[MD] Social Level- Catholic Social Teaching

[Stephen Hannon]

[gav]
apart from the inherent hypocrisy of the catholic church talking about
justice and peace

[dmb]
I mean, the track record of the church makes the site feel a little
like bankers-against-money or hookers-against-nookie.

[Steve]
Let me attempt to make a comparison here.  Would this also feel like
U.S. government-for-freedoms?  The U.S. government, like the Catholic
church, is a social organization.  The U.S. government promotes
fundamental freedoms, despite at various points in its history denying
those freedoms (Trail of Tears, Japanese internment during WWII,
waterboarding, etc...).  So is the U.S. government hypocritical or
not?

Social structures can change and even improve over time.  Most of the
Catholic church's atrocities occurred during the Middle Ages, when the
church was a political power (they owned most of the land).  Now, the
church has almost zero political power.  My point here is, I would not
judge a social structure based on its track record, because the
responsibility lies with the people inside those structures.

Peace,
Steve

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:55 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Steve said:
> I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how one group of people (Catholics) look at social level values. Is there any parallel to social values we usually discuss?  What are the overarching intellectual values/ideals driving these social teachings?
>
> dmb says:
> I didn't spend much time on it but I took a peek at the site you linked for us. If I was just shooting from the hip, I'd say there was a mixture of social and intellectual values expressed there. More specifically, I'd say it was a pale, watered-down version of liberation theology, which is basically Catholic Marxism. There was a backlash against it in the church for being too leftist. You can almost see that retreat in the caveat against "collectivist or statist" solutions and yet the vestiage of this remains in their demand for social justice, economic justice and such. These are intellectual principles. On the other hand, they think that human dignity hinges on our being created by God, in the image of God. In their eyes, I suppose, this gives it moral weight. But I see that sort of thing as an unfortunate regression to social level ideas, a kind of authoritarianism. The implication is that these values are the values of the creator of the universe and who the hell are you
>  to say otherwise. But I think the cause is just for earthly reasons and I'm glad they fight for that cause all the same. It would hardly even make sense to complain about the attribution of divine sanction to these values except that that same sanction is sometimes granted to very objectionable causes. Most famously, its been used to justify the burning witches and, more recently, to hide ghastly crimes. In both cases the victims were stripped of their dignity entirely. I mean, the track record of the church makes the site feel a little like bankers-against-money or hookers-against-nookie. The confusion about which is which can be avoided by taking one simple step. Make sure your banker is also a hooker or vice versa. The Pope gave me that advice, so you know its solid.
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