The latest Catholic compromise with "The world"



Christ said "My kingdom is not of this world" but the Catholic church certainly is. From earliest times, their compromises with "the world" have been huge. It is their legacy that causes us still to celebrate pagan holy days such as Sunday, Easter and Christmas. We even still feature the original pagan fertility symbols that go with Easter: eggs and rabbits. The one commemoration that Christ commanded of his followers -- the Passover -- they ignore.

Now among some Catholics, the adoption of the green religion is going on apace. See below


When I was a kid in Catholic school I memorized a list of virtues out of the Baltimore Catechism. The three theological virtues roll right off the tip of my tongue still -- faith, hope and charity. These three were followed by the cardinal virtues -- prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude -- that when cultivated led to a moral stalwartness fortified by the gifts of the Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, and fear of God.
These virtues were the goal and focus of our spirituality. They were resources to not only get us through life, but to enable us to flourish as citizens, as workers, as parents. Above all, they planted in our hearts dispositions to resist temptations and to do good.

Those afternoons memorizing the catechism took place, for me, in the late 1950s, while the Cold War was raging. Now it’s early in the 21st century.

Though these older virtues still abide, perhaps we need resources, vision and strength for completely new challenges, for the world is a very different place now.

Then the Cold War loomed and the battleground for the future of all that was good seemed located in remote lands, far off from me and my catechism. Now the struggle for the future seems as near as my own backyard. It will be fought in the ways we shop and travel and recreate, in adjusting our wants and needs to fit within Earth’s limits, even in the ways we imagine God and God’s connections with us.

Our task in the years ahead will be healing a world that is badly out of balance. What will help us to live and flourish as citizens, workers, parents, seekers after God in this new context? Recently I ran across a list of nine ecological virtues, suggested by Christian ecologist James Nash. One by one, I will describe each virtue.

Adaptability: My stepson when he was a teenager wanted a car. His request for help put me in a bind. Though convinced excessive driving is environmentally destructive, I knew that he needed some breaks in a life filled with mishaps and trials. I decided to give him a loan. Though I’d like to report that this deliberation proceeded with great-souled equanimity and grace on my part, alas, that was not the case.

“Life is the great balancing act,” said the late Dr. Seuss. Sorting through these difficult dilemmas, working out the necessary compromises and finding practical solutions to knotty problems is true prayer, encounters with God working in our lives. It is unheroic, not glamorous, and very holy.

Sustainability: A TV comedienne talks of visiting the mall to buy a wastebasket for her new apartment. The clerk put her wastebasket into a sack. She carried the sack home, then threw it into the wastebasket she’d just bought. “What am I doing?” she yelped. Convenient, yes, but is it not an unnecessary waste of resources and an insult to the Creator to behave in such a way? Her story is an apt parable for the wastefulness that characterizes so much of our living today.

Much more boring old crap HERE

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