I recall back in the day, when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears hillbilly rather than the seasoned hillbilly I see when I look in the mirror today, a wise man once told me that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, is the bottom line of Karl Marx, the IRS, and Jesus Christ". Looking back on that, I think he was in error. While the early church of Jesus' day and immediately afterward WAS communal, it was not communisitic. Christians within that community shared and shared alike, each looking after the other, but none of them advocated for appropriating the property of others outside the community for their own use. That was considered, and IS, theft. I think that is a glaring difference between Christianity and Marxism.
When I was a small kid in Ohio, I knew a lot of Catholics. Our public school buses even provided transport for them from their homes to their parochial school (St. Barnabus, in Northfield, OH, for those keeping score). None of them at the time, at least none of the ones I was acquainted with and rode to school with every day, were on board with a Marxist agenda.
But those nuns at St. Barnabus, in their penguin suits, still scared the hell out of me.
Flash forward a few years, and I also recall the "Liberation Theology" drive in Central America. It created a series of hell-holes. From what I saw at the time, it appeared to be driven by a single sect of Catholicism, the Jesuits, who have been stirring shit ever since their inception. They were not at all like the Catholics I knew in my youth. In 1570 or 1571, they tried to start a Jesuit colony in Virginia, on the York peninsula, nearly 40 years before Jamestowne was established by the English. It lasted only a matter of months before the entire enterprise save for one young altar boy was massacred by the local Indians. That massacre is the only reason English is the language of America today, and not Spanish.
Pedro Menendez-Aviles sailed into the Chesapeake and up the York river a couple of years later, found all the Jesuits dead, reclaimed the altar boy, and then killed between 9 and 20 of thee local Indians, hung them from the yardarms as a display, and sailed away never to return. The Spanish abandoned all pretense of colonizing the Lands where the Wild Things lived, evacuated the Santa Helena colony in South Carolina, and left the wilderness to the wild folk.
In both Nicaragua and El Salvador, Jesuit priests and nuns were killed at different times because their "religion" was more political than spiritual, led by their "liberation theology". At the time, I felt NO remorse for their demise, and I still don't. I don't think God does, either, but he will have to speak for himself - I'm not God's mouthpiece. What Jesus said in the matter - and I think it could be successfully argued that he WAS God's mouthpiece - was "render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and unto God the things which belong to God". That means to me that there is a clear separation between church and state. Neither of those institutions has any business dabbling in the affairs of the other. The one is entirely secular, the other entirely spiritual, and never the twain shall meet. That is the basis for the American separation of Church and State, a revolutionary idea at the time, when political monarchs were also high church officers, and Christians of one sort were killing off Christians of another sort because they weren't the right KIND of Christians.
So, I believe Jesuits who dabbled in politics forsook their God, and got what they had coming to them, which was often a shallow jungle grave and nothing more. Whatever happened to them after that was between them and their god.
Wasn't Frankie the Papal Pretender a Jesuit before he became Il Papa?
But now this "Liberation Theology", which is not a theology at all but rather a Marxist philosophy, has spread beyond the Jesuits. In the 1990's, I read a few books by a fella espousing "Black Liberation Theology' - I think his last name was Cone, but I'm not sure. He was not a Jesuit or any other brand of Catholic so far as I could determine, but what he was was a Marxist and a racist, who took "Liberation Theology" and ran with it for his own nefarious ends.
Now we look around, and if we know what to look for, we can see that crap EVERYWHERE in modern America of the current day. It's not just for Jesuits or Hispanics any more, although the Hispanics ARE a useful foil for the Marxists - but I think the Hispanics are getting really tired of being used like that.
Churches of all denominations appear to be being infiltrated by that Marxist philosophy currently. Now in the end, that will be between them and their gods, whatever their gods truly are, but I think it may go hard for them when God points out how they worked harder for Caesar than they ever did for God, merely blaming their depredations on God when he had no interest in the matter, but now they want a pass to skate into Heaven despite that glaring error of judgement...
And now an interlude from Heiko Grabmeier and Cherokee:
.
When I was a small kid in Ohio, I knew a lot of Catholics. Our public school buses even provided transport for them from their homes to their parochial school (St. Barnabus, in Northfield, OH, for those keeping score). None of them at the time, at least none of the ones I was acquainted with and rode to school with every day, were on board with a Marxist agenda.
But those nuns at St. Barnabus, in their penguin suits, still scared the hell out of me.
Flash forward a few years, and I also recall the "Liberation Theology" drive in Central America. It created a series of hell-holes. From what I saw at the time, it appeared to be driven by a single sect of Catholicism, the Jesuits, who have been stirring shit ever since their inception. They were not at all like the Catholics I knew in my youth. In 1570 or 1571, they tried to start a Jesuit colony in Virginia, on the York peninsula, nearly 40 years before Jamestowne was established by the English. It lasted only a matter of months before the entire enterprise save for one young altar boy was massacred by the local Indians. That massacre is the only reason English is the language of America today, and not Spanish.
Pedro Menendez-Aviles sailed into the Chesapeake and up the York river a couple of years later, found all the Jesuits dead, reclaimed the altar boy, and then killed between 9 and 20 of thee local Indians, hung them from the yardarms as a display, and sailed away never to return. The Spanish abandoned all pretense of colonizing the Lands where the Wild Things lived, evacuated the Santa Helena colony in South Carolina, and left the wilderness to the wild folk.
In both Nicaragua and El Salvador, Jesuit priests and nuns were killed at different times because their "religion" was more political than spiritual, led by their "liberation theology". At the time, I felt NO remorse for their demise, and I still don't. I don't think God does, either, but he will have to speak for himself - I'm not God's mouthpiece. What Jesus said in the matter - and I think it could be successfully argued that he WAS God's mouthpiece - was "render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and unto God the things which belong to God". That means to me that there is a clear separation between church and state. Neither of those institutions has any business dabbling in the affairs of the other. The one is entirely secular, the other entirely spiritual, and never the twain shall meet. That is the basis for the American separation of Church and State, a revolutionary idea at the time, when political monarchs were also high church officers, and Christians of one sort were killing off Christians of another sort because they weren't the right KIND of Christians.
So, I believe Jesuits who dabbled in politics forsook their God, and got what they had coming to them, which was often a shallow jungle grave and nothing more. Whatever happened to them after that was between them and their god.
Wasn't Frankie the Papal Pretender a Jesuit before he became Il Papa?
But now this "Liberation Theology", which is not a theology at all but rather a Marxist philosophy, has spread beyond the Jesuits. In the 1990's, I read a few books by a fella espousing "Black Liberation Theology' - I think his last name was Cone, but I'm not sure. He was not a Jesuit or any other brand of Catholic so far as I could determine, but what he was was a Marxist and a racist, who took "Liberation Theology" and ran with it for his own nefarious ends.
Now we look around, and if we know what to look for, we can see that crap EVERYWHERE in modern America of the current day. It's not just for Jesuits or Hispanics any more, although the Hispanics ARE a useful foil for the Marxists - but I think the Hispanics are getting really tired of being used like that.
Churches of all denominations appear to be being infiltrated by that Marxist philosophy currently. Now in the end, that will be between them and their gods, whatever their gods truly are, but I think it may go hard for them when God points out how they worked harder for Caesar than they ever did for God, merely blaming their depredations on God when he had no interest in the matter, but now they want a pass to skate into Heaven despite that glaring error of judgement...
And now an interlude from Heiko Grabmeier and Cherokee:
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’