(October 15, 2021 at 5:54 pm)brewer Wrote: Excusing religion for it's hypocrisy is just excusing religion for it's hypocrisy. I'm your moral authority, but then again, I'm not.
The 'good and humble men' should recognize the bullshit and stand up. Unfortunately they don't.
I do not excuse hypocrisy, religious or otherwise. I do recognise that hypocrisy is part of the human condition. That society simply would not function if we all spoke the truth even most of the time.
I also recognise how hard it can be to go against the status quo. Especially from within organisations with a rigid hierarchy :Eg a church, a bureaucracy or one of the armed forces. I think I need to fix my own problems before having the gall to judge others. Not up to me to tell anyone what they should do.
In terms of doing something, in late 1970's early 1980's there was a catholic movement called "liberation theology" which politicised some of teaching of Jesus. Especially those helping the oppressed. The instigators tended to be priests, and laymen would join. It was active on the island of Negros, Philippines when I visited in 1979. It annoyed the Vatican, which the movement criticised. The response of the big land owners and others in power (Marcos was still president) was that some lay members were murdered.
Don't know about you, but I can't think of any ideal for which I'm willing to die. Certainly not for any cynically vague notion such as 'my country' .
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"Liberation theology is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. In certain contexts, it engages socio-economic analyses, with "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples."[1] In other contexts, it addresses other forms of inequality, such as race or caste.
Liberation theology is best known in the Latin American context,[2] especially within Catholicism in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, where it became the political praxis of theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor". This expression was used first by Jesuit Fr. General Pedro Arrupe in 1968 and soon after the World Synod of Catholic Bishops in 1971 chose as its theme "Justice in the World".[3][4]
wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
