Safe Haven

 The reason why the vaccines against COVID are being provided free of charge to citizens is that a large group of citizens that are unvaccinated poses a serious health risk to everyone, not just to themselves. Of course, this shared burden of risk is why "I'll take my chances" is an incredibly selfish reason to refuse the vaccine. And you would have to believe that a good socialist or a social democrat is going to call this bluff, if you somehow argue that diabetes or cancer treatment is more worthy of being paid for by the government. The person who posted this foolish meme is now in the process of backtracking and denying that she favors "socialism," but the clear implication of the argument, such as it is, is that she favors public funding for the things that she worries about, and not the things that you might worry about, like catching the virus that causes Covid-19. If this strikes you as inconsistent, well, it is. For my part, the only thing more galling ...

 Bryan Cross is right. The text is here . I was actually quite prepared to criticize Archbishop Gomez--if only internally--for being woefully out of touch with the lived experience of people in America. What I found is not so much a criticism of the political movements themselves, or of particular injustices they raise, but of the primacy of politics in our society today, and the belief that the most important needs of human beings can be addressed by political means alone. In this light, the archbishop's comments deserve considerably more reflection on our parts, if not sympathy. The context of his comments about social justice movements as "pseudo-religions" is the replacement of a Christian worldview by a materialist worldview, where the battle is exclusively political, in the ends and in the means. I consider myself quite sympathetic to these movements on the whole, but I personally do so through the lenses of the Christian story. Specifically, the God-given dignity o...