Responsibilities first, before rights says Pope Benedict

Besides not being born in the USA, (since when has that been an obstacle!) the Holy Father has little chance of being elected president of the USA, because of his insistence that we had better focus on our responsibilities before we start clamoring for our rights. You will rarely catch an American politician talking like that!
If I had a nickel for every shot of an Obama voter who radiantly described the material wealth he'd gain for voting for him. . . Republicans are not much better, or they wouldn't have spent like Democrats in the past decade.
No, Pope Benedict answers to a higher authority. . and thus we can trust him to tell us the inconvenient truth. Social justice begins in our own lives and hearts. How we look at our fellow man, and how we treat him, not whether we have the right political party or purchased green grocery bags or carbon credits.
Deal Hudson says,
"In describing the importance of duty, Benedict uses this stunning line, which will go a long way toward unravelling some of the confusion about rights language: "The sharing of reciprocal duties is a more powerful incentive to action than the mere assertion of rights." Here the Holy Father is arguing that we should first think about our social teaching in terms of what we should do for others, rather than a set of demands of what we are ourselves owed."

Read the entire column at Inside Catholic