Here’s a story featured in the Catholic News Service today. It talks about how Canadian Catholics, and specifically Canadian Catholic politicians, seem split on supporting social justice issues and life issues.

Canada’s political battleground splits Catholic politicians between those formed by Catholic social justice movements and those who stake their Catholic and political identity on support for life and family issues, said a church historian.

“I’ve yet to see a politician make it work where these different things are wedded together,” said Mark McGowan, church historian and principal at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto.

New Democratic Party member of Parliament Charlie Angus, representing Timmins-James Bay, Ontario, is a former Catholic New Times columnist and a practicing Catholic. Tony Martin of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, also a New Democratic Party member of Parliament, comes from Irish Catholic working-class roots and speaks frequently about social justice and the church.

Liberals also have captured the imaginations of social-justice-minded Catholics.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, a Liberal Party member, is a churchgoing Catholic and a graduate of the University of St. Michael’s College. He has based his politics on Catholic social teaching, most notably in his commitment to debt relief for the Third World, an issue Pope John Paul II spoke about frequently.

The classic failure of liberal Catholics and the liberal MSM has been committed by CNS here also.  No one seems to realize that life issues are the cornerstone of Catholic social justice teaching.  Without protecting all human life, you can’t even start talking about social justice, because a person who’s dead doesn’t need social justice.  I think the reason it’s so overlooked is that the press makes the assumption that in order to be in favor of any part of Catholic social justice teaching, you have to believe that the government should be used to enforce that social justice (and I don’t blink at using the word “enforce.”)  I seriously doubt that pro-life Catholic politicians are opposed to the Church’s social justice teachings; typically they fall more on the conservative side of the aisle and advocate for government to get out of the way so the average joe can have more resources with which to fight for social justice.  The real shame is that the folks who want to use the police power of government to enforce social justice can’t see that they should be using the police power of government to protect life (which is actually a legitimate use of the police power of government) which is at the heart of social justice teaching.

article