In the past the catholic church was very far left and supporting far left governments.
Back in time Jesus was going after the banks and the money. What happen to the catholic church?
It was sin to be wealthy or have lots and lots of money. Has God hated wealth and money.
What happen to the Catholic Church and Christians today? It seems in the past they where more left?
Short answer: It’s easy to condemn wealth when you don’t have it.
When was the Catholic Church “very far left”?
In more recent times, the Vatican decided its interests were with the existing power structure and cracked down hard on “liberation theology”, effectively destroying it as a movement above the grassroots level.
In historical times it was much the same, except the power structure was the aristocracy, not the rich. So the wealthy were condemned, while kings and nobles were claimed to rule by divine right.
Some time prior to the Edict of Thessalonica.
Today the Catholic Church is mostly a banking organization (Institutum pro Operibus Religionis) that has been heavily involved in tax evasion and money laundering, and also occasionally issues moralistic edicts about how people should live despite the fact that it is the world’s largest organization which has only recently stopped promoting institutionalized child labor and abuse, and still protecting a global network of serial pedophiles and fighting compensation for victims by claiming to be bankrupt.
Stranger
Can I tell you about the lord and savior Jesus Christ?
The original hippie. Remember The Cleansing of the Temple.
And…since he founded the Catholic Church in 30AD or so I’d guess it is important.
Eh?Jesus didn’t intend to found any new religion at all. The idea of a religion separate from Judaism as it was then, happens later - arguably with post-Jesus Paul (or as @Stranger_On_A_Train says, the Council on Nicea).
So that’s the answer to the OP - any relationship between what Jesus said and did, and what the CC now does and believes, is verging on coincidental.
I agree the Catholic Church is far, far, far away from it’s origins.
But, they are the only one to lay claim to be original from Jesus Christ.
The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission,[16][17][note 1] that its bishops are the successors of Christ’s apostles, and that the pope is the successor to Saint Peter, upon whom primacy was conferred by Jesus Christ.[20] It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith taught by the apostles, preserving the faith infallibly through scripture and sacred tradition as authentically interpreted through the magisterium of the church.[21] The Roman Rite and others of the Latin Church, the Eastern Catholic liturgies, and institutes such as mendicant orders, enclosed monastic orders and third orders reflect a variety of theological and spiritual emphases in the church.[22][23] - SOURCE
Of course, there is no reason we need to believe them on this. They certainly do not act like they deserve the heritage they claim. They are much more conservative in character than the son of God they claim authority from.
YMMV.
Leo XIII disliked capitalism every bit as much as the Socialist he shared the late 19th century with, but maintained that Christianity already had the answers to the problems they were addressing (perhaps, but after 1900 years with not much to show, we might be willing to reconsider our options).
John XXIII was a reformist pope, but died too soon, leaving Vatican II to be followed through by a mediocrity with no vision himself, though a fondness for comely television stars.
Smiling, saintly John Paul II, along with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, completed the trio of 1980s triumph masking decline. No fool he, knowing that like Stalin who had his Yezhov, a big grinning baby-kisser should always keep a willing back-stabber on the payroll to do the dirty work
They can lay claim to all they want - and frequently do - but they were NOT founded by Jesus but, arguably, Paul - if not him then later men, depending on where you draw the line.
And, while I’m not across what the various Orthodox churches claim in this regard, they have at least as might right to believe they were founded by Jesus as the Catholics do. Which is, admittedly, not a lot.
I don’t read every encyclical from the Vatican, but without having any sources to point to that may satisfy, it’s my impression that the RCC has been for the past forty or fifty years very much on the side of climatology, environmental stewardship, reduction of economic disparity (though certainly Liberation Theology, in all its forms, is bit far from the standard rap), among other topics of concern.
I happen to belong to a group called “Catholics For Choice” — yes, they would be considered a fringe group, if not heretical, if they were on anybody’s radar.
All the Catholics I know personally, including me, are progressive in politics (not really Antifa fodder, though). They tend to be “fiscally liberal and culturally conservative,” maybe, but I don’t have enough data to make any kind of convincing statement.
I do somewhat question the premiss of the OP, though. But the Church is a complex organization, and that’s even before getting to the Illuminati and all those people. So, it’s unlikely anyone would be able to formulate a convincing recent history without considerable research.
Does your group consider the Pope to be your supreme leader and formal Catholic liturgy to be what you follow as a religion? (really asking)
Well…the Catholics for Choice group…I’m not sure how they’d phrase it, but, yes, their regular newsletters indicate at least their various spokespeople are well-trained in current RCC allowed practices.
I’d say yes to your questions. I don’t know how they justify their beliefs according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, on this one issue, just that they do.
FTR, I’m not especially active in this group…as a cis-het man, I’ve accompanied several women to Planned Parenthood centers, but I was not the one sitting in the stirrups, just the participant (fornicator…dammit…!) that led to that event. I just subscribe to their newsletter (literally).
That article kind of conflates Catholic and catholic, a little bit - catholic (small c) as per the Nicene Creed is just a word that means ‘whole and universal’.
The creeds used by protestant denominations still typically include the clause ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’.
Well, sure, even the Apostle’s Creed (Symbolum Apostolorum) is used when “doing” the rosary, and at masses during Easter. Baptisms as well, I think, and some other times perhaps.
It just has the simple [Credo in] sanctam ecclesiam catholicam as is used by other sects, who apparently have no difficulty with the common use of the word “catholic” as it’s intended, by contrast to the Catholic institution itself.
Silver Age Latin had a not very large set of essential words…couple of thousand…and vulgate/church(es) latin had perhaps fewer. So, “catholic” did some extra service. Certainly I’ve never heard of any problem with that use of the common word.
Different varieties of christianity employ the term “catholic”, but disagree about what it means.
Pretty much all mainstream Christian traditions agree that the church should be catholic, or universal. But, oversimplifying a bit, Protestant traditions tend to see the necessary degree of catholicity being acheived simply by shared baptism, whereas [Roman] Catholic and Orthodox traditions see catholicity as involving a higher degree of connection between Christians and between different Christian communities — including, in the case of Roman Catholicism, being in communion with the Bishop of Rome. (Hence the name of that particular tradition.)
The question of why the church moved away from “left-wing” positions on certain matters can be asked regardless of which concept of catholicity is invoked or intended, since this move happened long before the emergence of distinct Roman, Orthodox, Protestant, etc traditions within Christianity. The early christian movement was quite countercultural in a way that we would characterise as left-wing — it did discourage private property and encourage its members to hold their property in common; it did accord a relatively high status to women and disregard the social distinctions between slave and free; it did distance itself and its members from the institutions of the state and in particular from the army; etc, etc. But in a relatively short time — i.e. in its first few centuries — it moved away from these positions. Not entirely — there are still peace churches that hold pacifism to be a moral obligation of Christianity; women’s religious orders provided an opportunity for women to live their lives free from the control of fathers, husbands or other male figures in a way that wasn’t otherwise possible; monastics still hold their property in common; etc, etc. But it has certainly moved away from practices like these being seen as the norm, or even the ideal, for all Christians.
I think this is one example of why seeing everything in terms of left vs right or liberal vs conservative, in a linear, one-dimensional way, doesn’t always work very well.
When I think of the Catholic church, I think of concern for the poor and working class, social justice, etc. But I also think of a sexually conservative institution that values tradition, authority, and hierarchy.
That is literally the opposite of the truth. The exact policies that make up the political spectrum has changed over time, and Christianity has definitely not always associated with what modern Americans call right wing. But for as long as the concept of “left wing” has existed (namely since the French revolution where the term was coined) the left wing has been vehemently opposed to the Catholic Church as an institution, and the feeling was definitely mutual
What is the claim that the many people in church supported communism and far left movements than later on shifted the views to support conservative?
That was back in Jesus time.