Saturday, November 20, 2010

Fr. James Martin, S.J. On Jesus

Jesus didn't talk a lot about convenience and his idea of "community" is "everyone, especially the poor," says Martin
Link (here) to read the full article.
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12 comments:

Anonymous said...

"everyone, especially the poor...sinner"

Jack in Park Slope

November 20, 2010 at 6:32 AM
Anonymous said...

Absolutely. "The poor sinner"...is also he or she who ignore the needs and reality of the poor. They are very poor sinners in God's eyes I am sure.

Fr. Martin is right. Christmas as practiced is mostly consumer idolatry of these world's goods and implicit hatred or indifference to the poor.

Who will go homeless this Christmas? Who is without remunerative work? Who does not earn enough to support his family and send his or her children to catholic schools? Around 50% of Catholics! Who, right here amongst us in the land of obesity, doesn't have sufficient money for nurturing food or even a room to live in and is quite willing to work? Go and find out before Christmas eve.

Fr. Martin is seriously wrong about many things but not about this. Neither was Jesus. Just read the Gospel of Luke. You are Catholics aren't you?

November 20, 2010 at 2:23 PM
Anonymous said...

Want higher employment and fewer poor people? Eliminate all personal and corporate capital gains taxes at the federal and state levels, and you'll have an economic boom and era of prosperity that the world has never seen before. But the left will never allow that because the left hates wealth and power in the hands of anyone but themselves.

November 20, 2010 at 5:51 PM
Anonymous said...

Judas or Jesus?

The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days' time. So the chief priests and the scribes were seeking a way to arrest him by treachery and put him to death. They said, "Not during the festival, for fear that there may be a riot among the people." When he was in Bethany reclining at table in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard. She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head. There were some who were indignant. "Why has there been this waste of perfumed oil? It could have been sold for more than three hundred days' wages and the money given to the poor." They were infuriated with her. Jesus said, "Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me.
The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anticipated anointing my body for burial. Amen, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her." Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went off to the chief priests to hand him over to them.
Mark 14 1-10

Jack in Park Slope

November 20, 2010 at 7:46 PM
Anonymous said...

JIPS is certainly not suggesting that the passage in John somehow means that Jesus was indifferent to the poor. Surely he is not arguing Catholics should not do their utmost to help poor out the hole, politically and personally. Right?

Anon 5:51: Surely you don't believe that Catholics should wait for the left and the right to agree before helping the poor with dignified jobs, shelter and food.

November 20, 2010 at 10:58 PM
Anonymous said...

I am trying to knock the Liberation Theology out of you. Your preoccupation with the poor is a god to you.

Jack in Park Slope

November 20, 2010 at 11:12 PM
Anonymous said...

Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothed you? When
did we see you ill or in prison and visit you? Whenever you did for the least of mine,
You did for me. Matthew 26:37-40

November 21, 2010 at 7:39 PM
Anonymous said...

These are the most radical, challenging words I have read.

November 21, 2010 at 7:40 PM
Anonymous said...

The late Uruguayan Jesuit Juan Luis Segundo SJ pointed out that if one were only to listen to the gospel on Sundays it would 4 years to go through all of them. Most likely that creates gaps in a Catholic's knowledge of the faith. Are said gaps perhaps a mayor source of intra-Catholic conflict and an explanation why only 5-10% of Catholics are really committed to all Jesus pointed to?

That said, I must add that I disagree with Fr. Segundo's decidedly socialist identity, his seeming indifference to the supernatural nature of the faith and the church and his blatant hostility to the Vatican.

But like Fr. Martin SJ he deserves credit where credit is due.

November 22, 2010 at 11:15 AM
TonyD said...

"if one were only to listen to the gospel on Sundays it would 4 years to go through all of them."

When I was first exposed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) I was impressed by the fact that they go through one of their doctrinal books each year -- with accompanying Church produced teaching material. That means that after a few years, everyone has a very similar understanding about Church position.

It took me years of personal reading to figure out, however, that their weekly "gospel doctrine" presentation is so "simplified" that most of their members have very little deep understanding of their religion.

The problem seems to come down to recognizing that values and judgments are very different (and they are not well disambiguated.)

So, for example, poverty may be objected to on one occasion, while encouraged on another occasion. If you've only memorized "help the poor" then you really haven't moved very much closer to God.

November 22, 2010 at 1:55 PM
Anonymous said...

Blessed are the poor in spirit (Matthew) and the poor (Luke). We are called to be both. But the suicidally poor or those who kill them directly or indirectly, that is, through unjust laws and structures, are not blessed. The latter are in varying degrees accomplices of murder.

My idea of God is certainly not anywhere near that of a sometimes evil God (i.e. one who is in any way indifferent to the suffering of the poor). That God does not exist.

November 23, 2010 at 1:01 PM
TonyD said...

If I said that judgment must be used when deciding “how much” to love your neighbor, I expect that no one would disagree.

That is, we can recognize that there is a “context” to the application of values -- a specific person applies values to specific people.

Yet, for some reason, we randomly choose to interpret other things in a more literal, fundamentalist manner. Ironically, when we read scripture we are routinely confronted by God and Christ making choices that result in death, poverty, and other things that some categorize as “evil”.

That does not mean that God or Christ is evil. That means that we must be open to recognizing that our simplistic definition of evil is mistaken. That is, we often tend to define “evil” by applying moral principles that we’ve memorized without any consideration of their context.

November 23, 2010 at 4:33 PM

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