No Caritas For Caritas

If you worry about the dubious policies or projects our Catholic Campaign for Human Development occasionally supports, get a load of what its counterpart on the British Isles is up to. In a story I first read at ninme, but for which Fr. Tim has more background, it seems Caritas Social Action has just published a volume of essays attacking the pope's encyclical Deus Caritas Est. It seems that in reflecting profoundly on God as love, recommending the virtue of charity to everyone, and explicitly removing the Church from politics (except in so far as Faith can purify interested motives and calm passions, freeing Reason to do its work), the pope has revealed himself to be a racist colonialist. I gather the lead essay is by Fr. Tessa Balasuriya, who lost his right to be called a Catholic theologian in 1994 and excommunicated himself in 1997 (although he was reconciled with the Church a year later). And, Lord have mercy, they found a bishop to write the forward to this tripe.


There's all manner of dissent I can understand and even in a limited sense empathize with. But dissent from charity? As the young Obi-Wan said to the purveyor of deathsticks: time to go home and re-think your life.