The Pope on his flight back to the Vatican from Poland indicated that he knew the true cause of terrorism:
Questioned about what is fueling terrorist acts, the pope pointed the finger at the global economy, saying that “terrorism grows when there is no other option, and to the extent the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person.” The love and adoration of money is a “basic terrorism against all of humanity” he said, and has replaced love between humans.
Go here to read the rest. Note the subtle justification of terrorism: “terrorism grows when there is no other option”. The Pope summons up one of his array of strawmen, greedy capitalists, as the cause of terrorism and actual terrorists themselves. We have a very, very morally confused man as the Vicar of Christ.
It is factually incorrect.
Quite a few terrorists are wealthy and educated. It isn’t that they are desperate or don’t know what they are doing.
Certainly, the nihilism that accompanies being raised in hell can bring out the worst in people but it is best to think of such ones as clay, ready to be molded. If they first feel welcome among gangs or organized crime or terrorists, there their loyalties will go. If first among humanitarians, there their loyalties will go.
His Holiness has a habit of assuming much not in evidence.
Interestingly enough, I haven’t heard of a rash of homeless people terrorizing anyone. You can’t get any worse with “no other option” than being homeless. I wonder what the pope is doing for Venezuela, the socialist nation in complete ruins – violence and starvation everywhere. I wonder what makes him have an utter hatred for capitalism. He seems to hate capitalism more than terrorism. It would be almost laughable if people’s heads weren’t being sliced off. If I didn’t have to pray for him everyday, I’d be supremely offended and wickedly angry that he said that he’d rather talk about Catholic violence. Odd that a pope could be a near occasion of sin. But, I suppose with the rosary being a powerful weapon against the devil, and I have at least 10 in a bin on my shelf, I must be pretty violent.
I’ll faint dead away the day he says, “Abortion is murder.”
He’s a fountain of anti Bible errors:
Exodus 23:3
“nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute”.
And factual errors….ie Bin Laden….richer than Hillary.
“Odd that a pope could be a near occasion of sin.”
I have recently made the statement that this pope is bad for my faith.
Bill Bannon said:
He’s a fountain of anti Bible errors:
Exodus 23:3
“nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute”.
And factual errors….ie Bin Laden….richer than Hillary.
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My only question is if, like Hillary, he knows the truth but is spreading falsehoods deliberately for political effect.
The Christian Teacher,
No…he does not know the truth. His is the most dishelved intellect in the modern papacy and I’m no fan of his two predecessors but their partial but deep ascriptural confusion was restricted to small areas like the death penalty where they will get hundreds of thousands of poor people killed going forward where their error is influential. Quickly…non death penalty Brazil’s 50,000 a year murders becomes c. 2000 murders a year if they had China’s murder rate. The death penalty is not crucial in middle class dominant cultures like Europe and Massachusetts…but is pivotal where there are millions of poor who dominate. Death penalty Asia is the safest area and the safest poor dominated area in the world…lower murder rate than affluent Europe even. Northern Latin Amerca…non death penalty…has the highest rate of murder worldwide …with few death penalty Africa second.
All these Popes have image goals in the media age ( we are the uninquisition….remember the uncola) which so consume them that they have an only partial love of scripture. Francis ignores in scripture multiple passages on judging the poor fairly not in their favor; he like his predecessors ignores the context of Romans 13:4 an affirmation of the death penalty by God DURING a non ideal empire which had inescapable life sentences in the mines which alleged modern inescapability was the reason these Popes gave for avoiding the death penalty. Yes I think all three men are idiots on that topic but two of them hoped to reconvert non death penalty Euro college graduates who left the parishes for secular liberalism. They also hoped to convert the abortion lobby like Amnesty International by joining them in the anti death penalty belief. You convert no one well if you did it by disowning one verse of scripture.
My husband slaves away at the office every day to provide not just for himself, his (high maintenance) wife, and kids, but less able family members, and, yes, “the poor”. It is very hard to write the weekly check to the parish knowing that 10% (or is it 16%) goes to the Diocese and then eventually to Rome to put food on this person’s plate.
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My husband is in the financial sector, so I imagine must be especially evil occurring to the Pope.
I guess this is the Pope’s of helping us all to misunderstand the situation. It is no wonder the Catholic Church doesn’t seem to understand it’s own mission of preaching the Word and saving souls when the Pope thinks it’s all about saving the planet and the evils of capitalism.
The Holy Father is clearly right to direct us the economic roots of terrorism.
It is axiomatic that culture and ideology (world views, ideas, values, and beliefs) must arise from the base of society – to the forces and relations of production—to all the people, relationships between them, the roles that they play, and the materials and resources involved in producing the things needed by society.
Conflict arises because what one section of society sees as essential to the preservation of social life, (because it preserves the existing relations of production), will be seen as bad by another because it obstructs the development of new forces of production.
Islamic radicalism arose in the 19th century from the erosion of traditional society in the Islamic world by global economic forces of colonialism and capitalism. The success of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and their policy of modernisation and Westernisation sprang from their recognition that traditional Islamic society was simply incompatible with economic progress.
Oddly enough, the desperate poor living in the favelas of Brazil aren’t
slicing off people’s heads or blowing up public transportation. Immigrants
from Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, aren’t coming here and
shooting crowds of people a la San Bernadino and Orlando.
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The Tsarnaev brothers lived a comfortably middle-class life here before
they bombed the Boston Marathon. Nidal Hassan was an Army psychiatrist
who shot dozens of people at Fort Hood. Osama bin Laden’s family is
estimated to be worth over a hundred million dollars. None of those
people were poor or homeless, and yet they killed.
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If it isn’t ‘economic inequality’ and desperation fueling terrorism, then what
is it? What could possibly be the common thread shared by Syed Farook of
the San Bernadino shootings, Omar Mateen of Orlando infamy, the Tsarnaev
brothers of the Boston bombing, Nidal Hassan of Fort Hood, etc. What could it
possibly be? Hint: when they killed, they weren’t shouting “Ave Maria!”.
Note the subtle justification of terrorism: “terrorism grows when there is no other option”.
It’s one of those falsehoods that’s got just enough truth in it to taste like truth.
Here’s the turning point– no other option for what?
Now that’s where the flavor comes from– they don’t have another option, to get what they want in a route they’re willing to go.
(second half, site is erroring out for long comments again)
Killing a crowd of Not As Much A Person As Me people (not being Christian or infused with that presumption of “all humans are as human as my brother”) is a much lower “price” than what someone who believes, in their bones, that the guy over there is a person— without having to even talk to him, because he’s a human.
Similarly, you can’t compare Christian attempts to convert (where what you believe is what matters– public behavior will flow from that) to actions by groups where it’s what you do and publicly support that matter. (with the assumption that even if you’ve got a gun to your head, saying “Allah is everything” is what matters) There isn’t a way to really force people to truly believe ___, but there is a way to make at least some of them act like they believe you.
I’m confuzzled. I thought the poor were to be especially preferred, and the desperately poor, desperately so.
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Is the Pope telling us to get our righteous anger on?
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Where’s my terrible swift sword?
I hate the smell of upside-down Hegel in the morning.
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Smells like moldy cheese.
Ernst, I had the same confuzzlement.
The combox at Breitbart goes nuclear whenever this Pontiff opens his mouth.
He has less than the usual Catholic clergy understanding of economics, and that is not easy.
The Cardinals who put him there are equally guilty. I dislike him and his views.
Hey,lighten up,he’s not a Borgia or a Medici.Could be a lot worse.Google really bad popes for perspective .
Neither the Bogia nor the Medici attempted to change Church doctrine.
Tim Quinlan wrote, “he’s not a Borgia or a Medici.”
What was wrong with the Medicis?
Of the Medici popes, Leo X was a most munificent patron of learning and the arts. In particular, he encouraged the revival of Hebrew studies, in which he was proficient and in 1518, he authorised the establishment of a Hebrew press by the Jewish community in Rome, with whom he enjoyed very good relations.
His abolition of the tax on Jewish bankers was as politic as it was just, proving such a stimulus to finance and commerce that his treasury gained more than it lost.
He was notoriously dilatory in making appointments; as he explained to a friend, every appointment created nine malcontents and an ingrate.
As for Clement VII, he was a good scholar; Pliny’s Brief Lives was his bedside reading. He he commissioned a painting from Raffaello from whom he commissioned a painting for his cathedral of Narbonne, when he was Archbishop of that city. He liked it so much that he kept it and had a copy made for the cathedral. He was the patron of Benvenuto Cellini and one of his last acts was to commission Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Both were fellow-Florentines.
Pius IV is best remembered for his skilful handling of the conclusion of the Council of Trent and for the Tridentine Creed. He was a great builder, commissioning Michelangelo to rebuild Santa Maria della Angeli. He also commissioned Pirro Ligorio to build the Villa Pia. He sought to end the Calixtine Dispute in Bohemia by granting the cup to the laity in Austria and Bohemia in 1564.
Leo XI was only pope from 1 to 27 April 1605. He was a lifelong friend of St Philip Neri.
All in all, not a bad record.
“Neither the Bogia nor the Medici attempted to change Church doctrine.”
Nor did they seem to parrot DNC talking points.
“Islamic radicalism arose in the 19th century from the erosion of traditional society in the Islamic world by global economic forces of colonialism and capitalism. The success of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and their policy of modernisation and Westernisation sprang from their recognition that traditional Islamic society was simply incompatible with economic progress.”
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HUH?!?
Islam has been radical from the very beginning. (1400s!)
As I type, Turkey’s leadership is in the midst of a purge that is removing everyone who will not actively support the country’s leadership moving Turkey to a form of radical Islam.
The Christian Teacher
The most radical of Ataturk’s reforms were the abolition of the Caliphate (and also the Shaykh al-Islam) and the replacement of Sharia law with the Swiss Civil Code, the German Commercial Code and the Italian Penal Code. Ataturk insisted that the Quran is a record of religious experience, not a source of juridical norms.
One of the shrewdest was the replacement of the Arabic alphabet with the Roman, as well as the replacement of many Arabic and Persian loan-words with Turkish equivalents; it meant that, within a generation, only a handful of scholars would have access to anything written or published before the founding of the Republic.
He weakened the power of the clergy by abolishing the dervish orders and confiscating their property and by secularising the vakıfs or charitable foundations. These laws were largely modelled on those enacted by the French Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry (1899-1902) suppressing the congrégations.
Some reforms may appear trivial, such as the replacement of the Islamic calendar with the Gregorian, the substitution of the Turkish “Tanri” for “Allah” and the “Hat Law,” banning the Fez was frankly ludicrous, but their impact was not inconsiderable.
As a result, « Laïcité » (The Turkish “laiklik” is borrowed from the French; a rare example of a foreign loan-word of which the Kemalists approved) is strongly supported by most of the urban middle class.