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| A photo of the "Occupy" protest in Rome (here) |
I have been participating in (Blogger Note: O.W.S. was originally and is still associated with the US Day of Rage!) Occupy Wall Street since 30 September (my first post about it is here), and was most recently on site at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan on Friday the 14th. (My post imagining Occupy Wall Street being applied to the Catholic Church is here, picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education blog here.)
Among other fundamentally irreversible influences in my life, it was my Catholic upbringing, Catholic religious education, and Catholic graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School and at Boston College, that laid the spiritual and intellectual groundwork for me to be able to recognize, in Occupy Wall Street, a possible shared work of corporal and spiritual mercy, a potential place for practicing solidarity, and a plausible habitat for more deeply and experientially learning and living love’s public name: justice.
Because of this background, I am drawn in particular to the practices and rituals that help those of us at Occupy Wall Street to appreciate and to try to act on reality. These actions and performances bear the movement’s theologies or spiritualities as much as any explicit statement on the part of any single person about what they do or do not believe.
Link (here) to read the full post at the Liturgical
Press published / sponsored / financed blog Rock and Theology
Press published / sponsored / financed blog Rock and Theology
Link (here) to the cross post at America Magazine.
Go (here) to read Beaudoin's "Rebellion" rough draft from his early days and his associations at Voice Of The Faithful.
Read about Occupy Wall Street and its Communist origins and supporters (here)
Read about the "Horizontal Mesh Tactics" used at Occupy Wall Street (here)
Occupy Wall Street and its association funding provided by Ge0rge S0ros (here)
“Occupy Wall Street” Deface 9-11 Memorial Statue in Zuccotti Park (here)
Go (here) to read Beaudoin's "Rebellion" rough draft from his early days and his associations at Voice Of The Faithful.
Read about Occupy Wall Street and its Communist origins and supporters (here)
Read about the "Horizontal Mesh Tactics" used at Occupy Wall Street (here)
Occupy Wall Street and its association funding provided by Ge0rge S0ros (here)
“Occupy Wall Street” Deface 9-11 Memorial Statue in Zuccotti Park (here)
16 comments:
OWS is an opportunistic and hedonistic movement of lazy, ignorant, freeloading, obnoxious thugs who have been coddled since childhood in a society with socialist tendencies and lax morality. For the faux intelligentsia and social elites to give the movement any shred of credibility or sympathy is despicable, and it reveals the profound corruption of mind and morals that plagues the DNC, universities, journals of leftist opinion and Hollywood morons. OWS is a manifestation of the decay of the civil society. It is not something to be honored; it is something to be feared as a harbinger of the collapse of Western Civilization.
@Sawyer: well said. Here is an article worth reading re who is supporting of OWS http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/10/figures-nazi-party-throws-support-behind-occupy-wall-street-movement/
Fr. James Martin, S.J.,
Do you support Beaudoin's blog posts?
Tea Party==spitting on civil rights heroes and disrupting town hall meetings.
Occupy Wall Street is an appropriate action. There are actions that would be more appropriate, but I've been asked not to express them.
I think we too easily forget how the wealthy are regarded in the Bible. And we too easily forget how violence is often justified by God - for His reasons. Simplistic categories like Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Capitalist, and Elitist are essentially meaningless in the context of God's understanding.
Free will is essential to our lessons here. A society constructed by the rich which limits free will is not desired.
On re-reading my last post I realized that I chose some words poorly - Free will is not essential to our lessons here.
That is, many lessons can be learned in the absence of free will. For example, if our society allowed the wealthy to keep hiding their wealth and control then it would be appropriate to have lessons involving the loss of free will.
So, really, the choice is ours. In the case of Occupy Wall Street, we are making the better choice.
@TonyD: "I think we too easily forget how the wealthy are regarded in the Bible."
Yes, indeed, until the building fund is running low, church windows need to be replaced, and the heating bill is overdue...
Jules wrote: "until the building fund is running low, church windows need to be replaced, and the heating bill is overdue..."
Do you have data that wealthy Catholics provide more $$ as a % of their income than other Catholics? I don't--but my anecdotal evidence from parish life is that they do not.
Jules,
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wealth. And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the wealthy who acquire wealth - we have set up an economy to transfer wealth to them.
At the same time, there are consequences to the choices made by the wealthy, and the choices made by our society.
"There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wealth. And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the wealthy who acquire wealth - we have set up an economy to transfer wealth to them."
@TonyD: the wealthy, in most cases, don't 'acquire' wealth. They work for it. We 'transfer' wealth to them? Seriously? We pay for goods, services, etc. that are on offer. We do not 'transfer' wealth.
@Anon 8.02 a.m.: No, I don't have data. I simply speak as one who used to have money, not a lot, but more than the people of my parish. The parish priest was not bashful about asking for specific amounts, especially following a fire and brimstone lecture on how evil wealthy people are. And yes, I gave when I could.
Did you tithe?
Yes.
Jules,
Whether or not wealth is earned is of almost no significance. There are other values to consider.
It is easy to become confused about morality when we live in a society where such arguments are thought to be persuasive. We must be more discerning in our thought.
Most don't tithe--given the sexual abuse scandal etc. I'm not certain if I would consider it.
The working poor built the Church in America, brick-by-brick.
@Anon 5.36 p.m.: "The working poor built the Church in America, brick-by-brick."
Very true, especially in cities like Cleveland, Ohio, built by newly-arrived immigrants to the US in many cases. The Cleveland diocese closed 50 churches (mostly ethnic) in 2010 and is selling many of them to pay for the very sexual abuse scandals that you speak of.
Sick. Sick. Sick.
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