If you ask Sen. Patty Murphy, she will tell you that Osama Bib Laden is a good man, for building roads and schools. This good-bad distinction is no doubt of Catholic origin, just as in Good Catholic and Bad Catholic. Such characterization, I fear, is completely meaningless before a Holy God. Has John Paul II stopped the selling of indulgences for the forgiveness of sin, or the saying of pay-as-you-go Mass for the deceased? Has either one of you ever heard him preach the Gospel of Salvation, or was it another Social Gospel of works and obedience to a corrupt Roman Catholicism?

Some historians would more correctly describe R.C. as the longest operating tyranny, rather than bureaucracy; and a collector of forgeries, rather than preserver of knowledge; and a purveyor of debased corruption, rather than being a standard for morality. Priestly perverts in our age are neither new, nor the problem; they are just the symptom of an age-old perversion of Christianity.

Here are Jesus’ words in a similar situation:

“For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, [good men all] you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

I will let God be the Judge.

As for the pope: the Catholic church is the longest continuously operating bureaucracy in the world with the exception of the government of China, I believe. And its focus – at least a major focus, you would have to admit – is on morality. The church has made many mistakes over the years, yes. I personally feel closer to Savonarola than to John Paul II, but nonetheless, how do you measure – how do you quantify – the good that the church has done? Bad things easily lend themselves to statistics: murders, wars, persecution. Good things do not. How do you measure murders prevented due to the gradual instillation of moral values into 14th century peasants?

Modern capitalism is an outgrowth of the Protestant ethic (cf. Weber), which in turn is a refinement and purification of Western Christianity as preserved by the Catholic church from the time of Jesus through the Reformation. Without the Catholic church we would not have capitalism. What’s the value of that?

The moral essences preserved within stodgy old bureaucracies are good for something, I think.

Tom Grey, Liberty Dad, has got it wrong. The Pope may well be attempting, or pretending, to be similar to Jesus, but Jesus would never be “most similar to the Pope,” politically or otherwise. To even suggest such likeness could only imply validation of the biblical prophecy that in the Last Days many will be deceived. Is he referring to the so-called Vicar of Christ, who a few years ago proclaimed that he has no assurance of salvation, a declaration later confirmed by Cardinal O’Connor? The writer, who dreams of living in a “World Without Dictators,” couldn’t possibly be speaking of the head of a religion that, to the best of my knowledge, has spawned every single dictator in the Western World during the Twentieth Century, from Manila to Berlin? A Libertarian, believer in Freedom, (see his web site), was certainly not espousing the virtues of Pope Pius IX, who, just 125 years ago, condemned Separation of Church and State, and denounced Liberty of Worship, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press?

I would consider it blasphemous to see a similarity between the Son of God and the leader of the religion that never showed mercy to my spiritual ancestors from Savonarola to Wickliffe, Huss, Luther, the Waldensians and Huguenots, not to mention the persecution of Jews for nearly 1500 years.

There is a huge and terrible linguistic problem about “we the people”, “public”, “society”, and “government”.

“We” should certainly care about the poor. This does NOT mean we should support gov’t funded programs to hire uncaring bureaucrats to contemptuously give materialistic food aid to thos e who are doubly hungry, both physically and spiritually (and likely emotionally).

The Welfare Liberal thinks the public = gov’t.

Teaching a man to fish is NOT the best to help him — offering him a job, IS. True caring about financial poverty should be measured in the numbers of jobs offered.

Conservatives WIN that measurement, hugely. (And that’s also where a lot of the Tax Cut money went — to employers.)

That’s why they killed him – because he was a threat to the established, old, traditional way of doing things. He had new things to say that some people couldn’t hear.

Miriam-Webster definitions:
Liberalism: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties

Conservatism:
a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change

By these definitions, Jesus was a liberal. Just like the founding fathers of the USA.

Enrico Schaefer, Traverse City Lawyer

There is nothing to support the notion that Jesus “hated” money. Jesus had compassion on the suffering, but he had no tolerance for willful sinners.

BTW, if there was no monies exchaning hands, why was Judas the group’s treasurer?