coachdennis #2
Pope Francis is a faithful son of the Church, period.
No further discussion is necessary, especially on a Catholic website.
Further discussion is very necessary lest ambivalence and confusion become endemic in the Catholic world. The precision and depth of Bl John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI need to be emulated by Pope Francis.
Such a generalization in the absence of any rational examination evades the issue, but the reality is well examined in *Pope Francis and Poverty *by Samuel Gregg November 26, 2013, at
m.nationalreview.com/corner/365004/pope-francis-and-poverty-samuel-gregg
With reference to
Evangelii Gaudium, Samuel Gregg affirms:
“Reading the text, one does experience a profound sense of just how life-transforming belief in Christ should be.
Evangelii Gaudium is in many ways a beautiful document.”
There is praise of Pope Francis here, but very important problems arise which cannot just be glossed over. I quote on the serious problems identified in this Apostolic Exhortation:
- ‘To be very frank (which Francis himself is always encouraging us to be), a number of claims made by this document and some of the assumptions underlying those statements are rather questionable.
‘…the pope’s remark that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” (253). As one of the most authoritative Catholic commentators on Islam, Pope Francis’s fellow Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir (who is no knee-jerk anti-Muslim), writes in his *111 Questions on Islam *(2002), Westerners who assert that groups like the Taliban are acting in a manner contrary to the spirit of Islam “usually know little about Islam.”
- ‘My purpose, however, is to focus upon some of the many economic reflections that loom large throughout Evangelii Gaudium and which are, I’m afraid, very hard to defend. In some cases, they reflect the straw-man arguments about the economy that one encounters far too often in some Catholic circles, especially in Western Europe but also in Latin America.
‘Prominent among these is the pope’s condemnation of the “absolute autonomy of markets” (202). If, however, we follow
Evangelii Gaudium’s injunction (231–233) to look at the realities of the world today, we will soon discover that there is literally no country in which markets operate with “absolute autonomy.”
- ‘Another claim made by *Evangelii Gaudium *that warrants scrutiny is that certain ideologies “reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control” over the economy (56). But outside the minuscule world of anarcho-capitalists (who exert zero influence upon public policy), this simply isn’t the position of those who favor free markets today (let alone past advocates like Adam Smith).
‘…we find Francis critiquing those who “continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.”
‘There are several problems with this line of reasoning. First, opening up markets throughout the world has helped to reduce poverty in many developing nations. East Asia is a living testimony to that reality — a testimony routinely ignored by many Catholics in Western Europe (who tend to complain rather self-centeredly about the competition it creates for protected Western European businesses and other recipients of corporate welfare) and a reality about which I have found many Latin American Catholics simply have nothing to say.
‘Second, it has never been the argument of most of those who favor markets that economic freedom and free exchange are somehow sufficient to reduce poverty.
livingwordunity #11
if ‘conservative’ is defined as holding to tradition and resisting innovation, then our faith is conservative at its core.
The secular sites cannot be trusted to define religious terminology or to classify Catholics. Use of confusing terminology helps no one. The use of political terminology in particular only confuses clear thought. A WordWeb definition of “orthodox” = adhering to what is commonly accepted! One definition of “conservative” = materialistic.
Without the “ifs”, a Catholic is faithful or unfaithful to all dogma and doctrine.
Catholic was first used by St Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Smyrneans, A.D. 107, “Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” It is from the Greek katholike meaning “general” or “universal”. Within 90 years it meant also “orthodox” or faithful to the teachings of Christ. (
The Catholic Catechism, Fr John A Hardon, S.J., Doubleday, 1975, p 217).
Further no Catholic doctrine uses political terminology.
