May Jesus Christ Be Praised

Social Justice & Charity

- Charity & Social Justice
  
  Let me try to illustrate the difference between social justice and private charity with a story, famous in social justice circles:
  Once upon time there was a town which was built beyond the bend in a river. One day some of its children were playing by the river when they spotted 3 bodies floating in the water. They ran to get help and the townsfolk quickly pulled the bodies from the river. One body was dead, so they buried it. One was alive, but quite ill, so they put it into the hospital. The third was a healthy child, so they placed it in a family who cared for it and took it to school. From that day on, each day a number of bodies came floating around the bend in the river and, each day, the good charitable townspeople pulled them out and tended to them – burying the dead, caring for the sick, finding homes for the children, and so on. This went on for years, and the townspeople came to expect that each day would bring its quota of bodies … but, during those years, nobody thought to walk up the river, beyond the bend, and check out why, daily, those bodies came floating down the river.
  The difference between private charity and social justice is, in one way, the difference between handling the bodies that have come down the river and doing preventive work up the river. It’s more complex than that, especially when one sees the web of intertwined social, political, historical, and economic factors responsible for those bodies, but the analogy at least helps show a key distinction. Private morality has more to do with personal charity and personal goodness and honesty. Social justice has to do more with changing systems which, although often managed by persons in good conscience, are of themselves evil in that they, knowingly or unknowingly, victimize certain people. - Fr. Ronald Rolheiser.
- Enviromental Stewardship
- Pro-Life Issues
- Citizenship
- Works of Mercy
- 1) Tiger and the Fox
  
  A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs, and he wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come up with the game in its mouth. The tiger ate its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.
  The next day God fed the fox by the means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God’s greatness and said to himself, “I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with all that I need.”
  
  He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death’s door when he heard a voice say, “O you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Stop imitating the disable fox and follow the example of the tiger.”
  
  Kurtz, Ernest & Katherine Ketcham: The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning (New York: Bantam Books Doubleday, 2002)
- 2) St. Lawrence and The Church's Treasure
  
  The early church had a stormy relationship with the wicked and powerful Roman government. Cycles of severe persecution interrupted by tenuous peace recurred at the whim of the emperor. Roman officials, ignorant of the actual teachings and practices of true Christians, often acted out of bigotry, fear, superstition, or misinformation. The royal court assumed that the growing Christian church operated along the same lines as their own greedy religions.
  
  The emperor, coveting the wealth these Christians must surely possess, summoned their St. Lawrence to the royal court and ordered him to produce "the treasures of the church." The frustrated St. Lawrence protested that the church had no gold, jewels, or other valuables (which was indeed true at this point in history). The emperor, brushing aside the St. Lawrence 's objection, demanded that the riches of the church be brought to him in the morning. St. Lawrence left the royal presence quietly.
  
  The next day the St. Lawrence dutifully appeared at the palace doorway. He was empty-handed. "I told you to bring me the treasures of the church!" the emperor raged.
  
  St. Lawrence then invited the emperor to look out at the palace steps. Gathered together, peering sheepishly at the great doors of the royal palace rising above them, was a mass of ragged beggars, cripples, slaves, and outcasts.
  
  "These," said St. Lawrence with a sweep of his arm, "are the treasures of the church."
  
  For his unappreciated but accurate insight, the good St. Lawrence was promptly martyred. The treasure of the church is people. The church is not a building; it is not a doctrine; it is not a program. The body of Christ is the church.