Politics is a model for churchians, not Christ.
Posted on 01/11/2014 | By Chris Gale
Milford Sound: (c) shatteredlight
Yesterday I noted that when you are praised by the press, then there is a problem. You may be in effect not Christian but going down a path of what Lewis called “Christianity AND _______” (whatever is fashionable). Now, this can effect the right or conservative end of Christianity — from prosperity gospel to holiness movement — and it can affect the leftish wing, where the call to justice and service to the poor can overwhelm the gospel.
The “preferential option for the poor” is back. The doctrine that so inflamed controversy in the 1970s and 1980, famously wedded to Nicaragua’s Sandinista cause, now has a Papal imprimatur. It is close to becoming official doctrine for the world’s 1.2bn Roman Catholics under “Evangilii Gaudium”, the Pope’s first apostolic exhortation. This will have consequences.“While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by the happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,” Pope Francis says.
The conservative power of the Papal Curia is being broken. All of a sudden the Vatican is the spearhead of radical economic thinking. The best-known of the Pope’s newly-minted Council of Cardinals is none other than Archbishop Reinhard Marx, the firebrand “Rote Kardinal” of Munich and author of Das Kapital: A Plea for Man.
There are two parts to this: one is that there needs to be a critique of the issues of this day, and of this time. Luther said that if he preached all the gospel except the part which is confronting the people, he was not preaching the gospel.
The second is that the analysis of the Vatican (ironically published in that most Tory of papers, the Telegraph) is assuming that everything is politics. That the pope is a king. Which he, most certainly, is not, and cannot be.
15When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
16When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
22The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there. They also saw that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”
Now, the issues around our economic system are difficult. No person who can add can see them as sustainable: we have governments taking unsustainable levels of debt while regulating the market in such a way that their supporters (and only their supporters) are favoured. There is an old name for this economic structure: fascism.
And the Pope — although I have some doubts about some of the things he is doing — is correct to confront fascism.
However, the church is not here to run the world, but to save it. That is why Christ did not allow the people to make him king. That is why we have to be careful of those who just come to see the powers or be fed.
And it is why at times we have to say things that are unpopular. Unfortunately, the church of England is again an example of what not to do.
A wordly religion will adapt to the world without seeing anything strange in it. Today the very concept of sin is to be kept away from the customers faithful as if it dirtied them; tomorrow, the Cross might well go if they find it offends their sensitivity; the day after tomorrow, every mention of Christ will be expunged, less the family members of Muslim or Buddhist or other persuasion or of no persuasion at all feel offended by such an intolerant, “judging”, and clearly homophobic man.
The saddest thing of them all is that even Anglicans who care for God – and who rightly protest against the planned changes – are unable or unwilling to see what abject submission to the world their own shop incarnates and witnesses day in and day out. In this case, this abject submission is proclaimed quite openly, as the most natural of things. “Look – they say – we can’t ask a woman for submission, can we now? You got to be joking! Have you ever met our wives?”.
Mundabor, who is a Tridentine Catholic of the paleolithic school, as hit on something here. The Church as an institution has politics within it: all organizations do. (As a Catholic, he is concerned about where his church is going, as he ought to be).
The press, which uses the political left | right spectrum as an organizing principle, and, functionally Marxist, thinks we are rational players homo economicus , uses the paradigm of politics to understand what is going on.
Falsely: they have but two tools. The philosophy of modern greats (Politics, philosophy and economics) is strictly utilitarian.
But Christianity is not aboout the church as an institution. It is about Christ. Christ is within the church — as are the beleivers — but there are many false leaders, heretics, and unregenerate within us.
And the believer you can tell by their love and their humility. Their humility, for they know their own sin: their love, for the want the best for you… and from that their truth, for they will offend you by telling you that you are wrong.
Repeatedly.
Offensively.
For truth no longer has a place in this world, truth is hate speech: and Mundabor, that good Papist, although in error understands there is a truth. The wordly churchians have expunged that word from their dictionary, searing their conscience, and damning their souls.
