@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
Foofie, a day late and a dollar short, as usual. The original article refers to Catholic bishops, in fact. Given your well known racist and religionist bigotry, you should have a field day with that. At any event, i was referring generically to idea of whether or not there is anything wrong with preaching a political message--and i say it is not.
If you mean "preaching" by clergy, and Catholic clergy specifically, I find that interesting, since back in the mid '70's I do remember someone of the Catholic faith explaining to me that it is usually the right-wing conservative Protestants (aka, Southern Protestants) that mix religion with politics, and Catholicism just preaches a theology that focusses on one's way to personally live one's life, so they eventually have whatever salvation there is to have.
So, if you can today say that Catholicism should preach a more temporal gospel, I just find that interesting.
In the way of analogy, it is usually the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that sees their lives fulfilled by religion only, while it is some of the Reform Jewish community that oftentimes think of Reform Judaism, in my opinion, as a reforming voice amongst all the other liberal voices in the society. If the analogy holds true, then Catholicism was more like ultra-Orthodox Judaism fairly recently, but has been moving towards the more reformed version of thought that part of the "mission" of Catholicism is to correct the world's ills.
Perhaps, one difference between the two versions of Christianity (Protestant and Catholicism) might be that Catholicism wants to correct the world's ills, and Protestantism (in America) might just focus more on the ills of the U.S.? Analogous to the "charge" that many Jews have greater allegiance to Israel, than the U.S., is it really wise to want to correct the ills of other sovereign nations with great gusto?
And I say this in context of some secular bible scholars (not an oxymoron) that may think Jesus was an "anti-Roman zealot," aside from his teachings that were more religious oriented and peaceful. Can one really be an anti-Roman zealot and proselytize "turning the other cheek"? So much is lost in the history that is handed down to us, I believe.
And, your using the quip, "A day late and a dollar short" was just too tame for many of your retorts? I hope you are feeling well.