That word, ‘marginalized’ …
December 21, 2015 § 10 Comments
I keep reading assertions to the effect that the Church has to be more welcoming to the ‘marginalized’.
By ‘marginalized,’ those making the assertion seem to mean various kinds of people with the full weight of our culture and political authority behind them.
By ‘welcoming the marginalized’, those making the assertion seem to mean crushing any questioning of the comprehensive march through institutions by the culturally and politically powerful beneath the bootheel of formal and informal sanction.
Zippy Catholic 
I read ‘marginalized’ as “The Church is not allowed to have any standards.”
“… I don’t think it means what you think it means”
Is the Superman really the Superman if he views himself capable of being so easily trod upon by the Low Man? Inquiring nihilists would like to know 🙂
So you got that in your Sunday sermon too, huh?
Why can’t the Pope simply say “the poor”? Too offensive? Not college professor-ese enough for the current Vatican establishment? How are the mentally marginalized supposed to understand these eighty-page encyclical full of postmodern gobbledygook language (myself included)?
[…] the marginalized means supporting society’s most powerful people in crushing fringe religious opinions. […]
Marissa:
I think the idea is to make the category ‘marginalized’ more inclusive: to include not just the poor but all the usual liberal victim classes, as well as those in particular who are ‘victimized’ by mean and nasty Catholic doctrines — e.g. publicly unrepentant adulterers in second ‘marriages’, etc.
I’ve often felt marginalized by my goofy liberal parish. But I don’t think the pope was referring to us mean Traditionalists.
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
“Morally poor” might have to much of a sting to it while “not living in a white country poor” is a bit of a mouthful. And according to Beefy Levinson’s parish, the liturgically poor just need to deal with it.
Perhaps “marginalised” can be decoded as “someone on whose behalf I can claim to speak in a way that seems plausible and that doesn’t risk them contradicting me”.
And, if so, the word is a tool in the rhetoric of self-aggrandisement.