Foundations

   Every morning I bring up the blog of Fr. Zuhlsdorf, WDPRS.com. Besides being a Latin scholar, who translates the Collect (prayer) from the Mass, usually for Sundays, with old and new translations, comparing them for beauty and accuracy in meaning, he offers articles from other places, with his comments and observations.  Added to  the serious reading regarding religion and culture, he entertains with views of his bird feeders and step-by-step images when he is putting something together in the kitchen. He should compile a cookbook! Sometimes he quotes from serious literature, and he loves the old "The Little World of Don Camillo" books and Battlestar Gallactica. Poems often appear.  His blog is fun to peruse.

   Yesterday he quoted from Pope Benedict, who is visiting in Germany right now. The Pope's opening remarks fall into line with the essay(s) I'm putting together on social justice.  I'm quoting the Holy Father today, taken from Fr. Z's blog.

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We are witnessing a growing indifference to religion in society, which considers the issue of truth as something of an obstacle in its decision-making, and instead gives priority to utilitarian considerations.

All the same, a binding basis for our coexistence is needed; otherwise people live in a purely individualistic way. Religion is one of these foundations for a successful social life. "Just as religion has need of freedom, so also freedom has need of religion." These words of the great bishop and social reformer Wilhelm von Ketteler....remain timely.

Freedom requires a primordial link to a higher instance. The fact that there are values which are not absolutely open to manipulation is the true guarantee of our freedom. The man who feels a duty to truth and goodness will immediately agree with this: freedom develops only in responsibility to a greater good. Such a good exists only for all of us together; therefore I must always be concerned for my neighbors. Freedom cannot be lived in the absence of relationships.

In human coexistence, freedom is impossible without solidarity. What I do at the expense of others is not freedom but a culpable way of acting which is harmful to others and also to myself. I can truly develop as a free person only by using my powers also for the welfare of others. This holds true not only in private matters but also for society as a whole. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, society must give sufficient space for smaller structures to develop and, at the same time, must support them so that one day they will stand on their own.

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Subsidiarity will be explained as I go along with the essays on social justice. Meanwhile, just this morning, I see that President Obama's new chief of Social Innovation and Civic Participation Council (another czar) also is director of a "social justice" group funded by George Soros. The Aspen Group seeks "to foster values-based leadership, encourage individuals to reflect on the ideal and ideas that define a good society..." It has as its ideology the idea that government intervention is necessaary to fix what (it claims) are various social and racial injustices in the United States. It has global initiatives, however. It's website says it is dedicated to repairing "structural racism."  It also has a program providing training and seminars for federal judges.

This ideology is a direct contrast to the principle of subsidiarity.  Stay tuned. This is an important distinction.

9/23/11