# 4 of 5 - A Critical Analysis of Just/Faith

# 4 of 5 -A Critical Analysis of Just/Faith
The relentless pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Friday, Dec. 9, 2011

[Memo to Justice/Faith Ministry: For Catholics to read and study the writings of Jim Wallis, Bill Ayers, and Saul Alinsky on matters relating to Catholic Social Justice is like working with the ACLU on the First Amendment to our Constitution in pursuit of authentic religious freedom and rights.]

We continue with the classic article by William A. Borst in Mindszenty Report – V. LIII-No. II.

“The articles selected for Cloud of Witnesses support the standard socialist causes and includes many left wing Catholic peace activists and dissenters as well as a Masonic veterans group. The book contains a policy statement in favor of recognition and legal protection for homosexuals, including gay marriage, and articles favor the ordination of women. Cloud serves as an introduction to liberation theology, which the Church has refuted, beginning with Pope Pius XI’s 1937 “Divini Redemptoris” and continuing with every pope since then.

“The Common Good for All: Questions about social justice invariably lead to the issue of socialism in the Church. The first known usage of the term social justice derived from a 19th century priest, Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, whose sociology of politics attempted to recover the ancient virtue of what had been called general justice in Aristotle & Thomas Aquinas, but in a new contemporary form.

“The idea of social justice evolved into the notion of the common good which became an integral part of traditional Catholic social teaching. Pope Leo XIII relied on it when he issued his encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, for the purpose of combating the excesses of both laissez-faire capitalism and atheistic communism.

“But Pope Leo was not a socialist. He did not equate social justice with a false kind of guaranteed economic equality. He believed that inequality was the natural state of a society because people’s skills are unequal. In Rerum, the pope underscored the inherent right to private property while insisting on the role of the state in requiring a living wage.

"The pope considered the means of production to be both private property requiring state protection and a dimension of the common good requiring state regulation. He clearly understood that in the hands of the government, private property is always at high risk.

“The Tender Road to Death: Since the early 20th century, the progressive left has boldly adapted the history and the rhetoric of social justice and the common good to the detriment, not only of the Church, but also the country. Most Catholics have nothing more than a generic understanding of the term, social justice, which seems to have replaced sin in the dogmatic lexicon. It is promoted from the pulpit as an unexplained given that should not be questioned or discussed. This new understanding recognizes the government as an agent of social justice and unabashed purveyor of the redistribution of a nation’s wealth and resources…”

George H. Kubeck