Thursday 15 January 2015

Moral Leadership

Having the right to insult people's religion does not make it right for you to do so, says the Pope.

If you set out to elicit a reaction, then you should expect to receive one. The reactor may also be wrong. But so are you for having deliberately provoked another to sin.

And the biggest moral evil in Britain today is economic inequality, say the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, parliamentarians and Privy Counsellors that they are.

A few speeches by George Osborne do not mean that the stagnation of everywhere outside London and the South East, or for that matter inside much of London and the South East, is not happening. That stagnation very much is happening.

6 comments:

  1. "the biggest moral evil today is economic inequality"

    No it isn't.

    Christians don't believe in material equality (that's for atheist utopians) but in another kind.

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    Replies
    1. Take it up with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

      And the Pope.

      And everyone, really, outside the dying American Religious Right.

      Delete
  2. You're obviously not a Christian. Material equality is a goal of worldly utopians not "my kingdom is not of this world" Christians.

    Apart from anything else, Christians believe humans are only equal in the sense we're all made in the image of God. We're not equal in any other sense nor should we try to be.

    The American Right is dying-as is all Western moral conservatism. I'm not sure why you'd celebrate that. With legal marijuana and gay marriage under a Democrat administration and a growing liberal demographic of unmarried people in America, as Pat Buchanan predicted,the Right is losing its constituency.

    No

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    Replies
    1. Take it up with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

      And the Pope.

      And everyone, really, outside the dying American Religious Right.

      Delete
    2. Material equality is a goal of socialists, be they of a religious or secular stripe. You speak of "worldly utopians" as if Christians on this Earth are other-worldly! Strange. I am fairly sure almost all baptised Christians live largely in this world. The exception is actually monastics who ... generally live in a state of material equality and seek to create their own sort of utopian living conditions ... so they will not be distracted in the service of God!

      I remember reading the Christian Coalition Congressional vote ratings. Most of the issues on which they evaluated Congressmen had to do with petty tax cuts and tax credits. But they are not worldly?

      Yet, judging someone's commitment to Christianity based on a short, concise economic principle, well, that's exactly what Christ called us to do with our day!? The reason the Church would be opposed to growing economic inequalities is because it threatens social order. The reason it would oppose dire poverty is because it stunts spiritual and familial growth. Monks may take a vow of poverty, but it is a stable poverty. The poverty of a small farmer who owns his land is generally stable. Urban poverty is not.

      It's quite simple, really. Calling to curb inequality is not communism, "not that there is anything wrong with that".

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    3. Thank you very much indeed for this one.

      Delete