November 5, 2012 – Catechism 1934 – 1938

There is a vast difference between treating everyone with dignity and giving everyone exactly the same things.  With one each and every individual is seen as an individual made by God and to be treated as such.  In the other, every person is seen as someone with material needs that are exactly the same as everyone else and should have exactly the same as everyone else.  One is the teaching of God, the other is the institution of man.  One will lead to successful community and the other will lead to chaos and destruction.  If you read the paragraphs, you will see that the Church teaches equality in dignity among all people regardless of race, gender, etc.  But this does not mean equal in every facet of life.  The next paragraph talks about the talents and gifts we are all given by God.  These differences distinguish us from everyone else.  We are not meant to be the same, God made us different for a reason, and we unit as a community when we embrace our differences and each use our talents to move the entire community forward.  Some have more, some have less, but together we all are to move in a direction together.  If you have more, you are expected to give more.  If you have less, you are expected to do what you can.  But this is morality, it is not the role of government.  When it becomes the role of government, especially a government that tries to do it based on morality but is not founded in morality, it will not succeed.  It will only breed animosity, divide, greed, entitlement, laziness, anger, and destruction.  Too long our nation has seen equality defined as everyone being the same.  That is not the real definition of equality.  You cannot get to the real definition of equality without God the creator and there will be no movement back towards a real definition until we take a step back towards God as a nation.  Until then, our path leads to a very dark place where we are equal in the eyes of the world at the loss of equality as it has been bestowed on us by God.