This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
It is such a breath of fresh air to read an old prophet who preached about hellfire and damnation. What ever happened to these harsh sermons? What has changed? Just a decade ago it would have been unthinkable to hear an Elder’s quorum discussion about “toxic masculinity” or global warming. But now it’s a crime to talk about hellfire because that is being judgemental and we must not be judgemental. Today’s only call to repentance seems to be against anyone who calls people to repentance
Amidst popular culture’s descent, it seems like church culture often gets dragged with it. This is alarming enough, but there is also a large number of members leaving the church because of the dissonance between “progressive” ideas and church doctrine. Do messages of toxic masculinity and global warming undermine Christianity? I think we all have a feeling for what this “progressive” phenomenon is sweeping the religious community and sweeping people away, but it is so amorphous–how do we define it? Where did it come from?
Replacing Traditional Definition Of Justice
In the 13th century, Thomas Acquinas described justice in two terms: commutative and distributive. Commutative justice seeks to compare everyone equally to a standard for fair mutual dealings. Everyone gets charged the same price for a product at a store, and the price is equal to the value of the product. Distributive justice is the fair allocation of resources in a society. These two descriptors form the basis for justice which originated with Aristotle, and while it isn’t perfect, it has served well for centuries as a guide to legal, religious, and ethical systems. But then in the early 20th century, Marxists decided to change it and generalize all justice under the term “social justice.” Social justice is the relationship of an individual and society that provides equal access to rights and resources. This doctrine of social justice spread quickly like a weed and overtook our laws, schools, and popular culture. If you look up “justice” in the dictionary today, you find “social justice” as the given definition, while the 1828 dictionary made a careful distinction between commutative and distributive justice. In recent years, the doctrine of social justice has made an aggressive push to overtake the church. The ferocity of this campaign is remarkable enough, and the ubiquitousness of the voices agitating for “change” is not a tiny bit suspicious–nevertheless, the peremptory influence of social justice on Christianity is also not unprecedented. It’s always been undermining Christianity. In fact, it started with mainstream Christianity.
Catholic scholar Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio established social justice based on Neoplatonic principles of equality and relativism, and it was quickly adopted by the nascent Communist movement of his time. Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio was a Jesuit scholar who attended the same Jesuit school as Karl Marx, the founder of Communism. He defined social justice as “distinct from both commutative justice and distributive justice.” In 1923, Catholic Pope Pius XI claimed that it was actually Thomas Acquinas himself who invented social justice and its “sound principles,” not D’Azeglio. Aristotle? No, it started in the early 20th century with Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, but this was to be the frame with which the Catholic Church would push social justice, as a whole new way of looking at justice, replacing the classic definition.
Pope Pius XI made social justice “part and parcel of Catholic social doctrine.” It is shocking today to read through Catholic literature and see social justice treated like some empyrean commandment given to Adam. The Vatican pays tribute to Fidel Castro and other Marxists who enforced social justice. But it shouldn’t be surprising, because social justice as a formal doctrine started with the Catholic church (specifically Jesuits) under Pope Pius XI. As a Socialistic alternative, social justice treats resources and rights as economic commodities and matters of social arrangement. Pope Pius XI declared a religious imperative for a social arrangement of rights and resources: “Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced as soon as possible whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman… It is contrary to social justice when, for the sake of personal gain and without regard for the common good, wages and salaries are excessively lowered or raised; and this same social justice demands that wages and salaries be so managed, through agreement of plans and wills, in so far as can be done, as to offer to the greatest possible number the opportunity of getting work and obtaining suitable means of livelihood.” (via ‘The Holy See, Social Justice, and International Trade Law…’ by Rev. Dr. Alphonsus Ihuoma)
Before then, the issue of wages was the duty of commutative justice, and opportunity for getting work was the duty of distributive justice, and both were the result of merit. But both issues were combined by Pope Pius XI and approached as a matter of the “rights” established between society and the individual. This was not just religious dictation of economic affairs, but a religious doctrine dictating everything having to do with society. “The Catholic doctrine on social justice was set forth with tremendous authority. All thoughts on the Church’s social mission came to use social justice as the paradigm.” (via Rev. Dr. Alphonsus Ihuoma)
Mindset Of The Conquistador
It isn’t an idea that sprung up overnight. To find the origins of social justice and to see where it leads, we need to explore the complex history of Catholic powers and how concepts of “justice” directed events similar to what we are experiencing today. We can then see the true roots nd understand that the same doctrine that poisons popular culture today has plagued Christianity for thousands of years. Just as social justice ia foundationally about economics, the conquistadors were motivated by achieve wealth above spreading the good word of God. The Spanish conquistadors also displayed the moralistic supremacy that we find in social justice.
- Religious competition – Friar Diego de Landa reported that early Franciscan friars suppressed the “priesthood class” of Native civilizations because they had promoted “idolatry, divorce, public orgies, and the buying and selling of slaves.” Of course, this was hypocritical considering the conquistadors themselves sometimes sold the natives as slaves. So what was it really about? Overthrowing the moral system of the native culture by dismantling the organized structure of religious leadership. In a similar way, proponents of social justice today attack organized religions for what they consider modern “sins.” Socialist newspapers call for taxing churches and powerful groups ban churches from having any kind of influence in educational or governmental spaces. Unfortunately, this mindset seeps into churches who use censorship against other churches, particularly other churches with more traditional teachings. Do these churches hold the same kind of mindset that led the conquistadors to attack other churches?
- Public schools – Conquistador friars used public schools to indoctrinate the children and make them agents against their parents. In the book 1984, we read of children who turn in their own parents for violating the rules of their Communist society. This was also seen in Communist China. The Chinese schools urged children to report counter revolutionary activities of their parents. Friar Landa described how this tactic was used by the conquistadors: “The method taken for indoctrinating the Indians was by collecting the small children of the lords and leading men… The children then, after being taught, informed the friars of idolatries and orgies; they broke up the idols, even those belonging to their own fathers.” Natives were removed from their homes and placed in settlements, a lot like China continues to do today.
- Compulsion – Natives were forced to convert, Friar Landa reported: “The admiral and the royal judges always backed up the friars in gathering the Indians to catechism, and in punishing those who returned to their old life.” Then they were forced to pay taxes for “their support” from the church. Inquisition trials made public spectacles of those who did not conform, and some Natives committed suicide as a result. Likewise, those who propagate social justice don’t like to make it an option for people, if they can help it. They punish those who do not profess their beliefs. It is crucial for churches to respect the individual’s moral agency, as free choice is a gift from God, while social justice teaches obedience to be a matter of “social contract” which we are obligated, and therefore may be compelled to follow. This is why compulsion is fundamentally part of social justice but not part of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
- Revise Language – The friars revised and eradicated the native languages, just as Socialists attack our languages today. (This is something I would like to discuss fully in future articles).
- Moral crusade – Christopher Columbus captured a violent native tribe and sent them to Spain because they were “very barbarous and wild,” according to him. The conquistadors felt it was their duty to inflict their moral standard on foreign populations, and this is what I find to be the big similarity between conquistadors and social justice proponents of today. It’s like the classic Disney Pocahontas story of Europeans showing up and telling natives how things were going to be. How many natives of Utah move to San Francisco and lecture everybody there on how things should be run? I don’t see that happen. I see “progressive” media lecturing the natives of Utah. Now, skeptics would surely respond to me by pointing to the early church members who moved in to the town of Independence Missouri, took control, and sought to free the locals’ slaves. But there is a big difference between normal civic engagement through proper legal channels and the inflicting of moral standards on a foreign population. I haven’t seen any evidence that early Mormon settlers considered non-members barbarous or wild. Their behavior toward other Missourians was not comparable to non-members in church-dominated communities today. What we face today is a crusade from moral imperialists. When the regional bishop Francisco Toral released some native prisoners, the “Council of the Indies censured him” and the case went all the way to the king. This reflects the kind of “double down” attitude that does not allow for comprimise in today’s modern culture battle.
Jesuit Influence – This conquistador mindset slipped into the Jesuit order of Catholicism which was established in 1534 A.D.–and let’s not forget that social justice and Marxism germinated from a Jesuit school. The Jesuit founding documents made their order all about “progress” and propagation: “A Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine and for the propagation of the faith.” This mission statement was later expanded to include: “the education of children and unlettered persons in Christianity… to perform any other other works of charity, according to what will seem expedient for the glory of God and the common good.” Was this the basis for the compulsory schooling in American Indian communities? Education and the “common good”? Is the Jesuit order where the Marxist obsession with “common good” of society came from?
Globalism
Another important part of the conquistadors was globalism. They sought to unify the world under the single flag of their nation, a global empire.
Today, globalists have switched tactics. They now feign to embrace diversity, so now the Catholic leadership is “opening the Church to newfound respect for people of other religious traditions. Their contributions have led the Catholic community to significant engagement with issues of human rights, global justice, and inter-religious understanding.” (Banchoff & Casanova) This is what is known as global multiculturalism. They may not compel religious doctrines, but what about ideology? Today, global justice is not about violently compelling those of “barbaric” beliefs to submit to their version of Christianity, but about seeking “global justice” in non-religious yet highly moralistic ideological terms–propagating the same ideology. Just switch “religion” with “ideology” and is it basically the same thing?
Consider that the current Pope, a Jesuit, champions the “universal common good.” The Catholic catechism instructs Catholic church members to spread “a universal common good. This good calls for an organization of the community of nations able to ‘provide for the different needs of men… The common good is always oriented towards the progress of persons… built up in justice…” This kind of missionary language sounds strange to me, different from my duties as a Latter-Day Saint missionary. But really it is the same language that dates back to the founding of the Jesuits, and follows the mindset of the conquistador age. The “common good” and the establishment of a global government to “provide for” man’s needs reflects the social justice ideology of equal opportunity between society and the individual.
The Catholic church is now creating globalist Social Justice organizations, to form a “radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. The threats that arise from global inequality and the destruction of the environment are interrelated.” (Global Catholic Climate Movement) Catholic scholars are pushing Marxism and pastors are calling for a “new kind of Christianity.” Just as Pope Pious XI used economic terms, and Marxism fixates on economy, today’s religious social justice groups approach individuals as means of production to be compensated by society, rather than in terms of individual responsibilities and divine potential. Some say that in the Church of Jesus Christ there are likewise some who hold economics above religious doctrine and thus propagate social justice. (Maybe this is why some are so upset about the City Creek Mall.) Any church leadership that does not fit their egalitarian structure of “global equality,” needs to be dismantled–like the conquistadors dismantled the “priesthood class” of the locals.
Universal Salvation
The most important avenue for social justice infiltration is through the question of grace and salvation. Large numbers of mainstream Christians believe that as long as they call on the name of Jesus and throw their hands in the air, they will be saved. “Until the nineteenth century almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell. Here and there, outside the theological mainstream, were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated (in its commonest form this is the doctrine of ‘conditional immortality’). Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation, though these few included same major theologians of the early church… Since 1800 this situation has entirely changed, and no traditional Christian doctrine has been so widely abandoned as that of eternal punishment. Its advocates among theologians today must be fewer than ever before… Among the less conservative, universal salvation, either as hope or as dogma, is now so widely accepted that many theologians assume it virtually without argument.” (Theology Network, Richard Bauckham)
Christians who believe in universal salvation tend to embrace social justice, because social justice is an ideology that attempts perfect equality, so that everyone is saved. “Jesus wasn’t just preaching a universal salvation message for the world, but he was also addressing specific political, social, and racial issues. He was helping those who were being abused, violated, and oppressed. Involving ourselves within these issues — serving those who need justice — is an example of following Jesus that today’s Christians must adhere to…” (Sojo.net, Stephen Mattson)
Now, I understand this is a very broad brush to paint, and I’m not saying that everyone who believes in social justice is trying to promote universal salvation, behave like conquistadors, or replace true traditional doctrine. I think most are just following what is popular and what seems right. They can still be good people, as helping the abused and oppressed is certainly a righteous thing to do. I’m saying this kind of approach can lead to terrible situations like the conquistadors. It is a dangerous ideology because it counters meritocracy. God instructed: “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” Strict reverence of equality–to the point that everyone is “saved” regardless of merit–counters this basic concept. Social Justice forces equality the same way. We must not use compulsion, moral relativism, and societal dynamics to force people to do what is right. If you put the Jesuit philosophy of universal reconciliation and social justice side by side, I think you find that one is just an iteration of the other.
Social justice proponents attack traditional Christians for preaching hellfire and being “judgemental,” yet social justice leads down the road of the conquistadors who were quite judgemental themselves. Modes of belief that are “outdated” are quickly judged and executed in the Socialist utopia. Some judgements are more judgemental than other judgements, I suppose–just as some are more equal than others under egalitarianism. In societies dominated by social justice you find the highest income disparity, the most harmful sexism, the most violence, the highest rates of hate crime, etc. This ideology all about social equality and opportunity ends up producing the least amount of equality and opportunity.
United Order – The important differences between the true gospel and social justice as it has entered into theology can be seen as we investigate the United Order. Early Saints sought social unity and economic equality through a religious mode of living called “consecration.” Wikipedia incorrectly claims consecrations “central tenants” were “communal unity and equality.” This is simply false. This sounds more like the central tenant of the Jesuit order, not of the Church of Jesus Christ. The United Order sought social unity through fundamentally different paths than Marxism.
Social justice considers distribution of resources to be justice for classes who have been disenfranchised, while the United Order considers distribution as an unmerited act of charity. I don’t pay fast offerings because of some racist attitudes of my grandparents, for example. Commutative justice in the church presents a moral standard of charity whereas social justice makes redistribution a duty under social contract. Relying on the social contract as the final standard is very limited because Christlike morality is not to be incentivized in a future-based reward system. The United Order in the 1800’s failed for just this reason; people did not see the ultimate incentive in the distant future–they did not see how giving property to the poor would have ultimately benefited them in the future. Marxism is a system that focuses on what people can receive while the United Order focuses on what they give. Also, Marxists treat distributive justice as a matter of one social class victimizing another social class, while the United Order treats every person on an individual basis. When we focus on the individual, we can promote free will rather than compulsory behavior.
So when it comes down to it, the reason for social justice infiltrating Christianity is selfishness. People focus on receiving rather than giving. They retreat further away from Zion and drag us all into a sphere of existence where masculinity is toxic and exhaling CO2 is a crime against mother nature. They focus on money and economics rather than spiritual rewards. Like the Pope, they place filthy lucre as the motivator for morality instead of recognizing that morality dictates economics.
It is the secret combination of our time, this cult of equality. Look at Cain’s secret combination, the purpose was to get gain and reject meritocracy. Then Lamech committed murder not only to get gain but “for the oath’s sake.” The oath took away his agency and free choice so that he had to behave as the collective dictated. In this secret combination, “they knew every man his brother,” a hint at equality and egalitarianism. All of these attack articles in the newspapers today, all of the insults and bullying on Twitter, the hatred for our church propagated in Hollywood and popular culture–it’s all part of a secret combination that compels us to “know” every man equally as a brother and relinquish control over our own moral standards.