It was an inanity too far even for the New York Slimes, but over the weekend the voicebox of Amurkan liberalism foisted a fauxportage entitled, The Catholic Roots of Obama's Activism.
The evident purpose of the article, in anticipation of the President's upcoming meeting with His Holiness, was to fluff up Obama as also basically a Catholic among his various other interchangeable epiphanies.
The evident purpose of the article, in anticipation of the President's upcoming meeting with His Holiness, was to fluff up Obama as also basically a Catholic among his various other interchangeable epiphanies.
But there was another, more sinister, purpose as well -- one that comes naturally to the Slimes as a media organism. The entire thrust of the article was not simply to present another falsification in the kaleidoscopic pheonomenon known as "Obama" but to mischaracterise Catholic social teaching and, by doing so, to shift the entire orientation of the issues safely into the entrenched capitalist zone.
Although it borders on a ad hom, we feel constrained to begin by pointing out that the author of the article, a one David Horowitz, is, evidently, not a Roman Catholic or even a lesser brand of Christian. That in itself is not disqualifier for reporting on the Church. But as just as evidently and more importantly, Mr. Horowitz is not a Jew like Jacob Neusner who has studied Christianity in depth and who, precisely for that reason, is capable of making an informed critique of Holy Doctrine from an equally informed Jewish perspective. No. Neither Horowitz or the Slimes is anywhere near offering anything informed or intelligent about Catholicism or trends within the intellectual tradition of the Church.
Why does the Slimes think it unnecessary that the author of an article on an issue involving Catholicism should know anything about the topic on which he writes? Because the purpose of the article is not to inform but to "prep" -- to tell you how you should react to a political event and more importantly to steer you away from thinking about it critically.
Although Horowitz knows nothing about Catholicism, one would have thought that he at least understood English and would know that the word "roots" means: "the part of any thing that resembles the roots of a plant in manner of growth; .... The original or cause of any thing. ... to be firmly planted or established " To speak of Obama's Catholic roots is to say that Catholicism played a significant and determining role in his formation. ( NOT.)
Aside from being enrolled for a two years in a Catholic elementary school in Jakarta when he was six years of age ("When it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room") Obama had virtually no contact with anything Catholic... at least apart from (or so Mr. Horowitz tells us) once sending a Catholic acquaintance a postcard of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral. ≤-- CATHOLIC BUILDING, in case you didn't get it.
Although it borders on a ad hom, we feel constrained to begin by pointing out that the author of the article, a one David Horowitz, is, evidently, not a Roman Catholic or even a lesser brand of Christian. That in itself is not disqualifier for reporting on the Church. But as just as evidently and more importantly, Mr. Horowitz is not a Jew like Jacob Neusner who has studied Christianity in depth and who, precisely for that reason, is capable of making an informed critique of Holy Doctrine from an equally informed Jewish perspective. No. Neither Horowitz or the Slimes is anywhere near offering anything informed or intelligent about Catholicism or trends within the intellectual tradition of the Church.
Why does the Slimes think it unnecessary that the author of an article on an issue involving Catholicism should know anything about the topic on which he writes? Because the purpose of the article is not to inform but to "prep" -- to tell you how you should react to a political event and more importantly to steer you away from thinking about it critically.
Although Horowitz knows nothing about Catholicism, one would have thought that he at least understood English and would know that the word "roots" means: "the part of any thing that resembles the roots of a plant in manner of growth; .... The original or cause of any thing. ... to be firmly planted or established " To speak of Obama's Catholic roots is to say that Catholicism played a significant and determining role in his formation. ( NOT.)
Aside from being enrolled for a two years in a Catholic elementary school in Jakarta when he was six years of age ("When it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room") Obama had virtually no contact with anything Catholic... at least apart from (or so Mr. Horowitz tells us) once sending a Catholic acquaintance a postcard of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral. ≤-- CATHOLIC BUILDING, in case you didn't get it.
In fact, Obama was so unrooted in Catholicism that when, as a community organizer, he heard Cardinal Bernardin speak at an economic development meeting, he (to use his own words) "decided not to ask what a 'catechism' was."
It is clear what the New York Slime is up to. The Multi-Purpose Lawn Ornament is being "fixed" up as actually, quite Catholic after all. Hell... if Obama can do political Blackface, he can certainly be fobbed up as Catholic! Especially a Vatican-II type Catholic.
The article did a pretty good job of fobbing, blabbing broadly and vaguely about his "involvement" with Catholics as a community organizer, about his digs on the ground floor of Holy Rosary, about getting a grant from Holy Ghost Catholic Church, about attending "peace and black history Masses" at Holy Angels... (black history masses????) ... about being in the milieu of Liberation Theology and finally how it was was "amid the trappings of Catholicism, according to his fellow organizers, that the future president began to express a spiritual thirst." That his "spiritual" thirst was for something other than Catholicism was left as better unsaid.
All this is the kind of bullshit a college grad would put on his first resumé when seeking a job at a Catholic agency. But roots? Do people who read the Slimes "to be informed" believe this garbage?
Anyone who believes His Emptiness has any content at all is beyond repair and how Obamba gets tricked up and trucked out is really of little consequence at this point.
Not so risible, however, is the Slime's grotesque mischaracterization of Liberation Theology which Mr. Horowtiz identifies with an "antipoverty and social justice program."
Here we come to the real nub of the matter. Liberation Theology is not about social programmes to help the needy. Taking care of widow and orphans, prisoners and the poor, the sick and the maligned has been a basic tenet of doctrine since the earliest days of the Church. One did not have to wait for Gustavo Gutierrez to come up with the "radical" solution of helping the poor!
It is here that the Slimes' multiple layers of falsehood become a veritable decoupage. In addition to presenting Obama as a sort of Catholic at heart, Pope Francis is characterized as a progressive of sorts who has brought hope and change to a Catholic Church hitherto ruled by theological Nazis and Holocaust abettors. Catholic social doctrine is turned into a palliative minimum-wage thingie and the meeting of the two think-alikes provides a chance to spur on such "radical" social reforms as would have been heartily approved of by Henry Ford and Nelson Rockefeller.
Mischaracterizing Obama is simply the lynch pin to obfuscating what Catholic social doctrine is really about. The bullshit-in-your-eye begins with: "in his community organizer days," Obama "became steeped in the social justice wing of the church, which played a powerful role in his political formation." Not as strong a Milton Friedman evidently. Listen to Obambi, speaking in '09 of Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, and Goldman Sachs mogul, Lloyd Blankfein,
I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen, .... I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”
This is what the Slimes styles as the "second-term president who argues that income inequality undermines human dignity. " ???? Obamba's In Praise of Wealth, doesn't come close in radicalism to St Augustine,
"The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess superfluities, you possess what belongs to others. . . . You give bread to a hungry person; but it would be better were no one hungry, and you could give it to no one. You clothe the naked person; would that all were clothed and this necessity did not exist." (Exposition on Psalm 147, 12; Tractate 1 John 8,8)
Or St Ambrose,
"You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich."
But why be regressive about it? Let us pro-gress forward to the 19th century and to Rerum Novarum, (1891) in which Pope Leo XIII wrote,
"Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they created that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. "
By "watched over" Leo did not mean "left to the workings of the free market"
The denunciation of the free market "mechanism" for allocating wealth upwards was denounced even more vehemently by Pius XI in Quadressimo Anno (1931),
The denunciation of the free market "mechanism" for allocating wealth upwards was denounced even more vehemently by Pius XI in Quadressimo Anno (1931),
"The function of the rulers of the State, moreover, is to watch over the community and its parts; but in protecting private individuals in their rights, chief consideration ought to be given to the weak and the the poor the wealth of nations originates from no other source than from the labor of workers."
"Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. "
In 2009, Pope Benedict, issued Caritas in Veritate, a comprehensive distillation of the Church's socio-economic doctrine. "[T]the social doctrine of the Church," he wrote, "has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice ... [I]f the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well."
Last year, Pope Francis followed up on this tradition in his Apostolic Exhortation. Society," Francis said, "needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it." The "inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer peoples" needs to be replaced by a spirit of solidarity and this "presumes the creation of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few." He continued,
"The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, ... As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality...."
Only an uninformed moron could possibly think that Pope Francis's Apostolic Exhortation represented a "stunning" change of direction in Catholic social teaching. Pope Francis is certainly to be commended for reiterating the Church's preferential option for the poor. But it was a reiteration. Someone who knew something about the Church would know that. But knowing whereof one speaks is not a requirement for the New York Slimes.
In suggesting that the Church has reformed its social doctrine and that in doing so it has effected a raprochement with a "progressive" Obama, the Slime engages in multiple levels of outright falsehood.
The Church has not "reformed" or "liberalized" its social doctrine and Obamba is nothing close to an economic progressive much less radical. Obama has not a mustard seed of desire to effect structural reforms of the economy. He is an acolyte of free market capitalism, who worships at the altar of the Golden Calf.
But beneath these imbecilic falsehoods is yet another. What the Slimes wants its readers not to understand is that Liberation Theology goes beyond the preferential option for the poor.
Some context. When Pope Pius XI wrote that "chief consideration ought to be given to the weak and the the poor" he was adverting to the Gospel of St Luke, 1:52-53
In suggesting that the Church has reformed its social doctrine and that in doing so it has effected a raprochement with a "progressive" Obama, the Slime engages in multiple levels of outright falsehood.
The Church has not "reformed" or "liberalized" its social doctrine and Obamba is nothing close to an economic progressive much less radical. Obama has not a mustard seed of desire to effect structural reforms of the economy. He is an acolyte of free market capitalism, who worships at the altar of the Golden Calf.
But beneath these imbecilic falsehoods is yet another. What the Slimes wants its readers not to understand is that Liberation Theology goes beyond the preferential option for the poor.
Some context. When Pope Pius XI wrote that "chief consideration ought to be given to the weak and the the poor" he was adverting to the Gospel of St Luke, 1:52-53
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
God's preference for the poor, as paradigmatically expressed by St. Luke, and as reiterated by Ambrose and Augustine, is summarized in the doctrinal term "preferential option for the poor." It is nothing new. The argument in the Church has been over how the option is to be practiced. In this regard, there has of course been a change in the pragmatics of Church doctrine as social and economic have evolved.
Of course neither Ambrose nor Augustine spoke of "structural changes" to the "free market economy" because the free market (in the capitalist sense) simply did not exist in those days. As Karl Marx put it, the economics of early and late feudalism were based on "personal relations" rather than impersonal ones. Thus, Ambrose and Augustine spoke in personal terms.
By the late 19th century things had changed; so that both Leo XIII and Pius XI, condemned free market liberalism and called for structural controls over the generation and distribution of wealth. That is already far to the "left" of anything Obamba has called for.
Liberation Theology goes further and argues that the "preferential option for the poor" requires as a Christian duty, radical political action. As stated by Gustavo Gutierrez (A Theology of Liberation 1971)
"[T]he poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”
Thus,
“Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production.”
The divergence between Gutierrez on the one hand and Benedict on the other is encapsulated by the last phrase: does Christian Doctrine today demand "a radical change in the...private ownership of the means of production." The phrase "means of production" is as emblematic as "preferential option." The opening line of Karl Marx's Das Kapital is
"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity.
Thus, does Liberation Theology espouse and demand Marxist analysis and practice ("praxis" in theological lingo) ?
Both Benedict and Francis have actually equivocated. According to Benedict each generation must come up with Christian "structural" solutions in keeping with the circumstances of the time. In saying that Chrisitian doctrine requires " attacking the structural causes of inequality" Pope Francis has inched a little closer to Gutierrez.
But Gutierrez himself is ambiguous. He has called for a different (not merely "reformed") social order but he has always stopped short of saying that the Imitation of Christ requires Marxist political revolution. It was this latter step "too far" that Benedict (as then Cardinal Raztzinger) censured. Nevertheless, what can be seen from this brief summary is that the debate within the Catholic Church -- between "conservatives" and "liberals" is far far to the left of anything the Editorial Imbeciles of the Slimes can conceive.
Both Benedict and Francis have actually equivocated. According to Benedict each generation must come up with Christian "structural" solutions in keeping with the circumstances of the time. In saying that Chrisitian doctrine requires " attacking the structural causes of inequality" Pope Francis has inched a little closer to Gutierrez.
But Gutierrez himself is ambiguous. He has called for a different (not merely "reformed") social order but he has always stopped short of saying that the Imitation of Christ requires Marxist political revolution. It was this latter step "too far" that Benedict (as then Cardinal Raztzinger) censured. Nevertheless, what can be seen from this brief summary is that the debate within the Catholic Church -- between "conservatives" and "liberals" is far far to the left of anything the Editorial Imbeciles of the Slimes can conceive.
Or more accurately, they can conceive it but are doing their level best to insure that their readers dont. What a disgusting rag that paper is.
His Activist Putting for the Poor
©Barfo, 2014
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