Catholic Worker community ideas

[Caleb]

LOL! 

Dreepa, Tolstoy was most assuredly *not* Catholic.  He had been raised in the Orthodox Church, (which is somewhat similar to the Catholic Church, the two churches split in 1054.)  However, he rejected the Orthodox Church's theology in favor of a simpler theology based mainly on the Sermon on the Mount.  Tolstoy viewed the Church as a great impediment to the proper understanding of Scripture, because people could ignore the true teachings of Christ on its authority.  Although his criticisms were specifically directed towards the Orthodox Church (since he lived in Russia,) he would not have found the Catholic Church any more amenable.  Here's a sample from Tolstoy's work The Kingdom of God is Within You that exhibits his typical contempt for clergy:

But here comes a man along the street with flowing hair and in a peculiar dress, who gets out of his droskhy and goes into the Zemsky Court-house. The police clear a way for him through the crowd. It is the "reverend father" come to administer the oath. And this "father," who has been persuaded that he is specially and exclusively devoted to the service of Christ, and who, for the most part, does not himself see the deception in which he lives, goes into the hall where the conscripts are waiting. He throws round him a kind of curtain of brocade, pulls his long hair out over it, opens the very Gospel in which swearing is forbidden, takes the cross, the very cross on which Christ was crucified because he would not do what this false servant of his is telling men to do, and puts them on the lectern. And all these unhappy, defenseless, and deluded lads repeat after him the lie, which he utters with the assurance of familiarity.

He reads and they repeat after him:

"I promise and swear by Almighty God upon his holy Gospel," etc., "to defend," etc., and that is, to murder anyone I am told to, and to do everything I am told by men I know nothing of, and who care nothing for me except as an instrument for perpetrating the crimes by which they are kept in their position of power, and my brothers in their condition of misery. All the conscripts repeat these ferocious words without thinking. And then the so-called "father" goes away with a sense of having correctly and conscientiously done his duty. And all these poor deluded lads believe that these nonsensical and incomprehensible words which they have just uttered set them free for the whole time of their service from their duties as men, and lay upon them fresh and more binding duties as soldiers.

And this crime is perpetrated publicly and no one cries out to the deceiving and the deceived: "Think what you are doing; this is the basest, falsest lie, by which not bodies only, but souls too, are destroyed."

In defense of Frank, I think he was saying that all those people were distributists, not Catholics.  In fact, you don't have to be a Catholic to join the Catholic workers. 

[Caleb]

Since this thread is about ideas, I thought I'd throw one out there, at the risk of Russell telling me he thinks I should do it.

All the time in the paper there are people who advertise that they are giving away something free, all you have to do is haul it away.  We could drive around and collect these things, and then sell them to raise money.

[Russell Kanning]

I like that idea. If we had room for more stuff .... we could grab things. I think we should do that.

I was thinkin we could build things for people and ask for donations for the supplies.

You know ..... it is a compliment when I say, "I think you should do that."

[Dreepa]

LOL! 

Dreepa, Tolstoy was most assuredly *not* Catholic. 

I was joking.

[Kat Kanning]

See what happens when you try and kid these christian anarchist guys!   

[John]

, at the risk of Russell telling me he thinks I should do it.

[Kat Kanning]

Sean, Caleb, Russell, Kira and I visited a catholic worker house in Worchester yesterday.  It was very interesting.  They publish their own paper too.  The house has the locks removed.  They take in homeless people into the rooms they have and eat their meals with them.  I think the guests help with the meal preparation.  The catholic worker guys also do civil disobedience...lots of protests, various arrests while interfering with war/torture/genocide.  This particular guy has travelled all over the world reporting on genocide/war, providing humanitarian aid, doing civil disobedience.  It turned out we're more anarchist than these guys...they seem to like local government, but no state or federal.

[FrankChodorov]

Sean, Caleb, Russell, Kira and I visited a catholic worker house in Worchester yesterday.  It was very interesting.  They publish their own paper too.  The house has the locks removed.  They take in homeless people into the rooms they have and eat their meals with them.  I think the guests help with the meal preparation.  The catholic worker guys also do civil disobedience...lots of protests, various arrests while interfering with war/torture/genocide.  This particular guy has travelled all over the world reporting on genocide/war, providing humanitarian aid, doing civil disobedience.  It turned out we're more anarchist than these guys...they seem to like local government, but no state or federal.

that's because they are decentralist/distributists...equally critical of both capitalism and socialism.

http://www.distributism.com/compare.htm

a guy from the Worcester catholic workers house spoke at the Iraq war protest in Concord on Saturday.

[Kat Kanning]

That was the same guy we talked to.