Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The media trumpets Pope Francis talking down capitalism as if it were Gods Own Truth.
Makes me wonder: do you accept the Pope’s teaching on religious matters? No. Then why would you accept them on economic matters?
joe doakes
Religious figures are like conservatives, to the media; they take what they need, and they leave the rest.
American Catholics have been ignoring the Pope’s teaching on reproduction matters for about 40 years.
I am a lapsed Lutheran (ELCA refugee) and I am more Catholic than the Holy Father.
DMA, and a lot of Lutherans have been ignoring the ELCA presiding bishop’s proclamations for years.
Chuck, funny you say that. I have a good friend who is Catholic. Very active in the parish, goes to Mass relidiously(sorry). Occasionally the conversation veers towards religion. Inevitably at the end I tell him – Dang, you are more Lutheran than I am.
Then I have a good Lutheran friend, very active in his church, is in the choir, etc., and says he’s an athiest so maybe I just have weird friends.
“American Catholics have been ignoring the Pope’s teaching on reproduction matters for about 40 years.”
Tell that to my cousins…Min child count: 4. Max 7. (And they all are scary smart, future leaders of the country.)
There are more practicing Catholics out here than people know.
Yup, your cousins prove I’m wrong.
Actually, sounds like this pope is coming around to the point of view of the American laity on this:
Pope Francis: Catholics shouldn’t breed ‘like rabbits’
That is the odd things about religions. People don’t like to change where they go. Conservatives still go to ELCA churches, liberals go to Catholic churches, and my liberal cousin and her husband (Madison Wisc) go to an ELCA church even though I doubt they really believe in the Bible. To them its a Sunday morning social club. Their kids will be Atheists.
Churches should be like some companies do during reorganizations. They make all of their employees re-apply for their jobs. Let them go if they don’t fit. People, every so often, so re-decide on a church. Find one that they actual share values and theology with.
My cousins ( and many other Catholic families I know) prove your blanket statement wrong. Lots of people call themselves “Catholic” that haven’t set foot in a church in decades, heck if we take Betty! McCOLLUM and Nancy Pelosi as examples, you might just as well say “Catholics have supported abortion since 1973”.
As I’ve pointed out here, I can call myself a canary, but I still won’t fly…folks can call themselves Catholic, but saying it and living it are two different things.
“Pope Francis: Catholics shouldn’t breed ‘like rabbits’”
He was reiterating the Church’s stance on artificial contraceptives, and reminded us there are natural means at our disposal. It’s why we don’t see the 13 kid families that were common when I was a kid.
What I’ve learned, so far, from Francis’ tenure is leftists are incapable of understanding any but the most simple concepts, and are too quick to run their inchoate understandings up on the nearest flag pole.
If one were forced to put all the qualifiers and exceptions demanded by you into a simple chat site comment each one would be 5 pages long.
I stand by my post and also by my observation that you are silly.
Really? You attribute the reduction in the size of Catholic families to the fact that they are all using “natural” means to thwart God’s creative impulses?
Okey Dokey.
DMA, you are not in danger of producing any five page posts unless you find a way to stretch the rhetorical equivalent of “nuh-uh”, “uh-huh”, and the odd unsupported blanket generalization a lot longer than you currently do. 🙂
As I’ve pointed out here, I can call myself a canary, but I still won’t fly…folks can call themselves Catholic, but saying it and living it are two different things.
I’ve thought about this some over the years as my wife has an aunt and uncle who are staunch Catholic by family tradition, and blazingly liberal educrats as well. I’ve never really talked politics with them (except for a single brunch time discussion about Bill Clinton’s scandals roughly 18 years ago that quickly turned heated), however I’m sure her aunt is militantly pro-choice, and I’m sure they’re both “we support the gays because we’re more tolerant than you can imagine”. I’ve also seen lots of references (not from them, but in general) to “I’m working to change the Catholic Church’s stances on abortion, gays, female pastors, etc” in various places over the years. It strikes me that A) the whole point of being a good “religious” person is that YOU change YOURSELF to conform to your religion, not the other way around, and B) it’s yet another indication of the pervasive entitlement mentality in our country that such a mindset is so prevalent.
I don’t know what happened to the Catholic church since JP2 died, but between Benedict suddenly stepping down (the first pope in centuries to do so), and the Francis being VERY socialist and going against several of the precedents of the recent papcy (papcies plural? if there are such things, similar to “presidential administrations”), it’s getting easier by the month to go tinfoil hat and say that the Catholic church’s highest echelons of leadership were successfully infiltrated by progressives who are changing the church from within. I have noticed that the things that Francis has done and said that seemed to be a change pulling leftwards, have increased in “eye-raising-quotient” over the years. Boiling frog syndrome maybe?
It honestly would not surprise me one single bit, if sometime within the next 5 years, Francis actually breaches the subject of maybe not being 100% against abortion for any reason, and allowing women and homosexuals to become clergy. If that happens, I am not sure we’ll see a split in the Catholic parishes like we saw with conservative Lutheran churches breaking with the ELCA a few years ago. I think the archdioceses maintain too much financial control of the parishes for that to happen.
Bill, as you’re aware, I’m sure, the Catholic Church has had it’s schisms. The Eastern church, the Pope Pius X society, heck there were 2 Popes at one time.
The all male priesthood is tradition, not gospel, and I could see a successful challenge there. But childbearing and the nature of the relationship between men and women lies at the very heart of what Catholicism is. The bible tells us that Christ promised the gates of Hades will not overpower His church. If there is truth in that, no Pope will ever budge on abortion or homosexuality.
DMA, I was addressing the difference between those that know the path exists, and those that walk the path. Of course, there are many “Catholics” that use all manner of birth control, up to and including infanticide….and I’m a flightless canary. Then there are Catholics that find much success in the natural birth control God built in for us.
Think about it awhile, maybe an epiphany will come to you.