Christians and "Social Justice".(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: When I saw the title of November's editorial I expected to be outraged when I read it. However, I found myself in agreement with much of what you said. It is the Catholics more than anyone else who engage in the sort of behaviour you were talking about. The Catholic Social Justice Forum (CSJF) is one of the more laughable and vocal bodies. Their bleating in Catholic publications like the Catholic Leader about the evil of Work Choices was near ceaseless and rose to a hysterical crescendo coming up to the election.

I have discussed the matter of the church being active politically and obviously left-leaning with my parish priest and my local bishop. Both hold the line that Christian, or more specifically Catholic, forays into the area of government policy and economics are needed for several, but two main reasons: first to bring about God's will on earth and second because it makes Catholic Christianity "relevant", engaging itself with the issues of today. Both arguments are codswallop.

First, making comments about the acceptability to God of any policy is blasphemy of the worst sort. It's one thing to claim to work for God, it's another thing to think that you have the same transcendent understanding and perspective as the creator of the universe and that your musings are the same as his. That is to claim to be God.

Second, comments that are clearly uninformed on issues that are not within its area of concern make the church less relevant, not more. Even those few who actually listen can see that these people are generally far more concerned with getting attention for themselves to advertise their assumed moral superiority than the issues they talk about. That's exactly what disgusts me most about the rantings of the Left on issues like the economy, the morality of profit, indigenous questions, immigration, the environment and their other sacred cows. Clearly the Left share much ideologically with the CSJF and many in the Catholic Church. However, they share more than ideology. They share ignorance, a love of moral posturing, a desire for temporal power, and a belief that because emotion happens in the brain it is the same as reason.

We should expect this sort of behaviour from the Left, but not from Christians. Christ warned us about becoming hypocritical Pharisees and from desiring power on earth. Christ knew that temporal authority legislating morality causes more sin than it cures. Christ ordered men to give to God what was God's and to Caesar what was Caesar's. Also, St Paul ordered Christians to obey state authorities.

Perhaps the clearest call to resist the desire to gain earthly power is the temptation, where Satan offers Jesus the sword and authority of Rome, giving him earthly power to achieve the goal of justice and righteousness, and Jesus denies it. If Jesus refused to pick up the sword of earthly authority the CSJE and the Catholic Church should ...