Posted on 01/03/2011 8:15:52 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
No offense to our separated Pentecostal Holiness brethren . . .
Did you ever hear back from the fellow in your diocese who was a dyed-in-the-wool pro-illegal?
Stopped reading at Martin Luther.
Good post, thanks, the do gooders and pass the collection plate crowd will be very displeased.
Ping!!
‘Martin Luther famously used his private reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans to invent a whole new theology of salvation,’
This will be a fun little thread...
“Social justice” is not justice at all.
They always leave off the 'ist' after 'Social'.
I'm still trying to do my due diligence in the dogged dialogue department. Some adaptation of this thread is going to be part of that effort.
Gimme a bead on your next Rosary, 'K?
Ping!
‘Martin Luther famously used his private reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans to invent a whole new theology of salvation,’
ROMANS is often called the Bible within the Bible.
The obligation to respond decently to needy people does not, however, wipe out the obligation to do in a way that doesn't destroy other elements of the Common Good. In fact, justice to these groups must take place in the larger context of justice to all, as far as our prudence can work that out. And that's where the problems arise.
The controversy about the status of those who enter this country unlawfully is difficult in part because many of these millions are simultaneously accessories to, as well as victims of, injustice.
Check out the testimony of Dr. Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University professor of law and political science, who spoke to the House panel on immigration last September. (Good Link Here.) She made a convincing case that it is the steady flow of cheap migrant labor which destroys job opportunities and depresses wages for poor blacks and other American minorities.
It's very well to say, as some do, that Latino new-arrivals may be a better category of workers than our own home-grown welfare class. It's legitimate, though, to ask whether successive waves of low-wage foreign workers have played a role in keeping our own "welfare class" socially demoralized and unemployable.
The degradation of the wages of those who are already the poorest-paid workers in America, and the disappearance of jobs for unskilled youth, is having a catastrophic impact on our "permanent underclass." This is a legitimate argument against the acceptance of massive numbers of newcomers, no matter where they come from. It stems from concern for a vast group of sufferers whose interests are rarely considered: the millions --- particularly young, unskilled, minority males --- who are substantially, and in some cases for a lifetime, robbed of any prospect of gainful employment because they have been displaced by a vast influx of exploited foreign nationals.
That’s why I must ask well-intending Christians to resist reducing this controversy to racism or xenophobia on the part of those who strongly oppose illegal immigration. It's a mistake to assume that present immigration controversy is attributable to unreasonable fears and resentments.
Many Christian groups --- not only Catholic Bishops, but Evangelicals, and Baptists, and Hispanic Protestant Church groups, among others --- check these Links! ---have been big, prominment supporters of "immigration reform"; but let's notice that they're making the same rhetorical error here that many of them made in the "health reform" debate: namely, they're giving a sonorous "Oremus" to the label of "immigration reform", while allowing the content to be substantially defined by President Obama and his legislative allies.
If the so-called "reform" is injurious to the Common Good, no amount of "Oremus" is going to make it "compassionate," "generous" or "just".
My own specific critique will have to wait til later. What I'm doing here, is defending our right as a matter of justice and charity to disagree with our clergy's ill-considered political positions. Charity and justice are always the Church's concern; but public policy is the sphere of lay responsibility in which clergy have neither special competence nor direct ecclesial authority.
Placemark.
But of course. :) And Happy New Year.
A worthy topic for discussion, but I hope not on this thread, since it's far from Zmirak's principle theme, which is the misuse of Scripture to justify illegal immigration.
In fact, I thought of editing Zmirak's article to eliminate such highly pruritic distractions, but decided that it would be too big an alteration of Dr. Z's characteristic style. I judged that most people would focus in on his main topic. I hope I have not judged rashly.
bttt for later
All too often today’s husbandless mother is both husbandless and a mother by her own foolish willful choices so I fail to see any correlation to the Biblical widow who did not seek nor desire widowhood, but found herself one through no fault of her own.
BTTT
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