Saturday, May 28, 2011

"Unfortunately," said the progressive I crossed paths with who thinks the Church has to learn from the world as much as modern parents apparently need to learn from their modern children, "Latin America was too brainwashed by JP2 to realize his true mission:  to stamp out liberation theology."

I didn't realize JP2 made a secret out of it.  Communism didn't work well in Europe and it wouldn't really work well in the New World, either.  Priests are not bourgeois, salvation history is supernatural and not simply political, and individuals still possess culpability for their own sins.  What's not in need of correction?


This kind of condescending behalfism against easy, high-profile targets rather irks me.  I say it's condescending because it materially accuses the whole of Latin America of being too stupid to see what's actually going on around them.  Boy, good thing we have these socialists to aid the proletariat out of contempt, instead of some other kind of demographic or philosophical school that allegedly only wants to keep them down out of spite.


Look:  a clergyman wants to do charity work?  Great.  But a clergyman he is first.  If you feel you missed your calling, address your concerns and weigh your options against the commitments you already made.  You can't take it in halves; it's up to the Church to administrate itself. JP2 didn't chasten  Ernesto Cardenal behind closed doors, and didn't do it for some obscure reason.  If someone didn't take a hint from that event at his 1983 visit to Nicaragua, then someone's listening to the wrong rhetoric.

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