Jesus Christ, Super Liberal

I thanked Jim Kalb for writing back to my critic and further elucidating John Paul II’s position on immigration. Mr. Kalb replied:

Actually I’m glad he gave me the occasion to look at the thing again. The really odd part is at the end, where the Pope refers to “Christ, who through us wishes to continue in history and in the world his work of liberation from all forms of discrimination, rejection, and marginalization.” It’s sort of like saying “Christ, who through us wishes to continue in history and in the world his work of abolishing private property” only much more comprehensive. We, in accordance with the divine will, are to work to abolish all concepts of social position in the everyday world around us. If there’s any such concept, for example if there’s a distinction between pope, ayatollah, and champion hockey player, then there’ll be some setting in which one guy is marginalized and rejected compared with another guy. I can’t help but think that with the late Pope his enthusiasm sometimes got the better of his good sense.

I replied to Mr. Kalb:

I had not zeroed in on that phrase before. How perfectly this completes my analysis of JPII as a liberal/neocon. What, according to me, is the key idea of modern liberalism? Non-discrimination. And what, according to JPII, is the work of Christ? “Liberation from all forms of discrimination”! Unbelievable.

I had thought, in my backward, unenlightened way, that the work of Christ is to embody God perfectly and to bring men to God. But no, it turns out that Christ’s work is to embody Modern Liberalism perfectly and to bring men to Modern Liberalism.

And notice how this fits. I’ve talked a lot about liberal Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular adopted the religion of man, right? Now, leaving aside the religion of man for a moment, what is our analysis of liberalism? That it rejects the transcendent, rejects the idea that there is anything higher than man, and so must make all human things equal, which leads to the demand for (in the words of several United Nations Declarations) the elimination of all forms of discrimination between men.

So what does John Paul II, the ultimate champion of Vatican II and its religion of man, do? He embraces the religion of man to the max, which means he has virtually defined the divine in terms of man, which means that in practical effect there is nothing higher than this divine man, which leads to the idea that the ultimate divine truth is the elimination of all forms of discrimination between men.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 31, 2006 10:22 AM | Send