The Primitive Charism of the Amazon - Arrupe's Dream Realized Through Francis

 The testosterone lacking 
in the Church, found in
the Amazon

Here's a joke I made up...

Jesuit Father General Pedro Arrupe (RIP) - "We (the Jesuits) are looking for a primitive charism."

Jesuit Pope Francis - "Found it!"

In the Amazon, Pope Francis found the primitive charism Arrupe, that old agent of change, was looking for in the Society of Jesus, except now that primitive charism is for the entire Catholic Church which Francis is changing into Arrupe's Marxist secular humanist dream.

The following is taken verbatim from Malachi Martin's 1987 book The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church. While reading, please remember that Pope Francis is a Jesuit.

"The mortal remains of hope and change (Obama?) were buried in a continuing landslide of dedication to Liberation Theology and its redefinition of the Church and its teachings; of Jesuit magazines plugging away without pause at the erosion of papal and Church authority over morality and doctrine; and of ever bolder attacks, in Jesuit writings and sermons, on the person and the papacy of John Paul II and the basic dogmas of the Church he leads." p 484

"No political and economic liberation of people - however needed and justified - can be confused with the only liberation the Catholic Church promises, which is liberation from sin and sin's effects." p 485

Yet theologians thought that "The Church must become the universal sacrament of the new cosmic salvation being ushered into man's world, not by supernatural grace, but by man's material struggles to better his economic and social position." pp 305-306

Therefore, "Liberation Theologians found it far more effective and appealing to co-opt traditional Roman Catholic vocabulary, but to give all the terms a new anti-Roman and simultaneously anti-capitalist meaning. ... Liberation Theology is a quicker-than-the-eye formation of a spiritual warfare into a sociopolitical struggle; and - if need be - into an armed revolutionary warfare against capitalism." pp 311, 312

Going topless is INDIGENOUS
 so it must be a moral good, right?

"But that would have little use among the ordinary masses of believers, had the "new theologians" not succeeded also in transposing the meaning of all the key terms used to convey the basic truths and teachings of traditional Roman Catholicism. In their writings, you can see the quick, skillful way in which this was done." p 312

"The Church became 'the people of God', not the hierarchic Church of Rome. Sin is not primarily personal; it is social and almost exclusively the injustice and oppression due to capitalism. Mary the Virgin is the mother of the revolutionary Jesus - indeed of all revolutionaries seeking to overthrow capitalism. The Kingdom of God is the socialist state from which capitalist oppression has been eliminated. Priesthood is either the service given by an individual (the priest) who builds up socialism, or it is 'the people of God' as it worships according to its likes. The list of such adopted Catholic expressions is as long as you like. For each and every Catholic term about piety, belief, asceticism, and theology is taken over by Liberation Theologians." p 312

In Liberation Theology "The 'preferential option for the poor' was based on Christ's own preference for the poor, his preference for the working class versus the rich...The appealing and even convincing sleight-of-hand here consisted of giving the Biblical term poor the same meaning as Marx and Marxists had given to the term proletariat." p 311

However, Martin explains, "Christ never singled out the proletariat with a preferential option in their favor. Christ acted on no sociological theory about the economic inequality and political opposition between classes. He aimed at no armed revolution, no political liberation. He had no more preferential option for the poor to the positive exclusion - forcible or otherwise - of the well-off, than he had preferential option for little children to the exclusion of adults." p 311

He continues, "Christ's option was for godliness and piety and innocence and humility and fidelity to God's law, wherever he found it - in poor man or rich; in little child or old man, in his rich friends like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha; in his poor friends like Zacchaeus, Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, or any one of his twelve Apostles." p 311

"For Christ was a savior of sinners, not a secular leader. It was not poverty or riches that made or makes you desirable in Christ's eyes. It was what you did in your poverty or your riches - what sort of morality you practiced, what beliefs you nourished." p 311

"In reality, Liberation Theology is a quicker-than-the-eye transformation of a spiritual warfare into a sociopolitical struggle; and - if need be - into an armed revolutionary warfare against capitalism." pp 311, 312

And quicker than a blink of an eye, with his Synod on the Amazon (Oct 6-27), Pope Francis will transform the Church into Arrupe's dream of a proletariat run organization of women priests, married priests and priest-less parishes where we can all run - naked and wild, body and soul - with our passions. "Hooray! Hooray! We're free from God and His old musty Church of faith and morals!"