Posted on 03/13/2013 5:18:57 PM PDT by bamabound
Several years ago a good friend came to me about joining in our parish's social justice program. He prefaced it by saying'it ain't what you think'.
I am extremely anger with the high jacking of our language and the communist/socialist use of the term 'social justice' is an excuse for implementing totalitarian policies. In reading through several threads, I decided to post this vanity for everyone so maybe we can begin to claim our language back. here is a concise definition: In order to define social justice, let us begin, by taking a look at what social ministry is:
Social Ministry has two main aspects: social service (also known as Parish Outreach) and social action
Social Service is giving direct aid to someone in need. It usually involves performing one or more of the corporal works of mercy. That is, giving alms to the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick or imprisoned, taking care of orphans and widows, visiting the shut-ins etc. Another name for it is charity.
Social Action is correcting the structures that perpetuate the need. Another name for this is Social Justice. Through the lens of social justice, we begin to take a look at the problems and issues facing us in our own communities, the nation and finally the world, and we begin to ask questions such as, "Why is there so much unemployment in our area?" "Why are there so many poor in our community?" "How will the deforestation of our rain forests affect our global climate?" etc. Very often when you are performing social service, you also become involved in solving the problem which created the need in the first place, and the two are closely related and often blend together. An example of this would be, someone comes to your food pantry, and tells you he/she has no food, because he/she lost their job recently. You may know of an employer looking to hire someone right away for a job requiring little or no skills. You give that person food, then place that person in touch with the employer. You then would have solved both problems for that person. (a) the immediate need of food through an act of charity (social service) and (b) you would have corrected the problem which created and perpetuated the need. (social justice)
Copy/paste from http://www.ecatholic2000.com/sj/socjust.shtml#Some
Here is the money quote, again:Social Action, aka social justice is correcting the structures that perpetuate the need.
Here is an excellent description as it pertains to our free society. 2425. "The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with 'communism' or 'socialism.' She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of 'capitalism,' individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.[Cf. CA 10; 13; 44.] Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of SOCIAL bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails SOCIAL JUSTICE, for 'there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.'[CA 34.] Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended."
This quote by John Paul II is a favorite of mine.
1929. "SOCIAL JUSTICE can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him: What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt.[John Paul II, SRS 47.] "
And a free society as envisioned by our Founding Fathers provides the best opportunities for the dignity of man.
So, to really participate in creating social justice, we must fix the problems that cause the poverty, homelessness, war.....and it is not done through ANY government entity.
“Social Justice” is just code for Marxism.
I will never have anything to do with any organization that employs the term.
Some people misread Christian teachings on the poor. Jesus would never want people to have their earned wealth forcibly taken from them and redistributed by government. What’s Christian about that? Jesus wanted us to be charitable. He wanted us to help our fellow man out of our free will, through charity.
Thanks for clearing up social justice.
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/6893?eng=y
Yet he´s not the type to compromise himself for the public. Every time he speaks, instead, he tries to shake people up and surprise them. In the middle of November, he did not give a learned homily on social justice to the people of Argentina reduced by hunger - he told them to return to the humble teachings of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. “This,” he explained, “is the way of Jesus.” And as soon as one follows this way seriously, he understands that “to trample upon the dignity of a woman, a man, a child, an elderly person, is a grave sin that cries out to heaven,” and he decides not to do it any more.
The other bishops follow in his footsteps. During the Holy Year of 2000 he asked the entire Church in Argentina to put on garments of public penance for the sins committed during the years of the dictatorship. As a result of this act of purification, the Church had the credibility to be able to ask the nation to acknowledge how its own sins had contributed to its current disaster. At the celebration of the Te Deum at the most recent national feast, last May 25th, there was a record audience for Cardinal Bergoglio´s homily. The cardinal asked the people of Argentina to do as Zacchaeus had done in the Gospel. Here was a sinister loan shark. But, taking account of his moral lowliness, he climbed up into a sycamore tree, to see Jesus and let himself be seen and converted by him..
I think we picked the right Pope. He didn’t only talk the talk, he walked the path to bring Argentina back together.
That’s why I posted this. It is anything BUT Marxism. That’s what I thought too, until I read and studied what it really means.
Well, I can see that you didn’t read the post!
In referring to “social justice,” the new Pope is reclaiming the term. He is referring to personal responsibility for other individuals, personal charity and morality in dealing with one’s fellow man and the outlook and society that grow of of those things, not to government programs.
Keep in mind that any “special” kind of justice is suspect as a matter of definition. We are to believe that “social justice” isn’t quite the same as good old-fashioned “justice”, and it is not, in the same way that any “special” kind of truth, e.g., “emotional truth”, certainly embodies a lie.
While your ears are perked up, listen also for “economic justice” and, as I mentioned earlier, any special kind of “truth”.
Thank you so much. Very informative. Coincidentally we were discussing the term here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2996564/posts
any adjective in front of “justice” is pretty much a code word for marxism.
economic justice, social justice, reproductive justice, bla bla bla —— marxism.
I was once listening to a presenter who asked members of the audience to come up with examples of social injustice. I could think of plenty of examples of injustice, but none of “social injustice.” To believe that “social injustice” exists, one must see people as members of groups rather than as individuals.
Nonetheless, the concept and term have been fully co-opted in public to MEAN Marxism.
Catholics ought to pick new words.
One of the problems of an anti-Catholic culture with an anti-Catholic media is illustrated here. People who hear of Rerum Novarum think, "Oh, that's just some Catholic nonsense, I don't need to be concerned with that." So when the crazy "liberation theology" guys try to steal the term back for Marxism, the press is all too eager to present them as the leading edge of Catholicism rather than as what they, an infection in the body.
I did something kind of fun last year. I assembled every quote from the Catechism on "solidarity" and put them on one side of a piece of paper. On the other side I put every quote mentioning "subsidiarity." I gave the paper to a priest I was assisting. He read the "solidarity" side and said it sounded socialist. Then he read the "subsidiarity" side and was amazed at how conservative it was.
I have to quibble with this example, but I think I will illustrate the subtlety of the shading of the term. I can define "the problem which created the need" either as "the person does not have a job" or as "the employer does not need that person any more".
Via that first definition, finding the person a new job is a worthy endeavor and accords with free-market capitalism.
But via the second definition, a leftist would solve the "problem" by demanding beforehand that the employer needs to be "corrected" via a collection of stifling union rules, various quotas, minimization of performance measurements, subsidies, etc., so that nobody ever loses his job (which in their view is an inalienable right).
That my friend is what they mean by "social justice".
A perfect example of how how easily the democrat fascists gain ground through repetition of their propaganda.
They take a word or phrase, twist the meaning, flood the world with their new meaning through the democrat media and academic propaganda machine, and BANG. People accept their new definition and turn on whatever the democrat propagandists want to turn them against even if they've been doing good, conservative, work for decades and in this case, even tens of centuries.
It's just like prying the Reagan democrats away from Reagan little by little by changing the meaning of various conservative terms and phrases and repeating their meme with their new terms. A perfect example is calling murderous, Satanic, Mooze Lame, scum, "Fundamentalists" for a couple of years and once people have accepted that it's the same thing as "Terrorist", starting to spew lies about Fundamentalist Christians.
Works every time because people are conditioned to go along to get along and are now just like the dogs who drooled when Pavlov rang the bell.
It would have been better had you said, "Some people misuse 'Social Justice' as a code word for Marxism. I will never have anything to do with any organization that misuses the term in this way."
I say this as a friendly clarification. "Social justice" is a term which has spanned centuries, continents and cultures. It has been used (and sometimes abused) -- but I think it is our responsibility to TAKE IT BACK and use it for the purposes for which it was intended.
Fair weights and measures, fair advertising of goods and services, fair dealing without fraud is Social Justice.
Equal opportunity for all based on achievement and merit is Social Justice.
Requiring timely performance on a contract, is Social Justice.
Designing a system where nobody gets either adverse discrimination, nor favoritism (affirmative action), is Social Justice.
Making sure there is plenty of upward mobility possible, based on effort, work, honesty, creativity, and productivity, is Social Justice.
Take back the good words. Don't let the Left have them all.
There is only one kind of justice: justice justice. Whenever it is qualified, it is no longer justice.
As FA Hayek said, the entire concept of “social justice” does not belong to the category of error, but to that of nonsense, akin to the term “a moral stone”.
You need to read the Beatitudes.
Blessed are the communists, for they shall become the vanguard of the proletariat.
Blessed are the impatient, for they never let a crisis go to waste.
Blessed are the socialists, for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the social democrats, for they know how to work the system.
Blessed are the dark-hearted, for they shall run run the gulags.
Blessed are the unmerciful, for they shall deliver social justice to counter-revolutionaries.
Blessed are the those who persecute the counter-revolutionaries, for they will steal their land and goods.
But woe unto those who hunger and seek after social justice, for they shall suffer for being the useful idiots that they are.
Great post. Thanks
Well put, Mrs. D.
You are correct. The left has a way of appropriating language, as “gay” used to mean just happy. They also create false wordage, such as “homophobia”, which means, literally, “fear of man”. Social justice, to the Catholic Church, simply means taking an active stance in helping the poor. It does not mean what the liberation theology folks claimed it meant, which was a Marxist, or economic approach to helping the poor. The new pope has been at odds with these people and has said that an economic approach is not what is needed but a spiritual one where those more fortunate decide it is their duty to “feed my sheep”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.