Is Catholic Social Teaching Inherently Liberal?

[alacoque]

Timbothefiveth;5214344]

And they accomplish the degrading stuff, by voting. Funny how that works.

wow…you ARE a toughguy, aren’t you? I hope you’re really not…and hope you didn’t mean that you are opposed to women voting. I’ll assume you meant that ‘some’ women vote for ‘some’ harmful and degrading things and that THAT is not good. Of course, it’s not good when men vote for those degrading things either, but I think you probably agree with that notion.

I disagree with your other post, however, where you used the ‘give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, etc’ and differentiated, as I understood you, between the Church (i.e. Jesus) and liberals (i.e. wanting the gov’t to do it all). I understand what you’re saying…and I think that’s the actual Church’s social teaching - but what the thread is about is that, largely, the various Bishops and some, many, priests, have taken it upon themselves to interpret and articulate the “Church’s teaching” themselves…and it has come out very liberal.

So, was Jesus a liberal? Of course not! Is the dogmatic social teaching of the (one, holy, Catholic and apostolic) Church liberal? Nope, again. Is the modern day, 21st century IDEA of the Church’s social teaching (as espoused by many of the clergy and laity) liberal? I definitely think it is.

It’s the same thing as those who claim there’s such a thing as 'the spirit of Vatican II", as opposed to, just, Vatican II. Under the ‘auspices’ of that ‘spirit’, they allow, encourage and invent many things that have no basis or veracity in either the Church or Vatican II.

thanks for your post, toughguy…(even though I hope you’re not really THAT tough!! - on us, anyway!)

 

[alacoque]

Excellent post toughguy!

I can’t understand how so many Catholics have the teachings of the Church wrong! First off, most should realize that the Old Testament, teaches us how “we” as a society are to behave…while it is the Second Testament that teaches us how “we” as INDIVIDUALS are to behave.

But sadly, so many Catholics want to throw out the Old Testament and mistakenly take the teachings of Christ out of context and apply them to governments and societies, when in fact they apply to each ONE of us…not all of us collectively as a group.

The government is here only to provide an environment where each of us can flourish in safety. Meaning, the government’s job is to PROTECT its people…NOT PROVIDE for them. Especially because WITHOUT the people, the government owns NOTHING and has no ability TO provide!!

Hi…I hope my recent/last post in response to toughguy was clear, because it applies to your post, too. I didn’t think this issue was going to be that difficult to get across…

To reiterate MY position (which agreed w/the article I posted the link for), there is a DIFFERENCE between the Church’s social teaching (which I accept and assent to and have no problem with at all!) and the social teaching “promoted” by some Catholics (clergy and laity) as though it WERE the actual Church’s teaching (which it’s not).

THAT’S my point and my reason for posting the original author’s essay - I thought he made / illustrated that point well. I WAS NOT ATTACKING THE CHURCH’S SOCIAL JUSTICE TEACHING ! Please! I think a careful reading of what I have said in my posts will give a correct interpretation of what I was saying.

There are those (many, in my experience and world) who believe that liberation theology, and the seamless garment ideology (to name a couple) are the actual Church’s teaching on social justice. They also believe, promote and teach that the Dem. political party’s platform IS the Church’s teaching on social justice. They argue that there is NO difference whatsoever between abortion and the death penalty and that gay marriage IS a civil right, per the Church. I even heard a pastor, recently, give an entire homily on how the CCC and the Church BOTH APPROVE of same sex relationships, as long as they are monogamous and the people are ‘sincerely in love’. Huh ???

So, gimme a break…please…because I sincerely hope these things (very properly called ‘ideologies’ and not Church teaching) are not what YOU mean when you refer to the social justice teaching of the Church. The giveaway that most of that ‘teaching’ (as interpreted (read: hijacked) by our liberal friends) has nothing at all to do with virtue, sacrifice, or love of neighbor, and almost everything to do with ‘programs’. In fact, as far as the liberals go, you’d be hard-pressed to find God or Jesus or Christ mentioned or referred to anywhere in their worldview.

thanks for listening…I apologize for any harshness…I get a little ‘enthused’ sometimes…

 

[uther]

As others have pointed out here the term “liberal” is misleading. I realize you mean the current political identifiers, but even that is right now in a state of flux. Many in the Democrat Party get offended or laugh (Obama’s reaction) when called socialist, but it is true that even the Democrat Party is shifting its center to the left much further than it has ever been.
The GOP is also in a state of flux and the internal battle is on to define that party as well.

Because these are the choices presented to everyday voters, there is a larger picture that is most often missed. But right now, while both parties are changing, the conditions in America are not “business as usual”, and many social issues are coming to a head as vociferous minorites put on a bigger push than usual, there are more Americans in tune with the bigger picture. That is to say, they are thinking about what kind of America they have and what kind of America they want.

This is a good time to ask these questions. In a very real sense, it is a watershed time. That has been said often enough in political campaigns, but right now the people who don’t normally take to the streets are doing so. Ordinary people are awakening to the rumblings under their feet and are putting their heads up from their work and family and asking what is going on. It is a very good time to make a philosophical case to Americans and in particular to Catholics. Barack Obama knows this. His political inner circle know this. It is why they are focussing so much on Catholic universities and appointing Catholic dissenters to high positions.

Let’s play John Lennon for a moment.

Imagine a country where the primary political, practical and social questions are decided on the local level, amongst independent families and free people who know each other if not personally, by sight almost every day.
Imagine these local communities sending representatives to their sovereign state body which has been set up to support those communities and facilitate the commerce of the state between people of the state and communities of the state, taking charge of only those issues determined by the constitution of that state beforehand.

Let us pause for a moment in our dream.

Does this scenario so far seem like the ideal structure for the Catholic Social Doctrine to flourish? And are not that the principles of subsidiarity, government responsibility and individual freedom all encompassed by this scenario? The individual and family are the primary structures based on a notion that a man’s freedom pre-exists the state.

Let us go back to our dream.

Imagine then, a group of soveriegn states joining a union and establishing a government to oversee only what is necessary for that union to exist, leaving everything else to the individuals within that union and their own local and state governments.
Imagine that union beign codified in a constitution that delineates the limits of what that union government is allowed to do, leaving each state the choice as to what manner each wishes to send representatives to that body.
Imagine that government acting only as a support to the states in the union, not as their master, rather their servant. Again, employing the subsidiarity principle so that the good of the individual and family is supported at every level, from the local government down to the federal government.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but there was once such a country. It was the ideal setting for Catholic social doctrine.

What happened? Statism. From the left and from the right. What the founders feared came true. What they tried to prevent was accomplished. How do you get to a point where the symbol of free enterprise is the international face-less corporation? That could only happen in a country where the local people have lost control. How do you get to a point where the alternative to great concentrations of wealth is government control of everyone’s life liberty and pursuit of happiness so that all are equally miserable? That also could only be thinkable in a country where the local people have lost control.

How could you get a bloated, unaccountable and inefficient bureaucracy that sucks up high percentages of the GDP and runs up debt for future generations? The local people have lost control. They are no longer in charge and haven’t been for awhile.

How do you get such great disparities in any community between rich and poor? They don’t know each other, they don’t govern together and they don’t feel any responsibility for each other. The rich pay a tax to an entity far away and the poor get a cheque from that entity far away, and that entity has the power to build or destroy anything that local community can organize on their own.

So where is the reset button? I don’t know, but Americans need to find it quickly. And above all, Catholics who have a 2000 year history of experiencing persecution from tyrannical governments, should be right there in the hunt for that reset. This is a time when those Catholics who place their politics, their careers, and their statist ideologies above their faith are being identified as who they are.

I would say this, the only political goal that is consonant with our faith as Catholics is the cause of freedom. There we can be who we are, and can help our brothers and sisters in need, right where we find them, right next door.

 

[Toughguy]

okay toughguy
instead of talking in abstract terms, why not provide some numbers?
how many is “most”? 51%? 99%? 75%?
and while you are getting what percentage of women voters voted democratic also provide what percentage of men voters voted democratic.

cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls.main/

Not only did more women vote than men this last election (57% female to 47% male), but 56% voted for Obama compared to 49% of men. That was 2008

From another artilce in 2002:

"In data collected by the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of white men agree that government is wasteful and inefficient, compared to 64 percent of white women. Sixty-six percent of white women agree that “government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep,” compared to 54 percent of white men. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 51 percent of women say they favor smaller government with fewer services to larger government with many services, compared to 66 percent of men. "

prospect.org/cs/articles?article=do_real_men_vote_democratic

Do we agree with these?

 

[Toughguy]

alacoque;

wow…you ARE a toughguy, aren’t you? I hope you’re really not…and hope you didn’t mean that you are opposed to women voting. I’ll assume you meant that ‘some’ women vote for ‘some’ harmful and degrading things and that THAT is not good. Of course, it’s not good when men vote for those degrading things either, but I think you probably agree with that notion.

Keep an eye on my posts.

I disagree with your other post, however, where you used the ‘give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, etc’ and differentiated, as I understood you, between the Church (i.e. Jesus) and liberals (i.e. wanting the gov’t to do it all). I understand what you’re saying…and I think that’s the actual Church’s social teaching - but what the thread is about is that, largely, the various Bishops and some, many, priests, have taken it upon themselves to interpret and articulate the “Church’s teaching” themselves…and it has come out very liberal.

So, was Jesus a liberal? Of course not! Is the dogmatic social teaching of the (one, holy, Catholic and apostolic) Church liberal? Nope, again. Is the modern day, 21st century IDEA of the Church’s social teaching (as espoused by many of the clergy and laity) liberal? I definitely think it is.

It’s the same thing as those who claim there’s such a thing as 'the spirit of Vatican II", as opposed to, just, Vatican II. Under the ‘auspices’ of that ‘spirit’, they allow, encourage and invent many things that have no basis or veracity in either the Church or Vatican II.

thanks for your post, toughguy…(even though I hope you’re not really THAT tough!! - on us, anyway!)

I gotcha.

 

[Toughguy]

uther;

As others have pointed out here the term “liberal” is misleading. I realize you mean the current political identifiers, but even that is right now in a state of flux. Many in the Democrat Party get offended or laugh (Obama’s reaction) when called socialist

True, but they may laugh or become offended, not because they are not socialists, but because they know that that word is still a lightning rod. They laugh if you call them Communists too, but then you see this at an Obama campaign HQ:


http://www.americanthinker.com/20080211ObamaCheHouston2.jpg

 

[DavidHume]

If that were an Obama campaign HQ, there would be more than four people there, and it wouldn’t be in a combination personal office and u-stor-it/garage. I call fake on the level of Ashley Todd.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Most women who vote, vote Democrat.

I don’t think that’s true among married women. I believe most married women voted Republican in the last election. Among single women, yes, they tend to vote Democrat. Far from being an expert on women, (and what man would dare to say he is) I can’t say why that’s so.

 

[Ridgerunner]

As a former officeholder in the Democrat party, I can say that it ran off and left me in two ways:

First and foremost, its total devotion to abortion was impossible for me to accept.

Second, it “talks the talk” of “helping the poor”, but it doesn’t “walk the walk”. The last truly significant thing anybody really did for the poor was the Earned Income Credit, and that was Reagan’s. The Democrat party of today is utterly dedicated to abortion, and that has been true for decades. It is also dedicated to middle class welfare.

Probably the one thing that tells me the Democrats no longer care about real social justice is the fact that no Democrat proposal to improve the horribly inadequate income for the disabled needy (SSI) has come along in decades, and it isn’t being proposed now.

The notion that the Democrat party (don’t get on me for saying “Democrat party”. That’s what was insisted on locally, and I still say it out of respect for the “old Democrats” with whom I once worked) really cares about “social justice” is a myth that has been perpetrated, and amazingly believed, for decades. In truth, the party is just as devoted to big money as the Repubs are; perhaps more so, and do nothing for the truly needy.

If one reads the Social Encyclicals, one cannot help but conclude that the Democrat party stands for absolutely none of the Papal teachings on the subject of social justice. It once did, and that’s why I believed in it then. But it doesn’t now. Anyone interested in social justice should read those encyclicals and consider carefully what the political parties really do; not just how they talk.

 

[chewchoo]

cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls.main/

Not only did more women vote than men this last election (57% female to 47% male), but 56% voted for Obama compared to 49% of men. That was 2008

From another artilce in 2002:

"In data collected by the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of white men agree that government is wasteful and inefficient, compared to 64 percent of white women. Sixty-six percent of white women agree that “government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep,” compared to 54 percent of white men. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 51 percent of women say they favor smaller government with fewer services to larger government with many services, compared to 66 percent of men. "

prospect.org/cs/articles?article=do_real_men_vote_democratic

Do we agree with these?

yes it is a majority of women voting democratic.
but a 7% spread is hardly a difference between the men and the women.

 

[Toughguy]

DavidHume;

If that were an Obama campaign HQ, there would be more than four people there, and it wouldn’t be in a combination personal office and u-stor-it/garage. I call fake on the level of Ashley Todd.

Ok, I made a mistake, kind of. This photo is true, BUT, it was not an official Obama campaign HQ.

However, keeping in context of the initial reply that I made, which didn’t concern Obama, I stand by what I said about Liberals in general. After all, these people who put up the flag, ARE, in fact, Lib/Dem/ Obama supporters.

Here is the link:

snopes.com/politics/obama/chavez.asp

The first half of this link page, I never heard of, but the bottom half I have and is true.

 

[Toughguy]

I don’t think that’s true among married women. I believe most married women voted Republican in the last election. Among single women, yes, they tend to vote Democrat. Far from being an expert on women, (and what man would dare to say he is) I can’t say why that’s so.

The links I provided, did not specify. It only stated the sex. Not wheather they were married or not. Besides, a majority does not necessarily mean single women. Or men, for that matter.

 

[Toughguy]

yes it is a majority of women voting democratic.
but a 7% spread is hardly a difference between the men and the women.

But it can be a difference between a Lib President or a Patriotic one, and that was my point.

 

[nancit]

If that were an Obama campaign HQ, there would be more than four people there, and it wouldn’t be in a combination personal office and u-stor-it/garage. I call fake on the level of Ashley Todd.

That’s not true at all…I worked on this last election at a Republican HQ’s and it is not much bigger, nor do they have the money to fully stock and most people stroll in and out throughout the day to “help” out…you can go anytime to a political HQ and find a handful or less of volunteers there.

 

[DavidHume]

DavidHume;

Ok, I made a mistake, kind of. This photo is true, BUT, it was not an official Obama campaign HQ.

However, keeping in context of the initial reply that I made, which didn’t concern Obama, I stand by what I said about Liberals in general. After all, these people who put up the flag, ARE, in fact, Lib/Dem/ Obama supporters.

Here is the link:

snopes.com/politics/obama/chavez.asp

The first half of this link page, I never heard of, but the bottom half I have and is true.

Thanks for that, toughguy. I made a snap judgment about the legitimacy of the photo and that was wrong.

I don’t think it’s fair to hold these extremists up as typical Obama supporters, any more than it is fair to hold up people like Ashley Todd or the people shouting hateful things at some political rallies as typical Republicans. I mean, John McCain himself had to talk some lady out of saying “he’s a Muslim” (with the inartful, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man”).

 

[JimG]

If one reads the Social Encyclicals, one cannot help but conclude that the Democrat party stands for absolutely none of the Papal teachings on the subject of social justice. It once did, and that’s why I believed in it then. But it doesn’t now. Anyone interested in social justice should read those encyclicals and consider carefully what the political parties really do; not just how they talk.

Anyone who votes Democratic in the hope of enacting Catholic Social doctrine is sadly mistaken.

 

[Toughguy]

DavidHume;

I don’t think it’s fair to hold these extremists up as typical Obama supporters, any more than it is fair to hold up people like Ashley Todd or the people shouting hateful things at some political rallies as typical Republicans.

“The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.”

timesleader.com/news/breakingnews/Secret_Service_says_Kill_him_allegation_unfounded_.html

I mean, John McCain himself had to talk some lady out of saying “he’s a Muslim” (with the inartful, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man”).

A belief that is not based on fact, is irrational. However, Communism and Liberalism has been linked for a while to. Obama has been linked to Bill Ayers, a known communist.

Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama

my.barackobama.com/page/community/group/MarxistsSocialistsCommunistsforObama

Barack Obama’s massive pre-primary rally in Portland, OR, was aided in no small part by the appearance of an uber-hip band. Their gimmick? They start each performance with the Soviet national anthem.

pajamasmedia.com/blog/communists-for-obama/

“NEW YORK — Communist Party USA leaders meeting here Nov. 15-16 celebrated the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president, and of stronger Democratic majorities in Congress, saying it opened the way to progressive advances for America’s working families.”

pww.org/article/articleview/14039/

newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/06/16/ohio-judge-posters-che-obama-wheres-msm-outrage

It may be more than just a few nuts. Actually, quite a few nuts, lol

 

[DavidHume]

It may be more than just a few nuts. Actually, quite a few nuts, lol

Almost 70 million, I think…

 

[Toughguy]

Almost 70 million, I think…

LOL I think so!

 

[eric51]

I disagree totally with this. It was the charitble work of the Church that for so long took care of the misfortunate. govt assumed this role, wholly unnecessarily and has steadily injected itself as the supreme entity, replacing God and His moral code. The federal govt is now the source of all rights, real or imagined, and relativism is the norm. When the Church central to daily life, familiies produce less societal problems than those whose focus is unguided by Christian principles. imh (and unscientific) o.

The Catholic Church justifiably is renown for its charitable work all around the world. However, as important as this role is, as extensive and longstanding as this work is, it is not up to the job of addressing the inequalities and injustices cited above. One institution, no matter how large and committed, cannot address societal ills.

The federal government is not the source of any human rights. God is. What the federal government can do, is as a national institution channel and direct public resources to combat and hopefully address social ills.

God Bless

Eric