Is powerlessness in itself good? Leftist Christians say yes.

Mark Richardson writes:

A few days ago I wrote a post criticising a homily given by a local priest. The priest had argued that Mary was not favoured because she was special but because she was a poor confused peasant girl and that God favours the poor, broken down and marginalised. The equivalent of Mary in the modern world, continued the priest, are the likes of the Sri Lankan refugees and the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Richardson goes on to discuss contemporary Christianity’s disgusting replacement of spiritual purity and love of God with the condition of being “poor, broken down and marginalized.” Leftism hideously perverts everything it touches. The priest who said that should have been dismissed from the priesthood. Instead he may well represent what most Catholic priests today believe.

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Sage McLaughlin writes:

leftists calling themselves Christians not only say that powerlessness is a good in itself. As you suggest, they believe that powerlessness is a sanctifying trait.

An instantiation of this mindset can be found at the Catholic chapel on the campus of Indiana University, the St. Paul Catholic Center. (Or at least, it could once upon a time. It might have been renovated in the years since I was last there.) The traditional Stations of the Cross, which depict the Passion of Our Lord, were not visibly present, having been replaced with photographs of poor black Third World villagers, carrying bundles of sticks or what have you. No doubt the parish priest, a militant liberal, thought this very profound. Of course it is an almost barbarically crude literal-mindedness and iconoclasm, replacing the visible religion of Catholicism and the boundless mysteries of the Passion with dull left-wing ideological hang-ups about poor people. There is much more that could be said about how wrong-headed and offensive this is, but I needn’t say it. I will just note that this same parish, so spiritually advanced and “deep,” also canceled Saturday Confessions whenever the football team played a home game, meaning that for seven or eight weeks every fall semester there was not a single Confession time in the City of Bloomington—priorities, you know.

Similarly, the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Indianapolis has an actual icon, with golden disc and all, of Martin Luther King, Jr. hanging in the chapel, which to my mind is cause for serious scandal. Nearly ten years since I first saw it, I am appalled that this wildly inappropriate veneration is permitted to go on in the very seat of the Archdiocese. Not to say I am surprised any longer, of course.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 27, 2012 12:25 PM | Send