Difference between SJW and Social Justice in CCC

[pnewton]

…with little care or respect for the underlying cultures who are affected and the tone deaf response to their cries which reach to high Heaven.

I have never hear deprivation of culture as a sin that cries to Heaven. But yes, of course those who are here legal, and those who are born here, if they are poor and mistreated have a God who hears their prayer.

 

[Theo520]

There are many immigrants, undocumented or not, that are my neighbors. Jesus taught who our neighbor is, and in his parable, it was a foreigner, a Samaritan.

Helping someone doesn’t need to equal helping them break laws.
You can help someone comply with our rule of law.

As with the samaritan, you should give aide to a legal or illegal person on your doorstep. But it’s erroneous to take the parable to mean we help people break our laws.

 

[abucs]

I have never hear deprivation of culture as a sin that cries to Heaven.

Would not the Islamic State’s destruction of existing cultural artefacts be an obvious example?

Wouldn’t the forced use of language on a populace be another example?

Wouldn’t the banning of wearing crosses in say Egypt be another example or if a western force started banning say the burqua in Afghanistan be another example?

Wouldn’t the lack of respect for land rights of native tribes and hunting grounds by colonial governments be another example?

Or in the middle ages the Islamic restrictions on churches,dress and worship is another example.

This has been a great sin down the ages. Existing cultures need to be recognised and respected.

But yes, of course those who are here legal, and those who are born here, if they are poor and mistreated have a God who hears their prayer.

and I assume you accept the middle class and mis-treated (and heaven forbid the well off and mis-treated) also have a God who hears their prayer?

 

[pnewton]

God who hears their prayer?

God hears prayer. I have not said otherwise. This is the specific type of prayer to which I refer, from the Catechism.

1867 The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heaven”: the blood of Abel, the sin of the Sodomites, the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan, injustice to the wage earner.

Perhaps I was mistaken to presume that everyone knew of this doctrine.

 

[abucs]

I am glad I was right to assume you included these people.

Cries to Heaven are a lived reality not limited to a categorised group found in doctrine.

 

[Ender]

I tried defining the term back in post #35:

an SJW is someone who believes the church supports his proposals for the solution to political (social) problems.

That is a somewhat parochial view on my part, but I have always been struck by the extent to which SJWs view a political issue as a moral contest between good and evil, rather than an exercise in problem solving like getting your car to start on a cold morning.

I listened to the comment on SJWs by Jonah Goldberg (post #199). He had several explanations, one of the simplest being someone who believes:

The State must - and can - remedy all perceived wrongs.

It seems for an SJW if one person suffers a disadvantage relative to others that represents a moral failure on society’s part which the government must set right. Inequality itself is a moral issue. Everything is a moral crusade.

 

[Ender]

The only priority they should have is based on need, not citizenship. These people are their homeless, their poor, their needy. But even that must take a back seat to the spiritual needs of the people in their parish, regardless of how they ended up their.

This sounds noble, it’s just that nobody really believes it. If what you say was really true then our concern should not stop with those who have physically reached our borders but extend to all those everywhere based on need. Clearly those who come here are not the most needy as a trip to Haiti or Bangladesh would confirm. How can we say our priority is for the homeless and the poor if we limit our help only to those who are physically within reach?

Either we help those most in need or we don’t, but if we do then why aren’t we importing millions from the world’s most desperate nations? Why are we allowing millions of Mexicans in instead?

The truth is that we can’t in fact solve the world’s woes and that in fact it is our own neighbor who has first claim on our assistance, and the citizen who has the first right to his nation’s aid.

“Since one cannot do good to all, we ought to consider those chiefly who by reason of place, time or any other circumstance, by a kind of chance are more closely united to us.” (Aquinas citing Augustine)

 

[Vonsalza]

I think it would also be pertinent to realize that a good portion of those we broadly paint as SJWs probably aren’t Catholic - at least in America.
So any appeal to a more conservative Catholic understanding of subsidiarity would likely fall on deaf ears for those folks.

It would be like a Scientologist walking up to me and telling me to stop something because it violated an auxiliary tenet of Scientology.
If what I was doing was important to me, I’d almost certainly not care. I don’t submit to Scientological doctrine.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

So any appeal to a more conservative Catholic understanding of subsidiarity would likely fall on deaf ears for those folks.

The problem is that several of the folks in this thread are Catholic, yet they have no problem ignoring Catholic doctrine on Social Justice and Subsidiarity…

 

[philipl]

Yes, it is always bad. It is bad because there is no limits place upon their ability to do so. All they need to do to convice people it that what ever program they create is for the common good.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

So any appeal to a more conservative Catholic understanding of subsidiarity would likely fall on deaf ears for those folks.

The problem is that several of the folks in this thread are Catholic, yet they have no problem ignoring Catholic doctrine on Social Justice and Subsidiarity…

I get that.

But you have to deal with it on a case by case basis, which stinks for the intellectually lazy. One SJW is different from another SJW on the issues they crusade for.

A bigger issue still is defining subsidiarity in a way that means anything. It’s just a really nice sounding principal that is subject to the hazard of individuals subjectively applying it.

One zealous adherent to the philosophy might think the federal government is the only entity (and thus smallest, lowest, most local) that can suitably handle an issue.

Another zealous adherent rabidly disagrees and thinks it’s best handled by private nonprofits.

You can’t measure it, sadly. So who’s to say which people are applying it correctly?

 

[philipl]

Then You need to go out and take care of them, quit demanding others do it.

 

[Vonsalza]

Then You need to go out and take care of them, quit demanding others do it.

Maybe it’s larger than a local problem that he/she wants to solve in a way that has some degree of measurability and, thus, accountability?

Maybe lots of others agree? So many, in fact, that it represents the majority of the populace?

 

[philipl]

then that is the responsibility of those peoples neighbors. We are NOT a democracy. We are a republic for a very good reason

 

[Vonsalza]

then that is the responsibility of those peoples neighbors.

Cool.

So pnewton and his/her neighbors get together and create a program that they contribute to that tries to care for the downtrodden in the local area in a way that’s measurable. It’s such a big job that they have to hire a few people to run it.

…I think I just described government-run social assistance.

 

[philipl]

Except that government run assistance forces those who dont want to help to help.

 

[Vonsalza]

Except that government run assistance forces those who dont want to help to help.

I hate paying taxes too. I want roads, schools, social assistance and everything to cost me exactly nothing. Alas…

Democratic republics stink sometimes. Wait until they need to put a road, rail or pipe through your property.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

I think you can definitely argue about how to implement certain aspects of doctrine that are left intentionally vague. But you can’t refuse to acknowledge that the Church leaves the door open when it comes to government action.

 

[Vonsalza]

I think you can definitely argue about how to implement certain aspects of doctrine that are left intentionally vague. But you can’t refuse to acknowledge that the Church leaves the door open when it comes to government action.

Truly, I respect the view. We just have this two-edged rule about Church and state that I’ve always held mixed feelings about until the potential Church that wants to try and merge-in isn’t my own.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

I don’t think that’s what the Church says. Now, it might be what the Catholic people say, but that is something else entirely.

The Church is against excessive government that violates individual freedoms and human dignity. So long as the State allows for and protects human dignity it can operate with some level of moral authority.

That is a far cry from saying the Church and the State can co-exists unless the state religion is something other than Catholic.

Edit to add: there is only one system that is specifically excluded and this is Communism. And, again, it’s not simply because the Church decided to be reflexively anti-Communist. There are lots of reasons why, but one of the big ones is that it denies its subjects individual freedom.