Wednesday 27 November 2013

We Have Seen the Humility...Now for the Ambition

There is lots of opinion out there on the Exhortation, but have you read it?
They say that some people try to impress others by saying they have read a book, such as 1984, or Brave New World, when in fact they have not. People even claim to read books because they believe people will be more likely to sleep with them if they say so. Well, no such temptations will arise with this 'little papal book'!

Comment and opinion has already been fired into the world wide web concerning the Holy Father's exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. How did they read it so quickly? This new document is not easy to read at all and it is a confusingly long 'manifesto'. I am known to walk into a few cul-de-sacs when I write and sometimes suffer from what they call a 'butterfly mind'. Sometimes what I write just goes on and on. At such times, I think its most likely my 'ego' taking over. We Catholics know it as intellectual Pride.

Today, I spoke to someone who has written a piece on it having read the document (and this person was telling the truth). The individual said it was 'exhausting' that it "took five hours" - the average length of a Fidel Castro speech. I'm not sure if the individual meant five hours to write the article or five hours to read it. It is certainly not easy to digest. In fact, I've now read as much as I can without my eyes bleeding and I have to come back to it again and again. There are real nuggets in there, as well as some 'Hold on, what do you mean by that?' moments that we have come to expect, but its so long and dense it will take me ages to find them again. Much of it forms a kind of summary of the first nine months of this papacy, like a 'collected works' of the Holy Father's homilies and statements in the media - 'Thoughts of Pope Francis: Collected Works'.

Gosh, three paragraphs already! It is not that I come away from this exhortation with nothing, but I was hoping to find out more about the Pope's vision than I had already heard and read. The initial burning of my heart within me in the first thousand words gives way to torpor.  Sorry -'I want to be completely honest in this regard'. It is so heartening to read Francis's defence of the unborn and the dignity of all human life, but within it, an enigmatic appeal to readers concerning his own power to change Church teaching is slightly disturbing:

“Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or ‘modernisations’. It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?

His Holiness surely need not sound apologetic for teaching the Truth. It may sound pedantic, but the Successor of St Peter need not say that in this regard 'I want to be completely honest', because we do not expect him to be anything else but honest. He is, after all, the Pope, who one would expect to be completely honest in every regard. Who is proof-reading this Pope? Would the individual please step forward because it sounds as if the Pope is saying to the abortion lobby, "Believe me, if I could change the truth...I would!' while it is in fact the Jesus Christ, Who is the Truth that sets us free.

Certainly, it is not progressive to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life, but is not the whole problem about 'progressive' solutions to human dilemmas that they degrade, diminish or destroy humanity? None of the progressive solutions are anything but 'final solutions' for humanity - part of the 'throwaway culture'. This is a theme that runs throughout abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, artificial contraception, human embryology, IVF and the list of crimes with which we are so familiar now as the 'Culture of Death'. I omit from this list homosexual unions known as 'marriage', because this global trend seems to have dropped off the Papal radar, but for an oblique reference to marriage being at times 'modified'. Presumably adherents of this branch of 'adolescent progressivism' will have to be 'let down gently' in the next exhortation.

'We have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?'

Who indeed? You can make a donation to The Good Counsel Network, who run on a shoestring of resources here. Obviously, the Holy Father is not suggesting that we accompany women to the abortion clinic and hold their hands during the murderous procedure or that rape or poverty is a justifiable solution to 'the painful situation' of pregnancy, but such words could be misinterpreted when taken out of their original context. Having just re-stated the Church's timeless teaching, some wily souls could read the Holy Father's words as a nudge and a wink to the emotive power of poverty and rape as situations in which the decision over whether or not to bring a pregnancy to term is assigned a 'special status'.

I say this only because this is the constant refrain of the pro-abortion lobby and a powerful tool in their propaganda for the war on women and children. So effective is it, indeed, that the Pope seemingly has to mention these instances so as to appear conciliatory in an era in which the US President believes that to give birth because of an 'unexpected' or unwanted pregnancy is to be 'punished' with a baby while promoting IVF as the way to be 'blessed' with a baby.  The 'painful situation' alluded to is not the baby or pregnancy - it is the instance rape, or the situation of poverty, but will everyone realise that from the Pope's words? Most likely not.

To concede that pregnancy in a situation of extreme poverty is a 'painful situation' runs the risk of creating an 'idol of money' that puts a price on human life. It may sound cold, but the painful situation is not the arrival of a new baby, but extreme poverty and it should be noted that it is in countries and vicinities of extreme poverty that the population control junkies at the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - as well as respective Governments -  plough their respective gargantuan piles of cash - not into education and poverty relief - but into 'new vaccines', abortion facilities, sterilisation and artificial contraception promotion to assist in the decimation of the African population! In fact, if these nations want Western 'aid' they have to accept our 'population control' ideas as conditions of that aid, a fact not mentioned by Pope Francis, but condemned by Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate.

I note too, indeed, that on the issues of artificial contraception, sterilisation and the range of weapons in the arsenal of the population control billionaires and trillionaires, spread across the globe by such dynastic families as the Rockefellers and such global investors as George Soros, this Pope remains eerily silent. Everyone says this Pope's life is in danger from the mafia. Well, as long as he doesn't name names in the global war on humanity by a powerful elite of eugenically minded families who think they own the planet, frankly, I don't see it happening!

The Catholic Manifesto

At which point we come to the crunch of the blueprint which is either naive or a ladder step in what some would see as a grand deception, should The Catholic Manifesto ever be implemented. His Holiness is asking the powerful banking elite to be part of a restructuring of the global economy that places mankind and his environment first and that puts banking and the financial sector at the service of man for man's betterment and flourishing in all aspects of human life.

The kind of men who rule the World, the kind of men who own the gold, the kind of men who run the banking industry and notably, the media, the kind of men who His Holiness is addressing are not in the slightest bit interested in restructuring the economy in order that man might benefit and that the sanctity of life may be respected as human beings flourish in families and prosperity. They are, however, interested in 'restructuring' man so that he may better and more faithfully serve the economic model, whatever form or shape that takes.

It may be 'unbridled capitalism', or it may be that this 'model' will come to the end of its usefulness. Globalisation ensures that whether it is capitalism or communism or a perfect but barbaric synthesis of the two, the banking sector's particular ideology can be negotiable. For example, parts of the New York banking sector were happy to fund the Russian Revolution and sustain for a time that which came in its wake with never an apology or thought for the resulting 30-40 million dead people, so its not like the banking sector cannot be persuaded to buy into a 'big idea'. Today, China of controlled population infamy and zero human rights for everyone is where international investors are 'hedging their bets'.

The Holy Father desires that these people who work consistently, ruthlessly and conspiratorially against all for which Christ and His Church stands work with the Church to create a new and better society that places man and his needs at the centre of its economic life. Meanwhile, 'Why not turn to God and ask him to inspire their plans?' is a question that could be addressed to the elite banking sector as well as to politicians who so often do their bidding.

Well...


'No single act of love for God will be lost, no generous effort is meaningless, no painful endurance is wasted.' ~ Pope Francis

In reading this Exhortation, you will have fulfilled all three, thanks in part to Pope Francis's humility but largely also to his ambition. 'I dream of a “missionary option”' writes the Pope in his exhortation. Ah, Holy Father, I, yes, I too am a dreamer, but even I who am a dreamer knows that this 'Catholic Manifesto' will succeed only if either the Church is co-opted by the global banking elite from the inside as part of a New World Order with a One World Religion based on a Big Brotherhood Cult of Man that eliminates all who don't agree with it, or the banking elite convert to the Faith of Christ and worship Him as God. Hmm...which one's more likely as we approach the 100th anniversary of the visions of Fatima? Start 'hedging your bets' now, why not, or a spread bet on both?

Apologies, readers, for a post that is a little too long. If you don't applaud, obviously you'll be taken and outside and shot. There is much to recommend in the Holy Father's new exhortation, in terms of evanglisation, and his thoughts on the poor, but I encourage you to read it and discover these gems yourselves. Happy reading!

7 comments:

Lynda said...

What do you think of the criticism that the Pope is promoting state-controlled socialism?

The Bones said...

Well obviously, the Church's policies have not yet fully been fleshed out.

Gloria deo said...

I don't agree that Pope Francis' encyclical is unreadable, although it is long. It is surprisingly accessible using straight forward language. The average person on the street could read it quite easily.

I tried reading Benedict's encyclicals and found the language and concepts to be too dense and flowery. In the end I gave up. Personally, I think Francis' writings are an improvement. Now if they would just look at the presentation - a glossy booklet with pictures and diagrams would assist understanding in my view.

Tonia Marshall said...

I found the document challenging but not because of the language. I think most Catholics reading it with an attitude of "what is the pope saying I should do that I'm not doing" will find there's something in there to challenge them.

If the document is read through a lens of "how does this support what I already think is best" then most Catholics will also find it a struggle.

Nicolas Bellord said...

I have only read the first 70 paragraphs so far but I find it very easy to read and very challenging. Of course people will misinterpret it whatever he says. I think we need to be more positive - this Pope is slowly growing on me.

Lynda said...

A pope needs to be very clear at all times that what he is saying is in conformity with the doctrine of the Faith, with the unchanging Deposit of Faith.

Lynda said...

I think Samuel Gregg at National Review Online, 26th inst., dealt very well with the erroneous assumptions regarding economics in EG.

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