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Social Justice is the same thing as politics - Christian leaders should, please, stop talking about it.
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Since Christian leaders cannot be clear and truthful about politics (unless they are prepared for martyrdom) - or, at least they will not be clear and truthful about politics - they should say nothing at all on the subject.
That means shutting-up about Social Justice.
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I cannot, we all cannot, stand any more dishonesty on the subject - partial views, simplistic views, sounds bites repeated from a lying media, selective words, coded comments - in practice this feeds evil.
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Stop, please please stop it altogether - this cant about Social Justice.
At this time and in this place Christians must focus on spirituality, where we are pitifully and pathetically weak; focus on the individual, personal, local, directly experiential; and trust to divine Providence instead of plans and strategies.
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Amen, amen. Render unto Caesar.
ReplyDeleteWe agree, in a suspicious number of instances.
ReplyDeleteAt present, Catholic church MUST absolutely desist from saying anything at all about politics, war, Islam, capital punishment, social justice, poverty etc. Those that want, can protest abortion and homosexual marriage.
What is more, Catholic Church must accept that secular authority is no less a representative of God on Earth than the Church and must be given religious authority and reverence in all matters except salvation.
In other words, what is necessary is a theocratic secular authority, Catholic but suspicious towards Church whenever it tries to interfere with the secular life.
This will not come easily, and probably not before the Church is really diminished, to a small "remnant".
http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Formation-Western-Legal-Tradition/dp/0674517768/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279916212&sr=1-1
Law and Revolution, The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition [Paperback]
Harold J. Berman
This will be very difficult, because the Catholic Church founded the Western Civilisation with the Papal Revolution, (explained in the above-mentioned book), which de-sacralised the secular authority.
This, together with permanent intervention of Church into secular life, morality, marriage, law etc, allowed an enormous progress which we call Western Civilisation. But this progress was entirely secular; it was good, but not absolutely good.
I think that this decision was good and necessary, but it was dangerous - it slowly drained from the Church its transcendent purpose - it never disappeared, of course, but it appeared less and less.
Now we cannot survive any more progress, so the time nears when the Western civilisation should be perfected, finished and closed.
Can Bruce be passionate?
ReplyDeleteHere is the proof :)
I like it.
Dried bones become so by the removal of life. A formerly beautiful yellow and green songbird lies, even now, upon my back deck, awaiting the ravens. Diminished by its loss of the life that so recently filled it. Useful,now, only as protein for the still-living.
Go man go. Tell it like it is. The Church would do well to start remembering what it is, and why it is.
Before it is, no more.
CS Lewis said somewhere that social justice cannot truly arise until all people are personally righteous. One can't construct a just society out of a pack of scoundrels. He said also that everyone knows this truth by introspection; it is self-evidently true that if everyone in a society were righteous, that society would be just, without the need for any social policies or laws; and, that in no other way might any people approach to justice.
ReplyDeleteTalk among the religious about social justice is therefore a distraction from the true matter properly at hand, which is our own correction, the removal of our own beams from our own eyes - a much more difficult and demanding project than marching or preaching or writing letters in support of social justice. Such talk is a distraction; actually ameliorating the lives of concrete people by taking personal action is, on the other hand, a palmary path toward personal righteousness; for it entails humble service of the lowly.