swirlsofhistory posted:

Was with you until the last paragraph.

agreed. cheers was seriously overrated. designing women was the superior 80s workplace comedy

and no doubt most Catholics today have no communitarian values, ... it's been explicitly excised, diluted from doctrine.

is completely wrong and could only be written by someone who knows nothing at all about Catholic doctrine

if anything the problem with the folks running Rome right now and for the last century is that they are way too fond of "communitarianism" in situations where Christ was not

roseweird posted:

daddyholes posted:

if anything the problem with the folks running Rome right now and for the last century is that they are way too fond of "communitarianism" in situations where Christ was not

this sounds interesting, could you expand on this?

well first i'd suggest rereading the New Testament at least. The whole thing.

the best way to get into this further is to read the encyclicals: Rerum Novarum, Quod Apostolici Muneris, Humanum Genus (Freemasons lol) Quadragesimo Anno, Mater et Magistra, Populorum Progressio, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis and Centesimus Annus, among others.

these are very easy reads and skimming is fine past the ones by Leo XIII as many of them recapitulate earlier writings and clarify them for current events. you may already have run across G.K. Chesterton who attempted to formulate Catholic social teaching into politics. Distributism has formed one of many bases for contemporary "communitarian" theory and practice.

the "Christ was not" part is me being flip about my agreement with Gauthier and Gutierrez, two people you'll want to read regarding liberation theology. The papal encyclicals above advance a line claiming that the Gospels preach social harmony as an end and that the natural end of labor is the accumulation of private property in a setting conducive to subsidiarity (something that has heavily influenced Western European reformism for that reason). Like Gutierrez, who was of course much more diplomatic than I am, I find this incredibly hard to square with the words of Jesus Christ, St. Paul, the prophet Isaiah, and others who spoke of the Lord's specific hearing of the cries of the poor, the upheaval necessarily required by the inheritance of the impoverished and oppressed, the inheritance of the meek, and so on.

these disputes go much further back than liberation theology with a succession of monastic orders with vows of poverty and communal property battling Rome with various responses of suppression or coopting. i think we have some people on the forum who know more about this history than i do given the current discussion in the 'lol jews' thread. long story short there is nothing about the Pope inheriting the mantle of St. Peter that means that Catholics are absolved from or deprived of moral responsibility or moral argumentation (see Letter to the Duke of Norfolk):

This is a showy and serviceable retort in controversy; but it is nothing more. First, as regards the arguments which Catholics use, it has to be considered whether these are really incompatible with each other; if they are not, then surely it is generally granted by Protestants as well as Catholics, that two distinct arguments for the same conclusion, instead of invalidating that conclusion, actually strengthen it. And next, supposing the difference to be one of conclusions themselves, then it must be considered whether the difference relates to a matter of faith or to a matter of opinion. If a matter of faith is in question I grant there ought to be absolute agreement, or rather I maintain that there is; I mean to say that only one out of the statements put forth can be true, and that the other statements will be at once withdrawn by their authors, by virtue of their being Catholics, as soon as they learn on good authority that they are erroneous. But if the differences which I have supposed are only in theological opinion, they do but show that after all private judgment is not so utterly unknown among Catholics and in Catholic Schools, as Protestants are desirous to establish.

I have written on this subject at some length in Lectures which I published many years ago, but, it would appear, with little practical effect upon those for whom they were intended. "Left to himself," I say, "each Catholic likes and would maintain his own opinion and his private judgment just as much as a Protestant; and he has it and he maintains it, just so far as the Church does not, by the authority of Revelation, supersede it. The very moment the Church ceases to speak, at the very point at which she, that is, God who speaks by her, circumscribes her range of teaching, then private judgment of necessity starts up; there is nothing to hinder it … A Catholic sacrifices his opinion to the Word of God, declared through His Church; but from the nature of the case, there is nothing to hinder him having his own opinion and expressing it, whenever, and so far as, the Church, the oracle of Revelation, does not speak."

In saying this, it must not be supposed that I am denying what is called the pietas fidei, that is, a sense of the great probability of the truth of enunciations made by the Church, which are not formally and actually to be considered as the "Word of God." Doubtless it is our duty to check many a speculation, or at least many an utterance, even though we are not bound to condemn it as contrary to religious truth. But, after all, the field of religious thought which the duty of faith occupies, is small indeed compared with that which is open to our free, though of course to our reverent and conscientious, speculation.

it is in this tradition that i approach the Church.

tpaine posted:

there was a christ-centered linux distro that I read about that was trying to replace email with godmail or something because the dude who made email is gay, and I was like, tahts totally appropriate, because email, if you think about it, is for fags.

But Rhizzone socialism has nothing to do with feminism, the USSR and Maoist China were reactionary fascist regimes where people starved and shit and there was even worse gender inequality than now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_Russia

http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?is=0333734149

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2243892

It would be more accurate to say that trotskyism is a gateway drug to socialism and, as socialists get older, Democratic Party liberalism with some rhetorical support for Kim Jong Sungism-Kim Jong Ilism just to look radical.

These posts criticizing leftism are always ignored in favor of irrelevant discussions about linux and homosexuality or whatever. But rather than show Rhizzone's devotion to socialist ideals, this behavior actually demonstrates that Rhizzone doesn't care about whether the USSR was misogynist, because nobody here cares, because nobody here feels the need to defend anti-revisionist Marxist Leninism because nobody here is actually an anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist. Rather this board is full of boring democrats and welfarists who adopt positions like supporting the Taliban or North Korea just to troll conservatives.

"Communism" to the "communists" here is what "libertopia" is to libertarians. It will never actually exist, it's just an impossible ideal that's brought up to justify some political position, and disowned every time it's actually put into practice in its literal form. At least you guys aren't as bad as trots, you own up to failures like Cuba or East Germany and try to cast a positive light on them, but still, you don't spend much time defending them.

You see, my trolling here is a compliment. I don't want to troll Gawker because the people there are idiots and I get no reward from that. I want to troll this place because I want to see people develop complicated rationalizations to justify inconsistencies in their ideology. This is why it really bums me out when you simply ignore my posts, because these threads could be so, so much more hilarious if you just took the time to play the game.