Is de RK Kerk wel universeel? Of biedt zij vooral onderdak aan linksige mensen?

Krijgt de bevrijdingstheologie onder Paus Franciscus een tweede kans?

In zijn opus magnum, ‘The Spirit of Democratic Captalism’, heeft Michael Novak, een voormalig priesterstudent, een indringende analyse gegeven van de moeizame verhouding van de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk met de markteconomie. Om het geheugen op te frissen zie hier en hier.

Daar hebben we echter vele jaren niets meer over gehoord. Maar met de komst van de nieuwe Argentijnse Paus Franciscus lijkt de Rooms–Katholieke Kerk weer een come-back voor te bereiden van de nogal linksige bevrijdingstheologie. Dit keer echter met een klimaatrandje.

Onder de titel, 'Catholicism and liberation theology. A new sort of religious radical', schreef 'The Economist' ruim een half jaar geleden:

Is liberation theology — an ideological movement that emerged in Latin America in the 1970s and sought to combine Catholicism with revolutionary socialism — making a comeback? Pope Francis has made at least two gestures this month which may lead people to exactly that conclusion. Yesterday, on a flight back from South Korea, the pontiff expressed his admiration for a left–wing martyr: Óscar Romero (…), a former Archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered while saying mass in 1980. Francis confirmed that the process of elevating the slain bishop to the status of "blessed", which had been bureaucratically blocked till a year ago because of the cleric's suspected Marxist leanings, should now proceed swiftly. The pope said:

“For me Romero is a man of God … there are no doctrinal problems and it is very important that the beatification [elevation to blessed status] be done quickly.”

Two weeks ago the pope rehabilitated a (still living) figure from the era of liberation theology who is in some ways even more controversial. Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann was foreign minister in Nicaragua's revolutionary government from 1979 to 1990. ...

Lees verder hier.

Maar nu komt er dan binnenkort een nieuwe encycliek, waarin, volgens de voorinformatie die circuleert, aandacht wordt geschonken aan tal van thema's, waaronder armoede, milieu en klimaat. En wéér wordt de markteconomie gezien als bron van kwaad.

Onder de titel, 'The Pope’s Green Anti-Capitalism Will Hurt The Poor', schreef Melanie Phillips in 'The Times'.

Anglican and Catholic Churches are wrong to see climate change as today’s biggest moral issue. Sceptics of man-made global warming theory often observe that it resembles religious faith. Now it is turning into one. A Vatical official, Cardinal Peter Turkson, has called for a “moral awakening” on climate change ahead of a widely expected papal encyclical reflecting the Pope’s belief that anthropogenic global warming is destroying the planet.

In similar vein, Anglicans are selling off their fossil fuel investments. The Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam, Bishop of Salisbury and the Church of England’s environment spokesman, has said: “Climate change is the most pressing moral issue in our world.” This is absurd. Global temperatures have flatlined for a decade. As many scientists have attested, much of the “science” behind the theory is ambiguous at best and bogus at worst.

Heaven knows there is no shortage of pressing moral issues for the Church. The harm to children caused by mass fatherlessness. The slaughter of Christians in the developing world. People trafficking. The subjugation of women. ...

In the aftermath of the Second World War, theology gave way to sociology as the churches progressively caved in to secularism. God was replaced by Marx. Led by Latin America, the World Council of Churches embraced liberation theology, or the use of religion to bring about revolution. Anglicans fell into line. Priests turned into social workers preaching the gospel of poverty. The pews emptied, however, as the charge against capitalism failed to stick.

Now, however, “climate change” has given the Churches a new weapon. As Pope Francis has said: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.” For Francis is a revolutionary Pope, dedicated to ending the capitalist order. He has called capitalism “an economy of exclusion by an idolatrous system of money”. This tends to “devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits. Whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market”.

This radical message may destroy the West and will hurt the poor. His agenda of “social justice” is the twisted contemporary euphemism for coerced economic redistribution, aka soaking the better–off to keep the poor trapped in dependency.
This deification of poverty is a formula for human stagnation and the destruction of political freedom. It repudiates the core understanding of western modernity, that empowering every individual to achieve wealth is the essence of collective prosperity and liberty.

Aldus Melanie Phillips.

Lees verder hier en hier.

Door het enthousiasme voor welvaartsverdeling vergeet men vaak dat welvaart eerst dient te worden gecreëerd voordat deze kan worden verdeeld. Of, zoals Margaret Thatcher placht te zeggen:

'The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.'

Voor mijn eerdere DDS–bijdragen zie hier.