social justice

Recalling the conversation a few weeks back, the term “social justice” is all too often a euphemism that hides statist intentions as the cure for the vexing cultural problems facing us. Rather than fostering self-reliance, self-respect, self-control, and the other virtues necessary for independence, the programs and prescriptions that ostensibly cure the ills in fact erode any possibility of independence and success. Poverty — both material and and spiritual — is not at its foundation an economic issue. It’s a relational issue and the healing of poverty begins first by correcting one’s relationship to God and secondly to the neighbor.

View this video of Star Parker, a women who realized this and turned her life around:

I didn’t choose this video because Parker is black, or that poverty only affects the inner cities. I choose it because Parker strips away the veneer of false compassion and shows us how enslaving it really is. There is plenty of poverty elsewhere, call it a poverty of spirit, and it afflicts many of us Orthodox too.

Do you think the enslavement does not bind us? Think again. Did you know, for example, that abortion rates among the Orthodox are higher than the national average?

Read what John Couretas wrote a while back in A patriarch who ‘generally speaking, respects human life’:

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Two National Rabbinic Groups Issue Religious Ban on Voting for Pro-Homosexual Agenda Politicians; Call on Pope and other Denominations to Follow Suit

BROOKLYN, NY, May 27 /Christian Newswire/ — In light of recent developments in the ongoing push to legislate a Federal Hate Crimes Bill in Congress and same gender marriage legislation in New York and other states, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the 65 year old Orthodox Jewish national Rabbinic organization Rabbinical Alliance of America, surrounded by Rabbis, issued a religious ban on voting for any politician or office holder who supports any aspect of the homosexual political agenda.
Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8VkYFAGR9I to see the actual video of the statement.

Rabbi Levin also called upon other Orthodox Jewish religious and civic organizations such as Agudath Israel of America, the OU, the Rabbinical Council of America, Chabad and the Chasidic groups to follow suit.

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Greek Orthodox Metropoiltan Iakovos has issued a “call to action” on an Illinois bill that right-to-life advocates describe as a state level Freedom of Choice Act. The metropolitan has posted a clear and forceful letter on the Metropolis of Chicago Web site condemning the proposed HB 2354 as unjust and a violation of “the very principles of our faith in Jesus Christ, the Life of the world.”

The metropolitan said HB 2354 “would affect all health care workers by removing their right to conscientious objection to abortion and related procedures, forcing them to participate in or provide abortions or face legal punishments. This bill would basically make the right to an abortion a fundamental human right in the State of Illinois.”

More:

The forces that oppose religious freedom and are actually seeking to increase the number of abortions in our society are well organized, well funded, and well connected to the political process. It is high time for Christians to raise their own voices to demand their elected officials attend to the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Perhaps those who want this bill believe we will be distracted by the economic crisis facing our nation and affecting many of us personally. We must resist the temptation, especially during this Lenten season, to neglect this matter as “someone else’s problem.” None of us wants the government to come between us and our doctor. We should likewise not want the government to come between health care workers and their God. If we allow one step, we will never prevent the next.

Read the full text of the letter on the Orthodoxy Today website.

Leaders of the world’s Orthodox churches released a joint statement that touched on far ranging issues of interest to the Church, including the global economic crisis, the environment and the prospects for further pan-Orthodox consultations and a Holy and Great Council.

The primates were gathered for the Oct. 10-12 Synaxis of the Heads of the Orthodox Churches and Pauline Symposium at the Patriarchal Cathedral of Saint George in Istanbul, Turkey. His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I addressed the gathering on Oct. 10, saying that “such a Synaxis is deemed necessary and beneficial, especially in times like ours, when the personal encounter and conversation among responsible leaders in all public domains of human life is rendered increasingly accessible and essential.”

The Message from the Primates, posted on the Europaica site, also pointedly affirmed the Church’s role in the social sphere.

“Efforts to distance religion from societal life constitute the common tendency of many modern states,” the primates said. “The principle of a secular state can be preserved; however, it is unacceptable to interpret this principle as a radical marginalization of religion from all spheres of public life.”

The complete Message of the Primates follows:
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