Rebuttal of the myth that Catholics can fully embrace either political conservatism or liberalism, by a Franciscan University of Steubenville professo

[Elizabeth502]

Truth be told both US parties are Un Godly and pursue lustful worldly objectives. Thye just cloak there objectives in rhetorrc.

Overall, yes. (Or, the spokespeople for those parties.)

Btw, lest anyone be fooled by the concept of ideologically-driven parties, it has been awhile since parties and political platforms were genuinely ideologically driven. That may still be true for the Green Party and other sideliners, but for the two main parties, no. The pure ideologues are in the minority and become marginalized by the party leaders and the media pretty quickly.

And it is true for both parties.

Thus, gay apologists and those supporting massive illegal immigration shouldn’t be too awed by the Left’s embrace of these advocacy groups. For the most part, it’s all about Votes. Same for the so-called free-market purists on the Right.

Responding belatedly to Julianne’s post, there is no question that the U.S. has become increasingly a land of non-values. To paraphrase Ross Perot, the Loud Sucking Sound of the vanishing of values has grown louder in volume with each election cycle. When a society loses its unified purpose, there’s nothing left but the most base law of the jungle dominating the political, social, and economic landscape. There are still the idealists, in pockets, but they aren’t the main players any more.

 

[mercytruth]

mercytruth;9505837:

By your logic all businesses promote covetousness. All businesses have to sell a product to make a profit. Advertising is simply a way to promote one’s wares it does not promote covetousness.

As to why we spend so much on defense? In case you haven’t noticed America’s foreign policy for decades has been for the defense of freedom and democracy. No other nation has been so benevolent that they are willing to sacrifice their life for the sake of others. If that is an unmoral and unjust cause then I strongly question your ethics.

Once we have locked ourselves into our own ideological, philosophical, intellectual, and political fortresses we can no longer hear and obey the teachings of Jesus Christ. My prayer is that all of us, myself included, will truly know what this means:

2 Corinthians 10:4-5
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

**4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels,

5 And every height that exhalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ;**

 

[Ridgerunner]

All nations suffer from addictions. Name me this perfect utopia where everyone is perfect and everyone is innocent and noone suffers from faults and sin.

You seem to have an intolerable hatred of corporations. I am bombarded with those same messages and I see my peers getting car loans for new cars after graduating college with student debt…do I do the same? No…in fact I plan on keeping my car until the wheels fall off.

I don’t hate the man who wants a bigger house, I worry about my own life instead of getting bitter about other people’s purchases.

One has to wonder just a bit about the homilies we DON’T hear at Mass. When is the last time any of us have heard Father chide us about our I-Phones and our Kindles and our big screens and our $500/month car payments and the faux designer clothes and the house payments we can barely afford? When is the last time we heard him say our immediate prosperity is meant for us to aid others and to raise and educate as many children as God sends to us? When have our kids heard any of that?

We really can’t put all of the responsibility on the corporations that entice us into spending the hours of our lives working for some product we don’t really need. Some of the responsibility truly lies with those who ought to be our moral guides but who either don’t understand (e.g.) the Social Encyclicals or never read them. And when you get right down to it, most of the responsibilty is our own. We whine and cry over something somebody else has, and hate them for it, and if we can’t get it ourselves through honest toil, we expect the government to provide us with it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

mercytruth;9505837:

By your logic all businesses promote covetousness. All businesses have to sell a product to make a profit. Advertising is simply a way to promote one’s wares it does not promote covetousness.

It may be observed as well that in every “trade”, one trades what one values less for that which he values more. That’s always true or the individual wouldn’t do it at all. Savage “A” can perhaps make an excellent spear point in five minutes, but he’s physically clumsy and can’t hunt well. Savage “B” would take all day to make one inferior point but can track down a deer for miles unerringly. So “A” values a handful of points less than he values the deer quarter that “B” values less than the handful of points, and they trade.

No business would ever succeed if the customer did not value its product more than the dollars the customer will hand over for the product.

Which is not to say that appetites cannot be disordered. But we can’t blame businesses for our own disorders, though we can blame them for encouraging them. Some advertising really is an appeal to vanity or covetousness. But we also have a responsibility to know and to resist such things.

 

[austenbosten]

austenbosten;9505892:

Once we have locked ourselves into our own ideological, philosophical, intellectual, and political fortresses we can no longer hear and obey the teachings of Jesus Christ. My prayer is that all of us, myself included, will truly know what this means:

2 Corinthians 10:4-5
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

**4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels,

5 And every height that exhalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ;**

So by your logic, the Allies were wrong to go to war with Germany and should have allowed the Jewish race as well as the Russians to be exterminated. I’m sorry but I believe with that comment you are morally stained in your ethics.

We have a moral obligation to fight evil when it rears its ugly head. Sadly that may mean we may have to resort to war. War should not be the first response to responding to evil, but when all else fails war is the last resort.

One has to wonder just a bit about the homilies we DON’T hear at Mass. When is the last time any of us have heard Father chide us about our I-Phones and our Kindles and our big screens and our $500/month car payments and the faux designer clothes and the house payments we can barely afford? When is the last time we heard him say our immediate prosperity is meant for us to aid others and to raise and educate as many children as God sends to us? When have our kids heard any of that?

We really can’t put all of the responsibility on the corporations that entice us into spending the hours of our lives working for some product we don’t really need. Some of the responsibility truly lies with those who ought to be our moral guides but who either don’t understand (e.g.) the Social Encyclicals or never read them. And when you get right down to it, most of the responsibilty is our own. We whine and cry over something somebody else has, and hate them for it, and if we can’t get it ourselves through honest toil, we expect the government to provide us with it.

I agree, I think Church leaders should be less macro and be more micro. Good doesn’t come from big grand projects. Jesus never did anything on a large-scale up until his Ultimate Sacrifice. Jesus simply touched the hearts of individuals and from it (like dropping a pebble in a pond) a ripple effect occurred and seemingly normal fishermen took up the staff and became fishers of men. From that the Apostles went about touching the hearts of individual men (such as the case of St. Paul and the jailor) and then those men went on to touch the lives of others and make them fishers of men. I think the Church needs to drive this home. It is not the boat that saves the soul, it is the fisherman. We need less boats and more fishermen.

austenbosten;9505892:

It may be observed as well that in every “trade”, one trades what one values less for that which he values more. That’s always true or the individual wouldn’t do it at all. Savage “A” can perhaps make an excellent spear point in five minutes, but he’s physically clumsy and can’t hunt well. Savage “B” would take all day to make one inferior point but can track down a deer for miles unerringly. So “A” values a handful of points less than he values the deer quarter that “B” values less than the handful of points, and they trade.

No business would ever succeed if the customer did not value its product more than the dollars the customer will hand over for the product.

Which is not to say that appetites cannot be disordered. But we can’t blame businesses for our own disorders, though we can blame them for encouraging them. Some advertising really is an appeal to vanity or covetousness. But we also have a responsibility to know and to resist such things.

I wholeheartedly agree

 

[Ridgerunner]

mercytruth;9505964:

I agree, I think Church leaders should be less macro and be more micro. Good doesn’t come from big grand projects. Jesus never did anything on a large-scale up until his Ultimate Sacrifice. Jesus simply touched the hearts of individuals and from it (like dropping a pebble in a pond) a ripple effect occurred and seemingly normal fishermen took up the staff and became fishers of men. From that the Apostles went about touching the hearts of individual men (such as the case of St. Paul and the jailor) and then those men went on to touch the lives of others and make them fishers of men. I think the Church needs to drive this home. It is not the boat that saves the soul, it is the fisherman. We need less boats and more fishermen.
Ridgerunner;9506003:

I wholeheartedly agree

I am not SSPX, nor do I advocate people living in “bubbles”, but not long ago I happened to be at a gathering at which some SSPX people from St. Mary’s Kansas was present. Extraordinarily nice people, dressed very plainly, inexpensively and modestly (including the teenage girls), in no way fancy at all, though not poor. One lady there had 12 children; all healthy, well-behaved and seemingly well-educated. Notwithstanding all those children, she seemed quite robust, cheerful and healthy.

Now, I’ll grant that it is surely a lot easier to be modest in one’s expenditures and demeanor if one lives in St. Mary’s, Ks, which is sort of an SSPX enclave, but still, one has to wonder how most Catholics got away from all of that.

 

[mercytruth]

To Ridgerunner and austenbosten:

I find your deflections and misrepresentations of what I have written unacceptable.

I never mentioned FDR. Republican President Teddy Rooselvelt ran on the platform for breaking up the monopolistic/oligarchial powers of the robber barons by increasing their federal income tax.

I never said all businesses were bad. I made it very clear that I was speaking about corporations who sell shares on the New York exchanges, or any other exchange throughout the world. I never said that all corporations promote covetousness, but all corporations on the exchanges encourage the pursuit of mammon. Small and local businesses are the backbone of America.

I never mentioned anything about our war with Germany, but much could be questioned about our invasion of Iraq, (at least Pope John Paul greatly discouraged it).

I was quoting the scripture which states that our ideological, philosophical, intellectual, political and even religious opinions may be contrary to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we must bring them into submission to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, to austenbosten, your opinion that my ethics are morally stained are between you and God.

I bid you God’s peace, as there is nothing else to be said with either of you.

 

[Durnford]

They want to be free to pursue Mammon without being disturbed by pieces of scripture which talk about how undermining an dcheating the poor is hateful to God. Just as liberals do not want to hear about how infancticide and fornication are hateful to God.
So they play with words just as the liberals do. The world is full of people who wish to chose which parts of Catholicism applies to them.

 

[Durnford]

Spouting out angry rhetoric based on stereotypes, does not prove your point. It belittles your argument.

What is angry about stating that the Republican party is beholden to big business and lobbyists as I may add are the Democrats?

 

[Elizabeth502]

Friendly advice to austenbosten:

When you use the forum’s Quote tool (which you do), and you are quoting only part of a post (not the whole thing), remember to finish the portion encircled with forward-slash and the word QUOTE /QUOTE , surrounded by brackets ]. Otherwise, it ends up reading as you yourself authoring the quote you are referring to or objecting to.

 

[Ridgerunner]

To Ridgerunner and austenbosten:

I find your deflections and misrepresentations of what I have written unacceptable.

I never mentioned FDR. Republican President Teddy Rooselvelt ran on the platform for breaking up the monopolistic/oligarchial powers of the robber barons by increasing their federal income tax.

I never said all businesses were bad. I made it very clear that I was speaking about corporations who sell shares on the New York exchanges, or any other exchange throughout the world. I never said that all corporations promote covetousness, but all corporations on the exchanges encourage the pursuit of mammon. Small and local businesses are the backbone of America.

I never mentioned anything about our war with Germany, but much could be questioned about our invasion of Iraq, (at least Pope John Paul greatly discouraged it).

I was quoting the scripture which states that our ideological, philosophical, intellectual, political and even religious opinions may be contrary to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we must bring them into submission to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, to austenbosten, your opinion that my ethics are morally stained are between you and God.

I bid you God’s peace, as there is nothing else to be said with either of you.

Well, goodness me. I meant you no offense. Sorry about attributing FDR to you. That was an error on my part. Possibly you will at least give me that I agreed with you in part.

I never mentioned Germany or Iraq to you.

But, inasmuch as I have agreed with you in part and disagreed in part, I can perhaps still be allowed to not agree that publicly-traded corporations are necessarily better or worse than those that are not. It can be said that all businesses, even “mom and pop” businesses pursue mammon in that they are in it to gain a profit on what they do. That’s why I cited the example of “Savage A and Savage B”. In most trades, both parties gain because they each value what they get more than what they give. Otherwise, they wouldn’t trade at all.

I have, of course, allowed that oftentimes businesses attempt to encourage inappropriate desires, and felt it wrong that they do. But still, it’s our duty to curb our own appetites.

Other than the FDR thing, I don’t know why you are offended.

 

[Ridgerunner]

They want to be free to pursue Mammon without being disturbed by pieces of scripture which talk about how undermining an dcheating the poor is hateful to God. Just as liberals do not want to hear about how infancticide and fornication are hateful to God.
So they play with words just as the liberals do. The world is full of people who wish to chose which parts of Catholicism applies to them.

What part of current American political conservatism advocates undermining and cheating the poor?

 

[Durnford]

I would think almost all of it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I would think almost all of it.

Well, rather than just announcing what your particular bias is, why don’t you provide a foundation for it? If you think current American political conservatives advocate cheating and undermining the poor, you ought to have some reason for thinking it other than simply wanting to think it.

 

[stinkcat_14]

But, inasmuch as I have agreed with you in part and disagreed in part, I can perhaps still be allowed to not agree that publicly-traded corporations are necessarily better or worse than those that are not. It can be said that all businesses, even “mom and pop” businesses pursue mammon in that they are in it to gain a profit on what they do. That’s why I cited the example of “Savage A and Savage B”. In most trades, both parties gain because they each value what they get more than what they give. Otherwise, they wouldn’t trade at all.

There is one issue with large publicly traded corporations that most conservatives seem to miss, which is the principal agent problem. There is an incentive problem when the people running the corporation are different from the ultimate owners. You don’t have this problem in a small mom and pop because the owner and the manager is usually one and the same, and if not the owner has full say in who the manager is. A lot of the bad behavior of corporations can be traced back to this problem in some form or another.

 

[Durnford]

You can explain almost all sin away my friend. That is called casuistry. the right wing complain about the kennedys getting Jesuists to help them justify a support for abortion etc but the right do the same thing when it comes to tax rebates for the rich and cuttin social welfare problems. Bail out the bankers and foreclose on the little guy. The Democrats are no better. Why can the US not form a Catholic Party that supports true Catholic social policy which is balanced.

 

[mercytruth]

Well, goodness me. I meant you no offense. Sorry about attributing FDR to you. That was an error on my part. Possibly you will at least give me that I agreed with you in part.

I never mentioned Germany or Iraq to you.

But, inasmuch as I have agreed with you in part and disagreed in part, I can perhaps still be allowed to not agree that publicly-traded corporations are necessarily better or worse than those that are not. It can be said that all businesses, even “mom and pop” businesses pursue mammon in that they are in it to gain a profit on what they do. That’s why I cited the example of “Savage A and Savage B”. In most trades, both parties gain because they each value what they get more than what they give. Otherwise, they wouldn’t trade at all.

I have, of course, allowed that oftentimes businesses attempt to encourage inappropriate desires, and felt it wrong that they do. But still, it’s our duty to curb our own appetites.

Other than the FDR thing, I don’t know why you are offended.

You deserve a response and of course, I was not referring to you regarding the comments on our war with Germany.

It is just that you seem to misrepresent sometimes by saying things like: "No respectable economist says seizure of assets is necessary to the acquisition of wealth by ordinary people" (post 165).

Where did I mention seizure of assets? I was speaking of a higher federal income tax rate for the very wealthy.

So, all in all, tolerance is needed, but I can not help it. I remain suspicious of where you are coming from. Especially, when you assume that the original poster had a Democratic agenda: **Oops! The mask of critiquing both parties just fell, and we see the face of a Democrat party apologist. ** (post 151).

God’s peace.

 

[Durnford]

The good war against Germany has been used ad nauseum to justify the many bad wars over the last 60 years. It is now 60 years since Munich and Pearl harbor so maybe we should worry more about the justness of more recent conflicts.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Why can the US not form a Catholic Party that supports true Catholic social policy which is balanced.

So start one already.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

**If 90% of Catholics refused to fight in the unjust war that Hitler launched in 1939, the Nazis would have been done for.
**
They could not kill or arrest every Catholic in Germany. They would have killed several thousand, but soon the generals would have killed Hitler instead of continuing the killing of innocent Catholic Germans.

Hitler has a Gestapo and concentrations camps and so forth, but his security as leader depended on the support of most of the public.

That’s why they were so secretive about the direct killing of innocent Jewish civilians and others. If the German public and the German generals had know that Hitler was having civilians murdered, the generals and the entire officer corps of Germany would have immediately arrested and executed Hitler and all the rest of the top Nazis. Don’t you agree?

Even today, if we Catholics as a group all stopped paying taxes until abortion is made illegal, it would soon be made illegal. They could never imprison all of us. But, we all seem to be pretty content with a million abortion deaths every years, so nothing ever changes. We all seem to sleep pretty well at night. We watch our TV shows, play our bingo, shoot off our fireworks, eat our ice cream, and life (and death) goes on.

That is your theory. However, ordinary Germans had no weapons with which to resist the Nazis. We can “if” all we want, but Hitler came to power and killed over 6M Jews, plus Catholics, homosexuals, the disabled, the elderly. Gypsies.

I am growing tired of your ideologically twisted and 100% factually WRONG statements. “We” are not content with abortion, and many of us work against it as much as we can. Are you down at Planned Parenthood doing sidewalk counseling? If not, I’ll thank you not to lump me into your false “content” category.

By the way, I do not believe that Catholics were the majority in Germany - in Poland, yes, but not Germany. Does Martin Luther ring a bell?