In the Loop with Archbishops Dolan, Chaput and Ross Douthat of the New York Times (wink, nod)

Archbishop Charles Chaput (left) evangelizing the faith.

The best of the best New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan has quoted the best of the best wordsmith Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia declaring Philly to now be “Mission Territory” after decades of crime and coverup under the Cardinals Krol, Bevilacqua and Rigali crime regimes.

Timmy, in typical alpha male mode for the USCCB has volunteered the Archdiocese of New York as “Mission Territory” as well and is likely petitioning the Congress at this very moment for tens of thousands guest worker visas for Catholic missionaries from South America, Africa and South Asia to swarm over North America and save it and or offer it up to the oligarchs on a silver platter for a good price or place at the table in the new world order of things.

There was a time when Rome used to send the best of the best of Europe to missionary territories in the New World and up against the dominant Protestant Christian Culture of the young United States.

What have you done to my (Philly) church?

Bishop (Saint) John Neumann, a Sudetenland German, as fourth bishop of Philadelphia missionary territory laid the foundation vision that built the largest, superior Catholic education system in the United States, perhaps the world, that stood for almost a hundred years until the Krol, Bevilacqua, Rigali regimes started to strip the wealth of the Philly church, shipping cash over to Solidarity in Poland for General Wojtyla to oppose the Russkies etc. along side CIA allies and Ronald Reagan (bow your head).

These problems kill a Christian love of poverty and zeal. They choke off a real life of faith. They create the shadows that hide institutional and personal sins. And they encourage a paralysis that can burrow itself into every heart and every layer of the Church, right down to individual Catholics in the pews. The result is that Philadelphia, like so much of the Church in the rest of our country, is now really mission territory–again; for the second time...  

First, religious freedom is a cornerstone of the American experience. This is so obvious that once upon a time, nobody needed to say it. But times have changed. So it’s worth recalling that Madison, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson–in fact, nearly all the American founders–saw religious faith as vital to the life of a free people. Liberty and happiness grow organically out of virtue. And virtue needs grounding in religious faith... 

We’re becoming a nation where, as Ross Douthat describes it, “a growing number [of us] are inventing [our] own versions of what Christianity means, abandoning the nuances of traditional theology in favor of religions that stroke [our] egos and indulge, or even celebrate, [our] own worst impulses.” And it’s happening at a time when the Church is compromised by her own leaders and people from within, and pushed to the margins or attacked by critics without... 

http://robertaconnor.blogspot.com/2012/07/full-text-chaput-fortnight-for-freedom.html

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Ross Douthat’s Poison Pen on Religion – New York Times - “All the news that’s fit” to be bought

If you can define the parameters of an argument, you will likely win the argument.

There is a poison in American Religion. It is politics.

It started in the eighties when one third of a modern day version of an Anti-Christ in the form of Ronald Reagan, an actor, was helped into his cushy CEO crony job with the aid of southern bigots aka as “born again” Christians in the form of Jerry Falwell Incorporated. 

The television evangelists labeled their Edsel version of religion televangelism.  There were no warning labels on the make it up as you go along programming and or snake oil product and the resulting wealth brought out the vote for a washed up black and white film “B” Hollywood Actor in 1980. Every marketing success spawns repeat and imitation.

There is a poison in American Religion.  It goes beyond the Bush “Black Purse” ongoing bribe given to churches to dole out soup but not condoms to the poor.

There used to be a fairly decent Religion section the British Newspaper The Guardian. It disappeared one night that coincided with the visit of King Benedict the German of the Vatican 108 acre based money laundering empire.

In fact, I don’t recall The New York Times ever being big on religion or where religion would be booked except in the leisure section is in fact it ever existed.

I guess no doubt the editorial staff heard about all the Religious Politics or is it Political Religion that has poisoned the modern and or virtual American Town Square. FOX NEWS moronity sells papers so to speak and attracts sponsors.

On to the scene of the past few years is the Harvard educated Conservative Ross Douthat to explain modern religion to a seemingly godless liberal New York Times readership. No truth to the rumor that the NYT needed an emergency midnight loan to survive one day back when and the Knights of Columbus, the Roman Catholic Church’s “Black Banker” came through in a pinch, and Ross now has a bought desk, boutique stall, at the grand old lady of news as a concession or condition of that emergency Vatican backed loan?

Anyway, I keep seeing wanna be memes popping up from time to time based on the NYT Vatican Desk in the form of  "TC" theologically correct Ross Douthat articles on a truly global news site that has room even for a token puissant or is it pissant opinion pundit like Douthat.

Memes flow through the blogosphere. There are whole chucks of Catholic and or right wing “Born Agains” or the new flavor of the month title is “evangelicals” blogs that repeat, reverberate and praise the Douthat Vatican echo chamber.

There was quite a stir about the dangerous “Pantheism” theology threat of the Movie Avatar that Ross probably got nominated for a Pulitzer on.  Straight off the secret? GOP/RCC daily talking points sheet. Wink. Nod.

In a way, Douthat is the Ivy League version of the Beer and Sauerkraut Bill Donohue at the Catholic League directed toward the Church Militants, “igorant enlightment” for the lower classes on the right and wrong American Catholic PC political opinion and positions of the hour, day and month these days.  It is not like the Catholics ever read the NT.

Which brings me to the latest politically labeled religion piece by Ross trying to piss on Mainstream American Protestantism.

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

I have read many blogs in response of this piece of political trash masquerading as religion.

Give it a read and form your own individual opinion while you still have that option in a "free" America.

When did any Christianity become “Liberal” or “Conservative”?

Those are political terms!

And once this form of "Boutique Journalism" courtesy of the RNC and Ross Douthat interjects terms like liberal or conservative into the opinion page of the Beard NYT, then the parameters of the argument are already set. The argument is won by the controlling out of touch corrupt 1% elites trying to use one more ploy to prostitute religion into a political matrix of the 2012 election.

Christianity is neither liberal or conservative. It just is.

And for those of you that need a visitor’s guide to Christianity, take the Douthat tour and drink in his religion and in the end wake up in bed with dross of the soul.

Your soul.  

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Ross Douthat and his Many Many Heretics in a Diverse American Landscape

Watching Ross Douthat on MSNBC this morning and listening to words procreated from his honorary “George Will” conservative chair at MSNBC on the Chris Hayes Show, I had to wonder how does one inherit such media power?  

It is no secret that Douthat is the Vatican’s man at the New York Times from which to launch the Church’s national campaigns against troubling competing theisms such as “Pantheism” that Ross did with a NYT article attack on the fairytale movie Avatar back when.

But one, little peasant such as myself, should not question media shaping opinion as if it comes from or sounds like it is was shaped at the old Catholic Office of the Inquisition. Though I must admit that Douthat rendering opinion in a roundtable discussion on TV, the only thing missing was a perfumed laced handkerchief for Ross to hold to nose and sniff as he was forced to talk to less than his true true peers in that media setting. 

Mention of Douthat’s latest hack theology book, approved no doubt by both the Vatican and the RNC, was mentioned on this roundtable appearance today.

Before I quote from an excellent review of his book by Randall Balmer, I take exception with the deceiving title of Douthat’s book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics because “Heretic” is a bastardized Catholic word from the Greek, a variation of Heresy.

I have to wonder if the royal (?) “we” in the WE became Heretics is not really a stealth pronouncement (dictum ex cathedra)?  

And to wonder if Douthat is a Pure enough Catholic ready to rout out the many others, less than perfect Douthat Catholics, from His Church?

Heresy (from Greek αἵρεσις, which originally meant "choice", also referred to that process whereby a young person would examine various philosophies to determine how to live one's life) was redefined by the Catholic Church as a belief that conflicted with established Catholic dogma…--Wikipedia 

How Choice and or Option could get twisted into something so negative as Heresy, only a pure uber Catholic would know or understand…

Breaking Faith

The plunge into heresy, Douthat believes, can be traced to theological developments like the revisionist Jesus Seminar and the unlikely trinity of Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman and Dan Brown. Douthat accuses them of discrediting Christian orthodoxy in the interests of remaking Jesus in their own image, often for political ends. Debunking the debunkers, Douthat concludes that “they speak the language of the conspiratorial pamphlet, the paranoid chain e-mail — or the paperback thriller.” The currency of these ideas has given rise to what the author calls the “God Within” movement. “A choose-your-own-Jesus mentality,” Douthat writes, “encourages spiritual seekers to screen out discomfiting parts of the New Testament and focus only on whichever Christ they find most congenial.” 

The “God Within” malady has infected evangelicals as well, as seen in the so-called prosperity gospel. Douthat harvests a lot of low-hanging fruit in this section, and who can blame him? The pablum peddled by Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer and countless others surely represents an adumbration of Christian orthodoxy, but Douthat also criticizes Michael Novak’s defense of capitalism for being a betrayal of traditional Catholic teachings. All of this leaves us sinking into a morass of gluttony and narcissism, which has been inflected into the political arena as American ­exceptionalism. 

Although Douthat’s grasp of American religious history is sometimes tenuous — he misdates the Second Great Awakening, mistakes Puritans for Pilgrims and erroneously traces the disaffection of American Catholics to the Second Vatican Council rather than the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae” — there is much to commend his argument. 

Yes, the indexes of religious adherence are down, and the quality of religious discourse in America has diminished since the 1950s, in part because of the preference for therapy over theology. Theological illiteracy is appalling; many theologians, like academics generally, prefer to speak to one another rather than engage the public…. 

Like any good jeremiad, “Bad Religion” concludes with what evangelicals would recognize as an altar call. Douthat invites readers to entertain “the possibility that Christianity might be an inheritance rather than a burden,” and he elevates such eclectic phenomena as home schooling, third-world Christianity and the Latin Mass as sources for renewal. 

Religion in the rearview mirror never looked better.

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