In a 52-page pastoral letter, issued ahead of May elections, Church of England calls for ‘fresh moral vision’ in British politics (see HERE a commentary about it the conservative journal The Guardian.).
You may find HERE a summary and the key points of this important document.
The Conservative government called it ‘hard-left propaganda’. No surprise there. As I have written in a tween tonight, ‘too much talk about the poor’ in it. and that is something conservativs and the rich they defent can hardly stomach. As Zoe Williams said in an article in The Guardian,
I can see why. “Creation should be cherished, and not simply used and consumed,” it said. (I don’t, for instance, see how you could frack under that injunction.) “We should use our votes thoughtfully, prayerfully, and with the good of others in mind, not just our own interests.” It’s hard to see this as anything other than an open rejection of neo-liberal principles – founded as they are on self-interest as the wellspring of all that is good in the world. It goes to the very centre of what politics is. And yet, the bishops are right that you couldn’t necessarily impute any party allegiance to them: the entire mainstream, not just its right flank, has forgotten how to have a conversation in which money doesn’t come first.
Catholic bishops also add their voice to that of the bishops of the Church of England, calling for a responsible vote, with a bias towards the poor. Well done. I hope the Evangelical Alliance of Great Britain will do the same.
I must confess I envy British church leaders and I wonder when will the bishops of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and leaders of the other churches, will care about more that buildings and money.
maybe they need a massive secularisation process, like in the UK, to wake up. And I have some bad news for them: it’s comming here too. The many church buildings that seem to be their exclusive preoccupation will be mostly empty twenty years from now. And that is fully deserved, and a natural consequence of the lack of vision, irresponsibility, and sheer imorality of our church leaders, much like in the UK. Will we ever learn?
May God have mercy!
Persona 