Social justice, disparities and live of the poor

[littlenothing]

Help me out. When I hear those buzzwords I cringe. Let me give some examples, because I am better at that than brute logic.

Example 1. In my daughters highschool religion book, the question was to define some tenets of the mission of Jesus. The answer? Work for social justice. My problem with that: I thought it was the salvation of souls. Work for social justice? What is the book even trying to say? He wax some kind of activist?

Example 2. In the medieval field, we are inundated with talk about disparities. The examples we are given are always the poor (who generally have medicaid), racial minorities (who aren’t given less care because of their race) and the underserved (not sure that means the same thing to everyone in every place). My problem? The most underserved people I see are those with privathe insurance and decent jobs who can’t afford all the copays and time off work.

Example 3. A Catholic coworker, upon the election of Papa Francis, said she’s really impressed with this pope because he loves the poor. My problem with that is thinking, “what you think papa Ben didn’t?”

No, I’m not a Papa Francis detractor. I don’t hate the poor or folks on medicaid. I just don’t understand the seeming love of the poor simply because if their apparent financial status or if everyone has even thought all these terms through! My biggest issue is the OSV textbook seeming to misstate the mission of Jesus.

I am not trying to be obtuse or argumentative, really. I just want to know how to discern the truth from some kind of popular tripe. Thanks, guys.

 

[littlenothing]

Please forgive the numerous typos. My smart phone is to blame

 

[godisgood77]

Our mission is to know God, to love God and to serve God. Jesus taught to do to him through the least of our brethren… hence social justice. They ain’t buzzwords and it ain’t tripe…The good news is that there are tremendous and inexcusable disparities in the world so we will never run out of people to help.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Social justice means different things to different people.

The Catholic idea is quite different from what the secular left in America think when you get down to the specifics.

 

[Starrsmother]

Help me out. When I hear those buzzwords I cringe. Let me give some examples, because I am better at that than brute logic.

Example 1. In my daughters highschool religion book, the question was to define some tenets of the mission of Jesus. The answer? Work for social justice. My problem with that: I thought it was the salvation of souls. Work for social justice? What is the book even trying to say? He wax some kind of activist?

Example 2. In the medieval field, we are inundated with talk about disparities. The examples we are given are always the poor (who generally have medicaid), racial minorities (who aren’t given less care because of their race) and the underserved (not sure that means the same thing to everyone in every place). My problem? The most underserved people I see are those with privathe insurance and decent jobs who can’t afford all the copays and time off work.

Example 3. A Catholic coworker, upon the election of Papa Francis, said she’s really impressed with this pope because he loves the poor. My problem with that is thinking, “what you think papa Ben didn’t?”

No, I’m not a Papa Francis detractor. I don’t hate the poor or folks on medicaid. I just don’t understand the seeming love of the poor simply because if their apparent financial status or if everyone has even thought all these terms through! My biggest issue is the OSV textbook seeming to misstate the mission of Jesus.

I am not trying to be obtuse or argumentative, really. I just want to know how to discern the truth from some kind of popular tripe. Thanks, guys.

What we all forget to remember as American Catholics is that the very poorest person in the States is about 100 times better off than the poor in some countries like Somalia, for instance. I’m with you–if someone told me that Jesus came to promote “social justice”, I’d probably tell them to can the cr*p and quit running a bunch of PC semantics in my face. I have little tolerance for it either. What I HOPE Pope Francis means when he speaks of the poor is the poor of the world as a whole–the refugees from Syria, the people in North Korean prison camps, people in many 3rd world countries. The poor in the USA is a highly over rated thing. Sadly, social justice does play at least a part, however, in solving problems in some of these areas–such as Syria for instance.

 

[Starrsmother]

I don’t mean to get on my high horse here, but your post was just so spot on, that I wanted to add 1 more thing. Our Catholic religious programs for our kids has never been what I would call “impressive”–not like, for instance in the LDS churches where they go on missions etc. When my oldest girl was preparing for Confirmation back in the 80’s, we belonged to a very nice parish in Clear Lake, Tx which is a suburb near the Johnson Space Center in the Houston area. As you’d expect, most of my co-parishoners were pretty white collar, upper middle class folks–nice homes, good jobs etc. SO, my girl came home from CCE with a paper announcing that as preparation for Confirmation, all of the kids had to do a certain number of hours of public service. So far, so good, right?

However, when I called to see what they had in mind, I was informed that I didn’t need to worry–that they would be accepting sign ups for the kids to babysit the little kids during Sunday Masses in the parish hall–and that would suffice. I am a nurse practitioner–nothing fancy–and back then I was an L&D nurse. The problem for me was that my daughter had 4 younger siblings and we stretched pennies to live in Clear Lake for the schools, environment etc. Babysitting astronaut’s kids during Mass was not going to teach my daughter a THING!!

So, I put on my thinking cap, and located a Catholic ran place in the 6th Ward in Houston–which in Houston is just as close as you can get to the depths of Hades. It was called “Casa d’Esperanza” aka “House of Hope”. It was just a run down, beat up old house that some nuns got together and ran and they took in little kids whose parent(s) was thrown in jail, died, were beat up and hospitalized due to abuse, forgot to come home after a weekend out–or pretty much anything that could happen in the normal day to day life in the 6th Ward… They also took kids in when a mom for instance, was found drugged out or drunk laying in a street–things like that. Temporary placements were done for a period of weeks or months on an emergency basis. I’ll never forget when I called my parish and asked if I could let my girl work out her hours there. The shocked secretary–realizing where she would be working squealed “OMG!! You want her to go THERE!!!” Well, to make a long story short, I won and my daughter spent every Saturday of her life for several months at the “Casa”. I actually went with her because the neighborhood is so terrible that I didn’t consider her street smart enough to be there alone. Men walk the streets there with liquor bags and guns. Prostitutes are everywhere. We rocked and held babies, played with toddlers, made lunches out of whatever food we cold scrounge. We dried eyes, we comforted terrified little people who were devastated to be abruptly removed from whatever sorry environment had been there home–for always the most disturbing of reasons–things you hear of but don’t expect to ever see yourself. Derelicts would stumble to the front door and the sisters fed them–with whatever they had–and we helped every Saturday.

Once, I let her accompany one of the nuns alone to Ben Taub Hospital (in Houston we call it “The Tub”) to pick up a little set of black twin babies–no other family–and the mom had just died of an OD as I remember. Let me tell you, my daughter was reduced to tears EVERY single weekend over the misery and squallor she had to deal with first hand. To say she “got her hands dirty” is an understatment. When we’d get home, our first order of business was always to hit the shower and wash all the grime, urine etc off–delousing if you will! Anyway, I hoped she’d learned something–but you never are really sure.

So, fast forward to a couple of years ago. I was home in Houston visiting and my daughter and teenage grand daughter and I went school shopping. My grand daughter wanted some high ticket item and her mom told her no–to which my grand daughter flounced around for a bit after and finally sniped “I guess we must be TOO POOR to afford good stuff!” My daughter stopped dead still, turned slowly, looked her daughter straight in the eye and said “Poor? You think WE’RE too poor! Have I got a place for you to spend a little time this year learning what poor really is, Missy.” And yup my daughter tells me that Casa d’Esperanza is still there just as it was! LOL!

 

[littlenothing]

Our mission is to know God, to love God and to serve God. Jesus taught to do to him through the least of our brethren… hence social justice. They ain’t buzzwords and it ain’t tripe…The good news is that there are tremendous and inexcusable disparities in the world so we will never run out of people to help.

Are you misunderstanding me on purpose? Our mission IS to know, love and serve God. That’s right! But when kids (and adults, for that matter) are told our mission is “social justice”, what exactly does that mean? How much is in the CCC about it by way of explanation, for goodness sake. Is that one phrase answer really adequate? Since what most people hear on TV and around about isn’t what the Church teaches, I think leaving an answer at “social justice” is woefully misleading. In fact, my daughter, who rarely asks for homework assistance, asked me what this Mission of Jesus was. I was befuddled. I said, “Well, what do you think?” She replied, “To lead us to heaven, right?” Well, it was wrong. According to her text, it was “to work for social justice”. I then asked her what the book might have meant by that. She said, “I have no idea. Jesus IS always just, but he is always merciful. I don’t know.”

OK, I guess you can say I’m a poor parent for not teaching her what “social justice” means. But before you do, consider that I am on CAF asking YOU GUYS what it means. I know why Jesus came into the world-to die for our sins! That SHOULD have been the answer!

And as for the “least of our brethren”? Who do you believe them to be? I believe them to be unborn babies, children who are sold into depraved slavery, our own neglected grandparents, a depressed and mean neighbor…leaving it at just some nebulous “the poor”, especially in wealthy lands, is misleading and wrongheaded (in my estimation-again, this is why I’m on CAF).

Sure there are disparities. But what is a “disparity”? Just because some study has been done, or some grievance has been issued, or somebody somewhere felt that someone needed something that his neighbor has but he doesn’t, that doesn’t seem to create for me a duty. I have a car that runs. I know several people who don’t. Is that a disparity? I guess it is, but how much does it matter, and what should I do about it? I MUST have a car that works (don’t want to go into my whole life story, but I am busy, and I have to be to SERVE those whom I serve). Some can walk, and that’s OK!

See, it seems these “buzz words” lose whatever their original meaning was. Then what does the meaning become? THAT’s my issue.

Sorry for the YELLING. I just don’t konw how to do italics, which was my preference.

 

[littlenothing]

Social justice means different things to different people.

The Catholic idea is quite different from what the secular left in America think when you get down to the specifics.

You are SO close to the answer I needed. Something very concise and specific. I’d like the CCC answer “for dummies”, I guess.

 

[littlenothing]

What we all forget to remember as American Catholics is that the very poorest person in the States is about 100 times better off than the poor in some countries like Somalia, for instance. Sadly, social justice does play at least a part, however, in solving problems in some of these areas–such as Syria for instance.

Ah, thank you. I do actually think we have some kind of duty to those who are so lacking, due to their governments being in a war torn region and such. But what can we do? I sometimes feel like the real poor we need to help, like those you mention, are so far away, so controlled by whatever shady groups might purport to help them, that all we’d be doing is throwing money at not for profits that only give those people a bit of rice and, of course, birth control pills. What on earth can we do about Syria? About the poor (I mean like “you poor thing”) Christians there who are scared and need to get out? And our government wants to guilt us into helping people get free cell phones here? It’s like the very concept of any real social justice has been stymied and then perverted into something it doesn’t mean at all! It’s frustrating.

 

[littlenothing]

Babysitting astronaut’s kids during Mass was not going to teach my daughter a THING!!

So, I put on my thinking cap, and located a Catholic ran place in the 6th Ward in Houston–which in Houston is just as close as you can get to the depths of Hades.

“Poor? You think WE’RE too poor! Have I got a place for you to spend a little time this year learning what poor really is, Missy.” And yup my daughter tells me that Casa d’Esperanza is still there just as it was! LOL!

What a great way to do REAL community service! I have always hated those requirements, because they are usually of the babysitting astronaut’s kids type service. Really? When I was in highschool, I am ashamed to admit, one of my service activities was cutting the round plastic rings that holds 6 packs so that animals couldn’t get stuck in the rings. OK, it’s not a bad thing to do by any means, but why did they even let me do that, rather than suggesting that I help PEOPLE?

I think we could ALL use some Casa d’Esperanza time. I wish there was one near me. Thank you for your beautiful story. Those are truly THE POOR.

 

[J_Peterson]

What we all forget to remember as American Catholics is that the very poorest person in the States is about 100 times better off than the poor in some countries like Somalia, for instance. I’m with you–if someone told me that Jesus came to promote “social justice”, I’d probably tell them to can the cr*p and quit running a bunch of PC semantics in my face. I have little tolerance for it either. What I HOPE Pope Francis means when he speaks of the poor is the poor of the world as a whole–the refugees from Syria, the people in North Korean prison camps, people in many 3rd world countries. The poor in the USA is a highly over rated thing. Sadly, social justice does play at least a part, however, in solving problems in some of these areas–such as Syria for instance.

As far as the statistics go you are right. But, Catholic social justice is about the individual. There are plenty of people in America that are beyond poor. Many have mental health and substance abuse issues but they are the poor of the poor because many don’t even get the average person’ sympathy. Social Justice begins with your family and extends out from there. I’d suggest visiting your local shelter to get a look at how easy the American poor have it.

 

[littlenothing]

Read her long post. She has!

 

[Hypnotoad]

Help me out. When I hear those buzzwords I cringe. Let me give some examples, because I am better at that than brute logic.

Example 1. In my daughters highschool religion book, the question was to define some tenets of the mission of Jesus. The answer? Work for social justice. My problem with that: I thought it was the salvation of souls. Work for social justice? What is the book even trying to say? He wax some kind of activist?

Example 2. In the medieval field, we are inundated with talk about disparities. The examples we are given are always the poor (who generally have medicaid), racial minorities (who aren’t given less care because of their race) and the underserved (not sure that means the same thing to everyone in every place). My problem? The most underserved people I see are those with privathe insurance and decent jobs who can’t afford all the copays and time off work.

Example 3. A Catholic coworker, upon the election of Papa Francis, said she’s really impressed with this pope because he loves the poor. My problem with that is thinking, “what you think papa Ben didn’t?”

No, I’m not a Papa Francis detractor. I don’t hate the poor or folks on medicaid. I just don’t understand the seeming love of the poor simply because if their apparent financial status or if everyone has even thought all these terms through! My biggest issue is the OSV textbook seeming to misstate the mission of Jesus.

I am not trying to be obtuse or argumentative, really. I just want to know how to discern the truth from some kind of popular tripe. Thanks, guys.

1. Is the text book a secular school’s text book?
2. Yes welcome to the real world.
3. This bugs me a lot too, but there really isn’t anything you can do about it. There are a lot of people who have this misconception that cloistered religious help less than those who are seen in public places all the time. Most of them would probably also think the hidden years of Christ’s life were pointless years in the Divine plan of redemption for mankind.

 

[J_Peterson]

Read her long post. She has!

Haha, I just read it. Posted during break before and didn’t see it at first.

I still stand by the spirit of my post. There are truly poor in most areas of the country that need help, compasion, and prayer. The fact that there are people that are more poor than the ones in your area doen’t mean that you don’t have a responsibility to help those closest to you, regardless how hopeless the situation seems.

 

[Starrsmother]

As far as the statistics go you are right. But, Catholic social justice is about the individual. There are plenty of people in America that are beyond poor. Many have mental health and substance abuse issues but they are the poor of the poor because many don’t even get the average person’ sympathy. Social Justice begins with your family and extends out from there. I’d suggest visiting your local shelter to get a look at how easy the American poor have it.

I totally understand your point–but I hate it when even the Catholic church feeds into popular buzz words like “social justice”. The lady who spoke of spending her time cutting plastic rings off 6 packs carriers got my point. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with being concerned about the environment and animals. I just think that Catholics—especially when we teach the faith to our children who are the next generation of Catholics—should look a little deeper than just “causes” that are supported by Hollywood, etc and are currently popular. After all, the point is not for us or our kids to feel good, it’s to help those who need us. Jesus never spoke one word about a dog shelter—but he did seem to have a “thing” for lepers. A homeless shelter is pretty much the same thing as what I put my daughter to helping—I just picked the very worst one I could find to hopefully teach her the difference between life as she knew it in a cushy Houston suburb and life as it was and is for some folks. I didn’t want her to live the life of the people at “Casa”—but I did want her to know on every level that her life style was a pretty darn blessed one comparatively. I wanted her to learn the difference between what is a “trouble” and what is truly a “problem” and I think she got my message. Just sayin…

 

[J_Peterson]

I totally understand your point–but I hate it when even the Catholic church feeds into popular buzz words like “social justice”. The lady who spoke of spending her time cutting plastic rings off 6 packs carriers got my point. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with being concerned about the environment and animals. I just think that Catholics—especially when we teach the faith to our children who are the next generation of Catholics—should look a little deeper than just “causes” that are supported by Hollywood, etc and are currently popular. After all, the point is not for us or our kids to feel good, it’s to help those who need us. Jesus never spoke one word about a dog shelter—but he did seem to have a “thing” for lepers. A homeless shelter is pretty much the same thing as what I put my daughter to helping—I just picked the very worst one I could find to hopefully teach her the difference between life as she knew it in a cushy Houston suburb and life as it was and is for some folks. I didn’t want her to live the life of the people at “Casa”—but I did want her to know on every level that her life style was a pretty darn blessed one comparatively. I wanted her to learn the difference between what is a “trouble” and what is truly a “problem” and I think she got my message. Just sayin…

I appologize for the knee jerk reaction. I think I agree with you for the most part. While I think that thingsw like animal rights has it’s place, I get irritated when people make like spading cats is a priority while there are people like the ones your daughter helped living in utter destitution. We definitly need perspecitve.