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Any response?

CDL

Stoj -

A cousin of mine, a Pole who visited the US and now living in Poland, never blamed the United States for her country's problems like you do.

It seems to me that you are searching for a scapegoat for your country's problems. Poland has freedom. It is up to Poles and Poland to decide what to do with it, and it is not the fault of the United States if the Polish people don't realize that with freedom comes responsibility.

The Iraq war is seen as a mistake by many. Fine. I'm not going to debate it one way or the other. I'll just repeat what the libertarian Neil Boortz said.
"If it was a mistake to invade Iraq, then put Saddam Hussein back in power and immediately withdraw."

As noted, the Chaldeans, as do the Maronites and other Catholic and Orthodox communities in the Middle East, suffer greatly - at the hands of Arabs and Israelis alike. Hussein wan't nice to them either.
Take note of that. Catholics aren't treated nice by Castro, Chavez, the Chinese government, or in India either.

As for being in poverty in the United States - Father Benedict Groeshcel put it very well - "Some will be poor for a brief time. Some will be poor for an extended time. Some will be poor all their lives."
Thus has it always been and thus shall it always be.
Many poor people in the USA have cars, cable TV and cell phones. They are frequently overweight.
I see them every day in downtown Pittsburgh.

Poor people in Colombia, where my wife was born and raised, live in cardboard and corrugated fiberglass sheet shacks, drink water from dirty drainiage ditches and beg for money. One family my wife did tutoring work for invited her to dinner. They killed their hen to cook it for dinner. They then had no source for eggs.

There is a lot that is wrong in the US. Our popular culture is indeed rotten. TV, movies and pop music are wretched. I do not hate homosexuals but I despise homosexuality being shoved at me as if it is some type of choice. Our government loves to spend taxpayer money and doesn't care how hard we work for it.

American (Latin) Catholics are unaware of -
Catholic teaching
Catholic history
Catholic Churches other than the Latin Church
Catholic tradition
Suffering of Catholics in other parts of the world.

To the average American Latin Catholic, the Church consists of -
The Pope, and
The local bizarre lecture-hall style building called a parish church with bad music.

There ain't no perfect life here on Earth for anybody.
However, it is looking a lot better for most Iraqis, and for that we can all be grateful.

I think this is nice Dan.

I think the feudal Europe, the era of Christendom,
was more akin to the Indian system than is the present West, after the onset of captalism. What does that suggest?

I suppose that the great work of politics is Western countries is now about discerning how to soften the rough edges of the captialist system, how much softening is required, and how to balance the short and long terms effects (although I don't agree that in the long term the effect of the medicine is more harm than good).

I think the interplay of the alternatives of socialism and religion for tempering captialism is interesting. Capitalism has in its favor efficiency and productivity which increases prosperity. It can deliver the goods, determine costs and price. But is is useless for determining values. Without flinching, the market says that teenagers are much more valuable as prostitutes than babysitters. Religion is vital to keep the system humane. Unfortunately, it can be also used in favor of the employers to subdue or render complacent the employees; it can lapse into capitalotry (Michael Novak). Or it can instill into capitalism that means to understand the real value - not simply for the sake of productivity, but for love fo God and God's creation - of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, curing the sick, etc.

We don't do this very well, IMO. The difficulty is in seeing Christ, or at least our "neighbor" in all of the people we encounter in our country. We tend to be more suspicious of our countrymen. Europeans do it better, IMO, simply because the relative homogeneity of the populations in many of the European countries makes this easier for them - a tribal rather than Christian religion, perhaps.

What an insipid remark by Mr. Boortz! Will all of the lives lost, all of the injuries sustained, all of antiquities lost, all of the material costs, and all of opportunity costs also be reversed in this deal? If one wants to evaluate seriously whether or not is was and continues to be worth it, then one has to account seriously for all of the costs and benefits.

djs,

I think I fully agree with your comments. I think I neither love nor hate capitalism... or the Hindu Caste System for that matter. It would be like hating air. It just is. It frequently needs to be purified but it just is. I agree also that Medieval economy was indeed more akin to the Hindu Caste System than Capitalism is. What we have with Capitalism is a system based upon a kind of natural philosophy that denies the existence of God. It must therefore be modified by Christianity in order for it to be humane. Sadly, religion has indeed too often sided with the rich to the detrimate of the poor. When it does it denies God's existence in the world. I suspect though that state mandated Socialism has too many unintended consequences to be a very useful modifier to Capitalism. I wish we could count on the courage of the Church more. Perhaps that is an arguement for the existence of the Papacy. He can strongly encourage consistency.

I also agree with your analysis concerning homogeneity as a reason why socialism may work a bit better in Europe than it does here. Christianity could act to modify the harshness of Capitalism but we'd have to overcome our propensity to divide and divide and divide again over every supposed nuance. But it may explain one of the reasons why there is more loyalty to Christian groups in the USA than in Europe.

I'm glad we've found this in which we can agree.

Dan L

djs,

It also suggests that the call for "The Church to stay out of politics and keep to spiritual matters" is principally anti-Christian.

Dan L

Dear djs,

FYI, John Kerry lost the election!

And when I saw a clip with a comment from Kerry on Iraq, even I quickly went to the Weather Station . . .

God bless America!

Alex

Thanks, Pani Rose, for the tip.

Have to say I agree with the comments above by Brian & djs. It's matter of personal taste, but I prefer the sights of the city where I live (one of the poorest in Poland, with high crime & unemploymnet rates) to anything America has to offer. What a pity it will be if the rest of the world someday is filled with MacDonalds, strip malls, shopping malls, manufactured housing & all the other sites of the contemporary American landscape. Visit one of those tiny apartments in Eastern Europe & then visit a typical American home with garages filled with all kind of gadgets & homes full of unnecessary things. It's the American home that gives me clausterphobia. An obsession with things.


Orthodox Catholic wrote: Orthodox Catholic wrote:


The religious fervour of Eastern Europe is there, yes, but it will eventually cool, unfortunately, with the coming of material comforts.


Why should we expect that? And how is America, which you identify as a spiritual/religious culture, immune, when it's also the most materialistic nation on earth?

American religiosity (and I'm assuming you've been to the U.S.?) is NOT skin-deep, really.


Americans believe with their hearts, they hold the Bible close to them and, when push comes to shove, they are all praying and expressing their faith in Christ!

That is the America that I have come to know.

I was born & educated in the US & lived most of my life there. For me there's very little evidence of spirituality in America - those pockets of what I recognize as faith actually represent traditions, often from Eastern Europe, that have been transplanted to America. It was my misfortune to spend much of my life in the Bible Belt, where hatred is preached from pulpits every Sunday. If you watch cable TV, you do get the impression that it is a religious land, what with the preachers tap dancing on stages & people talking in tongues, but having experienced that variety of belief & then the intense expression of faith in places like western Ukraine, Romanian Bukovina, & just about any place in Poland, I don't see any comparison.

And about poverty - there's something to be said for it. I look at the poor in my own city & get the impression that they are much happier than the American dressed in designer fashion who is cruising in his SUV.

Stojgniev

Dear Stoygniev,

You haven't lived until you've handled a Blackberry!

And everyone is happy without an SUV until . . . they get to own one!

Did not the Pope himself start to criticize his native Poland (after the fall of communism) about the Poles becoming materialistic at an accelerated pace?

And you still haven't answered the issue about Europe's agnostic approach to its own history.

I love European museums and churches as long as they aren't ALL museums.

I hope Eastern Europe's religious fervour DOESN'T cool - but I think it is inevitable.

And it is perfectly democratic to disagree on this as we do.

I disagree with the Administrator sometimes and he doesn't seem to mind that.

As long as we can all agree on the excellent flavour of pimeny and popinky, who cares about the rest?

And my Ukrainian cousins in Ukraine know MUCH more about the latest fashions from North America and Paris than I could ever hope to.

I am just one of those contented, satisfied people . . .

Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Christus, Panie!

Alex

I don't disagree with this Dan. A Dutch friend who spent a lot of time in the Sovient Union, and ultimately married a Russian, once remarked that had the socialists there developed their new society not on the basis of radical atheism, but building on the resonance with Orthodoxy, things may have worked out very differently.

To be effective in working this connection in a heterogenous country, of course, one has to be thoughtful about the approach. The political analog of pray, pay, and obey will have limited traction within a religious community and zero traction outside of it. But the message of magnanimity - for the sake of mankind and for its salvation - this is the fundamental resonance of the two spheres.

Alex,

i was speaking of the social democratic Western European nations.

Dear Brian,

The French are hardly social and if democracy means dozens of political parties, as in Italy, then . . . isn't pizza just grand?

("Social democracy" in Europe isn't what it used to be - sorry to be the harbinger of disappointing news!)

Alex

Dear djs,

Ah, but there's the rub!

The Soviet revolution was not about coming to agreements with anyone, but with putting in a much worse autocratic oligarchy than Tsarism ever was.

In fact, one could make the argument that the Soviets sped up their revolutionary efforts because the then Tsar was "getting" soft etc.

The Soviet revolution was won on the basis of military might and murder, rather than a mass movement of "the people."

There were other, peaceful alternatives to social change in Tsarist Russia.

The Bolsheviks wanted no part of them. They wanted power, plain and simple.

Alex

djs wrote:

A Dutch friend who spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union, and ultimately married a Russian, once remarked that had the socialists there developed their new society not on the basis of radical atheism, but building on the resonance with Orthodoxy, things may have worked out very differently.


I've always wondered what the Soviet Union would have been like had not atheism been such an important part of official ideology.


This is a taboo topic, especially in Poland: but, the atheism came from the Jewish communist ideologues, who played a prominent role in the rise of communism & also who were predominately atheist. Rightly or wrongly, they felt threatened by Christianity.

I have to say that one of the rasons I left America is consumerism. As I become older, my aversion to American materialism becomes stronger. You know, so many people in Eastern Europe are poor. You wouldn't know it from looking at most of them, because they dress rather elegantly in comparison with Americans. The majority of people in my city live in small apartments in those ugly, highrise Socialist Realist "bloki" (there are few houses & most of those are small duplexes). The elderly either don't have or just barely have enough money to pay for medicine, food, etc. They live very simple lives. And the lives of the grandparents often revolve around the grandchildren, because the parents have to work. The young people look at that life, with the shortage of housing, unemployment, high crime rates in urban areas etc. & then they watch one of those American TV shows that have taken over Polish television. Which lifestyle do they prefer? Well, the grass is always greener...

But the people of Eastern Europe do have a wealth that is missing in America.

The worst thing is that, just because they've watched American films & they know American culture, many young people are convinced in their minds that they can never be happy in their country.

Does all of that American culture motivate them to open up a hot dog stand & become entrepreneurs & achieve American-style "success"? No, it just embitters them. I regard that as one of America's greatest sins - the spreading of American culture all over the world with no thought for the effect it has on traditonal cultures.


Stojgniev

Well, if I wanted glib responses Alex, Americans always bring up the Italian example when discussing European politics. It is an anamoly, nothing more. European social democracy is indeed still a very strong force in Sweden, France, the UK and especially now in Spain with a strong reforming socialist government. I am proud of the achievements of the social democratic parties in these nations and their achievements in social justice. It is a great tradition. The US lags behind in this area tremendously.