Archbishop Gomez Rails Against Social Justice

[47of74]

As if we needed yet another reminder why I left the Roman church

Quote

Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, railed against “new social justice movements” during a speech Thursday, decrying them as “pseudo-religions” that ultimately serve as “dangerous substitutes for true religion.”

Gomez, who heads the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, delivered the remarks in a video message sent to a meeting of the Congress of Catholics and Public Life in Madrid. The prelate argued that the United States, like Europe, has been subject to “aggressive secularization,” insisting that “there has been a deliberate effort in Europe and America to erase the Christian roots of society and to suppress any remaining Christian influences.”

He also lambasted “cancel culture,” contending that “often what is being canceled and corrected are perspectives rooted in Christian beliefs.”

But Gomez saved his most strident criticism for “new social movements and ideologies,” the influence of which, he said, accelerated after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.

Gomez, when your religion doesn't do it any more for people and stands with the likes of the fuckopotomus what the fuck do you expect?

Edited November 7, 2021 by 47of74

[Hane]

@47of74, social justice issues are the reason I left the Catholic Church. Remaining in a religion that didn’t support the full empowerment of women, marriage equality, and reproductive freedom didn’t square with my beliefs anymore—even more than my challenges with believing in the church’s core theology.

[PsyD2013]

I left the RC church for all those reasons, plus the church cover up and silencing of abused children.  

[Howl]

Jim Rigby, pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX posted this on Facebook today.   He is contrasting the theology of Gomez with Archbishop Óscar Romero, who championed liberation theology and was assassinated in El Savador in 1980 while celebrating a mass.  "As these two bishops illustrate, those who take up religion must choose between religions of dogma or of awakening, judgement or grace, hierarchy or liberation"  and Jim Rigby's post ends with this: "No wonder Christian liberation theologies strike such fear and loathing in the hierarchies of imperial forms of Christianity!"

Full text of "A Tale of Two Bishops" under the spoiler: 

Spoiler

Religion can be a call to superstition or awakening. Religion can be a call to judgment or love. Religion can be a call to hierarchy or liberation for every human soul.

The Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops made a statement last week that the the church must confront ‘woke’ social justice movements that aim to ‘cancel’ Christian beliefs.

The Archbishop said, “We recognize that often what is being canceled and corrected are perspectives rooted in Christian beliefs -- about human life and the human person, about marriage, the family and more. ... The ‘space’ that the church and believing Christians are permitted to occupy is shrinking,”

Ironically, the “discrimination” to which the Archbishop seems to have in mind is not being permitted to cancel the rights of pregnant women, LGBTQ Americans and anyone teaching outside the official dogma.

Archbishop Óscar Romero was also a Catholic, but he was a different kind of bishop. He was a liberation theologian. Bishop Romero believed the church SHOULD agitate for justice. He said, “A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that?”

He believed religion SHOULD be political. “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”

There were those who might consider liberation theology to be atheistic, but the movement believes religion should be INCARNATED into its place and time. Bishop Romero said, “We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.”

And:

“There is no dichotomy between human beings and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image.

And:

“Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ.”

Bishop Romero recognized that Imperial Christianity will defame all efforts at liberation. The bishop declared, “Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down. divisive.”

As these two bishops illustrate, those who take up religion must choose between religions of dogma or of awakening, judgement or grace, hierarchy or liberation.

I will close with one of my favorite quotes by Bishop Romero. Before he was assassinated in 1980 while celebrating mass. He spoke of resurrection, not as a one time magic trick, but as the irresistible power of life behind even our most tragic moments. He said, “I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.”

 

[SassyPants]

AB Gomez appears to have missed a core tenet of Roman Catholicism. Strong support of social justice is one of the most positive aspects of the RCC.

[bea]

I was raised in a family where my father had been a Catholic priest for 17 years, and my mother has been a nun for 12. My parents were more about “liberation theology”, and as far as I knew, that was how the Catholic Church worked. Imagine my surprise to discover that we were the outliers.
One of the things that my dad used to say was that the people who were the most progressive, in the Catholic Church, left after Vatican II, because they felt it didn’t go far enough.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

I was also Catholic left. I left, because the church needs too much reform it isn't going to make. Thank you @47of74 for starting this thread!