Come to Jesus stuff in the news

I just roll up my eyes when the present Pope lectures "catholics" about his green religion: not because protecting the environment is should be seen as part of a holistic Christian view of the world, but because he seems to aim all his preaching at rich yuppies living in urban areas who follow modern trends of non theological modern religions.

The rest of us? ignored. 

If you are a SJW who has nothing else to do and is willing to push the socialist agenda, fine, but who is helping people find meaning in the struggles of everyday life? Anyone?

an example of my frustration can be found in the fake news of the Amazon, which is being used to push an agenda over reality.

For example, the Amazon fires are being hyped to prove global warming, but they actually are less this year than in the past. Forbes via Instapundit:

Forget The Amazon Hype, Fires Globally Have Declined 25% Since 2003 Thanks To Economic Growth. “Any reader of the New York Times and other mainstream media outlet would be forgiven for believing that fires globally are on the rise, but they aren’t. In reality, there was a whopping 25 percent decrease in the area burned from 2003 to 2019, according to NASA. . . . And against the picture painted by celebrities and the mainstream media that fires around the world are caused by economic growth, the truth is the opposite: the amount of land being burned is declining thanks to development, including urbanization. That’s because the amount of land being converted into ranches and farms has been going down, not up, and because more of it is being done with machines than with fire.

I'll take their word for it. I know that deforestation is a major problem here, but the solution is not stopping all development in the area, which means keeping locals poor, but getting rid of corruption that allows deforestation, and the poverty that makes locals help cut down trees because they need to support their families.

so if a priest, activist, or even a rival politician points a finger at those taking bribes that allow the destruction of the environment, he is in danger of getting hurt by a hit man. 

So where is the theology about not taking bribes, and the theology about the dignity and vocation of being a Christian businessman (e.g. our family, whose organic rice program helps support local farmers). Indeed, one reason the "prosperity gospel" types are popular here is that they stress that hard work and honesty allows you to become wealthy.

Yet in South America (and to a lesser extent, in the Philippines), the elitist "liberation theology" (and it's twin, the religion of ecology) is the gospel of too many in charge of the church.

Heaven knows helping the poor in the slums is important, but is the answer to make the environment friendly to business (e.g. by condemning corruption and bribery) or by only pushing socialism and liberation theology? and is the answer to deforestation and environmental degredation the "green" gospel that pushes the poor to stay in dire poverty their poor carbon friendly lifestyle?

In other words, there is a gap between the trends popular in the Catholic establishment (who tend to be educated upper middle class types) and the average Filipino... and one result is that this is actually pushing ordinary pious folk to alternatives, i.e. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

So it excuse my cynical suspicion that the Pope doesn't give a F... about poor people in the Amazon: I suspect he is using the Amazon region as his "camel's nose" to push his new agey modernist agenda of the German church on the entire church.

 Most of the publicity is about how he is using this as a stalking horse for his predetermined conclusion, i.e. for married (and poorly educated) priests and eventually  womenpriests.( the ultimate agenda pushed by feminist nuns)

But the real danger of what is being pushed here is a new church that includes respect for a demonic form of gnostic mysticism that has little or nothing to do with God or Jesus.

I am not alone with this suspicion: at lifesite news, two bishops who actually worked in the area point out the real problems are being ignored.

Last week, Bishop José Luis Azcona, missionary bishop emeritus of Marajó, Brazil stated in an interview given to ACI Digital that the Amazon missionary region was hemorrhaging its once-Catholic identity.

“The Amazon, at least the Brazilian Amazon, is no longer Catholic,” he said. He noted that “any nostalgia for an Amazon that no longer exists is fatal to its integral evangelization,” pointing out that in some areas of the Amazon the “Pentecostal majority reaches 80%.”

...Brad Fassbender (stated) “I served in the Nicaraguan rainforest, Honduran, Haiti, Guatemala. But it's all the same, Latin America is the evidence that much of the Church is in eclipse—even nearing the state of complete apostasy.” ...   

When asked if it was his experience that the people of the regions he served had no desire for conversion or even the Eucharist, as Bishop Nann attested, he responded. “There is a lack of faith in the Curia, not in the poor! The poor believe strongly, they listen with hearts and ears wide open. They are easy converts. That's why we see many of them converting to Protestant churches....

actually, becoming a Pentecostal is not a bad alternative, since the other alternative is a descent back into an anarchy (where traditional pagan beliefs, which have also suffered from being weakened by the modern world, are distorted by sociopaths to exploit those under them), or a fall into drugs, alcoholism, violence, and promiscuity, leading to the destruction of the family (something one also sees in the USA).

“Unfortunately, the synod doesn't know, or knowing doesn't understand, the significance, for the present and the future of the Amazon, of the faces of anguished, re-victimized and denigrated children, [i.e. abandoned and neglected children who are often abused and end up living as street children] subjected to a slavery that forms an essential part of the abandoned and destroyed face of Jesus in the Amazon,” he said...

Azcona noted that “in no part of the Instrumenum laboris (working document) is the presence of demons spoken of, or their influence, their malice in persons, peoples and cultures, as well as the victory of Christ, his deliverance and the destruction of the power of the Evil One.” 

it's not PC to talk about the "evil one" in the modern world, but one need not listen to Jordan Peterson or explore Jungian psychology to recognize that "nice people" can do terrible things and then insist they are good at heart.

Yes, and this includes those who justify killing the unborn and elderly in the US, or infanticide of the imperfect in the Amazon which is ironically defended by elitists in academia.

so who is discussing good and evil to the Amazon tribes who are facing the challenge to adjust to the modern world and seeing their traditions being destroyed with no one giving them an alternative god to replace the one they no longer have?

Yes, there are Catholic missionaries there, and as my quotes point out, many are trying to help in many different ways.

But they are not the only ones there.

getreligion discusses a GQ article on that Asian missionary killed by an isolated tribe, and about the missionaries of the Pentecostal outreach to the Amazon who were inspired by the martyrdom of Jim Eliott.

no I haven't read it: because I am not big on reading "inspirational" or "religious" literature.

Been there, done that: I actually knew priests/ ministers/ sisters/ lay missionaries who were doctors or nurses (both outsiders and local folk) who were martyred (by communists, or by rogue hitmen from both the government and local crime gangs trying to rob them). Their crime? Staying in a dangerous area to help people.

my point: they were neither the plaster saints of the "religious literature" or the crazies usually portrayed in modern film or novels. They were ordinary folk with an immense depth of loving kindness.

A fictional novel about the type of person who goes to the missions to help (and a satire on Catholic fads) can be found in Andrew Greeley's book "Virgin and Martyr".

and another easy to read (and in some parts very funny) book about another such person can be found in John Grisham's book, the Testament.

both books can be found for free registration at internet archives.

more academic studies of this transformation of Christianity in non European countries:

To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the transformation of Christianity. (amazon link).

and Philip Jenkins book: The New Faces of Christianity. (archive link).

no, I will stay Catholic. Because the Eucharist. Because Mary. and because it preaches the God and the way to serve him is found at many levels: where a scientist exploring the wonders of the world in the stars, an author "co creating" a world in his mythology, a mystic who seeks God in quiet withdrawal, the mother who serves God in the "little way" where even a cup of water given to a little child crying for mama in the middle of the night, if done with love, is a prayer.

and when I read the gospels, I see my patients and my family in those stories: for Jesus is not some vague idea but one who suffered as we did and is with us in our sufferings "and he will wipe their tears away"...

Joey Veslasco: Last supper with street children.
Story behind the painting HERE.