La Salette Journey |June 06, 2017
Once again, Francis is
engaging in partisan politics and embarassing himself.
Liberal Speak
reports, "Pope Francis, leader of the global Catholic church, has been telling
his followers that they must reject Trump’s position on immigrants and refugees.
According to Pope Francis, Christians have a duty to embrace immigrants and
refugees – that’s exactly the opposite of what Trump and modern day Republicans
are trying to do."
Father George Rutler, of EWTN fame, wrote the
following about ideologues like Francis:
"The recent action of our
government’s executive branch to protect our borders and enforce national
security is based on Constitutional obligations (Art. 1 sec 10 and Art. 4 sec
4). It is a practical protection of the tranquility of order explained by
Saint Augustine when he saw the tranquillitas ordinis of Roman civilization
threatened. Saint Thomas Aquinas sanctioned border control (S. Th. I-II, Q.
105, Art. 3). No mobs shouted in the marketplace two years ago when the
Terrorist Travel Prevention Act restricted visa waivers for Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. The present ban continues that, and only for a
stipulated ninety days, save for Syria. There is no “Muslim ban” as should be
obvious from the fact that the restrictions do not apply to other countries with
Muslim majorities, such as Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh and
Turkey.
These are facts ignored by demagogues who speak of tears running
down the face of the Statue of Liberty. At issue is not immigration, but illegal
immigration. It is certainly manipulative of reason to justify uncontrolled
immigration by citing previous generations of immigrants to our shores, all of
whom went through the legal process, mostly in the halls of Ellis Island. And it
is close to blasphemy to invoke the Holy Family as antinomian refugees, for they
went to Bethlehem in obedience to a civil decree requiring tax registration, and
they violated no statutes when they sought protection in Egypt. Then there was
Saint Paul, who worked within the legal system, and invoked his Roman
citizenship through privileges granted to his native Tarsus in 66 B.C. (Acts
16:35-38; 22:25-29; 25:11-12) He followed ordered procedure, probably with the
status of civis Romanus non optimo jure—a legal citizen, but not allowed to act
as a magistrate.
It is obvious that the indignant demonstrators against
the new Executive Orders are funded in no little part by wealthy interests who
would provoke agitation. These same people have not shown any concern about the
neglected Christians seeking refuge from persecution in the Middle East. In 2016
there was a 675% increase in the number of Syrian refugees over the previous
year, but while 10% of the Syrian population is Christian, only one-half of one
percent of the Syrian Christians were granted asylum. It is thankworthy that our
changed government now wants to redress that. The logic of that policy must
not be shouted down by those who screech rather than reason."
In his
work of critical importance entitled "Man Against Mass Society," the French
philosopher Gabriel Marcel writes, "..the fanatic never sees himself as a
fanatic; it is only the non-fanatic who can recognize him as a fanatic; so that
when this judgment, or this accusation, is made, the fanatic can always say that
he is misunderstood and slandered...Fanaticism is essentially opinion pushed
to paroxysm; with everything that the notion of opinion may imply of blinded
ignorance as to its own nature....whatever ends the fanatic is aiming at or
thinks he is aiming at, even if he wishes to gather men together, he can only in
fact separate them; but as his own interests cannot lie in effecting this
separation, he is led, as we have seen, to wish to wipe his opponents out. And
when he is thinking of these opponents, he takes care to form the most degrading
images of them possible - they are 'lubricious vipers' or 'hyenas and jackals
with typewriters' - and the ones that reduce them to most grossly material
terms. In fact, he no longer thinks of these opponents except as material
obstacles to be overturned or smashed down. Having abandoned the behaviour of a
thinking being, he has lost even the feeblest notion of what a thinking being,
outside himself, could be. It is understandable therefore that he should make
every effort to deny in advance the rights and qualifications of those whom he
wishes to eliminate; and that he should regard all means to this end as fair.
We are back here again at the techniques of degradation. It cannot be
asserted too strongly or repeated too often that those the Nazis made use of in
their camps - techniques for degrading their victims in their own eyes, for
making mud and filth of them - and those which Soviet propagandists use to
discredit their adversaries, are not essentially different though we should, in
fairness, add that sadism, properly so called, is not to be found in the Russian
camps." (pp. 135-136, 149).
Marcel explains that, "In fact, the greatest
merit of the critical spirit is that it tends to cure fanaticism, and it is
logical enough that in our own fanatical times the critical spirit should tend
to disappear, should no longer even be paid lip service as a
value."
Francis has an extremist leftist political agenda. To advance
his agenda, he finds it necessary to demonize those who disagree with it.
Anyone who, following Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, believes in
border control, must be demonized as "non-Christiano," and as somehow
"uncharitable."
Francis is cheapening himself and doing much damage to
the credibility of the Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.