Jim Wallis Doesn't Know What He Is Talking About

Jim Wallis, spiritual adviser to President Obama and a leftist "social justice" supporter, has spoken out recently against the Vatican (not a surprise, really) saying that the Vatican is wrong to want to reform the LCWR.

Read the entire article here

I would like to address a specific comment of his-

 The sisters may be the most positive face of the Catholic Church today, and they are keeping people in the Church who would have given up on the all-male hierarchy long ago. These women are often the ones at the core of Jesus’ ministry, building relationships with the poor and vulnerable and most concretely offering the love of God. If you had a referendum on whom the best faith and moral teachers are in many local communities and parishes around the country, it would likely be the women who are now under attack. That is the sad situation here and the serious mistake being made by the Vatican.

The Church is very concerned about these sisters losing focus on abortion. But, most I know still feel abortion is a terrible moral tragedy and do whatever they can to reduce them. Their approach, however, is to support low-income women, which actually reduces abortion, instead of mostly legislative strategies that could just push abortions into back alleys. And perhaps the sisters would also rather minister to gay and lesbian people with the love of Christ instead of just telling them they are wrong and unacceptable.

When the Vatican said that issues like poverty are more important to the sisters than issues like sexuality, they are probably right. But from a biblical point of view, the sisters may be right and the Vatican wrong. The Bible is much clearer on the Christian imperative to serve the poor and stand for justice than it is on same-sex marriage or exactly when full human life begins. I, for one, miss the leadership of Catholic bishops like the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin who taught a “consistent ethic of life” and a “seamless garment” that defends life and dignity wherever it is threatened, from abortion on demand to poverty, the death penalty, and nuclear weapons.

 This is another case of misguided "divide and conquer" and I am not convinced this man knows enough about Catholic social teaching to warrant comments like this. 

In the social teachings of the Church, the defense and protection of life is the number one pillar of social justice. Everything else flows from that. This does not mean that all sisters need to be down at Planned Parenthood protesting or only engage in works that are directly involved in the right to life. 

It does mean that we as sisters, as brides of Christ, authentically assimilate and transmit the true teachings of Jesus. No one, including the Vatican, is criticizing the sisters of the LCWR for working with the poor or protesting the death penalty. Don't be deluded by these claims of the mass media, it simply is NOT true at all. 

The concern of the Vatican is the life-style and lack of assimilation of the entire life of Christ by many of those communities. Many of these communities have openly attacked the Church, supported organizations that destroy the order and sanctity of life and have aligned themselves with causes that are not part of the life that we, as sisters, have vowed to embrace. Do some research on this topic and you will see for yourself what is really going on. 

In the end, we must, as Haymitch tells Katniss, "Remember who the enemy is." The enemy here is not Jim Wallis (even though I think he is agenda-driven and misguided) or the LCWR or the Vatican or people on the left or the right. The enemy in all of our lives is sin which we must constantly turn to Jesus and ask for healing. Only through true repentance, conversion and redemption do we have any hope of living the fullness of life Jesus promised.