Jose, if you want a serious discussion, cut the crap about "George goes at John Paul II". I have changed the subject line in keeping with the topic. See my responses below.
--- jose colaco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It should then come as no surprise to anybody that John Paul II opposed the > Latin American Liberation Theologians who had joined hands with Marxist > Communists even to the point of supporting the violent overthrow of > governments. The bigger issue is when and to what extent should priests/nuns/bishops/cardinals/popes be involved in politics? Further one may ask: when and to what extent should lay Catholics be involved in politics, another critical topic. Should their non-involvement in a world full of injustices be considered un-Catholic? One school of thought says clergy should never be involved, they should be involved in spiritual matters and saving souls. However, the Vatican is a political state with ties to several countries. By its very set-up it cannot escape political involvement. However, the most common situation is a priest/nun in a local parish. If one believes, as I do, that religions and major institutions of the world need to liberate oppressed people (and I do not mean only political oppression), then it follows there should be some involvement. The next question is when and to what extent? That is an idea I (and many others) struggle with. Where to draw the line? I would like to see others post their thoughts. > As much as I want to agree that the Church must be involved in every aspect > of life in a country, I strongly oppose the involvement of the Church in > active partisan politics. Your seeming confusion here is part of the overall dilemma. On the one hand one cannot condone the Church's role in Poland and elsewhere and yet "oppose the involvement of the Church in active partisan politics". I suppose much hinges on what one considers "active" and "partisan" and "politics". Even if one removed semantics from the discussion, it is still a formidable phrase "active partisan politics" while trying to determine the church's role. Is all politics not active? Is it not partisan? Should the church be involved in inactive partisan politics? Should it be involved in active impartial politics? You see the difficulty.... > Did it not strike you that A Catholic Marxist-Leninist Priest would be an > epitomy of an Oxymoron? Logically, it could also follow that a Catholic Capitalist priest is an oxymoron. After all the Catholic church was around before Adam Smith and capitalism as we know it. It cannot now align with capitalism which would mean it was aligned with the wrong side prior to then. If it does align with capitalism now, what about the ills of capitalism? After all capitalism just killed a 100,000 people in Iraq. Regards, George
