Michael Hichborn, aka “The Lepanto Institute,” under attack by eeeeevil social justice warriors.

our gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion will help them sur­vive this exis­ten­tial threat to their very exis­tence. Michael Hich­born is still bunkered up some­where at Lep­an­to after I post­ed this vicious hit piece. He writes today from that bunker to defend him­self against the “enraged” “social jus­tice left­ists mas­querad­ing as Catholics in our midst.” In our very midst, dear read­er! Said social jus­tice left­ists (mas­querad­ing as Catholics!) are in a “blind rage” over the Lep­an­to Insti­tute’s very men­tion of Judas!

In this par­tic­u­lar instance, the mali­cious assault on Lep­an­to was over a new meme (a dif­fer­ent one than the one I addressed in my last post) sug­gest­ing that ugly and emp­ty church build­ings are a result of char­i­ty to the poor. I post­ed it on my own Face­book page. Accord­ing to the meme, emp­ty and ugly church build­ings mean that “Judas got his wish”—that is, that fan­cy dec­o­ra­tions be sold and the pro­ceeds giv­en to the poor.

Blind rage ensued, and now Lep­an­to needs your gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions so Mr. Hich­born can con­tin­ue to make these memes. Oth­er­wise, he will have to close it all down and find less social­ly valu­able work than meme-mak­ing.

“The point is clear,” Mr. Hich­born con­tin­ues in his fund-rais­ing let­ter.

God deserves a place of hon­or; Judas was first in line to con­demn such hon­or as fri­v­ol­ties — not because he had any true love of jus­tice or soci­ety, but because he was pil­fer­ing the purse.

Now, you know, dear reader—Mr. Hich­born does not point this out, so I must—that was the wery point I made in my eeeeeeeevil hit piece on saint­ly Lep­an­to:

Judas does not want to give the mon­ey to the poor; he wants to keep it for him­self and pre­tend he gave it to the poor. He does not prac­tice social jus­tice here at all.

Guess who point­ed that out first, dear read­er? I did.

But here is my ques­tion for Mr. Hich­born: If Judas “did not have any true love of jus­tice,” then how is it that he is, in your esti­ma­tion, the “patron saint” of social jus­tice? That is what you did not explain before, and that is what you do not explain now. If you have an expla­na­tion, we would all like to hear what it is.

Steal­ing from the poor is not social jus­tice. It is steal­ing from the poor. It is the oppo­site of social jus­tice. I said that in my post yes­ter­day.

“If the “social jus­tice war­riors” had a patron saint[,]” Mr. Hich­born writes, “Judas Iscar­i­ot would be their man.”

Are any of the peo­ple chal­leng­ing your memes steal­ing from the poor, Mr. Hich­born? Show us the evi­dence.

The patron saint of social jus­tice is St. Mar­tin de Por­res.

Mr. Hich­born con­tin­ues:

True social jus­tice? Rejects the idea of social sin. There is no such thing. True social jus­tice involves the cor­po­re­al and spir­i­tu­al works of mer­cy. Leo XIII is clear in Rerum Novarum, that social­ism is no solu­tion to social ques­tions — a fact lost on the polit­i­cal left­ists who have been con­fused and mis­led as to what Leo XII and John Paul II taught regard­ing the social doc­trine of the Catholic Church.

Okay, let’s stop right here. Who is advo­cat­ing social sin? What social sin? Does any­one find that in my post, or in Mary Pez­zu­lo’s? The only sin Mr. Hich­born has hith­er­to men­tioned is steal­ing from the poor. Where, in all these vicious nasty attacks on Lep­an­to, has any­one advo­cat­ed steal­ing from the poor?

And where has any­one denied that social jus­tice involves works of mer­cy? Many of them I list­ed in my own post, and one of them is feed­ing the hun­gry. And yet, if we believe all these Judas memes, that kind of thing detracts from the wor­ship of God and leads to ugly church­es.

And where has any­one advo­cat­ed social­ism? Define social­ism, and explain how it dif­fers from social jus­tice as the Church speaks of it, and then tell me how what I pre­sent­ed in my post yes­ter­day is social­ism rather than social jus­tice. That’s going to involve more than a meme.

Mr. Hich­born goes on:

In fact, so strong and so seri­ous is the con­dem­na­tion of this mate­ri­al­is­tic sal­va­tion that it is even proph­e­sied against in Scrip­ture.

Okay, I’ve had enough with this garbage. No one is advo­cat­ing “mate­ri­al­is­tic sal­va­tion,” Mr. Hich­born. Who did that? Where? That’s not what I, or any­one else who has been chal­leng­ing Lep­an­to this week, thinks social jus­tice is. You think the poor are seek­ing to be saved by hav­ing food to eat? By hav­ing a suf­fi­cient­ly just wage that they can pay their bills, live in decent hous­ing, and feed their chil­dren? That’s “mate­ri­al­is­tic sal­va­tion”? You think advo­cat­ing for the poor is advo­cat­ing for mate­ri­al­ism? For being saved by mon­ey and things? Real­ly?

I have not seen one sin­gle per­son, in all these mean and vicious attacks on Lep­an­to over the last cou­ple of days, advo­cate for mate­ri­al­is­tic sal­va­tion. Where is that?

The request for dona­tions goes on and on; and I won’t bore you with the rest, dear read­er.