Pseudo-Homilies 27 – Jesus, a backward xenophobe?

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A Oh, this reading was meant to spark controversy! Jesus is in pagan land, in the region of Tire and Sidon. A local woman (Canaanite) asks him to save her sick daughter (she was said to have “a demon”, but that’s not necessarily meant as a demonic possession in the proper sense). Jesus, at least at first, appears unfriendly, contemptuous. He states that he’s been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel! Only after doubling down, comparing pagans like her to house pets, It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs…

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The Pope from the end of the world. And a Catholic Church split between doomsayers and downplayers

…But today Catholics are facing a new fear: the idea that there’s no path for resistance, that things have changed so much that this time the Church isn’t gonna make it. This would be a sign of the End of the World; a world so profoundly corrupt it cannot function anymore. There are two distinct, disturbing trends developing. On opposite sides, and yet showing a striking similarity in a crucial element: fatalism. Two models we could describe as follows: A. Downplayers: “move on, nothing to see here” types, who insist there’s nothing you should do, beyond praying of course. B. Doomsayers: those who can find the Antichrist anywhere and everywhere……

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