[MD] Social Level- Catholic Social Teaching

[Ian Glendinning]

Steve, DMB,

DMB also said
"Make sure your banker is also a hooker or vice versa. The Pope gave
me that advice, so you know its solid." .... Brilliant :-)

Steve, all immediate social and intellectual actions are
"hypocritical" with respect to some other pattern somewhere else in
place and time. Truth is never complete and consistent at one and the
same time. The fact of the hypocrisy is not (necessarily) the issue,
but the "greater good" .... (where spin and rhetoric - and irony - can
seriously get in the way of recognizing it, but essentially true
none-the-less.)

(I must read gav's list of virtues - greater goods - too.)
Hypocrisy is a subject or much study itself, in governance and management.
Ian

On 7/31/08, Stephen Hannon <stevehannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> [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 y
>  ou
> >  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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