. A vast volume of the traffic on the Internet is pornography. Ironically, as all this unfolds in what was once “God’s country,” Vladimir Putin seeks to re-establish Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the basis of morality and law in Russia. And one reads in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that Xi Jinping is trying to reintroduce his Chinese Communist comrades to the teachings of Confucianism. The world is turned upside down. Every civilization seems to recognize the necessity of faith except for the West, which has lost its faith and is shrinking and dying for lack of it. In a New York Times article this month—“Are Western Values Losing Their Sway?”—Steven Erlanger writes: “In its rejection of Western liberal values of sexual equality and choice, conservative Russia finds common cause with many in Africa and with the religious teachings of Islam, the Vatican, fundamentalist Protestants and Orthodox Jews.” Yet what Erlanger describes as “conservative Russia” does seem to share values with America, only it is the America of 1955, another country from the America of 2015. Which raises a question: Does moral truth change? Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” But is this true? A decade after his beer hall putsch failed in Munich, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party won the largest number of Germans ever to vote in a democratic election. He had succeeded in the marketplace of ideas. Did that democratic ratification make Hitler’s ideas true? Or does truth exist independent of the marketplace? Secular America, which has purged Christianity, preaches a new gospel to the world: liberal democracy as the salvation of mankind. Yet did not Winston Churchill, icon of the democracy worshippers, tell us that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”? The Catholic Church, too, faces a growing crisis of moral consistency and credibility. The church of Pius XII and John Paul II taught that the truths of the Ten Commandments brought down from Sinai and the truths of the Sermon on the Mount are eternal. Those popes also taught that a valid marriage is indissoluble, that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral, that abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn, an abomination. Yet one reads regularly of discussions inside the Vatican to alter what is infallible church teaching on these doctrines to make the church more appealing to those who have rejected them. As the pope arrives in America, some Catholics are calling for an acceptance of contraception, the ordination of women and a new acceptance of homosexuality. Yet the Episcopalians, who have embraced all these “reforms” and more, appear to be going the way of James Fenimore Cooper’s Mohicans. In Cuba, Pope Francis declined to address the repression of the Castro brothers. Will he also avoid America’s moral crisis to chatter on about income inequality and climate change and find common ground with Obama? What has come out of the Vatican in the past two years is moral confusion. Yet as Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput reminds us, “confusion is of the devil.” It is also trifling with schism. Having emerged victorious in the 70-year ideological struggle against one of the greatest enemies that mankind has ever known, Marxism-Leninism, are the United States and the Catholic Church heading for the same desuetude and disintegration? Poster Comment: Mel Gibson for Pope!
Pope Francis shakes hands with Fidel Castro.
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#1. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
It is not moral confusion for the Church to directly address income inequality and poverty. That is as much of its duty as addressing sexual depravity. However, the Church cannot change the Law of God on sexual depravity either. Depravity is depravity, whether it is heterosexual adultery, homosexual sodomy, pornography, the charging of interest on loans, the refusal to remit debts after 6 years - all of it is evil of a high order, and all of it destroys people.
The charging of interest on loans and refusal to remit debits after six years is law keeping and not the gospel, which effectively makes the cross of no effect.
#11. To: GarySpFC, redleghunter (#6)
'Until the sky and the land pass away, not one iota nor penstroke of the Law shall pass away' - Jesus Christ. 'What good does it do you to say you follow me if you do not keep my commandments?' - Jesus Christ. 'And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.' - Jesus Christ 'Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.' - 1 John 3:7-8 'Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment: that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him.' 1 John 3:21-24 'Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God; but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.' - 3 John 11 'to the angel of the church of Ephesus write:...I know thy works and they labor...Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou has left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else... To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life...' 'to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ...I know they works, and tribulation, and poverty (but thou art rich)...He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.' 'to the angel of the church in Pergamos write:...I know they works...But I have a few things against thee...to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.... Repent...To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna...' 'to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:...I know they words, and charity, and service, and faith, and they patience and thy words; and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel...to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols...And he that overcometh, and keepeth my words, to him I will give power over the nations...He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.' 'to the angel of the church in Sardis write: I know thy works...Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God...Thou has a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life...' 'to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:...I know thy works; behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. ... Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation...' 'and unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write:...I know thy works, that thou art neither cold not hot: I wert thou were cold or hot...As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent....To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne...' The letters are from Revelations 2-3. Note well: these are baptized Christians to whom he speaks. Believers. He is speaking to the Churches, not to people outside of the faith. Works, works, works...and for what did he threaten punishment? Breaking tenets of the Law - his law. He repeatedly promises rewards in heaven to those among the Churches - and not all of these baptized Christians in each Church - who "overcome". Overcome WHAT? The examples he gives are commissions of sins - breaches of the law of God. He calls them to repent, to stop breaking his Law. Reward for obedience, punishment for disobedience. Over and over again he repeats it. He also speaks of rewarding those for their patience. What is that? Rev 14:12 "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Lawkeeping. And then the final denoument of it all - straight out of the mouth of God - if you wonder WHAT Law you had BETTER Keep, and had BETTER teach every other man to keep, here is what God says to you on the last pages of the Bible...with nothing after it to rely upon to reverse it - think of it as a FINAL WARNING to actually OBEY THE LAW OF JESUS: "He that overcometh shall inherit all thigs: and I will be his God, and he sall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lakw with burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." - God Almighty. And then finally, on the very last page of Scripture, Jesus says the same thing: "behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be. ...Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are the dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolators, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." - Jesus Christ. So, there you have it. Yes, there is a law. Yes, you will be judged by your WORKS, by what you DO, not just by your faith and what you believe. I just gave pages and pages of God and Jesus both saying that explicitly in the very last book. To what shall you oppose God Almighty and His Son sitting in heaven telling you to obey SPECIFIC ENUMERATED LAWS or be thrown in Hell? A line of Paul? Is there a Gospel of Paul? No, only Christ crucified. There is a law. Believe in Christ - including in the fact that he says that there is a law you must obey. Keep his law, do the works of the law and avoid the prohibited works, be judged on those works by doing the good ones and avoiding the illegal ones. Or be thrown into Hell. God Almighty and Jesus just SAID that, to seven Churches full of baptized Christians and to the whole world too. Stop resisting it. You and I and everybody else is bound by God's Law, and if we don't keep it, we burn. Sacrifices in the Temple? No. He destroyed the Temple. Tithes? No, they were to the Levites, who are destroyed? And yet the Law remains, and Christians must keep it, or lose salvation, just exactly as Jesus and his Father said 12 times over and more right there. There's a human tradition that has built up that says otherwise. Chuck it. It's bad.
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#6. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Depravity is depravity, whether it is heterosexual adultery, homosexual sodomy, pornography, the charging of interest on loans, the refusal to remit debts after 6 years - all of it is evil of a high order, and all of it destroys people.
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