The Pope

[alanjjohnstone]

The government in the Philippines is facing calls for an inquiry after it admitted relocating homeless people temporarily during Pope Francis' visit.Social welfare secretary Corazon Soliman said that nearly 500 people were taken from the streets of Manila to an upscale resort in the outskirts.But if you want a real taste of patronising…..She insisted it was "not for keeping them out of sight" but instead "Part of the orientation is to familiarise themselves with a room with a door and toilets,"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30946059

[alanjjohnstone]

The Archbishop of C of E http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/us/archbishop-of-canterbury-inequality.html?_r=0

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the monarchy exhibited in setting an example of service, of adherence to duty, of courage and of faith.

Uh-huh…as well as licentiousness, adultery, drunkenness, militarism, corruption, …Still touching the forelock to his social betters, is our Archbishop..

[sarda karaniwan]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

The government in the Philippines is facing calls for an inquiry after it admitted relocating homeless people temporarily during Pope Francis' visit.Social welfare secretary Corazon Soliman said that nearly 500 people were taken from the streets of Manila to an upscale resort in the outskirts.But if you want a real taste of patronising…..She insisted it was "not for keeping them out of sight" but instead "Part of the orientation is to familiarise themselves with a room with a door and toilets,"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30946059

This is the country where the spirits of heroes, martyrs, and saints lives on, they have come not to save the country but to destroy it, and destroy it they did. Transcendentalism at its best.sardaan Ordinarian

[alanjjohnstone]

I wasn't too far off the mark that the present pope is the antichrist…an archbishop called the confusion he is causing the work of the devil…a comment on another article says the Pope is part of a masonic plot…check out the links on the article.http://www.alternet.org/belief/5-scary-ultra-right-catholics-who-are-outraged-cool-pope

[alanjjohnstone]

But for many catholics the Pope is no radical

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Pope Francis has been highly touted for his criticism of institutional evils that create poverty. But there is something deeply troubling about a church leadership that rails against poverty and institutional sin while using its resources to defeat civil laws aimed at alleviating the suffering of the poorest. If the pope and his brother bishops are to be fully honest about roots of poverty, they must take an honest look at the ways in which the policies and agenda of their institutional church contribute to inadequate medical care for mothers, the starvation of families, the swelling of the slum population, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and environmental degradation…The institutional church now stands as the lone impediment between poor Philippine mothers and adequate maternal health care. The hierarchy's lobbying has kept mothers and fathers from raising families they can afford, families small enough to allow children to be fed and educated…it is important to make the connections between Roman Catholic doctrine and the suffering of the poor and sick globally

http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/contraception-philippines-and-pope-francis-passion-poorThe importance of the Popes 2015 visit to the USA and the need for positive PR is based upon the fact that The American church accounts for over 60% of the global institution’s wealth. American Catholics provide more than $150 million a week, or about $8 billion annually that is not going to the poor Francis pretends to advocate for. American Catholics are responsible for almost a third of the charitable contributions that directly fund the Holy See.http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/25/pope-francis-u-s-catholic-bishopsublic-relations-creation.html

[alanjjohnstone]

Came across another apt quote of this reformist lefty Vicar of Christ

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“Some people 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. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile the excluded are still waiting.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pope-francis-denounces-trickle-down-economic-theories-in-critique-of-inequality/2013/11/26/e17ffe4e-56b6-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.htmlI wonder if the Greek Orthodox archbishops are offering Syriza the same theological propping up ? 

[Anonymous]

He is just a chameleon. Never place your trust in any of  the allied of the ruling class. His collaboration with the Argentinean dictators is questionableThere is a big controversy about the canonization of   Junipero Sierra , who was a catholic Spanish ( from Spain ) priest considered as a saintit has been discovered that he is just another American native torturer, and thousands of natives died in the missions ( Misiones )  working as slaves, it was a typical concentration camp. Junioero considered the natives ( I don't call them Indians )  as part of an inferior cultureThey know that within few years the so called Latinos (  name imposed by the invaders )  are going to be a large population in the USA, and they need that clientele. His canonization will bring a lot of cash to the vaults of the Vatican  PD The comrades who make books review for the Socialist Standard should read the books written  by the Historian/ Anthropologist  Francis Jennings, he is one of the few historians who has described the real history of the natives of the Americas ( another name imposed by the invaders ) He has  raised a good critics against F.  Engels

[alanjjohnstone]

You are correct, but one thing to bear in mind, the Catholic Church insisted that the indigenous population were human beings and worthy of conversion. The Conquisadors wanted them to be classed as beasts to be treated as so. But here is another religious leader declaring he is  Marxist ( as he has done before)The 14th Dalai Lama has spoken about his political leaning – in 2011 he said: “I consider myself a Marxist…but not a Leninist”  when speaking at a conference in Minneapolis. More recently he reiterated:

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"We must have a human approach. As far as socioeconomic theory, I am Marxist,"  he said to the audience on Tuesday, at the lecture entitled ‘A Human Approach to World Peace’. The Tibetan spiritual leader partly blamed capitalism for inequality and said he regarded Marxism as the answer: "In capitalist countries, there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. In Marxism, there is emphasis on equal distribution,” he said, adding that “many Marxist leaders are now capitalists in their thinking”. He said that he regarded economic and social inequality in India as the reason for ongoing discrimination against women and low social caste.

http://www.newsweek.com/i-am-marxist-says-dalai-lama-299598This contrasts with the Pope who denies he was a communist

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I say only that the Communists have stolen the flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the center of the Gospel. The poor are at the center of the Gospel. Let’s take Matthew 25, the protocol on which we will be judged: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison, I was sick, naked. Or, let us look at the Beatitudes, another flag. The communists say that all this is communist. Yes, right, twenty centuries later. Now when they speak one could say to them: but you are Christians [laughs].

He again explains 

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The Gospel … does not, in fact, condemn the rich at all, except when riches become the idolatrous objects — the god of money, the golden calf.

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/full-english-text-of-pope-francis-interview-with-il-messaggero

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

You are correct, but one thing to bear in mind, the Catholic Church insisted that the indigenous population were human beings and worthy of conversion. The Conquisadors wanted them to be classed as beasts to be treated as so. But here is another religious leader declaring he is  Marxist ( as he has done before) The 14th Dalai Lama has spoken about his political leaning – in 2011 he said: “I consider myself a Marxist…but not a Leninist”  when speaking at a conference in Minneapolis. More recently he reiterated:

Quote:

"We must have a human approach. As far as socioeconomic theory, I am Marxist,"  he said to the audience on Tuesday, at the lecture entitled ‘A Human Approach to World Peace’. The Tibetan spiritual leader partly blamed capitalism for inequality and said he regarded Marxism as the answer: "In capitalist countries, there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. In Marxism, there is emphasis on equal distribution,” he said, adding that “many Marxist leaders are now capitalists in their thinking”. He said that he regarded economic and social inequality in India as the reason for ongoing discrimination against women and low social caste.

http://www.newsweek.com/i-am-marxist-says-dalai-lama-299598This contrasts with the Pope who denies he was a communist

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I say only that the Communists have stolen the flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the center of the Gospel. The poor are at the center of the Gospel. Let’s take Matthew 25, the protocol on which we will be judged: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison, I was sick, naked. Or, let us look at the Beatitudes, another flag. The communists say that all this is communist. Yes, right, twenty centuries later. Now when they speak one could say to them: but you are Christians [laughs].

He again explains 

Quote:

The Gospel … does not, in fact, condemn the rich at all, except when riches become the idolatrous objects — the god of money, the golden calf.

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/full-english-text-of-pope-francis-interview-with-il-messaggero

The history of the Catholic church in the Caribbean have motivated several historians including Juan Bosh to have a different opinion about the Catholic Church, whereas Conquistadores and the Vatican were both the same, and both had the same mentality. The so called Padre de Las Casas considered the Tainos as  an inferior race. In the USA the Protestants considered the Indian as half of an animal.The Dalai Lama will not act  like Camilo Torres who was  a catholic priest considered as a Marxist, but he became a guerrilla fighter, or like father Romero who was killed by the Salvadorian right wingers,  he is accumulating wealth

[alanjjohnstone]

The Pope castigates capitalism again and calls for a nice capitalism once more 

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“St John Paul II, in the inauguration in this hall of the First Conference on Nutrition in 1992, warned the international community against the risk of the 'paradox of plenty', in which there is food for everyone, but not everyone can eat, while waste, excessive consumption and the use of food for other purposes is visible before our very eyes. Unfortunately, this 'paradox' remains relevant. There are few subjects about which we find as many fallacies as those related to hunger; few topics as likely to be manipulated…“Aim your gaze and heart not towards an emergency pragmatism that shows itself to be perpetually provisional, but instead an approach aimed at removing the structural causes of poverty. Let us recall that the root of all evil is inequality”, says Francis, repeating his words in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium: “we have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. … It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. … The excluded are not the 'exploited' but the outcast, the 'leftovers'.It is therefore necessary, if we really want to solve problems and not become lost in sophisms, to remove the root of all ills, which is inequality. To do this, there are some priority decisions to be made: to renounce the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and to act above all on the structural causes of inequality”.

http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=26692

[alanjjohnstone]

Who in Edinburgh Br. said i could start an argument in an empty house?Try this article on Catholic Marxism to get your ire worked up.http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/bronterre/2014/06/28/catholic-marxism#more-2761

[alanjjohnstone]

He may be very fallible when it comes to solutions but the Holy See has drawn attention to inequality and wage slavery.http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/28/us-pope-economy-idUSKBN0LW0NZ20150228

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Pope Francis launched a fresh attack on economic injustice on Saturday, condemning the "throw-away culture" of globalization and calling for new ways of thinking about poverty, welfare, employment and society. In a speech to the association of Italian cooperative movements, he pointed to the "dizzying rise in unemployment" and the problems that existing welfare systems had in meeting healthcare needs. For those living "at the existential margins" the current social and political system "seems fatally destined to suffocate hope and increase risks and threats," he said.  People were forced to work long hours, sometimes in the black economy, for a few hundred euros a month because they were seen as easily replaceable. " 'You don't like it? Go home then'. What can you do in a world that works like this? Because there's a queue of people looking for work. If you don't like it, someone else will," he said in an unscripted change from the text of his speech. "It's hunger, hunger that makes us accept what they give us"

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"When money becomes an idol, it commands the choices of man. And thus it ruins man and condemns him. It makes him a slave," he said. "Money at the service of life can be managed in the right way by cooperatives, on condition that it is a real cooperative where capital does not have command over men but men over capital," he said.

[Dave B]

As we have this thread to ourselves Alan. It is reassuring for me as regards the material pope Francis is cherry-picking out of the early church father material, as I had already read it.  He has used saint Chrysostom’s pamphlet ‘On Wealth and Poverty’, Homily on acts and Homily on ‘Pauls’ epistle to Timothy. As wells as the shit kicking ‘Ian Bone of old Class War’ material eg;  On Naboth by St. Ambrose 340 – 397 AD ….You are anointed, O rich man, and you stink…… There is plenty of more of that kind of thing in it.   http://hymnsandchants.com/Texts/Sermons/Ambrose/OnNaboth.htm  http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-at-monday-mass-in-santa-marta   What I found really interesting was the following forged document from the 9th century, which should be of interest in itself. It still claims to be firmly ideologically/economically ‘rooted’ in early Christian communism, like Leninism did to Marxism. But are these ‘bishop and his ministers’ starting to whiff a bit of a Bolshevik state capitalist bureaucratic caste?   The Epistle of Pope Urban Firstto All Christians By the increase, therefore, and the mode of life which have been mentioned, the churches over which the bishops preside have grown so greatly with the help of the Lord, and the greater part of them are now in possession of so much property, that among them there is not a man who, selecting the life in common, is kept in poverty; but such an one receives all necessaries from the bishop and his ministers. Therefore, if any one in modern or in future time shall rise up and attempt to divert that property, let him be smitten with the judgment which has been already mentioned. http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/ANF-08/anf08-123.htm#P9039_2934283  So when Pope Francis says early Christians were early communists before modern lying ‘communists’; were post early Christians lying self serving Bolsheviks before ‘we were’? Hegel remarks somewhere[ that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce………The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm surprised by the lack of interest in the Pope's almost weekly sermons on inequality and capitalism.After all, when Russell Brand made some very vague political comments, our forum was full of praise that he had begun a discourse, even if what he said wasn't particularly original, but the point was he drew attention to topics upon which we can build…When a person with an audience far exceeding Brand's touches on aspects of the socialist case, albeit fallibly and with its own agenda (i always find the Catholic sites particularly valuable for data on debunking the over-population myths since they have to justify their anti-birth-control dogma), we appear to be scared of being seen associating with strange bed-fellows. If the Pope offers us ammunition…and presents an opportunity to even undermine his own base …why do we step back? I think i will follow up your early christian communist links you have been posting and see if something can be made of them to take advantage of the Pope opening the door and leaving it ajar for the socialists to get their foot in the door.I once posted on the rise of Catholic Church celibacy here on my personal blog…you might like to read it http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/08/rent-priestcom.html 

[Dave B]

I agree with you Alan. I personally know three 'catholics' with ‘far left political positions’ that aren’t all that far removed from the ‘Russell Brand’ type analysis. One of my objectives is to get people to think about communism in general and as modern Christianity is generally virulently anti-communist; pulling the rug from under their feet is all just grist to the mill as far as I am concerned. Re; that early Christians were ‘proto Marxists’, as Bart Erhman briefly ‘considered’ in one of his best selling books. And expose them as Staliniod revisionists and heretical apostates. It also has I think wider theoretical implications re Marxism and the transhistorical expressions of ‘communist’ type ideologies and albeit primitive class analysis etc. and makes; "………..The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome…." look like understatement. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/Two of the five or so best authenticated pre 200AD anti Christian documents accuse the Early Christians of ‘in common’ Proudhonist/ anarcho-syndicalist, shaker commune ‘communism’.  Engels in 1844 used the Shakers as an example of practical communism. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_10_01.htm Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm  True Doctrine by Celsus, as in Origens contra Celsum, and in Lucian of Samosata Passing of Peregrinus. And three of the best dated and provenanced Christian documents have it as well. Didache One of Justin the Martyr’s ‘apologies’ to someone. And one of the generally most interesting documents.  The Epistle of ‘Barnabas’; which has internal dating evidence that almost universally places it at 70- 131AD. In that; “…………Thou shalt communicate in all things with thy neighbour; thou shalt not call things thine own; for if ye are partakers in common of things which are incorruptible, how much more [should you be] of those things which are corruptible!………” ‘communicate’ [language an the other thread] is an interesting word that recurs often in this kind of material and means in this context to share. And “……who turn away him that is in want, who oppress the afflicted, who are advocates of the rich, who are unjust judges of the poor, and who are in every respect transgressors……” I mean why is a statement like ‘advocates of the rich’ not a proto class analysis? (It has other material in it as well like not eating weasels because they indulge in oral sex, although that kind of thing was standard intellectual Greek Zoology at the time- although maybe they do!) Another one is Revelation according to John dated by Fred at AD69. But that is more of your Red Brigade, Baader-Meinhof and ‘Shining Path’ Maoist ‘communism’ really.  As regards Christians in general there is a plethora of material on the internet arguing against the idea that early Christianity was communist; that usually struggles with the material in Acts. But they don’t seem to like the other stuff being supplemented to it. I have tried to go onto their forums but they kept expelling me and deleting my posts. I even got thrown out of christian forum on an apolitical thread on what Jesus looked like. All I did was quote Celsum from 180AD who cited reports that he was a shifty looking, ugly and physically disfigured ‘dwarf’. And briefly discussed the strange and enigmatic passage in Luke, I think, about Doctor why don’t you heal yourself or whatever. Concidentally material relevant to a thesis for social or base economic conditions of the emergence of Christianity sort of cropped up today on Greaber’s Radio 4 programme. As it goes in 6AD after the incorporation of Judea etc in the Roman empireand its economic laws etc. Traditional Judiac conceptions of debt forgiveness and the prohibition of ‘foreclosure’ on peasants means of production ie land posted as collateral on debt where overturned. Or gobshite usurers could now appeal to ‘Roman Law’. That resulted in a new class of dispossessed peasantry who went on to work as agricultural wage labourers.  The problem was also exacerbated by the implementation of fixed money taxation rather than in kind and as a proportion of product etc.       There was something related to that re economic analysis in Volume Three on that re small Roman peasants I think. And I think Lenin did something similar re late 19thcentury Russiaand the collapse of the Mir system?  Incidentally Origen, the Christian, responded that he wasn’t shifty looking and although he heard stuff about him being a ‘dwarf’ that was by no means a certain historical fact.

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