tag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2009:/CO//37 2009-01-08T16:53:25Z The site for Catholic Democrats of Colorado Movable Type 3.31 tag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2009:/CO//37.542 2009-01-08T16:46:42Z 2009-01-08T16:53:25Z

One of my interfaith brothers from the Denver area just told me about this wonderful opinion piece by Dr. Miguel de la Torre. De la Torre is a Cuban-American and is the director of Iliff's Justice and Peace Institute and...

Andrea Merida One of my interfaith brothers from the Denver area just told me about this wonderful opinion piece by Dr. Miguel de la Torre. De la Torre is a Cuban-American and is the director of Iliff's Justice and Peace Institute and serves as the associate professor for social ethics. Dr. De La Torre is also editing the Encyclopedia on Hispanic American Religious Culture, a 2-volume set (ABC-CLIO, 2009), is the series editor for the 12-volume Latino/a Religious Thought for the New Millennium (Baylor University Press), and is on the advisory board of Religious Perspective on Contemporary Ethical Issues (Rowan & Littlefield Publishers). The article is originally printed at the Associated Baptist Press on January 5, 2009. Read on: The Bible Demands Economic Justice (ABP) — Even before the economy crashed we were using oxymoronic terms like "a living wage" or "the working poor.” Shouldn’t all wages sustain a life? Should those who work remain poor? Somehow we have moved away from the biblical principle that not paying a living wage is stealing, for we steal from our employees when we extract a full week of labor and refuse to compensate them with the basic necessities to live a full week. Full-time workers who are paid the legal minimum hourly wage still fall thousands of dollars below the poverty line, thus proving that in this country, hard work can no longer lift the poor from poverty. Jesus teaches us that the employer has certain responsibilities toward the laborer. Take the biblical parable in Matthew 20:1-16. One early morning a vineyard owner set out to hire laborers. He found willing workers, negotiated a fair day’s wages (a denarius) and sent them to his fields. Several hours later, he employed additional workers and also sent them to his fields. This process was again repeated at noon, and in the mid and late afternoon. At the close of the day, the vineyard owner first paid those who were hired last and only worked a few hours, using the wage scale offered to those first hired. Some worked all day, some just a few hours, yet everyone got the same amount of money. Reading this parable from a position of middle-class privilege leads to a spiritual interpretation that reduces the meaning of the parable to symbolism. The denarius signifies grace, which all receive equally regardless as to when they come to the Lord. Jesus, however, preached this message to the poor of his time, fully understanding that poverty prevented those who were created in the image of God from participating in the abundant life he came to give. A literal reading of this text reveals that Jesus attempted to teach us economic justice. These workers had no control over when they would be hired to work. Regardless of when they were chosen, they needed a denarius to meet their basic needs: food, shelter and clothing. To be chosen to work for only half a day and to be paid half a denarius was insufficient. Half a denarius meant that several family members would not eat that day. Only an uncaring and unmerciful heart will declare it just that these laborers leave without being able to meet their basic needs. The biblical teaching is that those who are economically privileged, like the vineyard owner, are responsible for those who are not, while laborers are responsible to provide a full day of work unless prohibited by circumstances beyond their control. Jesus defines justice as ensuring that each worker obtains a living wage, regardless of the hours worked, so that all can share in the abundant life. Contrary to U.S. capitalist paradigms, it did not matter how many hours a laborer worked. What mattered was that at the end of the day, she or he took home a living wage so that the entire family could survive for another day. When we consider that Jesus spoke more about money and its use then he did about grace, salvation, heaven or any other topic, we are left asking why churches ignore or avoid dealing with unjust economic arrangements. To continue ignoring economic injustice, or worse justifying it in spiritual terms, threatens our very democracy. The collapse of the middle class can usher in the collapse of our democratic ideals as the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few imposes their will (through, among other ways available to them, political action committees). While some of my colleagues of the cloth, from the safety of middle-class privilege, provide some excellent textbook analyses that justify the maintenance of our present economic system, the fact remains that such classroom theories simply collapse when applied to the economic realities of the disenfranchised. While such pundits may see the cause of poverty to be laziness or buying too much tobacco and alcohol products, the poor realize they are trapped in an economic structure designed to keep them impoverished. For our economy to work at top efficiency, an “acceptable” unemployment rate is required. Corporate America needs a reserve army of under-skilled and under-educated laborers to keep wages depressed. Not surprisingly, these under-skilled and under-educated laborers are usually people of color. Full national employment means companies are paying too much to attract and retain employees, which negatively affects their profits. Our economic system is designed to prevent segments of our population from keeping part of God’s Third Commandment, “Six days you shall labor.” During the ’80s and ’90s, the United States experienced the greatest growth in wage inequality among Western nations, contributing to the smallest (proportionately) middle class among 17 industrial countries. This wage inequality means that the richest nation in the world has the highest percentage among other industrial nations of its residents living in poverty, of which 14.5 million are children. Among all industrial nations, the U.S., at 14.8 percent, has the largest rate of child poverty! How can this be? During the booming economy (1990 to 1995) when most corporations reported profit increases of up to 50 percent, the average CEO’s pay rose from $1.9 million to $3.2 million, while the average worker, during that same time period, experienced a pay drop from $22,976 to $22,838. Yet as the doomed middle class continues their downward spiral, do they look toward the economically privileged segments of our society as the cause of the economic plight? No, because they blame downward. Job loss is attributed to scapegoating (i.e., affirmative action and undocumented immigrants stealing “our” jobs are the culprits du jour) who are offered up as sacrifices to the gods of capitalism, redeeming the privileged of their sin of hoarding. No wonder the words of the prophet Jeremiah are ignored by “Christian” capitalists today, “Woe to the one who builds their palace by unrighteousness, their upper rooms by injustice, making their compatriots work for nothing, not paying them for their labor.” To make matters worse, we have moved away from any resemblance of true capitalism as this present economic crises continues the strategy of socializing losses while privatizing profits. The sight of corporate leaders of the automotive industries sitting before Congress asking for a bailout best demonstrates this point. Their bailout, through the use of taxpayers’ funds, spreads corporate losses among all of us. Yet to suggest that any profits they might eventually make also be spread among the taxpayers would raise accusations of communism. Why is socialism acceptable when we talk about bailouts but not profits? It is inconceivable for me to understand how any minister who reads the biblical text, specifically the message of the prophets to assist society’s most vulnerable members (the widow, the orphan, the alien), can choose to make a preferential option for the rich by accepting another’s suffering as necessary for the general good. But I must be patient. For you see, I too once fused and confused fancy abstract economic theories with religiosity to justify my own privilege. For 13 years I ran a real-estate company of 100 agents. I founded it when I was 19. I paid the minimum wage to my seven-year secretary while company earnings soared to six figures. I shook my head in disbelief when she used her 18-percent-interest-rate credit card to pay for her son’s medical bills (I refused to provide health care). Supply and demand justified my stealing of her labor, based on the fact that desperate and plentiful replacements gratefully sought the chance to catch scraps from my bountiful table. May the Lord forgive the sins of my youth, for even though I was a deacon at my Baptist church, it wasn’t until I made a preferential option to be in solidarity with the poor that I found my own salvation. My penitence is to fight for economic justice for those who lack voice. Please join me in the call for a living wage, even in these difficult economic times, so that the words of Jesus could be fulfilled, “The worker is worth their keep (Mt 10:10).” – Miguel De La Torre is associate professor of social ethics at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. tag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2008:/CO//37.524 2008-12-26T22:33:38Z 2008-12-26T22:35:59Z

There will be three Colorado Catholic Democrats in the 111th Congress: Ken Salazar, Senate, Betsy Markey, House, John Salazar, House....

Catholic Democrats Staff Ken Salazar, Senate, Betsy Markey, House, John Salazar, House. ]]> tag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2008:/CO//37.468 2008-11-02T16:58:59Z 2008-11-03T01:44:12Z

We were so pleased to learn that a progressive radio station that broadcasts in the Denver market, AM760, interviewed Dr. Patrick Whelan, our organization's founder, last week. He made some wonderfully insightful comments about adding abortion reduction strategies to the...

Andrea Merida 303-325-5600 or at andrea@emaildiva.net. Click here to listen to the entire radio segment, including the follow-up after the conclusion of Dr. Whelan's interview. Right-click the link to download to your computer.]]> tag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2008:/CO//37.470 2008-11-02T14:06:57Z 2008-11-03T02:20:42Z

REV. EMMANUEL CHARLES McCARTHY. Render unto Caesar is a book written by a Roman Catholic Bishop, who can only speak truth or falsehood as a person who is indelibly marked as a Baptized and Confirmed Christian and Bishop. He wrote...

Catholic Democrats Staff Render unto Caesar is a book written by a Roman Catholic Bishop, who can only speak truth or falsehood as a person who is indelibly marked as a Baptized and Confirmed Christian and Bishop. He wrote this book out of and within a Christian ethos in general and a Catholic mind-set in particular, and therefore it is herein evaluated for good or for ill on that basis. Charles Chaput, the very conservative Catholic Bishop of Denver and a very nice fellow personally, steers clear of any serious analysis of the primal issue in Church-state relations, that either poisons or empowers everything else. He does not seriously address in Render unto Caesar the foundational problem of the morality of Christians using violence in all forms against other human beings, and even each other, under the guise of the word "state." In other words he assumes as Gospel truth, and accepts, the Constantinian definition of the content of Christian love--a definition and content that is patently inconsistent with the definition and content Jesus gave the word love by His words and deed. Specifically, Charles Chaput's definition of Christian love includes killing and maiming people. Jesus' does not. His understanding of Christian love cannot be found in original Christianity. It comes into its own about 300 years later with Constantine. Beyond this, no more really needs be said about the book. If one accepts Chaput's understanding of Christian love, he or she may still have quibbles and squabbles, or maybe even fist pounding arguments, with him about what he writes on this page or that, regarding the implications and applications of his understanding of that love. But, if one accepts Jesus' definition of love, he or she will find an entire book one cannot accept, because it is the Constantinian understanding of love that underlie all thought in it. Take for example the book's introductory quotation from the philosopher Henri Bergson: The motive power of democracy is love. I agree. In fact on April 4,1971, I gave a public address of some length, subsequently published, entitled, DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND AGAPE, on this very subject. In it I referenced the word love exclusively to Christlike love, specifically quoting in full 1 Corinthian 13 to be certain that people would be clear about what I was saying. Since love is a word with an almost indefinite number of meanings attached to it in English, I felt truthful communication required this explicit clarification. In Render unto Caesar the meaning of the word love slips and slides like a drunken sailor all over the lot. Sometime what is being said appears to be Christlike love, or at least a logical deduction from it. Then on the next page it is clearly Constantinian love. The confusing and commingling of these understandings of love, understandings that exclude each other because of the logical Principle of Non-Contradiction* are the piedi d'argilla (feet of clay) on which Render unto Caesar makes its stand for everything it presents as moral truth in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. *["X" and "not X" cannot both be true; between "X" and "not X" there is no middle ground] Now, the saddest thing about Archbishop Charles Chaput's book, Render unto Caesar, is that 98% of the Christian Churches and Christian leaders, from Moscow to Manhattan, from the Pope to Putin, agree with him and think as he does in relation to the teachings of Jesus and their relationship to the "state." They believe that the piedi d'argilla on which this book stands are rock solid, namely, that Christlike love includes Christians getting a hold on the levers of the state's power of violence. As previously noted, they only disagree with Bishop Chaput, and among themselves, on some of the details of the execution of violence--on which human beings and on behalf of what causes Christ would approve killing, maiming, torturing, destroying and desecrating other people under the auspices of the "state." But, at root they all--Charles Stanley, John Hagee, Alexei Ridiger, James Dobson, Reverend Ike, Dimitrios Arhondonis, Hans Kung, Charles Chaput, Rowan Williams and tens of millions of other Christian pastors and preachers--are in complete agreement, getting the states power of violence in the hands of good [by their particular standards, not Gospel standards] Christians is faithful discipleship on the part of the Church and on the part of those Christians who pursue this end. An icon of Jesus as a soldier firing a machine gun at another human being is understood across the board to be a preposterous image of Jesus. It is an image imparting a grave and destructive false witness. So, is the Christian who orders the trigger pulled any more or any less a faithful follower of Jesus and His Way, a true image of and witness to Jesus and His Way of love (Jn 13:34, 15:12, Catechism of the Catholic Church # 1970, 2822) than the Christian soldier who upon orders pulls the machine gun trigger thereby cutting another human being to pieces? Practically all PMs and their "enforcers" in Western civilization over the last 1700 years have been and are Baptized Christians! The piedi d'argilla of Charles Chaput's book is the piedi d'argilla of just about every Church and pastor today, and for most of Church history. From House Churches, to Pentecostal Churches, to Glass Cathedrals, to Rock Basilicas--First World, Second World, Third World and Fourth World--nearly all Churches and Church leaders and Church members have been trying to be Pilgrim Churches and Pilgrim people while standing and walking on these ever corroding and corrupting feet of clay, that is, on a presentation and enfleshment of the truth and love that Jesus taught, that is not the truth and love that Jesus taught. Nothing in the teachings of Jesus says or even suggest, that for His disciples violence becomes acceptable when done as part of a crowd--whether the crowd names itself a state, a corporation, a Church, an army or any combination thereof. Render unto Caesar as noted above steers clear of this primal issue and simply assumes that it is a settled matter that followers of Jesus can be faithful followers of Jesus and kill and maim people, or order the killing and maiming of people, e.g., war, abortion, capital punishment, etc. if it is done under the auspices of the "state." As mentioned above an icon of Jesus firing a machine gun is universally experienced as preposterous because of what it says on the pages of the Gospels about who He was, what He taught and how He lived. Does the Baptized follower of Jesus, who is expressly commanded by Him to "Love one another as I have loved you," have available to him or her--morally, spiritually and ontologically--a body and a soul that have the authority to render to Caesar in an act of homicidal violence? Render unto Caesar is a book by a Christian and a Bishop about love, politics and Jesus. But, it is not a book about the love that Jesus teaches in the Gospels nor is it a book about the politics of Jesus. It is a book that says one can achieve Christ's ends by using unChristlike means. To believe this disconnect between ends chosen and the means chosen to achieve them "requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse," to use Charles Chaput's own words from another context. God is not mocked, we reap what we sow. It makes no difference if we re-name corn "wheat," or re-name violence "Christlike love." Nor, does it make any difference for how long we have been re-naming corn "wheat" and violence "Christlike love." It is equally irrelevant what personages of distinction re-named corn "wheat," and violence "Christlike love." What we will get in reality for sowing corn and violence is a harvest of corn and violence, and their fruits! Render unto Caesar is a book, that if it had courageously disciplined itself to proclaiming that love, and that love only, that Jesus taught, that is, a nonviolent love of friends and enemies in imitation of Him and in fidelity to His teaching, could have been an authentic prescription for Christianity being that salubrious mustard seed which planetary humanity so desperately longs-for and needs for its healing and peace. Instead it is a prescription for more of the same old addictive poison that for over a millennia and a half the Churches have been pouring into the minds and hearts and bodies and blood of Christians and non-Christians--the poison of the cross of nonviolent love turned upside down and made into a sword, and then sold to humanity in a bottle with the label "Christlike love!"]]> tag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2008:/CO//37.449 2008-10-13T02:59:09Z 2008-10-24T23:53:04Z

We are in the beginning stages of creating a Catholic Democrats chapter in the Metro Denver area, and the purpose of the chapter will be to pray together, provide restful welcome to one another, and to discuss ways we can...

We are in the beginning stages of creating a Catholic Democrats chapter in the Metro Denver area, and the purpose of the chapter will be to pray together, provide restful welcome to one another, and to discuss ways we can peacefully spread the word that progressive values have a place in our Church. If you'd like to get involved or learn more about the chapter, please do not hesitate to contact us at 303-325-5600 or send an email to info@emaildiva.net. May the Holy Spirit light your way!