Just a reminder…

…you know that beloved Scripture passage about how “If a man will not work, he shall not eat”?  The one that undergirds all those Randian demands to cut off the poor at the knees if they are unemployed?

Yeah.  See, it turns out Paul was not drafting a bill on welfare reform for Congress.  He was addressing Christian–and Christians alone–under his care as a pastor.  In other words, that beloved saying is not intended to free us from the obligation for charity.

So is there anything else in the gospel about charity n’ stuff?

Funnily enough, there is: “Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your  goods do not ask them again.”

It’s one of those reckless things Jesus says that, if Francis said it today in an interview, he would be screamed down as a garroulous old fool who has probably been hanging around with Marxists, Masons, and Jewish liberals and who is giving the MSM a totally false impression.

Recently somebody on Facebook was lamenting having to endure a Pope who keeps saying things that Conservatives keep having to “explain and contextualize.”  He apparently missed the past 2000 years since there has never been a time, starting with Jesus, when the faith was not chockablock with remarks that need to be explained and contextualized.  What’s especially funny though are the remarks that *only* need to be explained and contextualized to mean nothing by people who boast about their superior fidelity to everyone else while striving to ignore the plain meaning of what is actually being said.