This Is Not Christianity, This Is Liberalism

No awareness of priorities or the order of charity.

I support Theresa May’s attempts to restore the 0.7% aid budget. I DO think charity begins at home...the difference is, I believe the whole world IS our home and all members of the human family are our brothers and sisters. pic.twitter.com/xRr9wR7AML

— Peter Anthony (@FrPeterAnthony) June 7, 2021

IDW Liberals Denounce Natural Affinities and Loyalties

Pseudoscience...

"Much of the glue holding modern societies together is alarmingly fragile, and triggers...can shatter this facade with devastating consequences that we are only just beginning to understand." - @Robertflynch https://t.co/LRncd8t7Zg

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) November 22, 2020

Solidarity

As a "principle" of Roman Catholic social teaching, solidarity by itself it is insufficient to elaborate a systematic moral theology. We should diligere all with caritas, but that doesn't entail that we should diligere all equally. An essay like this cannot be systematic, given the limits of length, nor should it have attempted to cursorily mention difficult moral problems as if solidarity (or caritas) could tell us what to do.

"Monastic life is not one lifestyle choice among others. It is a public statement about the truth of who God is and what human existence means. It says in living words that this world is not enough."

Sister Dominic Mary Heath, OP on solidarityhttps://t.co/hc3Tb4w8g4

— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) August 24, 2020

Solidarity Means Giving Yourself by Sister Dominic Mary Heath, OP
Can a cloistered nun help a hurting world?

Spoken Like a Liberal

who's never heard of the order of charity.

We must fight, and I have fought, for persecuted Christians everywhere, including China. But there is no "first" (or second, etc.) here. We Christians must speak now and strongly for the persecuted of all faiths and shades of belief. It's our Christian duty and the Christian way. https://t.co/AfluQvYRFW

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) July 15, 2020

Priorities

Obviously this is fascism how dare the Hungarians try to look after everyone of their citizens - I mean what if it caught on https://t.co/3HkWtXweVf

— Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond) May 6, 2020

Our Urban Fantasies

First Things: A Call to Ordinary Heroism by L. S. Dugdale

Every night at 7 p.m., residents of Manhattan, where I live, fling open their windows. For about five minutes they cheer, shout, whistle, and bang spoons on pots in acknowledgment of all who put their lives on the line to care for those suffering from coronavirus.

The phenomenon is rumored to have begun in Italy—where lockdown has dragged on the longest. But it has since spread to Spain, France, and even to India. In the United Kingdom, it’s called the “Clap for our Carers” tribute—an expression of appreciation. Even the royal family participates.

Perhaps such a display of solidarity of gratitude is the best that can be done in a atomized and anonymized mass population center; whether it would be "obligatory" for every citizen in Manhattan, for example, to send a thank you card and/or flowers addressed generally to the staff of every hospital and medical center on the island when considerations of space would not make it possible for everyone to do this, still it is a question that one might want to ask one's self. In a real community that exists because it is of the appropriate scale such displays would not be necessary as gratitude would be part of the political friendship that exists among its members. But we do not have political friendship in our urban mass population centers.

One point of contention that has particularly intrigued me is whether health care workers should be prioritized. Many feel that they should. Medical professionals are a scarce resource, the logic goes, akin to N95 face masks. We must do everything we can to conserve them. Others argue based on morale. Fighting a pandemic with limited resources is hard enough—doctors and nurses may mutiny if their well-being isn’t considered paramount. And then there is the issue of competing obligations. Sure, health care workers are responsible for caring for the sick, but they also have commitments to their own families and neighbors.

Less often, over the last few weeks, have I heard my fellow physicians voice a willingness to “go down with the ship.” Maritime tradition holds that in an emergency, captains either save their passengers and crew, or they die trying. Medical ethics emphasizes that physicians have a duty to care for patients, even in crisis. Should we doctors be willing to serve, no matter the cost, and to put ourselves last? For my own part, I’m inclined to say yes, even if the personal protective gear proves inadequate. But I’m on the favorable side of fifty, in good health, and not afraid to die. For me, it doesn’t seem too much to ask. But this isn’t the case for everyone.

After the 2003 SARS epidemic, a survey of health care workers in New York City hospitals found that just under half would be willing to serve in another SARS outbreak. They counted the cost and determined it wasn’t worth it. They worried about their families and about their own health. 
There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my hunch is that far more than half of New York’s health care workers are serving in this present crisis. The same will probably be true as disease acuity shifts to other locales. Health care workers are rising to the occasion. But it’s not just doctors and nurses.

As for the obligation or the love of medical professionals, they may do it out of duty or love, but they don't do so intelligently or wisely if they don't consider whether they have a duty to an abstraction or a community that exists only as a polite fiction. What duty or love do they owe to strangers that is as important as the duty or love that they owe to those who are close to them, such as their family? We can commemorate soldiers and these medical professionals for their subjective states, but let us not celebrate the things to which they were attached, whether it be the Empire or illusions of community. They love as cogs are supposed to love other cogs subject to the same state, and while there is some good to that love, it is some sense not a properly ordered love. The state will, of course, celebrate that love and take credit for it.

Rod Dreher may condemn some as "free riders" and maybe some are just selfish "individualists" hiding behind the cover of "rights talk" but some are seeking to build community to prepare for the economic devastation that may be the result of the lockdown measures. It's on their own conscience whether they have done the risk assessment correctly or not. At least they are aware of the absence of community, and appeals to "solidarity" or "good citizenship" will not suffice if they believe these to be illusions. If those people who are engaging in risky behavior recognize they have an obligation to self-isolate after their meeting and to warn others with whom they come into contact about possible exposure, then they must be judged according to their conscience. Otherwise, one could criticize them for negligence and endangering others. Indeed, I would expect a bunch of preppers or those of like mindset to take extreme precautions, but I wasn't there for the meeting. Dreher is not just concerned about the spread of COVID-19, he is enabling the state with his use of shaming language. The debate about civil liberties and the danger of the state in the present context of the COVID-19 emergency will continue so long as the government continues to act during the emergency.

American Bishops Should Read This

CWR: Love, Loyalty, and Justice by James Kalb
Higher principles do not require a featureless global society ordered by commerce and public administration and run by billionaires and bureaucrats.

On the wrong tack...

"Let's all get closer to unity by being wrong on the order of charity!"

The last symposium for the Huffington Ecumenical Institute: Immigration and Healing with Ecumenical Dialogue: West, East, Orient, and Refugees

Is This Book Worth Getting?

Or will it be just too centrist to be useful?

The Miracle of “We” by R. R. Reno
This essay is an excerpt from R. R. Reno’s new book Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West.

In the first half of the twentieth century, perverse loves destroyed a great deal in the West, not just lives and buildings, but cultural legitimacy as well.

Let's get this right: some may have been motivated by a perverse form of nationalism, but others may have been motivated what they thought was patriotism, as it was defined for them through state indoctrination. But the ones who were issuing commands? Their perverse love was the love of self and power, and this is what is at issue -- not perverse forms of nationalism, which are manipulated by the state, but the state itself.

Dying Latin Churches

Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

CWR: Talking to some young Jesuits about social justice and evangelization by Bishop Robert Barron
My concern is that an exaggerated stress on the fostering of justice in the political and economic arena can compromise the properly evangelizing mission of Christ’s Church.

Mind you, a commitment to doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, to righting social wrongs, to serving the poor and needy necessarily follows from evangelization. One of the permanent achievements of Vatican II is to show that conversion to Christ entails not a flight from the world, but precisely a deeper love for the world and a desire to alleviate its suffering. There is simply no question about it: an evangelized person works for justice.

Moral Crisis in China

Are Chinese Women Heartless?

Kith and Kin: The Enduring Ethic of the South

Patriotism

Catholic Tradition and the Patriotic Question by Jerry Salyer

Dreher catching on?

Lega/Mateo Salvini v. Pope Francis... Christianity As National Suicide Pact By ROD DREHER

Approaching the Heretical Gospel of Liberalism

Does acceptance allow for any priority (or "discrimination") based on status, in accordance with justice and the order of charity? If not, then there is a problem.

Christian Refugees?

No...

For the sake of those who are our brothers, either spiritually or ethnically.(The fraternity proper to all who belong to the human race is last.)



And what is "excommunication," then? This is question to be answered at the political level, not the ecclesial.

Asia News: Pope: Refugees are our brothers, we must welcome them

At the General Audience Francis urges people to "touch the excluded" and the poor who need us. "Every night I pray: 'Lord, if you want you can make me clean' and I say five Our Fathers, one for each of Jesus’ wounds". "The grace working in us does not seek sensationalism. Usually it moves quietly and without fanfare".



Related:

CWR Blog: Is Patriotism a Virtue? by Jerry Salyer
The fact that so few public figures openly challenge the value of patriotism indicates not a genuine consensus in favor of patriotism, but only that few public figures have given much thought to what patriotism actually is.

Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge"

Unmanly Men in Flannery O'Connor's Short Stories by Mitchell Kalpakgian