American TFP > Catholic Perspective
Radical Catholic Movements Gather in Modesto, California: “We Must Disrupt!”
February 28, 2017 | Luiz Sérgio Solimeo
Extract:
A Message From Pope Francis
Peter Cardinal Turkson—Prefect of the new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—presented the message Pope Francis sent to “The first U.S. regional World Meeting of Popular Movements.” The document is shocking for its anti-capitalist tone, very akin to liberation theology, and the absence of any criticism of socialism.
This economic system which, according to Francis, “poses a grave danger for humanity”—is not socialism, which has destroyed thriving economies and reduced hundreds of millions to enslavement and the most abject misery12—but free enterprise and the market economy!
Some phrases in the papal message are hard to understand, as when he exhorts popular movements “to defend our Sister Mother Earth.” In what sense is the “Earth” our “Sister Mother”? What does it mean to have a “Sister” that is also a “Mother”?
Bitter Fruits of Liberation Theology
In short, Modesto’s gathering of “popular movements” is yet another bitter fruit of the Marxist-Modernist ideology of liberation theology, which has set ablaze several Latin American countries by promoting land squatting and violence in the countryside and the “conscienticization”17 of the heretofore pious faithful, turning them into hate-filled agitators.
It is to be feared that the fruits of “The first U.S. regional World Meeting of Popular Movements” will be social agitation, upheavals, and increasing disorientation among Catholics.
This needs to be countered with true Catholic social doctrine, which does not preach revolt and the subversion of the civil order, but “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.”18
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