First-

Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.

Second-

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that:

a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity

We can call it whatever, but “a rose is a rose is a rose”. lol

Possible Christian Wisdom: The well will never run dry….

Redistribution of wealth within the Catholic parish setting makes for messy budgeting. I’d love to see, in the parish, more of that kind of “mess”. Actual love IS “messy”….

Our love or charity cannot remain fragmented as it is if we are to show the world that Jesus is real and that God is Love. The government programs that attempt to organize a coherent care for the needy are the result of the fragmented and disjointed efforts of Catholic efforts to help. The Catholic charities seem to operate from love but do not seem to be organized into a coherent unity and thus fall short of potential effectiveness.
However, it seems that both Catholic and Christian programs to help the needy do parallel government programs for the same purpose and what they seem to have in common is the operation of love as their motivation.
Love filtered through human beings ultimately will get distorted in its expression and mutate into something less than its source and consequently will have a less than desired effect. Then the critics will voice their objections from either side and blame the other.
The problem seems to be that the focus is on the failure of the other rather than focus on the motivation of love that initiates the desire to help. It seems that if love were to be defined as the starting point for such programs then the unitive aspect of love would influence a global and more inclusive picture of the dynamics of suffering and consequently, a clearer organized and unified effort to create the “earthly city” of unified love that all desire to have at the most vulnerable hidden and sacred unknown of our being human.

Thus it may not be good for me as an individual that the government takes some of my money essentially at gunpoint, but it could be to the common good that it does so.

Now if it is true there is such a thing as the common good, and we have a genuine democracy that allows a majority of the collectivity to determine what is to the common good, plus safeguards of rights are in place to protect those not in the majority–then God is in heaven and all is right with the world! Well, maybe not quite, but I hope the point is clear.

And the parts of “big government” that conservatives like are justice as well. They like the Patent & Trademark office because it protects their precious intellectual property from knock-offs and fakes. They like the FDA because it saves Big Pharma from the endless (and just) lawsuits from marketed products that kill or sicken consumers. The like the National Center for Health Statistics because without it they would never be able to set mortality schedules for their insurance policies they sell to the aged.