{"id":13269,"date":"2013-05-16T12:01:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T18:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/?p=13269"},"modified":"2014-12-29T15:39:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T22:39:12","slug":"pope-francis-walking-past-lazarus-on-the-way-to-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2013\/05\/pope-francis-walking-past-lazarus-on-the-way-to-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis: Walking Past Lazarus on the Way to Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cFinanciers, economists and politicians consider God as manageable, even dangerous because God calls man to his full realization and independence from any kind of slavery.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Pope Francis<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When money is your god, you are well on your way to creating a hell on earth.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have gone so far down the road of making money our god in this society that\u00a0we basically exempt any public policies that have to do with business or finance from moral scrutiny. Some of the most ardent Christians are the ones who enforce this heretical nonsense.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The same people who go into a froth over abortion do not raise an eyebrow when it comes to limiting prenatal care or refusing to require businesses to provide safe work environments for their employees. There is no piece of legislation that limits access to care for the poor that these folks won\u2019t support.\u00a0They are the enemies of the welfare state \u2026 except when it comes to corporations. No deal is too special, no government hand-out too abusive to deserve a second look when it comes to business.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if Jesus never said a single word about \u201cthe least of these\u201d except as it applies to abortion.<\/strong>\u00a0You would think that it was a moral imperative to drain the public coffers dry and hand the money over to a few corporations and wealthy campaign donors who sit at the top of the social pile.\u00a0<\/strong>These Christians never consider whose money it is in the first place when they take it from the many and give it to the few.<\/p>\n

According to them, people are poor because they are lazy, stupid and deserve what they get. On the other hand the wealthy are rich because they are industrious, productive and deserve all they can get.<\/p>\n

Government has become a wholly owned subsidiarity of the rich and shameless.<\/strong>\u00a0In the hands of these moral Christian politicians, government is a method for funneling the wealth of generations into a few hands and impoverishing the rest of our society.<\/p>\n

This particular form of sinfulness is committed by those who are usually the most vociferous in claiming their loyalty to Christ. They are \u201cpro life\u201d and they usually support \u201ctraditional marriage,\u201d so in their little minds that means that everything else they do is, by definition, righteous and holy. You would think that we are saved, not by the cross, but by checking off the right boxes on candidate surveys by a couple of political support groups.<\/p>\n

When money becomes your god, you are well on your way to creating a hell on earth. I would guess that you are also well on you way to going to the actual hell one day, as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Money is a human invention. Wealth and poverty are symptoms of our fallen nature. There is nothing divine or holy about either one of them. That is not to say that they are necessarily evil. They are, simply, tools and reality. Money is a tool. Disparity of wealth is a reality.<\/p>\n

But greed, graft and government corruption are sins. When we carry them to the point that they impoverish millions while enriching a few beyond the dreams of avarice, they are deadly sins, both in this world and the next.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a simple equation, really. Do not walk past Lazarus; not if you want to go to heaven one day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pope Francis spoke about this concept of money as a means rather than an end<\/strong>\u00a0today when he addressed the new ambassadors to the Holy See from Kyrgyzstan, Antigua and Barbuda, Luxembourg and Botswana.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoney has to serve, not rule\u201d <\/strong>he told them \u2026 wanting power and possession has become limitless \u2026 the sprawling of corruption and tax evasion has gone global.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pope urges a return to the unselfish solidarity and ethics in favor of man in financial and economic reality,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Pope loves everyone rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ\u2019s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, <\/strong>to respect them, to promote them.\u00a0This would take a courageous change of attitude on the part of political leaders\u00a0<\/strong>\u2026 I urge them to face this challenge with determination and farsightedness, taking account, naturally, of their particular situations.<\/p>\n

The excerpts of his discussion below are from\u00a0CNA<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joy of living is decreasing, indecency and violence are the the rise and poverty is becoming more evident,\u201d said Pope Frncis.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must fight to live and often to live in a non-decent way \u2026 We have created new idols, the ancient worship of the golden calf has found a new and ruthless image in fetishism of the dictatorship of the economy without purpose nor a truly human face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reduces man to one of its demands, consumption and even worse, the human being is today considered himself as a commodity that you can use and then throw away \u2026 Financiers, economists and politicians consider God as manageable, even dangerous because God calls man to his full realization and independence from any kind of slavery <\/strong>\u2026\u201d (Read the rest\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFinanciers, economists and politicians consider God as manageable, even dangerous because God calls man to his full realization and independence from any kind of slavery.\u201d\u00a0Pope Francis \u00a0 When money is your god, you are well on your way to creating a hell on earth. We have gone so far down the road of making money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,10,40,516,900,2790,43,726,1631,41,3346,48,548,1],"tags":[3862,721,3868,3866,7849,3859,3861,2782,2902,1078,3102,3860],"class_list":["post-13269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-catholic","category-christianity-2","category-culture","category-economics","category-evangelization","category-faith","category-following-christ","category-holy-father-2","category-politics","category-poverty-2","category-pro-life","category-same-sex-marriage-2","category-uncategorized","tag-corrupt-politicians","tag-government-corruption","tag-government-of-the-corporation","tag-graft","tag-jesus","tag-lazarus-and-the-rich-man","tag-money-and-politics","tag-pope-francis","tag-poverty","tag-sermon-on-the-mount","tag-the-least-of-these","tag-the-rich-and-shameless"],"yoast_head":"\nPope 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