The nun and Glenn Beck: a standoff

Is there a way for us here in the U.S. at the parish or personal level to support Sr. Marie Claude's ministries? This is a woman who truly deserves to be called heroic,and I believe there are many people who would like to help her.

Congratulations dear Sister! We're proud of your prophetic voice and action. As we celebrate women's month, it's high time to see the cost of war, trafficking and poverty that adversely affect women and girls.

Fine women indeed! Sr. Marie Claude whose life enriches and is enriched as she embraces justice, and Sr. Joan whose reflections warm the spirit...I am reminded of Hafiz's poem - 'Christ's Breath'
I am
a hole in a flute
that the Christ's breath moves through -
listen to this
music.
Thank you dear women for the music you bring!!!!!

Thanks a lot for this account, Joan. I hope, too, that Glen Beck will take the invitation. He certainly does not know what social just is. Tod help him.
And God bless all the women of the world who have been trafficked.they certainly have borne their cross.
sister Florence Rice, SHCJ

What is it about the human race that has had men lording it over women from time immemorial? Patriarchy is everywhere it seems -- and the institutions that should be, at the very least, giving women equal rights have the same demeaning attitude toward them. Churches should be leading the way, but they mostly fall far short.

Blessings on this wonderful woman, Sister Marie!

The question of 'political', 'social' interference of the church, esp., but not only the RC Church, is as old as what has come to us from Jesus. 'What you do to the least...." Of course, the trouble is the horrible side of church history, from Constantin's political tool to the Thirty Year's War, to the blood baths of the crusades, to the golden garments of church dignitaries, when Jesus' garments were bare feet, or sandals and the attire of folks of his surroundings: people professing 'religion' have mostly gone astray in the same direction. In England one still talks of 'cold as charity', Hamas, and Hetzbollah have schools with good old indoctrination too, in Nigeria Christians and Moslems beat-in the same kinds of heads, Timor...., and, and..
The trouble is that man is violent, wants power, does not want to think, and scarce supplies bring out the fights that we can observe in nature. We only fool ourselves that we are not part of the patterns that could teach us, since nature is our mother. The trouble is that we have so well avoided the possibility of looking and learning that to overcome our folly is also almost zero. One look at the profligate US life style tells it.

We are in religious thought as a species not so far removed from the tribe that would put up a rain god, dance around that 'golden calf' and tear it down when no rain came, to be replaced by a new model.
Clearly, the religious movements, the churches, mosques, temples, were safety havens of protection from often the worst ills. The trouble is that at the same time none had 'clean hands' in other areas, mostly money and property, so 'honesty' would not hold out, could not make the particular organization clean.

Maybe, this is the human condition, and it is worsening as the horrible increase in numbers rises.
It is the individual, the Sister of the Good Shepherd, standing alone, and walking with her Lord, who gives the picture and the answer about what the task is, and by mercy has come so far.
The church has not found the way--and maybe there is none--to even deciding on a 'just war'. Tribalism has not been looked at honestly, and comes up in myriad forms in social, socio-political, socio-economic groupings. These are things sitting on the doorsteps of all churches, as numbers increase, resources dwindle, power plays get worse. Palestine comes to mind as can numbers of other areas, albeit not so crass. One looks into a morass. Maybe facing it and its background would be one of the ways to prepare people better. May Sister Marie Claude Naddaf be safe.

Thank you
Johanna Sayre

Bless Sr. Marie Claude Naddaf for her ministry. Some who have unexplainably large audiences, who by now ought to know better, still try to keep us women from speaking. I too, am a sister, a deaconess of the Lutheran Deaconess Association/Lutheran Deaconess Conference. We sisters have a call to service that makes it imperative that we do speak out as advocates for victims, especially those that our government created! Thank you for the heads-up and the information about Sr. Marie Claude Naddaf's "qualifications."

Important to spread the news about human trafficking. These numbers are well beyond any estimates re the USA that I have seen before!

I would say that Glenn Beck, as usual, makes a normal and good project of compassion from a religious institution sound like it is a plot to turn the country into a socialist state or even more extreme, communist.

All this nun is doing is a charitable act. Something everyone should consider doing at every opportunity available to them.

However, May God bring both Beck and our nun peace of heart. And maybe also give the nun strength and courage to continue to stand and act strong as others in the world criticize or say negative things in general.

Thanks again, Sister Joan for another great informative article about this courageous nun, Marie Claude Naddaf and her difficult and dangerous work on behalf of women, the most marginalized of women. It is the work of God to be sure. I hope this man, Glenn Becks, and all men and women take the work of doing justice seriously because that is what God asks of us first and foremost.

Thank you and Congratulations, Sister Naddaf.
http://www.state.gov/s/gwi/iwoc/2010/bio/137498.htm
Memo to Beck:
Don't mess with our NUNS!
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/11/christian-leader-calls-for-glenn...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/glenn-beck-to-catholic...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/an-open-letter-to-glenn-b_b_495...

This might be interesting about Glenn beck,

mn

Sister Marie Claude and Sister Joan are brave women who speak the truth about war, women and how social and economic justice are ignored by many in our country. More dialogue is needed here and abroad. Most especially, the church needs to address these issues more clearly from the pulpit.

We all know religion, especially Christianity, most especially Catholicism, is all about believing the right stuff, not doing anything about it...[sarcasm off]

Glenn Beck is an ex-alcoholic whose mother committed suicide. He is, whether he knows it or not, an emotional, psychological, and spiritual basket-case. It is easy to hate Glenn, but a more appropriate comportment toward him is pity. He needs a lot of help and a lot of prayers.

thank you for this enlightening story. It seems there is a female Episcopal deacon who agrees with Glen Beck, God help us. Deacon Tom Williams

I recently, through the Maryknoll Lay Missionary Friends Across Borders Program, took a two week immersion trip to Cambodia. There we learned about the high incidence of human trafficking of young girls, who are often sold by their parents who are desparate for money. We visited several projects in Phnom Penh that were programs that help to shelter and retrain the women - "Jars of Clay" and "Hagars" restaurant. I was so moved by the lay missionaries and nuns who worked in the programs. This is truly the best of the catholic church, "social justice" and made me feel proud to be catholic.

Fox and Friends: History in the Making

Confession: I find a darkly magnetic quality in Glen Beck which is practically mesmerizing, at least for the brief period before nausea weighs in with a rescuing veto.

There’s just something about that smiling face of your kid’s baseball coach, weaving fond images of folkloric America and speaking reverently of Our Founders which invites a listen; something about that visage of A Regular Guy just chatting on your living room TV screen which draws you into pausing for a moment while innocently channel surfing cable news. Those folks who brought us the visuals of Hannity and Colmes (you remember - Boy Scout vs. Soviet KGB agent) do have a touch.

Well, I’ve listened lately to Mr. Beck, especially the “history” lessons he’s feeding to the credulous of America responding to that earnest countenance, and the background images of sacred documents, and those blackboards of childhood upon which he draws his appalling vision. It recalls another, longer history which continues to spill across the airwaves commanded by Fox, to echo in the chambers of The Supreme Court, and to write itself upon the bonus checks of bankers.

It’s the History of the Jungle, and the remorseless Law dictating to the creatures therein. The large and strong prey upon the small and weak and feed upon them. The strong suffer less, and live; the weak suffer more, and die. From the beginning of time and all across the planet, small numbers of the strong and the rich have controlled large numbers of the weak and the poor; they have and continue to create structures and systems which further that end.

Regard the truth of this, laid forth in a kaleidoscope of time and place. Whether it was the feudal system supported by serfs; or the Soviet Politburo by the Russian masses; or today’s mullahs of Iran with its citizenry reduced to the frail hope of Tweeting their powerlessness to the outside world; or Southern American landowners supported by slavery and sharecroppers; or Afghan tribal warlords wielding power over the villages of the destitute; or dictators like Hussein or Amin or Stalin or Duvalier; or the English Empire in Ireland or America; or pretty much any South American or African country which springs to mind; or the Goldman-Sachs types of Wall Street now, issuing billions in bonuses as millions of Americans lose homes to their banks; or the Mexican drug lords in Tijuana; or the gang leaders of South Central LA; or any one of the number of politicians whoring for the corporations who are the new controllers of wealth and unaccountable power – it’s all the same thing. Fill in the blank. Fill it in with the names of the brutal and the greedy, addicted to personal power and ruthless in their quest for more of it. You don’t have to look very far for them, they’re in our homes and on our computers, in our places of worship and our legislative bodies and in the air we listen to as we drive our cars.

Mr. Beck wraps the Law of the Jungle in a flag and calls it a Tea Party; Tony Perkins and James Dobson paint it with prayer and hang it on a cross; Boehner and McConnell sell it on K Street and peddle it on Sunday morning talk shows; Limbaugh screams it to the body politic like a cheerleader at a bloodsport.

Take what you want because you can. Celebrate yourself for being able to do so.
Build social and financial structures that will support your unaccountable power.
Unremittingly quest for more.

The historical differences lessons lie chiefly in the methods of control used these days, and the means employed for feeding on the weak. Today’s weapons and wiles are newer, swifter, shinier, and much more subtle than a fist or club.

The structures are more sophisticated and sanitized; the systems are now globalized. But it’s still the same dynamic of self-congratulatory power feeding off the lives of those with fewer resources. They collaborate a little differently nowadays to control and profit from the powerless. For example, they form legal entities called corporations - who buy control of politicians, who appoint judges, who enforce the will of corporations.

Judges appointed by the rich and the powerful have now defined corporations as people. We all know that cannot be so, for common sense and the facts of modern life make plain the truth: corporations are amoral entities, invented for the sole purpose and sustained by the shared transcendent value of the creation and accumulation of wealth. They are now free to express their political will, just like people - by whatever tsunami of advertising corporate money will buy.

So corporations are defined as human beings now, by 5-4. Hardly the notion of human beings created in the image of the God mentioned so prominently in our founding documents. Hardly the stuff of human beings, endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Corporations do not experience life or happiness, corporations do not make people more free, nor do corporations resemble anyone’s image of a Creator.

The powerful can control the information available to the population, as in the case of China. They also have the power to poison the world with misinformation, to send it round the planet and feed it directly into the homes of the citizenry, as does Rupert Murdoch via the earnest face of Mr. Beck.

Though the power of wealth hasn’t changed much, the way that power works now is vastly more efficient. The press of a button can strangle the ability to purchase goods for a business or necessities for a family; it can prevent someone from renting a dwelling or getting a job. Electronic thievery is rampant – and the exhausted or inarticulate are poorly equipped to defend against it. Traditional tools of communication diminish daily, and the new systems can be used to cut off or channel away resistance – the population has been trained to sit interminably on a phone, pressing buttons at the direction of a machine so that they may be diverted to a website. Letters, emails may be ignored at will, leaving one to wonder - how can one ever touch a corporation, how can people be heard by politicians owned by the powerful, what language will be heard by a bank?

Only money touches corporations – the power to buy, or not. Or ideas – the power to communicate them, or not. So what happens when the money and the communication – the only two means by which they can be touched - is controlled by the powerful? What’s left to protect a populace?

Short of Divine Intervention, there is only one thing. Democracy. Democracy is the only frail obstacle to unfettered power. Democratically elected government - imperfect as it is - is the only thing which stands between people and the powerful few.

A miraculous if imperfect vision of liberty was captured by an extraordinary group of human beings who happened to find themselves alive in the same place at the same time in history, and who took a great chance to reach together for a sense of freedom the world had not yet seen. They managed, together, to upend the Law of the Jungle for a moment in time and to throw off the suffocating traditions of monarchical authority and iron-clad class division. In a new land, they discovered a new way of looking at things, and they built something that hadn’t happened anywhere before.
Democracy has been the source of our strength and free imagination; it’s been the foundation for an American sense of discovery and promise. It’s the ideal we strive for even when we fail to meet it. It’s the hope that the glue which holds the land and its diverse peoples together. It’s the common defense against the brutality of the institutional beast. It’s the means by which imperfect human beings can perhaps build something better than a jungle in which to exist.

No wonder Mr. Beck tells us we’re meant to be entirely on our own – like it’s a good thing. The mighty of the jungle much prefer it that way. So he holds up our Constitution in front of Mr. Murdoch’s cameras and tells his listeners it means something it does not. He tells them that for America to reclaim the purity of the Founder’s vision, the country will have to collapse and reorganize as originally intended – which is to say, as Mr. Beck instructs on his blackboard. So he tells people that, “Sure, if you’re 75 you’ll still get your social security, we’ll take care of you…but other than that, everyone else, you’re on your own.”

He says that the Constitution the Founders wrote was not a way of being, from which the country could grow - but an implacable Law reminiscent of the jungle, which must be observed to the letter as written in 1776. Nothing to get in the way of now-existent multi-national corporations, without loyalty to country nor moral obligation to take precedent to profit. He tells us what the Founder’s meant – the Founders who bonded together, who could never have built this country without a sense of obligation to one another, who would never have survived without each other to create this amazing democracy – is that we are each on our own. He tells us that our government is an evil thing and a tool of oppression. He says that the Constitution according to Beck and Forbes and Alito and Scalia and Thomas will make you free. He says it on Mr. Murdoch’s airwaves.

We’re called to be something better than that, we’re supposed to emerge from the primordial cultural soup and to evolve away from the mindless brutality of life as jungle creatures. That’s not a lesson you’ll learn from Mr. Beck’s blackboard histories.

Beck knows that those who do not recognize history are doomed to repeat it. As he perverts history on that blackboard - he’s counting on it.

Whether our young democracy survives the current assault upon it remains to be seen - but one way or another, history is in the making. If the Law of the Jungle prevails as it has in the past, it will be written by the powerful. Beck and Co. are counting on that, too.

But Jesus is counting on the rest of us.

Update 3-10-10: Which is why, no doubt, Mr. Beck is now calling on his followers to leave the churches which take Matthew 25 seriously.

Thank you for helping keep the issue of social justice actions in the forefront. Many people are talking about Glen Becks' comment and are debating the appropriateness of a church's involvement in social justice issues -- your voice helps those who are not sure understand how important (and right) it is to be involved.

Let's not forget that the wedding tradition of a father "giving away" his daughter is founded on a father selling or trading (not giving away) his daughter to another adult male for the purpose of breeding. Most people nowadays are lulled by the romantic Hollywood images of the "perfect" wedding, but that doesn't eliminate it's origin: the trafficking of a female.

For those who didn't know, it's exactly why only the father of the bride gives her away - the mother of the bride is a woman, and not part of the business transaction. Similarly, the parents of the groom aren't involved; their adult male son is taking care of his own business.

Perhaps this is why the Catholic Rite of Marriage prescribes a procession in which the bride and groom process together, along with the Presider and other liturgical ministers. If desired, the parents (BOTH sets of parents) and the witnesses may process as well.

My heart was singing with joy as I read through the article--exhilarated and thrilled to find a "soul sister" in Sr. Marie Claude. I am also a Good Shepherd Sister doing the same work of helping abused women and girls reclaim their dignity and womanhood, only in a smaller scale. We ran a Residence for sexually abused girls and an Outreach Program for Prostituted Women and Victims of VAWC. More power to you, Sr. Marie Claude and to you Sr. Joan for your powerful pen. How powerfully you champion the plight of the poor, exploited, dehumanized women.

I don't understand. Did this commentator advise against her program specifically or against socialism. There is a difference. By lumping a particular situation into a general concern is suggesting that all such programs are part and parcel socialism. I don't think that is the intention but is what someone would like us all to think.

Wow! Once again,it is the witness of women in the church, religous women, witnessing to the mission of Jesus and leading us in the hope of a future church. Thank you! Perhaps, Glen and a few members of the male hierarchy will accept the invitation, shed their robes, and understand the invitation Jesus gave (washing feet, laying down one's life). In hope...

Glenn Beck is so full of hatred that it obvious that it clouds most everything he says and does. We can only hope that the love of the Christ will someday fill his heart and from then on the compassion and love for his fellow human family will then rule his thoughts and actions.

Glenn Beck is not the only one. When I questioned Charles Chaput, the Archbisop in Denver why we didn't hear more sermons on social justice rather than abortion he said, "Jesus never spoke about social justice."

Thanks for that story: great to see items about human trafficking and slavery being shared world wide.
Blessings

The facts about the good work, the social justice work that Sr. Marie Claude Naddaf performs in Syria contradict Glen Beck's position that Social justice and economic justice are code words (for socialism). Glen Beck is a demagogue so he will ignore this and unfortunately will not take the invitation. The sad thing is that so many people in the United States agree with him.

If I were Glenn Beck I would go and hide in a corner after his latest tirade telling people that "social justice" is the same as "socialism" and "communism." He should read about the ministry of this "Woman of Courage," Sister Marie Claude. She has brought into being what others have only dreamed about. I think that it is time for someone like Glenn Beck to see the faces of those he scorns and ridicules. I do hope that he accepts the invitation to go to Syria and allow Sr. Marie Claude to show him what her ministry involves and how essential it is to have a deep faith life in order to persevere in this work.

Sr. Marie Claude is a modern-day saint.

Thank the Lord for the U.S. State Department. I wonder why no international Catholic group gave this extraordinary Sister an award? The Vatican seems to be occupied either with interviewing Bishops about priest sex abusers in their countries, or investigating the countless numbers of U.S. Sisters who work day in and day out in ministries just like Sr. Marie Claude.

Sister Joan, you are truly A Light Unto the World.

Thank you, Sr. Joan, for sharing this sister's inspiring mission. Is there anything that we in America can do to help her or other organizations like hers? I am already involved in Women for Women International and UNIFEM, but I would like to do more.

What a challenge to Glenn Beck and those who take up his cudgel! I was blown away, Sr. Joan, by the whole article and particularly by your helping us to see and appreciate the chasm between Mr. Beck's perceptions and those of Sr. Marie Claude.

Thank you Sr. Marie Claude for the challenge. And thank you Sr. Joan for revealing to the rest of us the strong and loving heart of this great woman. "May her tribe increase!"

Please send this to Pope Benedict. Thank you.

MA

You are (and I will give you credit that you relied on an out-of-context truncated source of this information) misstating what the "commentator" said and misleading your readers shamefully. Glenn Beck immediately clarified what he was saying by telling his listeners to ask their church/church leaders what they mean by the use of the terms "social justice" and "economic justice". These terms have been misused by socialist and communist movements in the past and it behooves all of us to make sure we are not fooled into supporting dangerous ideologies under the guise of helping the poor.
Previous popes have spoken out very eloquently about the evils of socialism and we must make sure not to fall into this trap.
Social justice as Jesus taught, where individuals make the choice to help the poor or marginalized is one thing, social justice where a tyrannical government is given the power to redistribute wealth against the will of the people is quite another animal all together and something the Church has stood clearly against.

The Glenn Becks of this world will, no doubt, protest loudly at the pope's concern about ecology. Dualism does horrendous violence to the Body of Christ. They would, no doubt, protest Jesus feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

The problem that Glenn Beck identifies, and that dear Sister ignores, is that all too often "social justice" is a code word that means "left-wing ideas". The Catholic Church does support social justice properly understood. It does not support leftist ideas that are inimical to Catholic morality but which are dressed up in the "social justice" label. Left-wing radicals have attempted to co-opt the Church's social justice teachings to support their agendas. For example, anyone who claims that same-sex marriage is a matter of social justice simply doesn't know what he is talking about. Social justice, properly understood, requires keeping marriage as male-female only. But in order to pass the radical leftist agenda of legalizing same-sex marriage, it supporters are attempting to make it a social justice issue. Same with radical leftists who are now speaking of abortion as a matter of reproductive social justice. Pure nonsense. That is the danger that Glenn Beck is talking about. In schools, students are being indoctrinated in leftist thought but few people realize it because the ideas are presented as "social justice" rather than "radical, Saul Alinsky inspired leftist dogma." Get behind the words "social justice" to see what is really meant.

I wasn't even aware of Glenn Beck's name until a few months ago.

Based on what I now know of this guy, I think he's one sorry excuse of a man. I find guys like him embarrassing.

Thank you for telling us about this awesome and inspiring woman. Truly living out the fullness of her humanity. She is filled with God-consciousness!

The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven....Unfortunately, the likes of "Glen Beck" and his army of supporters treats mercy in any of its many forms as a Socialist Disease".
Sad though it is, that is the Beck's mantra of suspicion, and fear engulfs and immobilizes us.
Edward McDonald

Dear Sr. Joan, Again you are misleading people in your commments concerning the award for courage being given Sr. Marie Naddaf. You state that even here, even now, it takes much courage for women to speak up in certain arenas. You are so wrong and have been for the last 50 years. Why not get your head out of the sand? I have not met a woman who has felt threatened in any arena here in the United States and in fact have expierienced exactly the opposite.
You continue on in your wonderland of nothingness and expect people to believe what you say! Truth is a virtue and should be practised by all, even women! This is not a defense of Glenn Beck, a self admitted crazy who in his own words thinks he belongs in a mental hospital. Perhaps you should re-examine where we really are before you come out with "From where I stand"????

I've never been able to understand the fact that Glen Beck is actually taken seriously by his followers.

The drivel he spouts doesn't surprise me anymore, especially considering the fact that he claims to have 'thought' himself out of Catholocism and into Mormonism.

Thank God people like Sr. Marie Claude never give up. Of course, some people don't even start!

Namaste! Sister Joan:

A wonderful tribute to Sister Marie Claude Naddaf and to women everywhere. So many people, thinking of themselves as righteous, condemn prostitutes and prostitution without knowing a single one. Many more, self-righteously, put their faith into the criminal justice system and the use of capital punishment without ever having visited a prison, a jail, or a single person incarcerated as a criminal.

This sister of ours from Syria shows the way. Sister Joan tells of it.

I've never heard or seen Glenn Beck (or Palin/Hannity/Limbaugh/Lou Dobbs/Bill O'Reilly, thank God), but I would guess that, should he accept Sister Marie Claude's invitation, he will likely reject the evidence at his hand.

He is a man with myriads of fattened lambs. Nevertheless, let us pray: May he show mercy to the persons of the poor and those who today are lying on the ground.

Persons who are poor, lying on the ground, are sometimes capable of greater virtue than the best of us.

Sister Marie Claude, no doubt, could tell Mr. Glenn of real prostitutes who are truly merciful and practice heroic virtue and are worthy of a social justice they have never experienced.

Between Mr. Beck and you "socialists" a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from their place of torment cannot.

‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Let us remember, we are in the holy presence of God.

Thank you for this article!
Like many Christians I was distressed to learn of Glenn's statements knowing the heart of the gospel centres around faith, mercy and justice.
The upside to his comments are articles like these, portraits of people who allow Christ's justice to shape them to affect society for good, to alleviate the weight borne by the poor and to bring the marginalized into the mainstream

Thank you for the comment and expressed hope that Glenn Becks accepts the invitation. I am an Australian and recognise that we have our own faults to address but the way so many Christians especially but so many Americans see 'socialism' as a devilish ogre is frightening. Mind you too many read the Gospel of Matthew and read its Kingdom of Heaven as a future prospect NOT as present sign of what has begun in Christ.
"The spiritual life gives us the energy we need to do justice." needs to be writ large for America's survival.

He won't take the invitation. He is too busy being stupid. I don't know why a television station would hire him nor do I know why anyone watches and listens. He should be banned from the media. God bless Sr. Marie Claude and the women who have flocked to her services.

If you look at Glenn Beck on Google, his biography shows what a twisted, tormented person he is. Now he knows he can make big money being a moron.

Very inspiring. Congratulations! She is full of courage. May we have more like her in our convents.

It always interests me which articles attract the bloggers and which do not. Here it is March 13th, and there are no bloggers on this article yet. Thank you, Sr. Joan, for bringing this uncomfortable topic to your column.

I don't want to take anything away from the very fine editorial contribution from Joan Chittister. Marie Claude Naddaf is truly a gift to the women of Syria and elsewhere. However, I am troubled that Joan and other commentators, such as Jim Wallis, James Martin, and Joe Carter, find it necessary to recognize and critique Glenn Beck. Who is Glenn Beck? He is a FOX cartoon character, a "shock jock," a tool of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, pretending to be a journalist/talk show host on the "fair and balanced" network. Beck lacks any standing and ought to be ignored, just as Rush Limbaugh. I cannot understand why we continue to offer them more "air time" by acknowledging their irrational rants. Beck, Limbaugh, and other talk show hosts are part of the propaganda machine designed to totally discredit participative democracy and social-centric religion. Why continue to give them further attention? I have viewed some of Beck's shows and found myself yelling at my television in reaction to his preposterous rantings. Then, after taking a deep breath and with the convenience of my remote control, I changed channels and tuned out Glen Beck at the same time. Now let's get on to heralding the magnificent contributions of Marie Claude Naddaf and other champions of social justice without switching channels to Glen Beck et al.

I can't believe that Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. can be serious about warning us all of socialism. In their minds Communism. It was revealed a few weeks ago that the Republican party's strategy for getting more votes was to scare people into believing that we were on the road to socialism. They are very cynical and depressing. Are they trying to take the soul from our country?
Re. social justice, I have noticed over the last few years that this is never mentioned in Catholic church sermons anymore. Is there a reason for this? The sisters, however, continue to stand valiently for social justice. God bless them. What's up with the priests?