Beck and Call: Looking for Social Justice in the Wrong Places

This article is so ignorant it doesn't deserve a response. Yet the readers should know that the wing nuts and their apologists are infiltrating the Catholic church in large numbers. It is a problem that needs to be addressed.

I suspect that Glen Beck is enjoying all of this attention and I am tend to think that he would wear the title, "Irritator in Chief", proudly. Also as you state; "He sends legions of left leaning Americans into fits of apoplexy with a deft turn of phrase. His lazar tounge attack are typically vile, but his method is impeccable. He knows how to rile." I am sure your saying this has made his day! That said, this is very serious. Like in the 70's when so much of the productive Left was being taken over by the more radical fring, the same is happening to The Right today. However, they may not implode as The Left did because they have the powerful and omipresent right wing media supplying them with leader likes Beck and other hate promoters - hate promoters who wrap their hate, as most hate promoters do, in rightiouness. They will use cross and flag to disguise their hate and sell it as a virtue. These people have an unhealthy and unholy hold on their audience and that is what we should fear. Left or Right, I believe that those who don't realize that it is the balance of conservative and liberal that holds this country together will be the ones who destroy it.

I pray for my country. I pray for thoses who promote hate and thoses who support hate while thinking they are closer to God for doing so. I pray that I never become a disciple of a hate promoter, that I may see how they will damage my soul and flee from them long before they have a hold on it.

Peace and prayers.

John David

Ken, he's not a Catholic.

He has therefore never had any exposure to any Christian tradition in which "Social Justice" was anything other than a code word for "Who cares if there's really a God? Let's just invite Buddhists to preach from our pulpits and agitate for taxpayers to feed the poor and equalize gay relationships with straight marriage so we can feel good and enlightened and inclusive."

In the Catholic tradition, there are champions of "Social Justice" who are also orthodox; indeed, one can't really claim orthodoxy without approving of what the Church teaches on that topic. "Social Justice" Catholics are often Catholics who can say any of the ancient creeds without crossing their fingers behind their backs. Not so in the Protestant world...and Beck's limited exposure to mainstream Christianity (he is Mormon) comes from the Evangelicals, with Evangelical-tinted lenses included.

Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying Protestants don't help the poor and work for what Catholics call "Social Justice." They do; and in some places they regularly outdo their Catholic brethren in time and money.

What I am saying is that those who do it, who are also orthodox (by Protestant standards, I mean) Christians, simply do not use the term "Social Justice" for what they are doing. They call it "domestic missions work" or "local outreach" or similar terms. Anyone in that world who does use the term "Social Justice" is invariably also "theologically liberal" in the sense of overturning ancient moral and theological teachings with such reckless abandon as to require them to believe that the apostles really never quite understood Jesus' message, and it took until the early 21st century for these "Social Justice" Protestants finally to decipher what Christianity was all about.

So Beck's (and many Evangelical Christians') gut-level reaction to a person using the term "Social Justice" is similar to the average Evangelical's reaction to Catholic talk of "praying to Mary." Catholics know that prayer to Mary doesn't involve worship, but the Evangelicals are all taught that prayer equals "ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication"...and of course adoration is only due to God, so you see the problem! The two cultures are widely different, but sadly their shared use of English gives the illusion that they speak the same language. They don't: Any given term may have wildly different meaning, connotations, and associations.

I think that's the case with Beck: "Social Justice," with its associations, fell afoul of his heterodoxy detector, and he assumes anyone using it is some Monty Pythonesque "trendy vicar."

It's likely Beck got the inspiration for this diatribe from Catholics (or evangelicals) who are allied with the anti-abortion movement. I know several of them who are huge fans of Glenn Beck. They consider social justice a red herring that detracts from the mission of the "pro-life" movement which is to herd voters into the Republican Party. Hence, social justice is often reviled as something that only concerns Democrats and all Democrats (in their opinion) are "pro-aborts".

Here's one traditional conservative who has no problem proclaming the importance of social justice.

" . . .and Economic Justice for All."

Where are now the great writings such as these?

Read once more "Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice" by Marco G. Prouty and wonder how far we have fallen . . .

How far we must arise.

Called to Action.

Encyclicals on social justice were familiar to all educated Catholics once.

For those who have forgotten them, and for those denied instruction in them:

Rerum Novarum

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xi...

Quadragesimo Anno

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_...

So Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Martin Luther King, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and Mother Theresa were all in error according to Saint Glenn?

Thanks, I'll continue live in error. We'll see which side of the afterworld we end up on...