Last week, Archbishop José H. Gomez assailed “new social justice movements” as “dangerous substitutes for religion.”
Gomez, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke to the Congress of Catholics and Public Life, an international conference held in Madrid, but his comments spread beyond the direct audience. His remarks focused on “the new social movements and ideologies” that he said were “seeded and prepared for many years in our universities and cultural institutions;” movements that were “unleashed” on society after George Floyd was killed in May 2020.
“In denying God, these new movements have lost the truth about the human person,” he said. “This explains their extremism, and their harsh, uncompromising, and unforgiving approach to politics.”
While the archbishop acknowledged that “racial and economic inequality are still deeply embedded in our society,” the comments seemed, to many, to be an effort to delegitimize social justice efforts within the church despite past and present commitments to social justice from Catholic leaders.
Sojourners asked Catholic leaders and thinkers across the United States why social justice is important to their faith. Here’s what they had to say.
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