When the Church is accused of liberal leanings

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portarica said:
One of the problems with your conclusion about free markets is that they are not free. There are not only economic burdens to entry in many markets, there are also many codified and uncodified restrictions and traditions that take away the freedom to participate freely in the markets.

And stealing from the rich in the form of taxes was acknowledged by Jesus as a reasonable action of governments.

In the US it is ironic that many of those who have the most resistance to taxation for social justice live in the states that enjoy the highest rates of transfer of federal taxes from other states. taxfoundation.org/files/fedspend_per_taxesbystate-20071009.swf

Peace

Peace
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And what kinda burdens do you think there will be if our government becomes socialized. 100 times worse. The government should only have a hand in what is absolutely necessary - no less no more.

Where does Jesus tell us to steal from the rich and give to the poor? I don’t think that is anywhere in the Bible. Actually I am certain that is not in the Bible.
 
srferdave said:
And what kinda burdens do you think there will be if our government becomes socialized. 100 times worse. The government should only have a hand in what is absolutely necessary - no less no more.

Where does Jesus tell us to steal from the rich and give to the poor? I don’t think that is anywhere in the Bible. Actually I am certain that is not in the Bible.
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I think that’s one of the crucial problems today of many Catholics. They view Jesus as a “Robin Hood” type revolutionary.

(for the record, I love reading about the Robin Hood legends!)
 
srferdave said:
And what kinda burdens do you think there will be if our government becomes socialized. 100 times worse. The government should only have a hand in what is absolutely necessary - no less no more.

Where does Jesus tell us to steal from the rich and give to the poor? I don’t think that is anywhere in the Bible. Actually I am certain that is not in the Bible.
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Jesus said taxes were OK , you implied that taxes are stealing from the rich since that is the transfer mechanism, so if taxes are OK and taxes = stealing from the rich, then stealing from the rich in the form of taxes is OK by the Saviour.

Peace
 
portarica said:
Jesus said taxes were OK , you implied that taxes are stealing from the rich since that is the transfer mechanism, so if taxes are OK and taxes = stealing from the rich, then stealing from the rich in the form of taxes is OK by the Saviour.

Peace
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I don’t speak for the guy you quoted, but I’m fairly certian he didn’t mean straight taxation as stealing from the rich.
 
Stealing from the rich would be imposing unnecessary and unneeded taxes onto people who truly work to earn their living. I live in one of the wealthiest suburbs in my state and you can bet that while many of these people are extremely wealthy, they do support charitable contributions. However, it’s when you tax just because someone makes 200K or more a year to help someone who is low-income where it becomes questionable. AND in doing so, you make associations with liberal groups which espouse views which are contrary to the Church.
 
portarica said:
Jesus said taxes were OK , you implied that taxes are stealing from the rich since that is the transfer mechanism, so if taxes are OK and taxes = stealing from the rich, then stealing from the rich in the form of taxes is OK by the Saviour.

Peace
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Yes taxes are “OK”. Jesus said render unto Ceasar what is Ceasars and to God what is Gods. And like I said the government needs to collect some taxes. But you can still have a capitalistic society with taxes. The problem is when the government starts collecting taxes for things that can be completed by the free market. The problem is also that our government thinks that they should take from the rich and redistribute it to the poor. Instead of taking a FAIR tax from all people. Jesus never said stealing from the rich was OK. I still am waiting to where he said that?
 
St_Francis said:
I think that the Church teaches Church teachings, and they are *completely unrelated *to our politics, which are based on materialitic, anti-Catholic, “Enlightenment” thinking. It is not that the Church leans left or right–the Church is instead vertical and has nothing to do with the horizontal.

As it happens, each side of our political spectrum offers a range of political ideas, some of which coincidentally match up with what the Church teaches, but only coincidentally, not because anyone out there has done a serious study of Church teaching and based a proposal on that teaching.

Any linkages we see now are after the fact, as far as I have seen. People push an agenda, and then when the Catholics speak up, since they are a big voting group, a “Catholic veneer” is put over it, sometimes as clumsily as Pelosi’s supposed justification for her stance on abortion, other times in a more nuanced way.
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Nicely put. I shudder a bit when I hear about the Catholic Church being “liberal” or “conservative.” It just IS. It is what it is.
 
Captain_America said:
Nicely put. I shudder a bit when I hear about the Catholic Church being “liberal” or “conservative.” It just IS. It is what it is.
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I agree. I think we need to start concerning ourselves with making sure our vote is moving to the most moral good. We need to start putting issues such as abortion as top priority. When it comes the moral issues Catholics cannot debate. We need to start voting like Catholics.
 
Yes everyone I am aware that the labels don’t exactly accomplish anything. But the labels come into play when people criticize the church of engaging, associating with, and doing activities which are contrary to teaching, or in other words unorthodox. In this case, that would be “liberal.”
 
Rascalking said:
Friedman. Your --you’re-- spelling the name wrong.

Well, like I said in my OP, I think, for the most part, people who believe left-leaning money ideas are ignorant of there --their-- outcome and effect on people. A free market helps many, many people.
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Irony…
 
tomarin said:
I’ve heard this before and in some sense it’s true but I also think it’s overstated sometimes. You don’t think the church is a fundamentally conservative institution? That is, it’s pledged to defend the “enduring moral order” of society?
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Ahhh, if you are using conservative in its basic meaning of wanting things to stay the same, the Church wants things to stay the same only insofar as things are in moral alignment. When society is out of whack, morally speaking, then the Church is all for change.

However, insofar as in the US social conservatives want to conserve what tattered shreds of morality are left in our nation, and possibly even return to an earlier circumstance (which would be reactionary rather than merely conservative), yes, the Church would be more in line with those conservatives than with, say, progressives.
 
spunjalebi said:
Because the Church espouses viewpoints regarding economic and social justice?

I read on a conservative blog about how a commentator was reading CARITAS IN VERITATE and found much of what the Pope had to say was in line with Obama’s political views, other than abortion. Then we had Glen Beck telling people to leave their churches if our priests talked about economic justice.

Isn’t there a difference between addressing the root causes of economic and social injustice by finding the roots which are often tied with selfishness, mistreating other people, and supporting immoral social structures, versus supporting liberal political and social views?

Or, would it be more wise for the Church to remove itself from economic and social issues and focus simply on charities? How can we as the Church, avoid the association with such organizations which water down teachings in order to further their causes? How do we as a church, avoid liberal leanings or views while promoting justice?

Couldn’t it be argued that the idea of “justice” is liberal?
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I think that current US liberalism is based on the idea that if we change the structure, everyone will behave the way we want them to. If we have wealth redistribution, then everyone will be happy and behave well.

To me, the Church teaches that what needs to change is individual hearts and minds. While the government and other social institutions should of course encourage and support that metanoia, they should not try to replace the need for it.

Our first thoughts in these areas should always be about increasing holiness. There are various sayings which say that when we are considering a law, we should consider its effect on [some weak entity, the poor, the children, the environment]. In reality, we should first consider its effect on holiness, which is the most important thing. *Just because *a law is beneficial to the poor does not mean it is a morally good law: if someone proposed a law that the poor or their surrogates should be granted licenses to become robbers of the wealthy, that would not be a good law, even tho it would benefit the poor.

So that is the big difference between liberalism and Church teaching.
 
srferdave said:
And what kinda burdens do you think there will be if our government becomes socialized. 100 times worse. The government should only have a hand in what is absolutely necessary - no less no more.

Where does Jesus tell us to steal from the rich and give to the poor? I don’t think that is anywhere in the Bible. Actually I am certain that is not in the Bible.
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If you just ignore ridiculous liberal, socialist posters, they may not respond again. It is hopeless to point out the obvious to some. I’m trying to be kind, but you will never convince this particular poster that stealing from the rich and giving to the poor isn’t sanctioned by God Almighty in order that we can be charitable. Using the bible to support socialism…weirds me out.
 
St_Francis said:
Oh, dear, I really didn’t mean that to come out the way it did :o
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Ok cool. Sorry if I was out of line as well.

See Spunjalebi? While it’s true boys will be boys (I assume gender-sorry if your a girl! :o) we can also be gentlemen!
 
Rascalking said:
Ok cool. Sorry if I was out of line as well.

See Spunjalebi? While it’s true boys will be boys (I assume gender-sorry if your a girl! :o) we can also be gentlemen!
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I’m going to attribute that to lack of sustenance. Lol.
 
Gal here, but that means I appreciate your gentlemanliness even more 🙂
 
spunjalebi said:
Because the Church espouses viewpoints regarding economic and social justice?

I read on a conservative blog about how a commentator was reading CARITAS IN VERITATE and found much of what the Pope had to say was in line with Obama’s political views, other than abortion. Then we had Glen Beck telling people to leave their churches if our priests talked about economic justice.

Isn’t there a difference between addressing the root causes of economic and social injustice by finding the roots which are often tied with selfishness, mistreating other people, and supporting immoral social structures, versus supporting liberal political and social views?

Or, would it be more wise for the Church to remove itself from economic and social issues and focus simply on charities? How can we as the Church, avoid the association with such organizations which water down teachings in order to further their causes? How do we as a church, avoid liberal leanings or views while promoting justice?

Couldn’t it be argued that the idea of “justice” is liberal?
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When I watched the show on which Glenn Beck spoke on “Social Justice”, he very succinctly clarified the difference between social justice of communism and what should be the Social Justice of religious organizations. The two are quite different. The former is forced upon a people by the government (the Bishops apporved this except for abortion) and the Social Justice which Christ preached which emphasizes love and concern for each other on an individual basis. I personally do not like the type of Social Justice preached by our US Bishops in which they leave out an emphasis on the hierarchy of evil and the existence of Absolute Truth taught by the dogma of the Catholic Church. Bernadin’s Seamless Garment theory has been distorted by liberals within the Church.
 
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