(An excerpt from a letter to Bishop, later Cardinal, William Baum, (1971)
“The Church in America—in fact in the West as a whole— has accepted as religion a kind of cultural syncretism, culminating in a near-perfect allegiance to the State. Not a few of its more prominent Bishops have waited upon the Presidency like court jesters. And now the culture is being violently challenged, and the State doesn’t so much govern as rule by force. To whom do we turn? To the Bishops?
On the contrary, the American episcopacy has docilely and silently stood by while their countrymen and spiritual sons established the American empire and ruled it with ruthless might.They stood by as spectators, or advocates, while their country plunged into perpetual hot and cold warring.
The understanding from this quarter is simply this: both Church and State are vast, sprawling bureaucracies which share an insufferably arrogant assumption that they offer the fundamental answers to the human condition. One layman I know says this: ‘Shepherds? There is not one in the American Church! They are upper management people for the most part and they are the State’s sheep!'”
-Rev. Philip Berrigan, S.S.J.
“State’s sheep” metaphorically hits the nail on the head. “Church’s Shepherd’s” throwing their sheep to the wolves of the State,-Military-Corporate troika is ontologically and historically accurate.
How long, O Lord, how long?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_O860l8u3U&feature=youtu.be
-ECM
