Solidarity Catholic Quotes

And that’s when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity. One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara: “When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.” Charity wins awards and applause but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for living out of love that disrupts the social order that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.

The ancient world found an end to anarchy in the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire was a brute fact, not an idea. The Catholic world sought an end to anarchy in the church, which was an idea, but was never adequately embodied in fact. Neither the ancient nor the medieval solution was satisfactory – the one because it could not be idealized, the other because it could not be actualized. The modern world, at present, seems to be moving towards a solution like that of antiquity: a social order imposed by force, representing the will of the powerful rather than the hopes of the common men. The problem of a durable and satisfactory social order can only be solved by combining the solidarity of the Roman Empire with the idealism of St. Augustine’s City of God. To achieve this a new philosophy will be needed

The Catholic Church standing in "solidarity" with members of the LGBT community while condemning their behavior as "sinful" is a little like attempting to stand with two feet in one shoe. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" sounds really high-minded until you realize the only sin committed was being born different.

At a minimum it must involve renouncing any desire or ambition to become wealthy or famous; fostering vertical solidarity between rich and poor as well as horizontal solidarity between consumers and producers; rendering effective assistance to marginalized groups in society such as the poor and immigrants; a shared commitment to traditional values, particularly with respect to sex and marriage, as well as a recognition of the importance of families and children; opposition to abortion; an emphasis on environmental stewardship and caring for creation; and a commitment to nonviolence.

In old census reports, I found a hint of how British administrators had vivisected Sri Lanka in the early 20th century. In 1901…the census classified people into seven categories—Europeans; Burghers, Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors, referring to Muslims of south Indian origin; Malays; and the indigenous Veddahs of eastern and south-eastern Sri Lanka. “A mere 10 years later, the matrix had exploded. By ethnicity, a Sri Lankan in 1911 could identify himself in any one of 10 ways, and then again in any one of 11 ways by religious denomination—a multiplicative tumult of identity. Slender distinctions were now officially recognized. A Sinhalese could be a low-country Sinhalese or a Kandyan Sinhalese; a Tamil could be a Ceylon Tamil or an Indian Tamil, depending on how recently his family had settled in Sri Lanka; a Christian could be a Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist, or a Salvationist, or he could belong to the Church of England or ‘Other Sects.’ Assembling legislatures based on such muddled ethnic loyalties helped the British by disrupting solidarity and nationalism because, as Governor William Manning once wrote to his secretary of state in London, ‘no single community can impose its will upon the other communities.

A fascist regime could imprison, despoil, and even kill its inhabitants at will and without limitation. All else pales before that radical transformation in the relation of citizens to public power. It follows almost as an anticlimax that fascist regimes contained no mechanisms by which citizens could choose representatives or otherwise influence policy. Parliaments lost power, elections were replaced by yesno plebiscites and ceremonies of affirmation, and leaders were given almost unlimited dictatorial powers. Fascists claimed that the division and decline of their communities had been caused by electoral politics and especially by the Left’s preparations for class warfare and proletarian dictatorship. Communities so afflicted, the fascists taught, could not be unified by the play of naturally harmonious human interests, as the liberals had believed. They had to be unified by state action, using persuasion and organization if possible, using force if necessary. The job required what the French sociologist Émile Durkheim called “mechanical solidarity” rather than “organic solidarity.” Fascist regimes thus contained multiple agencies for shaping and molding the citizenry into an integrated community of disciplined, hardened fighters. The fascist state was particularly attentive to the formation of youth, jealously attempting to retain a monopoly of this function (a matter that brought fascist regimes and the Catholic Church into frequent conflict).

He did not begin by tearing down, or by painting so intense a picture of misery and injustice that you burned to change the world. Instead, he aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment. He made you feel that you and all men had great and generous hearts with which to love God. If you once recognized this fact in yourself you would expect and find it in others.

American

In spite of good intentions, the net effect of Negro solidarity proved to be a tremendous obstacle to integration in Catholic life. A separatist organization was not in a very strategic position to protest against separatism.

Jews and Marxists were forbidden in any case to practise journalism in Nazi Germany. In October 1933, Hitler enacted an editors’ law modelled on the regimentation of journalists in fascist Italy. From mid-1935 the Catholic-owned press was also purged of all divisive religious trends. Sinning newspapers were sniffed out and closed down. As Goebbels publicly emphasized: ‘I reject the standpoint that there is in Germany a Catholic and a Protestant press; or a workers’ press; or a farmers’ press; or a city press or a proletariat press. There exists only a German press.’ To Goebbels's new monolithic organization Hitler assigned three tasks: to illuminate to the world the urgency of the problems he was about to tackle; to warn that he would not be trifled with; and to show the world the solidarity of the German people.