Caritas Social Action attacks Pope

There is a disturbing piece today on Damien Thompson's blog - Holy Smoke:Bishops support book attacking the Pope. He reports on a book published by Caritas Social Action called Catholic Social Justice: Theological and Practical Explorations.

Thompson says that the book (which has a foreword by Bishop Budd) "systematically rubbishes Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est". The book includes an essay by Fr Tissa Balasuriya whose work "Mary and Human Liberation" was the subject of a notification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Apparently, Fr Balasuriya believes that Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have lived “in a world dominated by white racism” and were therefore unable to understand the developing world. Thompson also rightly draws attention to the disgraceful inverted commas in Balasuriya's description of the 9/11 massacre as a "terrorist" attack.

Caritas-Social Action describes itself as
[...] the umbrella organisation for Catholic social care organisations working within England and Wales. We are an agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and part of Caritas International.
Caritas Social Action is the "home" partner of CAFOD which is the agency of the Bishops' conference that is concerned with overseas work. CAFOD and Caritas Social Action are two of the 162 Catholic agencies that enjoys the support of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum.

More than strange then, that the book's approach to Deus Caritas Est is so much at variance with that of Cor Unum which was largely responsible for the second half of Deus Caritas Est and organised a special press conference to present the encyclical.

As Damien Thompson points out, Caritas Social Action is funded by the lay Catholics of England and Wales who are invited each year to contribute to the "National Catholic Fund".

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