we find:
Bush: “I hope
I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I
don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.”
ECONOMIC, not "environmental." So for
him, it is all about money. Well, thank
you Mr. Bush for making it clear which master you serve, God or mammon.
Bush: “I think
religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things
that end up getting in the political realm.”
If political efforts are not directed toward making us
better people, then what ARE they doing to us?
If our political efforts are not directed by our properly-formed
consciences (hence by the practice and study of our religion), then what are
they directed by?
Beckwith: “Bush, like candidate Kerry, treats the Vicar of
Christ, not as one to whom he owes obedience, but rather as a religious pundit
whose suggestions he is free to discard if he finds them politically
inconvenient. But if religion is about “making us better people,” as candidate
Bush affirms, and if one’s religion requires obedience to its Magisterium, is
not candidate Bush, by his reluctance to obey, denying himself an opportunity
to improve his own character?”
Precisely.
“A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to
face the incredible and inconceivable idea that someone else may be wiser than
he is.” --GK Chesterton
We all need to consider VERY carefully just exactly
WHAT the Pope is trying to tell us with this encyclical. Beckwith’s sideways remark about Pope Francis’
speaking about something in which “he has no expertise” is not appreciated by
this Catholic, for one. We could
certainly say that Pope John Paul II “had no expertise” with respect to
romantic love and marriage, and yet he had enormously powerful things to say
about how these very things in which he had no personal expertise reflect and
reveal our relationship with God. This
Pope may not be an environmental scientist, and yet, guided by the same Holy
Spirit, he may have enormously powerful things to say about our relationship to
God through His natural creation. Let us
pluck up the courage to face the incredible idea that he may actually be wiser
in this matter than we are. St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
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