Francis just finished the most exciting week of his papacy | National Catholic Reporter

Francis just finished the most exciting week of his papacy | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The comment about being the beggar is interesting - because it shows what is reqired for solidarity to be real, not just a show.  It is also why we know Jesus was in dire mental straights when he called out to the Father from the cross (after having abandonned his mother and his ministry) - that was his poverty (the other kind he could do in a walk).  Of course, if you do know solidarity, you can speak powerfully.  MSW could not evict an addict crashing over.  I have thrown people who relapsed into the street and expect others to do the same if I do.  That comes from the power of solidarity and humility.  Indeed, when one speaks from authority, solidarity goes out the window.  This is why the fight for gay marriage to be recognized by the Church, as it is by the state, is falling on deaf ears.  It is the gay couples who have had to demand their rights, but with humility, as it is an open question.  Marriage is always relative to the culture - that is what scares so many in the Church.



As for materialism, without it, workers have to revolt - but a consumer surplus allows the comfort not to do that - although a little discomfort and radicalization may be good in pushing back against the capitalists - who are expanding their reach because the rest of us are not pushing back.  Poverty, here we come.  One can argye that those who get aborton are in a type of poverty - sometimes the real kind - and because we have no solidarity with them (both economically and spiritually), they have no choice but to do what we find unthinkable.  Poverty does that to you.  It also has you use birth control - both for economic poverty and a spiritual poverty.  If men were required to be the stay at home parent, some of that poverty would end. Back to solidarity - a bit of solidarity would have prevented Paul VI from ignoring his advisory committee and going with what the Curia said.



American aid requiring pushing birth control is another kind of spiitual poverty that says nothing about solidarity.  It does not stop poverty to simply have less poor people - indeed, a surplus of people often brings on both industry and consumerism.  That is simply how things work - so ZPG efforts, if designed to retard growith are exactly the wrong thing.  Still, a Corinthian theology is not an item for foregn policy.



Solidarity for the Pope meant taking it all in - saying nothing and weeping when faced with the stories of poverty and survivl from the recent typhoon.  Silence sometimes speaks volumes.  As MSW says, much nore so than the dogma of he Curia.