Yuku free message boards

Quote:

---

House Senior Deputy Minority Leader Rolex Suplico of Iloilo City added that Capallas proposal would violate the constitutional separation of Church and state.

He also expressed resentment over Capallas suggestion that all lawmakers needed moral guidance from the bishops.

We cannot presume that members of Congress cannot discern right from wrong, Suplico said. We cannot presume that the people voted clowns to Congress.



Lawmakers slam bishops for meddling in politics

---

Quote:

---

The new president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Angel Lagdameo, told more than 100 cardinals, archbishops and bishops that he would focus on the young and the poor, said Monsignor Hernando Coronel.

"Our priority would be evangelization of the two sectors -- the young because they are more than 50 percent of the population, and the poor because about 70 percent of the population are poor," Coronel told reporters.

Some 65 million of the 84 million people -- roughly three-quarters of the population -- are Catholics.

The bishops have played major roles in popular upheavals that led to the ouster of two presidents -- Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001.

Last year a number of senior church leaders were high-profile participants in an opposition-led effort to impeach President Gloria Arroyo over alleged election fraud and corruption.

Coronel said the church would use the mass media -- including cable television, the Internet and mobile phone messaging -- to spread its message to the young and the poor.

"We have to use new approaches, new techniques, new methodologies with our new leadership," the spokesman said.




Catholic Church leader tells bishops to shun politics

---

Quote:

---

Evangelism in Latin America tends to define itself on opposition to the Catholic Church and practicing Catholics. Many aspects of Catholicism are singled out for criticism. Evangelists, for example, point to excesses of Catholic ritual, both public and private. The amount of money spent on rituals and the excessive drinking and eating are heavily criticized. Ritual behavior such as completing pilgrimages on ones knees is seen as foolish rather than as an ex-pression of awe.

Furthermore, Catholicism has been severely criticized for its inherently pantheistic rather than a monotheistic approach to religion. Latin American Catholicism (and indeed all Catholicism ) is populated by a series of deities: primary among them is Jesus Christ, but the universe abounds with such sanctified spirits as the Virgin Mary and hundreds of saints.

Evangelism, in response, eschews most representations of the Virgin Mary and the saint, focusing nearly exclusively on Jesus Christ and his presence in the world and their lives.



Religion and Politics in Latin America

---

Quote:

---

It is a great mistake for the Church to be actively and overtly involved in social political reform. Politicians are as fickle as teenagers struggling with peer pressure. It is not wise for the Church to be yoked with them in any fashion (2 Cor. 6:14-18 ).

Too many Christians in America confuse the personal freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights with their spiritual freedom obtained at rebirth. The two are not equivalent. They should not - no, they must not - be held with equal esteem.

The first is a temporal issue of little consequence in the overall scheme of things. The second has enormous eternal import. A pursuit of the first does not fulfill the expectations or obligations of the second. Indeed the first often only hinders the second.



More. . .

---

Quote:

---

Like the Benedictines, who kept bright the lamp of learning during Europe's Dark Ages, and the Vincentians, who've brought comfort to the poor for hundreds of years, the Rev. Frank Pavone believes his new Roman Catholic society, the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, will change the world.

As the society, which is dedicated to fighting abortion and euthanasia, broke ground on its new national headquarters Thursday in Amarillo, Texas, it boasts but one member: Pavone.

But the 37-year-old priest, who has headed the Priests for Life for about a decade, during which he also played a controversial role in the public square, knows how to draw a crowd.

n his tenure at the head of Priests for Life, Pavone built the organization into a powerhouse of the anti-abortion movement, with an $11 million budget for 2006, and 10,000 priest members and 200,000 lay members, Pavone said.

But his activities were curtailed at times by the Catholic hierarchy, who may have grown weary of his courting controversy. In 2001, New York's Cardinal Edward Egan forced Pavone to step down as head of Priests for Life and assume a parish position. Eventually, Egan and Yanta "came to an agreement" that allowed Pavone to transfer to Amarillo, Pavone said. The new arrangement, according to Pavone, "enables us as a society in some ways to take even more controversial of a stance. A diocese may not want to do something, but a society is more flexible and can get involved. We intend to be far more controversial than the ordinary, run-of-the-mill church response to abortion."


More. . .

---

Quote:

---

I don't want a theocracy on earth. It didn't work for the Catholic Church, and it wouldn't work for the Christian right. The church however well-meaning does not replace government. Or doctors. Or journalists.

There has long been a dynamic in the Christian faith between social activism and the Gospel, and the spiritual principles laid down in the Bible, Old and New Testaments.

Roughly, it comes down to this for many Christians: Change the world on the outside, or change ourselves, then the world, starting on the inside.

In American political life, both the left and the right or liberals and conservatives have attempted to seize the truth of the Church of Jesus Christ and transfer it into an agent of social change.

In most cases, however, these efforts come up short, mainly because they do not deal with the human condition.



More . . .

---

Quote:

---

The Roman Catholic Church is a political entity headquartered in Rome and controlled in Rome. Its teachings and policies are set in Rome. All of its employees work for and represent the interests of the headquarters in Rome. It has awesome political power in the U.S. and the world over. It has inviolable territory, diplomatic representation to governments around the world and its minions sit on international bodies of a purely secular nature.

It has political interests, including security-survival interests which are in direct conflict with those of the United States Government and its people. But the image of the Catholic Church presented by the American press does not reflect these realities. We are led to believe that this institution is primarily religious in nature.

On the contrary; numerous observers over the years, including scholar Paul Blanchard, have correctly described the Catholic Church as a political institution cloaked in religion. Little has changed. The Church and its Vatican are firstly a political institution, now desperately trying to survive.

Much distortion is possible because relevant information that would limit distortion is not collected in the first place, since the Church has succeeded in blocking its collection. For example, for the bishops to claim we speak for 59 million Americans alone gives the Church an enormous amount of political power to manipulate government policy.

It is not possible to challenge their present count of 59 million, though the actual number of Catholics who consider themselves adherents of the Catholic faith and who are willing to give the bishops permission to speak for them in the political arena is undoubtedly but a fraction of 59 million. But when politicians hear the number 59 million, they listen intently. The result -- a lot of political power.

These are but a few of the reasons Americans have such a distorted view of the Church. However, American priests, nuns and laymen have a much less distorted view; it is amply documented that they are leaving the Church in droves. The test of the image is in the polling.

The image of a healthy, robust and expanding American Catholic Church is clearly wrong. American Catholics are not conforming to the extent that our perceptions tell us. We are affording the Church far more deference than it deserves.




More . . .

---