Christ called each of us to help the poor. It is not a duty of love that we can assign to Caesar or to others.  I recall a medieval legend that Judas got to spend one day of each year off from Hell on an iceberg in the Atlantic because one day in Jerusalem he had absentmindedly placed a coin into the bowl of a beggar. We are called to aid out of love for our neighbor and Christ.
The Catholic Left in a Nutshell
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Even that is better than communism.
That’s not just the *Catholic* left…
I’ve long said how easy it is to be a leftist in this society – just go along with the cultural currents, and in a similar vein to the meme above, throw (taxpayer) money around and call it “compassion”.
But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world:
And they follow him that are of his side. (Wisdom 2:24-25)
I was thinking about this passage, and I’ve always taken the “of his side” as “on his side,” which I certainly think is a possible reading.
But there is perhaps a deeper signification, for as the woman was brought forth from the side of Adam and as the Church is brought forth from the side of Christ, so perhaps there is a diabolical inversion here in that those who fill their hearts with envy are “of his side.”
Pope Bob, here’s looking at you.
This article goes along with something that I have observed about a lot of social justice warriors. That for them their issues are about feeling good rather than doing good. A person who wants to do good should be willing to accept personal responsibility for the consequences of their views and actions and accept constructive criticism. To many SJWs personal responsibility is hate speech to be canceled.
I can’t help thinking of the rich young man in the Gospel, who nowadays would found an NGO and lobby the Romans to tax his political enemies to make him feel good about “helping the poor”. These idiots began to multiply as vocations fell. Could one entertain the hypothesis that there are a lot of “denied vocations” among us: folks who in other generations would have taken the tonsure or the veil in a religious order to serve the poor personally under obedience and a vow of poverty, but today have neither the courage nor encouragement to do so?
Jesus warned his disciples to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees (hypocrisy & self righteousness) and Herod (political power & moral compromise).
And of course A COMBINATION OF BOTH!