Love & Justice, J.D. Vance vs. Pope Francis

A criticism has arisen among a few responders to the DM that I should not use the language of “spiritual warriorship” because it has the word “war” in it.  

To eliminate that word would be to erase a lot of spiritual teaching over the years deriving from indigenous, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian Scriptures and teachings.  

I think I have demonstrated in various DMs over the past two months how that language is explained in all those traditions.  For example, that a four-year training was necessary to convert a soldier to a warrior.

I think the greater danger is found in overusing the word “love” and underusing the word “justice” and separating the two.  

Latin American theologian Jose Miranda has warned us that One of the most disastrous errors in the history of Christianity is to have tried—under the influence of Greek definitions—to differentiate between love and justice. 

Splitting love from justice invites sentimentalism and Carl Jung warns us that if you scratch a sentimentalist you get violence.  Violence and sentimentalism are convex and concave of the same surface.   Sociologist Anne Douglas, in her major study on sentimentalism, The Feminization of American Culture, concludes that sentimentalism is “rancid political consciousness” that always leaves justice out.  

Love and justice travel together.  Justice keeps love from being syrupy and cheap; love keeps justice personal and direct.  I talk about “erotic justice.”  Thus Meister Eckhart declares that “compassion means justice.”  

Elie Wiesel, writing from the same tradition as Jesus, put it this way:  In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.  In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way.  When someone suffers, and it is not you, he comes first.  His very suffering allows him or her priority….To watch over a person who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God. 

This issue came out in the open recently when vice president and recent convert to Catholicism, J.D. Vance, entered into a public skirmish with Pope Francis when he tried to defend the current administration’s policies of handling immigrants and of dismantling the USAID program to assist the poorest nations in the world.  

This effort is being spearheaded by the richest man in the world who paid $280 million to get the current president elected and who has handed him the keys to dismantling the government.  J.D. Vance cited Thomas Aquinas (wrongly) that said that an “order of love” says we should love family first and strangers only much later.  In fact, Aquinas stresses how justice “directs all the virtues to the common good” and how “God is both Justice and Compassion.”

Vance wipes clean Jesus’ numerous parables such as the Good Samaritan and Matthew 25, etc. that invite our better selves to reach out to strangers who are in fact our neighbor.  And to love our neighbor—whoever they are—as ourselves.  Jesus extended the meaning of family far beyond the literal meaning of the word.  “Who is my mother?  Everyone who hears the word of God and keeps it.”

See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 286f, 288-292.

And Fox, “On Desentimentalizing Spirituality,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 297-316.

And Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 404-412.

And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.

And Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.

And Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Faith Traditions.

Banner Image: JD Vance campaigns at a People’s Convention (photo by Gage Skidmore, Flickr); Pope Francis connects with the poor of Brazil (Wikimedia).

Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree that it is a “disastrous” turn of events when we separate love from justice?  And that sentimentalism is the result and feeds injustice?  And that spiritual strength is something we need to cultivate and demand of our spiritual traditions who call it spiritual warriorhood?

Recommended Reading

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life

In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more.

Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him.  He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French).  He  gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way. 
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit