Social Justice groups such as JustFaith, CCHD, IAF

[ljpgoodwin]

I primarily use the encyclicals when discussing social teaching. The libertarians and the socialists both have it wrong as far as a true social doctrine. The libertarians don’t understand the true meaning of freedom, and socialists have no clue about subsidiarity as well as warped understanding of solidarity.

As far as “blogosphere hearsay” have you even read the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry’s report? It is fully sourced, and respectable news organizations have verified the facts. I wouldn’t consider the author of that report as being “very very right.” If you heard him on the Drew Mariani show the other day you would have noticed that he would not ascribe any motives to the CCHD when asked.

Yes I find that libertarians and socialist often have a very different understanding of freedom than consevitives or liberals. However I’m not sure that socialist would have much problem with the notion of subsidiarity. I could see a socialist understanding that issues or problems in the society could be addressed at the lowest or most local level of government.

I just took a look at Bellarmine Veritas Ministry website. This is exactly what I have been talking about. We don’t know who these people (person) are (is). It does not have a list of authors. In Communio we know who the authors are and the publication has been around since the 1970’s. Communio has had world class theologians and intellectuals, mostly conservative, writing in its pages for almost 40 years. Its list of authors in includes popes. John Paul 2 and Benedict 16 have written articles specifically for Communio since its beginning. These are theologians from all over the world writing on issues of our day from around the world. There is a very big credibility difference between Communio and Bellarmine Veritas Ministry’s report. This website has no credibility with me because they don’t identify who they are, where they are from or anything else. For all I know this could be written by some guy who never leaves his doublewide trailer, sits around eating bon bons, smoking unfiltered Pal Mals, watching Will and Grace, while downing a bottle of vodka every day. From looking at the website, how do I know this is not the case?

 

[ljpgoodwin]

:banghead:

:nope:

Maybe if you would stop banging your head against the wall like that, you could think straight. ;0)

I told you that you would not agree with my list. I suspect the only list that I could write that you would agree with would have no names on it.

Can you make a list of good things or people that are from the left?

 

[ljpgoodwin]

Maybe if you would stop banging your head against the wall like that, you could think straight. ;0)

I told you that you would not agree with my list. I suspect the only list that I could write that you would agree with would have no names on it.

Can you make a list of good things or people that are from the left?

P.S. Fultonfish, that wall you are banging your head against is of your own making.

 

[St_Francis]

I suspect you might be someone who thinks everything for the left is bad. So there does not seem like there is much I could say.

However, Social Security, The GI Bill, environmental protection, perhaps health care reform (without a public option), suffrage, civil rights, Gaudium et Spes, Deus Caritas Est, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnston, Roosevelt, Arlo Guthrie, Karl Rahner, Pope Leo XIII, Pope John XXIII, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mother Theresa, Teresa of Ávila, The Declaration of Independence, just to name a few things.

I could also make a list, with equal conviction of great things the conservatives have given us. The sad part is that I could also make a list of bad things both sides have given us.

Social Security is bad. Evironmental protections (within reason) and the GI bill are properly a part of the government. The voting thing… there are problems with that. G&S, DCE–presumably Catholic and therefore neither left nor right. JFK, LBJ, FDR, only good if you already are on the left. Arlo Guthrie, don’t know. Karl Rahner–immanentist? Not good! Popes–all Catholic, shouldn’t be either left or right. Beethoven!!! Mother Theresa–Catholic, not left or right. Teresa of Avila??? Declaration of Independence–prolematical.

The main problem is that both the left and the right are part of the so-called Enlightenment, when people suddenly got the idea that they didn’t really need God, and life would be easier if He were not in the picture.

To me, the right tends to be somewhat closer to Catholic thinking, in terms of social protections and subsidiarity, and the left, well, it is true that they proclaim that they want to help the poor, but they always seem to choose the way to help the poor which will mess things up.

The fact that the ideas of right and left have entered into the Church is a serious problem because it shows that there is a division of thinking within the Church. What I see is that those on the left exhibit less and less Catholicism the further left they go. (A person on the extreme end of the left in the Church is to me a person who calls for women priests and an “end” to prohibitions against homosexual actions.) What can I say about those who are on the “right” in the Church? They tend to be concerned with orthodoxy and the Church’s maintaining a Catholic identity. Some have gone so far as leaving the Church, but they would be more recognizable as Catholic to the popes of old than would those on the left.

 

[ljpgoodwin]

There has always been a left and right in the Church, and there always will be. That is not a bad thing. The reason it is not a bad thing is because it is part of who we are a people. We are social creatures and that is good. What make left and right bad is when each side cannot respect the other side.

One of the hallmarks of the left is changing the status quo, which is countered by the rights wanting to protect the status quo. The right is called conservative because it tends to want to “conserve” things. Often the left is called “progressive” because it wants to shake things up and challenge people to think in new ways. The left will tend to want to do things to distribute wealth and resource, where the right tends to consolidate wealth. The left tends to want to protect the individual and the right tends to want to protect big business. The left tends to want to protect the environment and the right tends to what to open the environment up for the use of natural resources. The left thinks it is protecting life with its views on abortion and stem cell research, (I so disagree with the left on this point) but the right still wants to use the death penalty. The life issues is the one area that both sides are messed up on. The left wants to provide public service so women don’t feel like they have to have an abortion, but the right wants to rightfully do away with abortion but does not want to provide the public services for women to be able to give up the child for adoption.
We need both.

If you notice that things and people I chose to describe the good of the left were almost all reformers or things that help to spread the wealth a bit.

Social Security is a very good thing as it is a way that the country can have a bit of economic padding. It would be in better shape if we would have used it for its intended uses. One of the biggest struggles of the right is to see that not everything that is run by the government is bad. There are some things that are best run by the government such as the military. So we need to be able to balance between public and private. We need both. The GI Bill is what built the middle class in this country after WW2. Environmental protection is what cleaned up our air and water pollution in the 70’s. I lived on the Great Lakes in the 60’s, I remember what they use to look like and how big business fought their responsibility in helping to cut back on what they were dumping into the environment. We have come a long way. Health care reform is something that has to happen. My health insurance premium just went up by $170.00 every 2 months! I am a single health man, for crying out loud.

The civil rights and the right for women to vote…how can you argue against that? You say there are problems with the voting thing, OK, I suspect you are thinking about Florida? I’m talking about the fact that at one time women and black people could not vote at all and now they can. That is a good thing no matter how you look at it. Gaudium et Spes is the left and Lumen Gentium is right. These V2 constitutions were purposefully written in this way. GS addresses the issues that people on the left would find most compelling and LG addresses issue that the right would find compelling. Deus Caritas Est, is probably the most neutral of the things I listed here. However, people who tend to the left will most often relate to it. While people on the right might be less happy with it, but really like Dominus Iesus. Kennedy and Johnston were vanguards of the civil rights movement which the right fought tooth and nail in the 50’s and 60’s. People were killed over the civil rights movement. It’s kind of hard to say that the civil rights movement was not a very good thing.

I should have said Woody and not Arlo Guthrie. Arlo was Woody’s son and also a folk singer Woody was a wonderful 1940 – 1960’s folk singer who fought for the poor working class. He wrote the song “This Land is Your Land”. Leo XIII was the first pope to write about social justice in 1893 with Rerum Novarum which spoke our directly about the working conditions of the poor during the worst part of the Industrial Revolution. He wrote about the right of the worker to unionize and to own property. He also wrote against Socialism, Marxism and unrestrained Capitalism. He was bucking the system. Paul the XXIII called the Second Vatican Council because he wanted to change the way the Church was running.

Mother Theresa left her life as a cloistered nun to start a new religious order. Theresa of Avila reformed the Carmelites along with John of the Cross. These are not people who were interested in protecting the status quo or returning to an older time. They were interested in shaking things up and helping things progress. Don’t get me wrong, I know that “progress” is not always a good thing. Just like staying in the same place or moving backwards in not always a good thing.

The Declaration of Independence is the quintessential child of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. Beethoven was writing music that was almost considered anti-German. He was not well liked by many of the stuffy old Royal Court of his time. He was breaking ground in musical structures, structures that people thought were standard and not to be messed with.

Again, we need both the left and the right. The Church knows this and works with the left were it is right and works with the right where it is right and tries to correct both when needed. We are created social creatures and that is a good thing. It is why and how we can spread agape.

The Church is made up of people on the left and right. Being a-political does not mean “more Catholic”. What it often means is that the person does not know enought about themselves.

 

[Stylite]

There is a very big credibility difference between Communio and Bellarmine Veritas Ministry’s report. This website has no credibility with me because they don’t identify who they are, where they are from or anything else. For all I know this could be written by some guy who never leaves his doublewide trailer, sits around eating bon bons, smoking unfiltered Pal Mals, watching Will and Grace, while downing a bottle of vodka every day. From looking at the website, how do I know this is not the case?

So, does an author’s credentials matter more than the content of what they write? Sure, knowing credentials can be useful in initially judging especially technical articles, but doesn’t relying entirely on credentials amount to a form of intellectual laziness and elitism? The BVM report is more a piece of journalism than something technical in nature. The author makes no argument concerning the principles of social justice but instead merely lists some groups that support abortion and other moral evils and provides ample evidence using primary sources.

Do you have any actual disagreements with the content of the report?

 

[fultonfish]

Social Security is broke.

Medicare is broke.

Medicaid is broke.

The post office is broke.

Government anything is broke.

All the leftist ideas are broke.

Ponzi schemes.

Government schemes just don’t work.

And now they want to take over more of the economy.

:nope:

 

[St_Francis]

There has always been a left and right in the Church, and there always will be. That is not a bad thing. The reason it is not a bad thing is because it is part of who we are a people. We are social creatures and that is good. What make left and right bad is when each side cannot respect the other side.

I wrote a long post refuting several of your points individually, and realized that I was going in the wrong direction.

The main thing is that left and right are political terms which have no place in the Church. This is not to say that the Church never needs reformers like Catherine of Sienna, but that the impulses towards action have a different source.

Our current political structure has as its source the so-called Enlightenment, which has as its foundation the idea that man can do anything, on his own. The idea of God is to be abandoned, and the worst of all is the Catholic Church, which proposes that Christ is the King of all, including those who do not accept Him.

What occurs in the Church is therefore *separate *from a political structure which has completely abandoned God and His Church.

Sure, if you define the left as reformers who want to help the poor and disenfranchised and the right as recalcitrant foot-draggers who only want to protect the profits of greedy businessmen, then yes, you are going to end up thinking as you think.

And if you think of the left as reformers and the right as those mired in a previous time, then you are going to think about this sort of thing vis vis the Church as well.

How can we explain that the self-described champions of the poor and disenfranchised are the ones who are for abortion? How can that contradiction be resolved? There is simply no way that that can be. There is obviously something wrong here. If their desire to help the poor comes from compassion, then where does this desire to permit others to kill their unborn children? If they have no care for the unborn, how can they truly care for the poor?

Our politics today stem from the so-called Enlightenment, a way of thinking based on and centered around man *alone, *with no reference to God much less His Church.

Yes, it is true that many political ideas align with one idea or another of the Church, one can hardly avoid that. However, the *impulse *towards that idea is not of the Church if it does not include the rest of Church teaching.

The tension in life ought not to be between left and right but between good and evil, between following our own will and that of God. The political designations of left and right, with their corollary descriptions from either side are not *real, *there is no good stemming from unfettered change any more than there is from unfettered stasis.

 

[yayi238]

Mother Theresa left her life as a cloistered nun to start a new religious order. Theresa of Avila reformed the Carmelites along with John of the Cross. These are not people who were interested in protecting the status quo or returning to an older time. They were interested in shaking things up and helping things progress. Don’t get me wrong, I know that “progress” is not always a good thing. Just like staying in the same place or moving backwards in not always a good thing.

 

[ljpgoodwin]

So, does an author’s credentials matter more than the content of what they write? Sure, knowing credentials can be useful in initially judging especially technical articles, but doesn’t relying entirely on credentials amount to a form of intellectual laziness and elitism? The BVM report is more a piece of journalism than something technical in nature. The author makes no argument concerning the principles of social justice but instead merely lists some groups that support abortion and other moral evils and provides ample evidence using primary sources.

Do you have any actual disagreements with the content of the report?

Journalism is by definition “technical writing”. Credentials are important. The word credentials and credibility both have “cred” as a root as in creed like we say at Mass. This root means “believe”. Without credibility, I have no reason to believe what the BVM report is saying. Credentials is the difference between journalism and sharing of one’s opinion.
When we are writing in this kind of forum, where people are saying who is and who is not Catholic or what is and what is not Catholic, it’s helpful to be able to back up one’s argument with some credible sources. That’s not laziness. On the contrary, it shows that someone has been doing their homework.

It’s not a matter of just repeating back what someone else has said. That would be lazy. It’s about saying what you believe and showing where you get your ideas from. It’s not “elitism” because anyone can read a peer-reviewed journal such as Communio. Anyone can take the time to learn from credible sources. Why read BVM report if you can read something that has real credibility like Communio? If I am going to read, I’d rather read something that I can rest assured is academically sound.

 

[yayi238]

Great, thanks to St Theresa of Avila, now I know that wanting to examine CCHD and not allow it to maintain its status quo is a good thing. Some reformers just hope to keep things on track and not shift focus.

 

[jewells17]

Great, thanks to St Theresa of Avila, now I know that wanting to examine CCHD and not allow it to maintain its status quo is a good thing. Some reformers just hope to keep things on track and not shift focus.

Right on! And Glenn Beck is challenging the staus quo too and our church loves it! 912 groups are starting up everywhere…find one and join. Don’t listen to anyone elses opinion…find out for youself. These people are wonderful folks…check it out.

 

[Tigg]

I cannot take credit for this link - it was PM’d to me by a CAF poster who previously commented on this thread and is researching these groups of progressive/socialists. There must be a huge movement in this country; actually, it looks global to me, to politically re-structure everything according to their ideology. It would of course, be social engineering of sorts. Still checking it out.

**Important for anyone seriously considering JustFaith to note that “Bread for the World” whom they are partnered with, is on this list. ** Of course we would expect to find NARAL Pro-Choice on it as well, along with MoveOn.Org and National Center for Lesbian Rights.

ALL POLITICS, FOLKS, ALL POLITICS. The term “social justice” has been officially kidnapped.
commondreams.org/community.htm

 

[ljpgoodwin]

Great, thanks to St Theresa of Avila, now I know that wanting to examine CCHD and not allow it to maintain its status quo is a good thing. Some reformers just hope to keep things on track and not shift focus.

I agree with you 100% here. The idea is almost always to make things work better. I have never said that we shouldn’t reform things where they need to be reformed. However, many of the posts here were suggesting to do away with CCHD. Again I would like to point out that the bad actor this case is ACORN and some other groups…not CCHD. Let’s take actions against the real problem. Not the group that has been doing great work in the name of Jesus for 40 years.

 

[ljpgoodwin]

Social Security is broke.

Medicare is broke.

Medicaid is broke.

The post office is broke.

Government anything is broke.

All the leftist ideas are broke.

Ponzi schemes.

Government schemes just don’t work.

And now they want to take over more of the economy.

:nope:

Hey Fultonfish. This isn’t real helpful. Instead of just saying “Social Security, broke”, tell me what you mean by broke and where you see the implications of this in our lives as Catholics and back that up with some kind of Vatican document.Perhaps “Economic Justice for All” might be a good place to start. It has Magisterial authority.

One idea in that I think is helpful when talking about these issues is the idea that “a budget is a moral document”. It is a moral document because it has implications on how people live.

If you don’t tell me what you are thinking, it’s kinda hard to have a conversation. I’m more than happy to have a conversation or not if you don’t want. But give me some full thoughts

 

[ljpgoodwin]

I wrote a long post refuting several of your points individually, and realized that I was going in the wrong direction.

The main thing is that left and right are political terms which have no place in the Church. This is not to say that the Church never needs reformers like Catherine of Sienna, but that the impulses towards action have a different source.

Our current political structure has as its source the so-called Enlightenment, which has as its foundation the idea that man can do anything, on his own. The idea of God is to be abandoned, and the worst of all is the Catholic Church, which proposes that Christ is the King of all, including those who do not accept Him.

What occurs in the Church is therefore *separate *from a political structure which has completely abandoned God and His Church.

Sure, if you define the left as reformers who want to help the poor and disenfranchised and the right as recalcitrant foot-draggers who only want to protect the profits of greedy businessmen, then yes, you are going to end up thinking as you think.

And if you think of the left as reformers and the right as those mired in a previous time, then you are going to think about this sort of thing vis vis the Church as well.

How can we explain that the self-described champions of the poor and disenfranchised are the ones who are for abortion? How can that contradiction be resolved? There is simply no way that that can be. There is obviously something wrong here. If their desire to help the poor comes from compassion, then where does this desire to permit others to kill their unborn children? If they have no care for the unborn, how can they truly care for the poor?

Our politics today stem from the so-called Enlightenment, a way of thinking based on and centered around man *alone, *with no reference to God much less His Church.

Yes, it is true that many political ideas align with one idea or another of the Church, one can hardly avoid that. However, the *impulse *towards that idea is not of the Church if it does not include the rest of Church teaching.

The tension in life ought not to be between left and right but between good and evil, between following our own will and that of God. The political designations of left and right, with their corollary descriptions from either side are not *real, *there is no good stemming from unfettered change any more than there is from unfettered stasis.

I think that the Church has a very important role to play in the political life of our world. Abortion is just one example. In Gaudium et Spes we hear that we are called to be in the world and not of it and that it is right and just to participate as good citizens in our communities. It goes so far as to say that lay folks have a special calling to participate in world, national and local politics. We should not just leave politics up to other people. That’s how we ended up with abortion and the death penalty being legal. It is real clear in the document.

Then in Lumen Gentium we see the structure of our society according to the Catholic Church. Religious, (sisters, brothers, priests, deacons, bishops…) have the responsibility of teaching the lay folks the love of God and about faith and morals so that the lay folks can then go out and change the face of the earth.

If you are homeschooling your kids, it seems to me that you might what to have some familiarity with the constitutions of the Church. I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you or anything like that. But the constitutions of the Church are real important. They are full of wonderful theology.

These two documents when read together are a great example of how the Church understands the nature of the left and the right needing each other.

For the record, when I said that left is interested in “progress” or changing the status quo and that the right is interested in stability, I didn’t mean that the right is too slow or stupid and that the right does not see the value of change. That is not true. My point is that we need to always look to see if there are more clearer ways of teaching about Jesus Christ. But we need the right to help us remember and stay focused on from where we have all come and where we are going. We need both.

The left and the right from a Catholic perspective are not opposed to each other, they complement each other. They both have their relative strengths and relative weaknesses. We need to listen to each other and acknowledge where the folks on the other side are right and likewise for the folks on the other side, so to speak.

 

[St_Francis]

I think that the Church has a very important role to play in the political life of our world. Abortion is just one example. In Gaudium et Spes we hear that we are called to be in the world and not of it and that it is right and just to participate as good citizens in our communities. It goes so far as to say that lay folks have a special calling to participate in world, national and local politics. We should not just leave politics up to other people. That’s how we ended up with abortion and the death penalty being legal. It is real clear in the document.

Then in Lumen Gentium we see the structure of our society according to the Catholic Church. Religious, (sisters, brothers, priests, deacons, bishops…) have the responsibility of teaching the lay folks the love of God and about faith and morals so that the lay folks can then go out and change the face of the earth.

…

These two documents when read together are a great example of how the Church understands the nature of the left and the right needing each other.

For the record, when I said that left is interested in “progress” or changing the status quo and that the right is interested in stability, I didn’t mean that the right is too slow or stupid and that the right does not see the value of change. That is not true. My point is that we need to always look to see if there are more clearer ways of teaching about Jesus Christ. But we need the right to help us remember and stay focused on from where we have all come and where we are going. We need both.

The left and the right from a Catholic perspective are not opposed to each other, they complement each other. They both have their relative strengths and relative weaknesses. We need to listen to each other and acknowledge where the folks on the other side are right and likewise for the folks on the other side, so to speak.

Well, I will have to read these documents to see what you are saying, because my reading of things so far is what I said before. From what I have learned so far, it seems that movement in the Church is either towards God or away from God, not to the left or to the right. Sure, both sides have some good ideas, but both sides also are coming from a point which is antagonistic to God.

It’ll probably take a bit of time for me to read those encyclicals, so I may not have anything intelligent to say for a while

If you are homeschooling your kids, it seems to me that you might what to have some familiarity with the constitutions of the Church. I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you or anything like that. But the constitutions of the Church are real important. They are full of wonderful theology.

Well, I am a revert… baptized but not raised Catholic, I returned to the Church when my oldest were young, and have been learning ever since. I have read several encyclicals over the years and now find myself reading more and more of them more studiously. You may think that I have made slow progress, but my life is way too full even without this type of studying!

 

[St_Francis]

Journalism is by definition “technical writing”. Credentials are important. The word credentials and credibility both have “cred” as a root as in creed like we say at Mass. This root means “believe”. Without credibility, I have no reason to believe what the BVM report is saying. Credentials is the difference between journalism and sharing of one’s opinion.
When we are writing in this kind of forum, where people are saying who is and who is not Catholic or what is and what is not Catholic, it’s helpful to be able to back up one’s argument with some credible sources. That’s not laziness. On the contrary, it shows that someone has been doing their homework.

It’s not a matter of just repeating back what someone else has said. That would be lazy. It’s about saying what you believe and showing where you get your ideas from. It’s not “elitism” because anyone can read a peer-reviewed journal such as Communio. Anyone can take the time to learn from credible sources. Why read BVM report if you can read something that has real credibility like Communio? If I am going to read, I’d rather read something that I can rest assured is academically sound.

I think that there is a difference between scholarly writing where the credentials matter, and journalism where they do not matter so much. The information given in this particular report can be easily verified, which would establish the truth or lack thereof of the writer/analyst.

 

[fultonfish]

I agree with you 100% here. The idea is almost always to make things work better. I have never said that we shouldn’t reform things where they need to be reformed. However, many of the posts here were suggesting to do away with CCHD. Again I would like to point out that the bad actor this case is ACORN and some other groups…not CCHD. Let’s take actions against the real problem. Not the group that has been doing great work in the name of Jesus for 40 years.

In the United States the chief opponent to reform and improvement is the Federal government.

For example, the Feds have restricted the use of interstate competition for getting cheaper and better and more improved medical insurance policies. Such as MSA/HSA types of policies. the Feds have prevented people from taking full deductions of medical expenses and the Feds have prevented people from taking tax deductions for gifted medical expenses. Among other things.

 

[yayi238]

I think that the Church has a very important role to play in the political life of our world. Abortion is just one example. In Gaudium et Spes we hear that we are called to be in the world and not of it and that it is right and just to participate as good citizens in our communities. It goes so far as to say that lay folks have a special calling to participate in world, national and local politics. We should not just leave politics up to other people. That’s how we ended up with abortion and the death penalty being legal. It is real clear in the document.

Then in Lumen Gentium we see the structure of our society according to the Catholic Church. Religious, (sisters, brothers, priests, deacons, bishops…) have the responsibility of teaching the lay folks the love of God and about faith and morals so that the lay folks can then go out and change the face of the earth.

If you are homeschooling your kids, it seems to me that you might what to have some familiarity with the constitutions of the Church. I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you or anything like that. But the constitutions of the Church are real important. They are full of wonderful theology.

These two documents when read together are a great example of how the Church understands the nature of the left and the right needing each other.

For the record, when I said that left is interested in “progress” or changing the status quo and that the right is interested in stability, I didn’t mean that the right is too slow or stupid and that the right does not see the value of change. That is not true. My point is that we need to always look to see if there are more clearer ways of teaching about Jesus Christ. But we need the right to help us remember and stay focused on from where we have all come and where we are going. We need both.

The left and the right from a Catholic perspective are not opposed to each other, they complement each other. They both have their relative strengths and relative weaknesses. We need to listen to each other and acknowledge where the folks on the other side are right and likewise for the folks on the other side, so to speak.