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1. As far as it goes, Noel is right to say that proclamation without work for justice will be empty and possibly ineffectual, and, too, that it will probably be seen as self-serving.
   But the very same can be said about justice without proclamation.
   I'm personally very wary of such writings and opinions, as they often become legitimations for abandonning proclamation, in fact any reference to God.
   Christianity has to provide the ground upon which God is encountered and Transcendence realised as providing the horizon which prevents the narrowing self-interest of the merely secular and 'pragmatic'.
   Doing good is the ebullient overflow of a life already grounded within faith. An authentic faith cannot help but overflow into good done in the world.
   The standards Noel essentially uses to legitimate the worth of faith are those of a pragmatism that is ultimately hypocritical. This is because the heroes of the culture Noel lauds are not those who serve the poor and address injustice.
   Such pragmatism is the mere cant of a society that has erected a new morality which despises the poor and the outcasts of the world- poverty and undesirability as the new sinfulness.
   The Kingdom of God is not of this world. It erupts upon it.
   Our efforts do not enable it.
   And, in fact, such an in-breaking may expose our virtues for what they really are.

   Posted By: Mark Johnson

2. Mark: I would have to see you credentials in working for Justice, before I put much weight on your comment on proclamation.
   Your comments sound fairly ungrounded to me.
   Was it Pope Paul who said people accept witnesses long before they accept teachers, or some such.
   We all have to try to do our bit in the kingdom, whaver opportunities come our way.
   Come to the conference and see.
   

   Posted By: Vince Carroll MSC

3. One of the challenges posed by the 'new evangelisation' is, as Mark Johnson points out, that it does not become simply a platform of social justice that is not motivated by and integrated with explicit reference to Christ and the Kingdom he preached and lived.
   In other words, a self-justifying work ethic that effectively denies the need for God's grace.
   Pope Francis reminds us of no less when he exhorts us, together with service of the poor and action for justice, to develop the 'thirst for the Absolute' written into the depths of our being.

   Posted By: John

4. Vince: So the point of your post is only those that pass Vince Carroll's justice high jump can comment in the way that I have? Should I lay out my years of working with the most marginalised so to be heard?
   I suspect the conference you refer to may well be a very elite group vetted by a few.
   The point isnt that of being an either/or.
   As explicitly stated: one pours from the other. But when there is actually no grounding within faith, and that 'justice' is actually all about the cul-de-sac of vanity and other neuroses of the activist, then what really is being served?
   People accept witness, as you say, but what is being witnessed?
   Faith without works is dead, but what sort of self-referential monstrosity is works without faith?

   Posted By: Mark Johnson

5. I wonder what culture it is that Mark Johnson refers to, and exactly who are its nameless heroes?
   Could it be be that culture of secularism that we hear so much about these days.
   When it comes to issues of poverty and justice perhaps that culture has something meaningful to say. I am reminded of the words of Helder Camara:
   'When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.'
   I contrast this with the words I hear so often from those who genuinely consider themselves to be well and truly evangelised: "They live that way because they choose to."
   It was encouraging to read again in these posts the reference to Evangelii Nuntiandi and what Paul VI had to say about teachers and witnesses. I hope that the time will come when another maxim from thjis document may be seen to be implemented in a meaningful way: 'The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself.'
   

   Posted By: David Raue

6. Always sad see Dom Camara's words become little more than a platitude.
   Those that so misuse his words commit the very same lack of understanding that those who accused him of Communism made. Anyone without an understanding of actions grounded within proclamation, or even hostile to the Kingdom, can only accuse such as Camara of a purely political end.
   Justice is never its own end. It is only so for those whose hubris is such that it cannot abide a horizon under which they too are accountable.

   Posted By: Mark Johnson

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