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What Catholics can teach Glenn Beck
By John Gehring
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good
While it's generally not worth spilling any ink over Glenn Beck, the Fox News commentator whose daily deluge of paranoia, racism and faux populism pollutes our airwaves, his recent attacks on churches that preach "social justice" has rightly earned the condemnation of diverse faith leaders.
In case you missed it, Beck recently said this on his radio show: "I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
Mr. Beck, who could be inhaling too much chalk dust from his blackboard, views social and economic justice as "code words" that obscure a sinister agenda once sought after by both Communists and Nazis. Even after leading Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants immediately lined up to remind our gentle scold that seeking justice for the poor and most vulnerable is not some ideological agenda rooted in lefty politics but central to Biblical values and specifically the Gospel teachings of Jesus, Beck came out swinging.
When more than 30,000 Christians (and counting) responded to Rev. Jim Wallis' call to write to Mr. Beck and "turn themselves in" as social justice Christians, the implacable host turned his rhetorical guns on Rev. Wallis and the good people at Sojourners: "So you go ahead and you continue to do your protest thing, and that's great. I love it. But just know -- the hammer is coming, because little do you know, for eight weeks, we've been compiling information on you, your cute little organization, and all the other cute little people that are with you. And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over..."
Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, author and culture editor at America magazine, has pointed out with his usual wit and wisdom that Mr. Beck is, well, off his rocker. Watch him on the Colbert Report reminding viewers that social justice is central to Catholic teaching and deeply connected to Christian values. The Catholic Church has been speaking about social and economic justice since at least 1891, when Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical on capital and labor that began the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching. In 1919, the U.S. Catholic bishops recruited Monsignor John A. Ryan, a Catholic priest from Minnesota whose writings on economic justice, labor and social inequality were widely read in the decades following World War I, to write their Program for Social Reconstruction, a document that Jesuit scholar Joseph M. McShane, S.J. credited with launching "the American Catholic search for social justice" in earnest. The program called for what at the time were dramatic social reforms: minimum wages, public housing for workers, labor participation in management decisions and insurance for the elderly, disabled and unemployed.
Last summer, Pope Benedict XIV released a timely encyclical on economic justice, labor unions, international development and environmental exploitation. Benedict delayed its release to more adequately address the global economic crisis. The finished product is, in part, a critique of free-market fundamentalism that left neoconservatives scrambling to downplay passages that take a skeptical view of unfettered markets. Indeed, the pope goes where many U.S. politicians fear to tread in his call for a more just distribution of wealth, robust financial regulations and the essential role government has in serving the common good. If the pope were running for political office in the U.S., you can imagine the attack ads blasting him as a socialist.
I imagine that Mr. Beck might be more comfortable with "charity" than he is with "justice." Charity is a response to the immediate needs of people (hunger, for example). The pursuit of justice involves changing the social structures that perpetuate poverty. The late Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara famously summed it up: "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint," he said. "But when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist." Both charity and justice are essential principles that must coexist together, not as competing claims on our conscience. When confronted with the moral scandals of poverty, war and racism, Christians are called to ask "why" and set about building something more equitable and humane.
As for the antics of Mr. Beck, most Christians will be sticking with their church and tuning him out.
John Gehring is the Director of Communications for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
By John Gehring |
March 24, 2010; 11:53 AM ET
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Posted by: truthseeker1 | March 28, 2010 7:12 PM
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Jim Wallis has gotten 30,000 signatures from leftists who are upset that Glenn Beck has exposed their dressing up their push for government redistribution of wealth as a something religious? Wow. That represents a tenth of Glenn Beck's viewers on a single night.
Jesus called for us to take care of the poor. He did not ask us to vote for government handouts. The reality is that liberals are the most stingy with their own money, but don't mind raising taxes on everyone else (Google Biden's, Obama's, or Kerry's tax returns.)
"The problem with socialism is that pretty soon you run out of other people's money." Margaret Thatcher
Posted by: GiveMeThat | March 25, 2010 4:48 PM
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Maybe catholics can teach Mormon Elder Becks's buddy Limbaugh how to get his jollies here in the US and get away with it instead of having to go to the Dominican Republic.
Posted by: coloradodog | March 25, 2010 2:47 PM
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Er, why Christians listening to or taking advice from a Mormon?
Posted by: mammyyel | March 25, 2010 12:13 PM
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Invitation to ALL!
New blog tackles Church abuse, separation of Church and State, Atheism, Buddhism, Existentialism…
Posted by: Schaum | March 24, 2010 7:09 PM
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Mr. Beck is an entertainer. Charity is good.
Posted by: dcfanoutwest | March 24, 2010 6:31 PM
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Do your homework. This is the teaching of Catholic Church for all-time. The Catholic Church is not a Progressive Institution. It's not a Socialist or Communist Party.
Leo XIII - Rerum Novarum - ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON CAPITAL AND LABOR. www.vatican.va/.../leo_xiii/encyclicals/.../hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html - Cached - Similar
The philosophical fathers of progressivism include Francis Bacon, Hegel, Marx, Comte, Rousseau, Condoret, Bentham, Mill and Edward Bellamy… One of the main characteristics of these thinkers’ progressivism was its pseudo spirituality, or relation of humanity. In this substitute religion, faith in a transcendent moral order is replaced by faith in nature, science, technology, and reason, This faith also involves a sort of humanitarian sentimentalism that attempts to satisfy an inner desire to serve mankind and the world by engaging in reforms meant to uplift the less fortunate. Yet these reforms are not intended to effect inner spiritual reform but rather to change institutions and thus improve society through outer reform. Conservatives argue that progressive humanitarianism is both a diversion and escape from individual moral responsibility.
Progressivism also includes the idea that human perfectibility is possible in history. This doctrine hold that it is unnecessary to wait for the afterlife for human perfection; the fulfillment of human nature can take place in earthly life. Scientific progressives, like Bacon, believe that progress is a predicate of scientific knowledge and technological developments. Social progressives, like Croly, believe that human nature can be transformed through political reform.
Progressivism is intimately tied to modern liberalism and the politics of the welfare state, which holds that the transformation of society can only be achieved by a centralized government that has sufficient power to remake society…
…Finally, progressivism has in it a gnostic element. That is, progressives believe that they possess the knowledge needed to transform society and human nature. They are greatly dissatisfied with the world as it is and are impatient with life and the very structure of reality because these fall short of perfection or the the progressive ideal. These gnostic attributes are part of an existential disposition that fails to accept the permanence of evil in earthly life – in theological terms, original sin. By contrast, most conservatives believe that the structure of reality, including human nature, is permanent. Attempts to transform the human condition end up in disaster, as Huxley and Orwell suggest in their dystopias Brave New World (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
…Here again lies the underlying assumption of progressivism: evil is the result of a poorly organized world. Reorganization of the world in accordance with progressive ideas will usher in a new age of freedom, equality, and peace.
-from American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia
Posted by: tradlatinmass1 | March 24, 2010 2:25 PM
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If the Catholic Church and other religious institutions continue to advocate this social justice (redistribution of the wealth/Marxist) message from the pulpit and the Halls of Congress, you deserve to lose your tax exempt status.
Forty percent of what I earn already goes to either the local, state or federal governments.
As a middle class American, I can barely make ends meet and save for a rainy day.
Enough is enough!
If I hear one more social justice sermon preached from the pulpit, I'll stand up and do just what Beck suggests. I'll run for the hills.
How dare you lobby the government to steal from me to give to those that you and other Marxists righteously deem the "most vulnerable in society.
Posted by: Julie24 | March 24, 2010 1:29 PM
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Wonderful post, Mr. Gehring,
I am not religious myself, but posts like yours remind me why I don't divide the population according to religious vs non-religious -- but instead according to who is an extremist fundi right winger vs. not. (And yes, atheists can be fundi right wingers too. Christopher Hitchens and Ayn Rand come to mind.)
I think we are on the same divide according to how I draw the line -- both of us are opposed to the Glen Beck and his ilk of extremist fundi right wingers.