Inf38 is reading the latest papal encyclical for some reason. Struggling through but pausing long enough to note that there's a sense behind the meaning behind the words that when [if, etc.] Jesus Christ performed a miracle like healing the sick or feeding the hungry, it wasn't so much to end the suffering of the afflicted as it was to demonstrate his mighty command of miracle-working technologies, and the mighty mightiness of the copyright holder on those technologies.
Put another way, healing the sick and feeding the hungry is all about founding and then expanding the Church - the individuals involved and their individual sufferings aren't important except strategically.
A little thought along the other line would lead inescapably to - Can feed the multitude; can raise the dead; can do these things whenever He wants: therefore He could feed everybody all the time, and nobody ever has to die.
Here speaks Pope Benedict XVI:
With regard to the personnel who carry out the Church's charitable activity on the practical level, the essential has already been said: they must not be inspired by ideologies aimed at improving the world, but should rather be guided by the faith which works through love...That isn't so much dogma or spiritual commentary as it is politics and conservative social theory with its gunsights on leftist revolutionaries. Ratzinger/Benedict's sort of the George W. Bush of the Vatican. A man chosen for his low-wattage, as well as his acquiescent dependability and unwavering fealty to the party line. Still, he's the Pope. Which puts him right up there with the Reverend Sun Yung Moon and that Dobson fella, as a leader of millions of more-or-less human beings, and the political power and economic energy that brings with it.
