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| The tilting-dummy or "quintain" is used in jousting practice. It spins around and if you do not duck it will knock you off your horse. It is a great example of "secondary effects". |
Our regular priest was away today and we had a visiting "Senior Priest".
A Senior Priest is a retired priest that the Bishop presses into duty as the need arises.
The Catholic Church no longer has a deep bench. The Bishop has the same challenge that coaches in recreation league sports have. He has to play them all. The gifted. The average. The flawed.
Today's priest is clearly a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist. "Rich people bad. Government should provide money, housing, medical care."
I did not argue with him. He is an old, sick man and I doubt I could move him.
It was illuminating to realize that he visualizes Daddy Warbucks and Harry and Megan Markle when he rails about "rich people" when the people he would kick are actually the plumber who still works every day and and who owns his own business and employs other five guys, including a guy who can't do much more than sweep.
Where is the justice for him if you destroy his business? How about the people who work for him? Who is going to unclog the shitter when you destroy your business? The same people who issue you license plates?*
The irony is that one of today's readings included the passage
"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea."
It seems disingenuous to preach what he wanted the Bible to say rather than what it said and the context in which it was said.
The intellectual rigor of old Socialists is on-par with that of doctors who would still bleed patients to reduce fevers. It is the obvious solution...and it is dead-wrong.
*Yes, I know the old joke: Socialists don't need toilet paper or plumbers because there is no food to eat.
It seems nearly impossible to find pastors that read the Bible with an eye to themselves. Those that take the convicting of the Holy Spirit when He applies the Word to them, and make Biblical changes to their lives. Then share that change to the people they under-shepherd. That kind of authenticity moves people into a higher, Holier plane without man's effort.
ReplyDeleteThe professional pastors seem only able to find a topic and then some passage they can lift from the context to try and support their subject.
If you do not rightly divide the Word, you are abusing the Word and your office. There is no difference between that "cleric" and the person that deserves a millstone diving collar.
our parish is so small we get a priest once a month and deacons or the occasional lay presides doing a communion service the rest of the time. We had a deacon today who was all upset how the Haitian refugees are being treated at the border. Didn’t argue with him either!f
ReplyDeleteWithin that reading it also says if a hand, foot or eye causes you to sin, cut it off or pluck it out. But the hand , foot and eye are part of a living organism, just like the commie priest in the Catholic Church.
ReplyDeleteA different interpretation of this reading is that if a person causes you to sin repeatedly, cut them out of your life, pluck them out so as that mill stone is not assigned to you.
It will be better for you.
Mill Tone