In a talk right before Thanksgiving, Sister Simone Campbell used her speech for the Louisiana Teacher’s Conference not as an opportunity to promote the necessity of a solid education for the flourishing of the human person, nor the need to improve education in impoverished areas, but instead as a bully pulpit for the values of political liberalism and leftist economic policies. Towards the end of her closing words, she accuses a number of Americans of promoting an “unpatriotic lie” that promotes individualism and, as she hints later, shelters and promotes “the 1%” at the expense of others.
While the sentiment that people ought to fight poverty and exploitation of the poor, is honorable and correct, Campbell’s characterization of the situation is hyperbolic and fundamentally at odds with a Christian understanding of the world. Sister Simone presents the situation in such a way that the only moral, patriotic solution to the current state of affairs is direct government care for the poor. Furthermore- and more disturbing- is the supreme importance Sister Simone places upon this issue. She states: “it’s more than – no I can’t say that it’s more than faith- it’s faith for me,” thus placing government programs on the same plane as the sacraments and core doctrine of the Catholic Church.
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