Golly, what a shock.
I’ve been saying the same thing about the Catholic Church all along. If they had gotten their little carve-out, they’d be backers of the bill.
The Catholic Church is all about the “social justice” mentality. The recent missive from the Pope backs this up.
And the failure of the Church to do anything about “Catholics” who back abortion shows me that their so-called opposition to abortion is all talk and no walk.
The idea of a government as a positive redemptive channel is something that churches have a hard time getting rid of. Governments do law well. But being an inevitable mix of believers and unbelievers, they can’t do gospel well.
I strongly believe in ‘social justice’, and I think most of us here do. The problem is how you define ‘social justice’, and what you think the best way to work for it is.
Personally, I believe that the future success of the Republican party, and a broader base for conservatism depends heavily on making this case and embracing the type of approach to social justice that is truly ‘just’. We have let the left characterize themselves as the champions of social justice - the defenders of ‘Tiny Tim’, and characterize conservatives as ‘Scrooges’, but this is not even close to reality, and we cannot let it stand any longer.
From a Catholic perspective, if this requires debating and challenging the clergy about the human spirit, and freedom, and about how Catholics and other religions have been treated under communism and other totalitarian regimes who gained power by claiming they were for ‘social justice’, so be it.
When inner city youth are brought up in gang-infested neighborhoods, don't finish school, don't get the kinds of education that helps them to be proud productive successful members of society, and don't have father's in the household etc., it is not ‘social justice’ to perpetuate this by just giving government money without attempting to address the greater spiritual issues, decline of the family, and moral decay that is actually robbing whole generations of a truly happy and productive life.
It is not social justice when someone like Hugo Chavez uses class envy and class warfare to gain the power to confiscate property and wealth from those who have worked hard for it, and who have the capacity to contribute to social justice by providing jobs, upward mobility, and to be beacon of hope for those who believe if they work hard they can also achieve these things.
Marxism, socialism, communism, are all antithetical to true social justice. All of them.
‘Universal Healthcare’, as routinely promoted by the left, is not ‘social justice’ - for many, many reasons. All who need treatment should receive it. No one who is ill should be turned away. Most physicians, nurses etc. that I know feel this way, and would volunteer their time to make this a reality. The things routinely proposed by the left will take away the ability to get treatment from many, define who gets what treatments, and will cost more and therefore absolutely require rationing - as decided by bureaucrats and not physicians. That's just for starters.
You can't elevate the human spirit and guide it towards greater compassion and charity by stealing away freedom and attempting to engineer societal behavior and calling it ‘social justice’.