“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.
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.
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".
Great post. Thanks
And why wouldn't you be? It is disgusting. The problem is, we have to pick our fights. Especially when the propaganda heights are commanded by the enemy. IMHO the root of your problem is the co-option of the word "society;" if people don't understand that word, how are they to understand "social justice?"Thomas Paine is not every Christian's cup of tea, but IMHO he is correct in this, which George Washington associated himself with by ordering Common Sense to be read to his troops:
Common Sense
By Thomas PaineSOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.Add to that the objection that justice is a different thing from grace or mercy, and that calling grace or mercy (our only pathway to Heaven) "justice" (which, apart from grace and mercy, is our inherited ticket to Hell) is inherently confusing if not actually confused. FreepersSociety in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
bamabound;Viennacon;EBH;livius;bronxville;MadDawg;Mrs.Don-o;STJPII;D-fendr;NotTallTex;, I beg you to be patient with FReepersDarrellZero;jiggyboy;SecretAgentMan;FijiHill;UncleMiltie;Rashputin;Skepolitic;Patriotic1;and myself if we ask,"If it was true in 1776, and is still true today, that most people entirely confound ‘society' and ‘government,' precisely how do you expect to redeem your own intended meaning of the term 'social justice' when there are arguments against your intended meaning which are accepted even by conservatives, and you are up against the headwind of so-called ‘objective' journalism?”Thomas Sowell can be added to the list of intellectuals who consider actual justice to be in contradistinction with “social,” or any “other kind” of “justice.” I don’t think that Isaiah 5:20 applies to those who think so. I do think that, unfortunately or not, you need to rethink your choice of language in this instance.Of course if you want to make me be in a similar position to where you are with “social justice," just get me going about “liberalism!” Right up to 1920, “liberalism” meant what you and I now call, quite inaccurately, “conservatism.” Other than in America, it perhaps still does. According to Safire’s New Political Dictionary, the meaning of the word transformed - essentially inverted - in the 1920s. And “conservatism” simply does not do our philosophy justice, yet we have no word that actually means liberalism. The word that used to mean that, now means its very opposite.
But is “social justice” really something that can be “obtained”? You may be able to get legal justice in a court of law, but “social justice” is like “fairness.” If it has any existence at all it’s an ideal that you may approach but not attain — or just a slogan.