Subsidiarity: Judging the Appropriate Level

The Distributist Review‘s own Paleocrat has posted a fascinating rumination on what subsidiarity really is. He convincingly argues that I, like many others, have been using the term rather imprecisely.

Oftentimes subsidiarity is described as the principle that the lowest possible level of society ought to be performing a given function. I myself have often defined it as such. It’s understandable that many people think of it that way, given modernity’s unquenchable penchant for harmful centralization. Indeed, Pope Pius XI’s own formulation, in Quadragesimo Anno, was clearly concerned primarily with larger corporations eating up the functions of smaller, not the reverse. That saintly pope noted specifically that “it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of right order, for a larger and higher association to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower societies,” making no mention of usurpation the other way around. So it’s only sensible that distributists likewise have traditionally concerned themselves more with over-centralization, rather than over-decentralization, though naturally both are problematic.

Furthermore, I think Paleocrat’s “libertarian-leaning distributists” violate even this “smaller is always better” definition of subsidiarity, because they allow no real corporations between the state and the individual, meaning that the state is the only possible choice for any function the individual cannot himself perform. While they themselves will argue that private individuals can still get together and do things, rather than the state, the fact remains that any time one did not want domination by private individuals seeking private profit, one would be forced to resort to the state and to nothing else. What type of real subsidiarity is possible with such individualistic atomism?

Nevertheless, Paleocrat’s argument is quite persuasive and, ultimately, correct; subsidiarity should be understood as saying not that the lowest possible level should be doing things, but that the right level should be doing them.

However, this does beg the question: how do we determine what the appropriate level of society is? I think the answer to this does depend, in part, on how high or low an order we’re operating on. Many factors will play into our determination of what order of society is appropriate for what functions, and our conclusions will vary considerably depending on local circumstances. Still, here’s a few of the considerations that I think are most important.

The nature of the task and the order in question. Obviously, what the task is, and what order we’re looking at, will be pivotal in determining whether the task is appropriate to that order or some other. The best example of this is educating children. The nature of the task itself, and the nature of the family itself, make it quite clear that the family is the appropriate order for this task. (Of course, it’s not always as simple as that; certain types of education are probably better done by other orders. But the general principle, I think, stands.)

The level of the order. While what Paleocrat calls “libertarian-leaning distributists” will probably balk at his conclusion, statist-leaning distributists will probably balk at what I’m about to say. However, the level of the order does have a good bit to say about whether it’s the appropriate order for a given task.

Let’s consider the education of children as another example, here in the United States. To assign this task to the federal government would be nothing short of ridiculous, and it would be ridiculous precisely because the federal government is too high an order for it. Education needs to be responsive to local needs; schools need to respond to local disciplinary problems; and so on. The federal government is just too high up, too large and broad-based, to effectively do the job.

On the other hand, the individual family is arguably too low-level to do all of it. The base of human knowledge is simply too broad even for two well-educated parents to teach their children completely on their own. My knowledge of calculus, dimly recalled from high school classes many years ago, just can’t cut it; I’m going to need help teaching my children that.

So while “always let the lowest possible level do it” is certainly not an accurate application of subsidiarity, the level of the order in question is a vital consideration. A distributist need not be libertarian-leaning to assert that most functions currently performed at a high level of society ought to be done by one considerably lower.

The state itself is a corporation of last resort. The state exists in order to direct subsidiary corporations toward the common good. As such, it has a vital role to perform. The common libertarian notion of “our enemy, the state” is fundamentally antithetical to distributism, and to Catholic social thought in general. The state is not only our friend, but it’s a good and necessary part of human society. As Aristotle rightly observed millennia ago, the man who can live rightly outside of the state must be either a beast or a god; he cannot be a man.

Catholic social teaching gives us the criteria for determining when the state needs to be involved:

[I]t is rightly contended that certain forms of property must be reserved to the State, since they carry with them an opportunity to domination too great to be left to private individuals without injury to the community at large.

Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno. Clearly, the state has a role to play, but it’s not one to be played lightly. The argument that Pius is supporting here is that the state is an appropriate agent when the “opportunity to domination is too great to be left to private individuals.”

The military is an obvious example. Entrusting the defense of the realm to private individuals was tried in the Middle Ages, and worked reasonably well; unfortunately, it also resulted in frequent internecine warfare and armies difficult to direct to a single purpose for any considerable length of time. Our current system of entrusting national defense to the state is sensible and wise; even though the job could be done effectively by a lower level of society, it is done better and more appropriately by the state exclusively.

On the other hand, one could argue (and I would, personally) that entrusting personal defense entirely to the state would be deleterious. I work with the local police on a daily basis, and respect them immensely; they do an excellent job with overly limited resources and deserve our support. But they can’t do everything. Permitting private citizens who have not otherwise forfeited their right to do so (for example, by conviction of a felony) to possess weapons for their own defense, and to use them for that purpose if necessary, is only sensible. Entrusting personal defense entirely to the state, forbidding lower corporations from defending themselves and owning the means necessary to do so, would be a violation of subsidiarity.

The reasoning behind not giving a task to the state if it’s not necessary is the same as that behind giving it to the state if it is. That is, the “opportunity to domination” just isn’t great enough to justify it. One must, of course, always consider this factor, even when the state is not in question; private corporations can dominate just as effectively as the state can. However, with the state the issue is much more relevant. The distributist need not be reminded about the benefits of private ownership; ownership and performance of a function by private—by which I mean simply non-governmental—organizations ought to be preferred, wherever possible, to that by state organizations.

As commentator Marchmain on Paleocrat’s article remarked, Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra probably said it best:

It should be stated at the outset that in the economic order first place must be given to the personal initiative of private citizens working either as individuals or in association with each other in various ways for the furtherance of common interests.

The state when necessary; but only when really necessary. Non-state corporations are to be preferred whenever possible.

And that doesn’t even begin to address what level of the state would be the appropriate actor, even once we’ve determined that the state must be the one to do it.

Obviously, many other factors will play into this analysis. Frequently there will be great room for overlap. Furthermore, the appropriate level for a task will vary considerably according to local conditions; for example, the state may be an appropriate provider of health care in one community but not in another. However, Paleocrat has given distributists a lot of food for thought with his recent posting, for which I, for one, am grateful. I’ll be pondering this one for some time.

Praise be to Christ the King!

On St. Thomas Aquinas

Once again, don’t be fooled by the broad-ranging glory of the title; this is just a blurb at best. However, Dr Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo over at Ite ad Thomam has brought to my attention a beautiful tribute to the philosophy and theology of the Angelic Doctor, the Universal Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.

The Relevance of St Thomas Aquinas

Too often, I hear Catholics stating, “Sure, St. Thomas is great, but it’s not like he’s the be-all and end-all of Catholic thinking.” True enough; but he’s certainly the standard against which all Catholic thinking is measured. Pope St. Pius V said that “[h]is theological doctrine, accepted by the Catholic Church, outshines every other as being safer and more secure.” Pope Innocent VI was even more explicit, stating that arguing with St. Thomas is itself enough to raise suspicion of heresy:

His teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dares assail it will always be suspected of error.

Pope Benedict XIII stated that St. Thomas’s works were “written without the shadow of error,” while Benedict XIV honestly confessed that “if there is anything good in our books it must be ascribed wholly to such a great Teacher rather than to ourselves.” Perhaps the greatest commendation, however, comes from the great Pope St. Pius X:

If the doctrine of any other author or saint has ever been approved at any time by us or our predecessors with singular commendation joined with an invitation and order to propagate and defend it, it may be easily understood that it was commended insofar as it agreed with the principles of Aquinas or was in no way opposed to them.

In other words, other saints and authors are good, but only insofar as they agree with St. Thomas Aquinas.

Pius XI even stated that “the Church has adopted his doctrine for her own.”

So yes, I adulate St. Thomas Aquinas; when the teaching of the Church is not clear, I clarify it with St. Thomas Aquinas; when a philosopher disagrees with St. Thomas, I agree with St. Thomas universally. I do this because the Church herself has taught it.

But what about the Fathers? What about the other doctors? Pope St. Pius X answered that question quite clearly: they are good insofar as they agree with St. Thomas. They often approach things in different ways, and this is helpful; but St. Thomas is the one who just got everything right. (Philosophically and theologically; we’re not talking about his medieval biology here.) St. Thomas was the Universal Doctor, according to Pope Pius XI; this title is just, because he took all that was good from the Fathers, from the doctors, even from the pagans, and united it all in his work, into a whole in which shines forth all the beauty of the Catholic Thing to which he was so devoted.

So no, I’m not overglorifying St. Thomas; I’m giving him the glory which the Church herself gives him, and rightly so. According to Benedict XV, “[t]he eminent commendations of Thomas Aquinas by the Holy See no longer permit a Catholic to doubt that he was divinely raised up that the Church might have a master whose doctrine should be followed in a special way at all times.” If Catholics paid more attention to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church would be healthier and holier; may his teaching be ever before our eyes, for no other thinker has better made Christ’s teaching so clear.

Praise be to Christ the King!

The Mixed Blessing: Caritas in Veritate, Part III

The Pope also turns his attention to new challenges, challenges which he addresses rigorously from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching.

The one most pertinent to the modern world is the issue of the environment. He notes that “[t]oday the subject of development is also closely related to the duties arising from our relationship to the natural environment.”[1] However, the Pope’s care for the environment is not one of valuing nature for nature’s sake, nor one of promoting the good of nature above that of man. Rather, it is based firmly in man’s duty, as expounded in the Sacred Scriptures, to care for the earth, a duty that is frequently called Christian stewardship.

In other words, the environment exists for man, not man for the environment; as such, it becomes even more important to ensure that it is well cared for and protected:

The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. When nature, including the human being, is viewed as the result of mere chance or evolutionary determinism, our sense of responsibility wanes. In nature, the believer recognizes the wonderful result of God’s creative activity, which we may use responsibly to satisfy our legitimate needs, material or otherwise, while respecting the intrinsic balance of creation. If this vision is lost, we end up either considering nature an untouchable taboo or, on the contrary, abusing it. Neither attitude is consonant with the Christian vision of nature as the fruit of God’s creation.[2]

Surely, St. Thomas Aquinas would have been hard pressed to have said it better. Both ways—that of giving nature too much value and that of giving it too little—are fraught with danger. The Pope teaches that “it should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism.”[3] Which is, of course, precisely where it has led. On the other hand, viewing nature as irrelevant, subject to any whim of man, is also dangerous, because it neglects the order which God put into nature for man to use, not to abuse:

[I]t is also necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at total technical dominion over nature, because the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a ‘grammar’ which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation.[4]

Both the environmentalists and the anti-environmentalists are, the Pope teaches, wrong. The environment exists for the service of man; as such, man is entitled to use it as he sees fit. However, nature also contains an order which must not be violated, even on the pretext of serving man.

In this vein, the depletion of natural resources also falls under the Pope’s gaze. Personally, I’m not sure I concur with the so-called “Peak Oil” theorists; however, the fact is that many natural resources are limited in nature, and the Pope addresses such resources in a reasonable and thoughtful way.

It is likewise incumbent upon the competent authorities to make every effort to ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations.[5]

This is nothing more than a straightforward application of traditional principles of distributive justice. He who reaps the benefits must pay the cost. An excellent example is a collapsing fishery, which is generally utilized by many countries. A country which consumes the bulk of the produce of this hypothetical fishery ought to pay the costs of its collapse, given that that collapse is primarily due to its own overfishing. However, frequently not only the overfishing country, but also all other countries who use the fishery, no matter how responsibly, suffer from its collapse. This is unjust. The Pope teaches here that we must ensure that when a natural resource is depleted, countries should bear the costs of that depletion in proportion to the benefits they’ve derived from it. Similarly, we have no right to use up all our resources without providing for future generations in some way.

How can we ensure that nature is protected and utilized properly, and that natural resources are justly distributed? The Pope speaks to that question, too. While some of what he writes is entangled in what both distributists and others have found to be an objectionable internationalism (for which see the upcoming Part IV), he makes another observation about solving these difficult problems which distributists and Catholics should find inspiring:

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology.[6]

If we do not respect human life and the order of human society, it is unsurprising that we do not respect anything else in the natural order. No economic policy, no matter how wise, will rectify this. We need to respect the order of creation first of all in ourselves; only then will we respect it in everything else.

His Holiness also speaks against what he calls “relativistic education,” which is a great force preventing true development of peoples. While education has been on a decline for decades, its relativism is now so explicit and so widespread that the Pope’s treatment of it must qualify as addressing a new problem.

The increasing prominence of a relativistic understanding of that nature presents serious problems for education, especially moral education, jeopardizing its universal extension. Yielding to this kind of relativism makes everyone poorer and has a negative impact on the effectiveness of aid to the most needy populations, who lack not only economic and technical means, but also educational methods and resources to assist people in realizing their full human potential.[7]

We educate people to be good at things, but not simply to be good. Education in both developing and developed countries now teaches only techniques, not truth. But without a good foundation in truth, the economic and social realities cannot change.

Another new circumstance, largely unknown at the time of most of the previous great social encyclicals, is tourism. The Pope addresses tourism as an “industry” at some length, noting that it “can be a major factor in economic development and cultural growth.”[8] However, he also argues persuasively that it “can also become an occasion for exploitation and moral degradation.”[9] One’s mind is immediately brought to so-called “sexual tourism” in places like parts of Southeast Asia, in which the locality and its inhabitants are treated as tools for richer countries’ enjoyment, a situation tolerated and even embraced by local communities because there is no other way for them to bring in this extra coin. This, of course, is one of the extreme cases; however, the Pope has strong words for tourism even as practiced in less drastically exploitative circumstances:

Even in less extreme cases, international tourism often follows a consumerist and hedonistic pattern, as a form of escapism planned in a manner typical of the countries of origin, and therefore not conducive to authentic encounter between persons and cultures.[10]

Now, one’s mind is immediately brought to trips to Mexico by thousands of drunken, drug-besotten teenagers for “spring break” (formerly called “Easter vacation,” though given that it’s currently given over entirely to debauchery it is perhaps good that it no longer takes its name from that most sacred of holidays).

The Pope does not, of course, condemn tourism entirely. Some tourism does, in fact, have “the ability to promote genuine mutual understanding, without taking away from the element of rest and healthy recreation.”[11] This type of tourism ought to be promoted, and the others discouraged. The precise means for doing so, of course, is up to the localities which depend on such tourism for their livelihoods.

The distributist answer, of course, is to rely on something else for one’s livelihood. A locality relying on the wealth and spending habits of an entirely separate population for its economic health is a clear violation of subsidiarity. While tourism can be a part of a healthy economy, it ought not be the majority of it. For tourist locations, as everywhere, the sources of real wealth are the fields, the forests, the factories, and the mines; tourism certainly isn’t productive, and therefore while it is not bad in itself, is not an appropriate driver for economic development.

Finally, the Pope addresses another industry that has arisen in recent decades: that of psychiatry. While it’s clear that psychiatry and psychology are legitimate fields with real value—the Pope steers well clear of a Scientological condemnation of all psychology—it’s equally clear that our society overvalues them and relies on them in an inappropriate way:

One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man’s interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul’s ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost.[12]

Depression, failure to pay attention, failure to behave, failure to avoid criminal activity—none of these are considered as indicators of bad behavior, bad spiritual formation, or even bad judgment. Too often, these and other behaviors and conditions are seen solely as the result of disordered psychology, due primarily to a chemical imbalance in the brain. This is the “neurological reductionism” to which the Pope objects. The Pope teaches that

[s]ocial and psychological alienation and the many neuroses that afflict affluent societies are attributable in part to spiritual factors. A prosperous society, highly developed in material terms but weighing heavily on the soul, is not of itself conducive to authentic development.[13]

Yet because our society has become so reductionist, equating accumulation of money with economic health and economic with societal health, we are unable to recognize this fact. Ironically, this emphasis on psychological causes—”neurological reductionism”—prevents us from ensuring the psychological health of our people. This is because “[d]evelopment must include not just material growth“—this includes the neuroses that psychology too often explains as mere physical issues—”but also spiritual growth.”[14]

The Pope has addressed these new concerns in a way deeply consonant with past Catholic social teaching, faithful to his teaching that “the Tradition of the apostolic faith . . . [is] a patrimony both ancient and new.”[15] Some limited aspects of this encyclical, however, gives the distributist some pause and discomfort. That will be the subject of the next part.

Praise be to Christ the King!

1. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 48.
2. Id.
3. Id.
4. Id.
5. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 50.
6. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 51.
7. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 61.
8. Id.
9. Id.
10. Id.
11. Id.
12. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 76.
13. Id.
14. Id.
15. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 10.

A Primer on Dozenalism Published

I’ve been working on this little document for a while, and I think it’s ready to be published now.

A Primer on Dozenalism

It’s a basic explanation of numbers, systems of writing numbers, and number bases, as well as a fairly detailed explanation on why the dozenal system is the best possible number system for human beings. Enjoy.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Handiwork and My Insurance Boondoggle

That’s right; I did it. I used “boondoggle” in the title of a post. And no, it’s not a post about government economic stimulus; it’s about an insurance debacle I recently experienced.

My homeowners’ insurance (which shall remain nameless at this time) has been covering my property for two months; we recently switched to them because the price was significantly better. After two months, we got a letter in the mail, without warning. “We’re canceling your policy. You have no railing on your back stairs and your trees are touching your house, and these are risky. Bye.” No warning; no information that an inspection would be or had been done; no statement that fixing the “problems” would result in continuing the policy; not even any pictures to tell us which trees or which stairs were the problem. Just that.

So we called. Turns out the back stairs from the back room to the porch don’t have a railing. We’re talking about four feet of steps, at the most, something that our prior insurance company didn’t even notice. As for the trees, the weight of summer leaves and slowly maturing pecans weighed them down, leading some leaves to brush the roof. Really; that was it. If they’d come out in the winter, they never would have noticed anything.

Both the steps and the offending pecan tree.

But the price really was better than anyone else’s. A lot better. So following on an earlier post, I decided I’d fix these problems, once and for all. I’d learn a little about masonry and tree cutting. (All right, so I already knew something about tree cutting.) I’m going to put in a railing, and trim back that tree. Given that I knew precisely nothing about masonry, other than that it dealt with things harder than wood but not as flexible as metal, I decided I’d better get started immediately. After all, we had a whole two weeks to solve the problems and to get the underwriters to approve it before our policy vanished into the financial void whence it came.

The Mighty Hammer Drill

This involved purchasing a hammer drill; to the right, you can see the Mighty Hammer Drill, proudly posing in my hand. (No, I’m not as young as I look, though I’m not exactly a senior citizen, either.) I had an excellent power drill, but I’d tried to drill masonry with it before, and it was approximately equivalent to trying to drive your finger through a block of oak: probably not absolutely impossible, but not really worth trying, either. I mentioned this at the hardware store (more on that place later), and they told me about the wonderful piece of equipment known as the hammer drill, seen here. With this relatively inexpensive tool, driving my finger through a block of oak became a lot more like driving my finger through a block of cheddar: you’ve got to push it, but you’re not going to have much problem. A hammer drill is just like a regular drill, except that it can be set on “hammer,” which means that it will pound in the direction of the drilling; this pounding makes all the difference. This, then, is the Mighty Power Drill, without which the Great Railing Saga could not have met its happy end. (Those yellow things on my shirt are earplugs; hammer drills are rather loud when set on “hammer.”)

The Completed Railing on the Otherwise Impossibly Dangerous Steps of Doom

And so, pictured at left, the happy ending; the completed railing, making perfectly safe the Otherwise Impossibly Dangerous Steps of Doom. (All that white powder is cement dust. Lots and lots of cement dust, extracted from the drill holes that were its former home. Have I mentioned how awesomely powerful the Mighty Hammer Drill truly is?) Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. The guys at the hardware store were borderline incompetent; this was a new aluminum (British people: note the single “i”) railing, whereas formerly one had to buy cast steel railing; the hardware guys knew about the cast steel, but not about the aluminum. I had to go back to the store five times to get what I needed, after having been sold the wrong stuff. This included being sold thirty-inch posts for my three-foot railing. No kidding; I trusted them to give me the right supplies, and they sold me posts six inches shorter than my railing. How’s that going to work? They were good about exchanging them; however, this resulted in posts that cost, without exaggeration, twice as much. They also sold me five-eighths-inch bolts for quarter-inch holes. They also sold me square brackets for my rectangular railing runs. And finally, as though as this weren’t enough, when I finally got the right brackets they came with the screwiest screws I’ve ever seen: they had square holes for the driver head. Square. I’ve never seen this before in my life. I’ve got whole sets of standard, Philips, hex, and star heads; I neither owned, nor had ever seen, square heads. There certainly wasn’t any notice on the package saying, “Warning! Screwy screws contained herein!” This resulted in my last trip to the hardware store; at that point, I finally had all that I needed, and a three-hour push after work last Monday finished the job.

I don’t know if insurance will accept this work or not; I’m still waiting to hear from them. (Typically, it’s taking longer to hear from them than it did to actually do the job.) I’ll update this post when I find out. And the tree? Trimmed it; got a great pole-shears, much cheaper than hiring a tree guy. In some ways, it’s even cooler than the Mighty Hammer Drill, but I haven’t taken any pictures of it yet. Maybe soon, next time I need it.

So again, I got my hands dirty. And I feel great. They really are the simple joys of hard labor.

Praise be to Christ the King!

UPDATE: I just got word today that they were happy with my work and will continue our insurance policy. Non nobis, Domine, non nobis; sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Catholics, Jews, and “Dialogue”

Traditionalists often get in trouble with neo-Catholics regarding their criticism of “dialogue.” Dialogue is one of the post-Vatican II novelties that have occupied high-level churchmen for the past four decades or so, distracting them from their real roles of confirming the faithful and spreading the Faith. “What’s wrong with dialogue?” these neo-Catholics argue. “What better opportunity do we have to approach those of other religions and explain to them the great mysteries of Christ?”

Well, what’s wrong with it is that it’s a total departure from the methods of evangelization that have been pursued for the entirety of the Church’s history. As such, it doesn’t work. Despite forty years of such dialogue, proponents of the faux evangelization are unable to point to a single successful instance of it; rather, conversions continue to come through prayer, good example, and individual contact, as they have for nearly two millennia.

However, the case for dialogue is even worse than mere ineffectiveness; it’s actually counterproductive, only solidifying nonbelievers in their unbelief. It does this by implying an equality of position between false religions and the true one. The name itself reveals this: “dialogue,” which means a conversation or an exchange. It’s not a matter of evangelization; it’s a matter of talking about things, nothing more.

Many churchmen, of course, specifically support this view of dialogue; namely, that it simply consists of two equal religions trying to understand one another better. Consistent, scandalous declarations have come from some high Vatican officials that certain religious believers, such as the Orthodox and the Jews, should not be the objects of evangelization (that is, that Christ’s saving message should not be given to them). Cardinal Walter Kasper has made several ridiculous statements of this type, arguing that “it is not our policy or strategy to convert the Orthodox to the Catholic Church” and that Jewish “witness to the kingdom . . . must not be curtailed by seeking the conversion of the Jewish people to Christianity.” So while traditional Catholics are often ridiculed for asserting that dialogue leads to religious indifferentism and a refusal to convert nonbelievers, what are we to think when the President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews says something like this, without any rebuke from the Pope?

However, even those who take up dialogue honestly, with the intent to bring others to the love of Christ—and there are doubtlessly many such—dialogue just doesn’t work. As the name implies, dialogue is just a conversation; evangelization, on the other hand, is the bringing of a message, the Good News, to those who do not believe it. Other religions all look at this way; they think that, when we approach them for dialogue, we’re just trying to talk, not trying to help them understand and believe. And that’s why dialogue is totally fruitless; that’s why it was never practiced until the 1960s; and that’s why traditional Catholics have always opposed it.

Take as an example American Jews, who joined together to issue a statement regarding dialogue with the Catholic Church. The USCCB recently stated that dialogue with the Jews was a chance to teach them about Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world; after all, “[n]o man cometh to the Father, but by me” (St. John 14:6). This group of American Jews replied, “A declaration of this sort is antithetical to the very essence of Jewish-Christian dialogue as we have understood it.” Of course it is; it’s antithetical to the essence of Jewish-Christian dialogue as it’s been practiced and as it’s been advertised by the Catholic hierarchy. These American Jews are absolutely right—not about Christ, concerning Whom they are clearly wrong, but about “the essence of Jewish-Christian dialogue.” It’s not about converting them; it’s just about talking. And that’s precisely the problem with it.

Evangelization does not, and has never, come about by high-level meetings with representatives of other religions and engaging in dialogue with them. It does, and always has, come about by prayer; by fasting; by good works; by good example; by Catholics speaking with and explaining things to nonbelievers. The knowledge of Christ is the greatest gift any human being can possibly receive; let us not dialogue with those who don’t have it, but rather endeavor to give it to them, in prayer and fasting, with understanding and love. In this way, and this way only, can we “teach . . . all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (St. Matt. 28:19), as Christ Our Lord has commanded us.

Praise be to Christ the King!

America and the Rust Belt

This post’s title sounds much more grandiose than it really is, so don’t be fooled; this will be a brief, basic little post, not a grand discourse on the Rust Belt’s economy.

For those of you who aren’t American or otherwise don’t know what the Rust Belt is, let me explain. The Rust Belt is the string of northern and “Midwestern” industrial states which, starting in the 1970s, have collapsed into largely defunctionalized non-industrial towns. Its extent is defined in different ways; however, everybody seems to agree that it includes at least Peoria, Illinois, stretching east through Gary and Indianapolis, Indiana; into Michigan, especially Flint and Detroit; the many defunct industrial towns of Ohio including Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo; the Pennsylvanian industrial powerhouses, including especially Pittsburgh and sometimes Philadelphia (though that’s also a major port, so that one’s iffy); and up through Upstate New York, including Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Rochester, and Syracuse. The “Rust” in the Rust Belt comes from the dead and decaying factories, in which formerly hard-worked steel machinery is descending into rust.

Of course, all of these towns had different focuses; Pittsburgh was a big steel town, of course, while Niagara Falls focused on chemical plants. But they all depended upon their industrial bases for their prosperity. They had a large, reasonably well-disciplined and hard-working working class, racially and ethnically varied, and generally common in their desire for a decent living raising a family. They had their own particular characteristics, each one being quite unique. For example, while we now think of American accents as being limited to “Valley Girl,” “Southern,” “New York,” and “Regular,” each one of these cities at one time had a distinctive accent all its own. One could tell a Pittsburgh steelworker from a Buffalo one, simply by the way he spoke. Even today, in the relatively small enclave of the Rust Belt known as Western New York, one can still tell older denizens of Cheektowaga apart from those of Tonawanda (the former a heavily Polish town, the latter more Italian and Irish, though with some Polish as well) without asking where they’re from.

I grew up partly in Tonawanda, a town once occupied mostly by industrial workers in nearby Buffalo and across the Erie Canal in Niagara Falls, and partly in Springville, not part of the industrial base but rather a bit of the Rust Belt’s rural hinterland. (I’m no longer a citizen of that glorious place; I’m now firmly ensconced in the American South, a proud citizen of a proud country, here most probably to remain.) While the Rust Belt, and that particular corner of it, have waxed and waned throughout my life, its history in my lifetime has been one of a general decline. Buffalo, for example had half a million residents in 1950; it’s about 300,000 now. And things aren’t getting any better. My perspective on that decline follows.

The American industrial heartland was once “the heartland” in a real and true sense. The South, since the Civil War, was still a proud country but a poor one; the West was still vast and empty, with the exception of a few port cities; and the great port cities of the Atlantic coast sustained themselves on commerce more than on industry, though of course industry was quite powerful there, as well. It was for the heartland, what we now derisively call the Rust Belt, that made this country prosperous and powerful, for it was in the heartland that America’s power was made.

Literally. The industrial heartland produced vast quantities of goods, from Minnesota’s timber and iron ore to Detroit’s cars to Pittsburgh’s and Buffalo’s steel to Niagara’s chemicals and lumber. America’s industrial base was enormous, so huge as early as 1917 that her entry into the war was known, even to the Germans, to most likely spell Allied victory, and so ridiculously huge by 1939 that keeping America neutral, or getting America involved, was rightly seen by both sides as the linchpin of the war, one way or the other. America, the factory of the world, produced war material sufficient to sustain three great powers; Britain had the resolve, and Russia had the manpower, but neither could produce what they needed to beat the best army ever fielded in modern times without us. They needed America, and more specifically, they needed the Rust Belt.

Nor was the Rust Belt merely an industrial place, with black coal smoke pouring from smokestacks and factory men resting their lunch boxes on the bar for a drink after work. It was an agricultural place, and strongly so, producing large quantities of agricultural goods for its own cities and for others. Minnesota is probably preeminent in this way, its Minnesota wheat being justly famous even to this day, but it was hardly alone. Springville, my second home town, was part of the agricultural hinterland of America’s heartland, corn being its greatest crop.

Blessed by our Creator with fertile soil and ample rainfall, pressed up against the beautiful and stirring Great Lakes, the Rust Belt provides an excellent agricultural setting, and its residents never failed to take advantage of it. It does not require irrigation and is well-suited to a variety of crops; while Minnesota provides an excellent home for wheat, south of the Great Lakes corn seems to be a better main crop, with many types of vegetables also thriving. Dairy farming was also quite common, particularly in Upstate New York, where cheddar cheese which can give Vermont’s a run for its money is made. Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region (which includes such former industrial towns as Rochester and Syracuse) is also excellent wine country, and without the massive irrigation requirements of California’s Napa Valley, though strict exportation laws make this wine difficult to obtain elsewhere.

Alas, all this is gone. Industry is either dead or dying, as it is throughout this great country, and people flee the Rust Belt faster than rats from a sinking ship. This once proud country, made of so many distinctive local cultures, fed by its many immigrant and native communities, now strives to be as much like the great coastal ports as it can, in order to feed off their imported prosperity where once they had built their own. This country, so blessed by Providence with all that it needed, in its natural resources and the industry of its inhabitants, has fallen in so short a time. “Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion.”

Now, however, the great coastal cities are starting to feel the crunch. Take California as an example. The same phenomenon that led to the decline of the Rust Belt—huge floods of cheap East Asian imports—led to California’s meteoric rise. Even as factories in the heartland shut their doors as consumers took advantage of borderline slave labor in the Far East, California rose as those slaves’ products came into this country through its wide-open doors. As Detroit begged for assistance, asking America not to let it die, California profited while the heartland slowly died. The Rust Belt’s death, really and truly, was California’s gain.

But now, the dollar is tanking, oil is rising, and imports are becoming more expensive. As energy becomes increasingly costly, California’s situation becomes increasingly dire. More and more Asian factories are turning to providing products to their own countries. California now, like Pennsylvania and Michigan before it, begs for the assistance of the rest of the country. Will America respond to California, when it refused to respond to Michigan?

Now, the Rust Belt has a chance to rise again. If current trends continue and imports start to reflect their real cost again, local production will become more and more important. The Rust Belt, like the other industrial towns scattered throughout this great continent, is uniquely suited to take advantage of the situation. It has an agricultural hinterland which does not require irrigation; it has lots of industrial buildings, in need of repair but still usable; and it has a lower-middle class that is still, even forty years into the region’s decline, accustomed to and expectant of factory labor. What better situation for the rise of fields and factories could one ask for?

My new home, Martinsville, Virginia, is in a similar place. Once a great industrial town, housing factories of furniture companies that were based right here, it has since suffered the same industrial decline that has afflicted cities from Minneapolis to Syracuse. Hooker Furniture, based in this good city, no longer produces any furniture here but merely buys and sells that made in China. American Furniture, also based here in the City, is in the same situation. Nearby Bassett Furniture and Stanley Furniture are still producing furniture in this country but struggling. Textiles, once strong here (we were once informally known as the sweatshirt capital of the world), now transferred entirely to China, the factory now converted into a sparsely occupied office-containing eyesore. Dead factories litter this poor town; but now is its chance to rise. A populace accustomed to factory labor, still seeking such labor; a strong agriculture hinterland; a large body of industrial property. Martinsville, if you ask me, is the place to be as our nation begins to rise from its import-dependent rut.

So praise be to the Rust Belt; may it, and all of our great country, prosper once again.

Praise be to Christ the King!

This post was inspired by an interesting article by John Michael Greer: Betting on the Rust Belt.

The Mixed Blessing: Caritas in Veritate, Part II

This encyclical contains much to give the Catholic heart, devoted to Catholic social teaching, immense joy. Pope Benedict XVI states clearly and unequivocally a number of propositions that make those dedicated to Catholic social teaching very happy, and others very unhappy.

The Pope states first and foremost the basis for all of the Church’s social teaching, a basis which one could easily derive from the title of the document: charity. “Charity,” the Pope declares, “is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine.”[1] Not some cold, detached vision of an economic “science”; not some abstract notion of the inevitable progress of history; charity, pure and simple. In so saying, the Pope clearly and explicitly distances Catholic social teaching from capitalism and socialism in all their many forms. When the Church thinks about economics and other social matters, her primary concern is not efficiency, liberty, or any of the buzzwords of materialistic economic thinking. It is charity, pure and simple.

Furthermore, since the Church’s social teaching is based fundamentally on charity, the Pope reaffirms what the Church has always taught: that economic and political matters are unquestionably within the jurisdiction of the Church. The first of the great economically-focused social encyclicals, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, thought the subject so obviously within the Church’s purview that he asserted her authority over it with little argument:

We approach the subject with confidence and surely by Our right… [because] the question under consideration is certainly one for which no satisfactory solution will be found unless religion and the Church have been called upon to aid.[2]

Pius XI clearly reaffirmed the Church’s authority in such matters, stating that “both social and economic questions [must] be brought within Our supreme jurisdiction,”[3] and John Paul II went so far as to teach that the Church’s social doctrine “is an essential part of the Christian message.”[4] While some have managed, even when confronted with all these pronouncements, to continue to deny with a straight face that the Church has authority in the economic realm, Pope Benedict’s clear statement provides additional support for that clearly correct proposition.

Of course, His Holiness makes it very clear that he is offering only principles of social thought, not specific and technical solutions. “The Church does not have technical solutions to offer. . . She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation.”[5] However, the Church’s obligation to present this social teaching, and her authority within this realm, he defends with every bit of the strength of his predecessors, proclaiming that the Church’s “social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation [of Christ]: it is a service to the truth which sets us free.”[6]

The Pope also argues that the Church’s social doctrine is not really separable from Christianity.[7] He argues that “adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development.”[8] While some later statements in the encyclical make this statement questionable, in principle, here if not elsewhere, the Pope reaffirms the necessity of acknowledging Christ the King in any truly just social order.

The Pope then proceeds to identify two absolutely essential linchpins of Catholic social thought: justice and the common good. While His Holiness never defines justice, a regrettable omission to be sure, it is clear from his treatment of it that he accepts the traditional definition; namely, giving to each what is his due. This, in particular, is distributive justice, that specific type of justice from which distributism takes its name. The Pope observes that charity, which he’d previously identified as the root of Catholic social teaching, goes beyond justice; however, he further observes that justice is the minimum required by charity.[9] Justice being the minimum of charity, it’s clear that meeting the requirements of justice is absolutely necessary for an economic system to conform to Catholic social teaching.

Next is the common good, a concept thoroughly rooted in Catholic social teaching and much abused by modern philosophers. The “common good,” His Holiness teaches, is “a good that is linked to living in society.”[10] It is not merely the good of each individual living in society; it includes individuals, families, and all subsidiary corporations, including the workingmen’s associations which he addresses much later on in the encyclical. “It is the good of ‘all of us’, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society.”[11] His Holiness proceeds even further, sounding almost Aristotelian on the subject:

[F]or the people who belong to the social community . . . [they] can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. . . . This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly, outside the institutional mediation of the polis.[12]

In other words, seeking the common good is nothing other than seeking charity on a political level. It is not, as so many modern thinkers will have it, merely seeking the greatest good for the greatest number; it is specifically ensuring justice within society—namely, that everyone receives what is his due—which itself includes charity, which goes beyond justice in seeking the good of everyone, including families and other corporations subsidiary to the state. Outside of the society, His Holiness teaches, man cannot effectively pursue his good; it is necessary, therefore, that society be geared toward assisting him toward that end.

And therein, of course, lies the crux of his disagreement with so many worldly economists and other social thinkers: His Holiness believes, and unabashedly proclaims, that society must be designed around the entirety of man, not merely his material well-being. He says so quite explicitly:

[A]uthentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension. Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space. Enclosed within history, it runs the risk of being reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth; humanity thus loses the courage to be at the service of higher goods, at the service of the great and disinterested initiatives called forth by universal charity.[13]

One can already hear the vehement protests from “Austrians” and all other stripes of modern thinkers. What do you mean, human development needs to include “the perspective of eternal life” or “it runs the risk of being reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth”? Economics is all about the mere accumulation of wealth! The Pope, of course, disagrees.

[P]rogress of a merely economic and technological kind is insufficient. Development needs above all to be true and integral. The mere fact of emerging from economic backwardness, though positive in itself, does not resolve the complex issues of human advancement.[14]

Catholic social teaching is after more than merely helping people get microwaves and flat-screen televisions; it’s after achieving justice and the common good and motivated by charity. That’s what separates it from modern social thinking, and that’s what makes modern thinkers despise it.

Human development (by which he means social and economic improvement, among other things, as he explains in some detail in no. 21) isn’t just about getting more material stuff; it’s about assisting real, living human persons toward their salvation, their “eternal life.” That is why justice and the common good are the cornerstones of Catholic social thought; that is why charity is the viewpoint through which all social efforts must be analyzed; and that is why modern economists of all varieties hate Catholic social teaching and hate this encyclical. In this respect, it reaffirms the constant and perennial social teaching of the Catholic Church; as such, it is their enemy, but the distributist’s friend.

On more particular matters, His Holiness says many things that makes the distributist’s heart rejoice. He observes, for example, that technological progress is not a good in itself; rather, it requires analysis and circumspection.

Paul VI had already warned against the technocratic ideology so prevalent today, fully aware of the great danger of entrusting the entire process of development to technology alone, because in that way it would lack direction. Technology, viewed in itself, is ambivalent.[15]

So when modern economists tell us not to worry about the constant hemorrhaging of traditional jobs in agriculture and manufacturing because new jobs in computers and other new industries which Americans can do “more efficiently” will inevitably take their place, distributists have some further support for their skepticism.

The Pope further opposes the “Austrian” economists’ favorite idol, the profit motive, when considered as an end in itself. In these cases, the profit motive only furthers poverty and worsens the lot of the poor. “Profit,” His Holiness states, “is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”[16] In other words, when profit is sought for the common good, with due regard for its just distribution, it is good; however, when profit is sought without regard for these considerations and solely for some private good, it ceases to be helpful. The desire for profit must have “the common good as its ultimate end”; otherwise, it is untethered from its purpose, and like anything else so untethered will run amuck to society’s disadvantage.

The Pope further laments “the damaging effects on the real economy of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing.”[17] Distributists, who advocate a return of the real economy to primacy, will appreciate his words on this subject. Finance, he continues, “needs to go back to being an instrument directed towards improved wealth creation and development.”[18] It needs to be responsible finance, at the service of the real economy, not an independent economy on its own. The financial sector requires not only an internal conscience, but also external regulation to be appropriately directed toward the common good:

Both the regulation of the financial sector, so as to safeguard weaker parties and discourage scandalous speculation, and experimentation with new forms of finance, designed to support development projects, are positive experiences that should be further explored and encouraged, highlighting the responsibility of the investor.[19]

Whatever the particular form of the financial sector, usury must be avoided, and the poor and weak must be provided with means to protect themselves against it.[20] The condemnation of usury here is a welcome addition to the encyclical.

Further along these lines, Pope Benedict follows his predecessors in discussing the free market, and approving of it only in a limited way. He notes that the economy in general involves moral, not value-neutral, choices:

[T]he conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.[21]

The Pope then proceeds to acknowledge that free markets in particular do offer some advantages, but notes that this approving verdict, which after all only echoes prior decisions in past encyclicals,[22] is not unconditional:

Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.[23]

In other words, free markets are wonderful, provided that they are subordinated to the pursuit of the common good. They are not a goal in themselves, nor are they the “value-free” means of guaranteeing efficient production that capitalists often tout them to be:

It must be remembered that the market does not exist in the pure state. It is shaped by the cultural configurations which define it and give it direction. Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends.[24]

Markets are not and cannot be value-free. They are good when used properly; they are disastrous when not directed by the political system toward the common good. The encyclical makes its approval of markets very clearly conditional upon them being “structured and governed in an ethical manner.”[25]

Finally, the Pope speaks at some length on the proper role of the state in the economy. Now, Popes have long held that the state has an important and active role in a well-ordered economy, specifically in ensuring that all the private interests in the state, whether of individuals or of subsidiary corporations, are directed overall to the common good. Pius XI explained it this way:

It follows from the twofold character of ownership, which We have termed individual and social, that men must take into account in this matter, not only their own advantage, but also the common good. To define in detail these duties, when the need occurs and when the natural law does not do so, is the function of the government.[26]

This was extended by John Paul II, who even spoke approvingly, as a prudential matter, of the welfare state in this regard,[27] though he also identified its problems, ascribing them mainly to a neglect of the principle of subsidiarity.[28] His Holiness Pope Benedict takes up this question again, and provides a great deal of food for distributist thought in the process.

In the first place, the necessity and goodness of state involvement in the economy is taken for granted; Pope Benedict does not defend the proposition, nor does he need to, since the question had already been settled beyond question at least as early as Rerum Novarum.[29] However, His Holiness makes quite clear that current modes of state involvement need to be reconsidered:

[A]s we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State’s public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodelled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today’s world.[30]

This, however, is a practical question, not a theoretical question about whether government involvement is necessary at all. Such involvement is clearly necessary, part of the proper role of government, even if its current role needs to be rethought.

Specific involvement that needs to be reconsidered is the government’s role in outsourcing and its relations to trade unions. Outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor markets has resulted in governments competing for foreign investment by setting up “favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market.”[31] This, the Pope observes, has had “consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, [and] for fundamental human rights.”[32] Furthermore, “trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions.”[33] This last is perhaps the worst of all the effects of this competition for worker exploitation, because it violates what has been one of the most consistent prescriptions of the Church for the world’s economic ills, the need for workmen’s associations:

The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine . . . for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.[34]

The loss of worker’s rights, along with the increasing mobility of labor that deregulation has facilitated, have made the formation of stable families more difficult, as well. It has also resulted in comparatively uncertain and unsteady employment for many workers, which leads to “[b]eing out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period,” which in turns causes “great psychological and spiritual suffering.”[35] All in all, the entire situation—the competition among nations to set up environments most exploitative of the worker being the root issue—requires serious reform, a reform that distributism, founded as it is upon producing stable and independent workers, is well-suited to undertake.

Finally, though papal encyclicals have often focused on the industrial worker (not neglecting their agricultural brethren), Pope Benedict keeps agriculture and the farmer in their proper place, as an equal partner to the factories in the production of wealth. His words for the agricultural situation are stern. Agricultural needs reform, and that reform

needs to be accomplished with the involvement of local communities in choices and decisions that affect the use of agricultural land. In this perspective, it could be useful to consider the new possibilities that are opening up through proper use of traditional as well as innovative farming techniques, always assuming that these have been judged, after sufficient testing, to be appropriate, respectful of the environment and attentive to the needs of the most deprived peoples. At the same time, the question of equitable agrarian reform in developing countries should not be ignored.[36]

Pope Benedict wisely refuses to get involved in the many disputes about modern agricultural practices—chemical as opposed to organic, large-scale as opposed to small-scale, and so on—and simply notes general principles; namely, that traditional methods should be remembered, but that new techniques should not be neglected, and most of all that subsidiarity must be respected. The Pope’s adamant insistence on the involvement of local communities, rather than top-down reform, is a thoroughly distributist aspect of his teaching; indeed, at one point he even declares that localism is an appropriate standard for determining good investments,[37] a striking endorsement of the subsidiarity that his predecessors have always strongly supported.

Many other constant themes of distributist thought appear in and are defended by this encyclical. His Holiness specifically defends the concept of the just wage, for example, stating that poverty often arises in societies “because a low value is put on work and the rights that flow from it, especially the right to a just wage and to the personal security of the worker and his or her family.”[38] He further supports the concept of workmen’s associations, as already noted above, with some specificity, though he refers specifically to labor unions, which are probably not the notion that Leo XIII and Pius XI were explicating. The Pope praises workmen’s associations for “their necessary activity of defending and promoting labour, especially on behalf of exploited and unrepresented workers, whose woeful condition is often ignored by the distracted eye of society.”[39] He also argues forcefully for taking into account local cultures when trying to aid them economically.[40]

The Pope further warns against the overextension of welfare policies; if solidarity—which in this case means social assistance programs—fail to take into account subsidiarity, or vice versa, it will descend into “paternalistic social assistance” or “social privatism.”[41] Too much social assistance, or social assistance done badly, “can sometimes lock people into a state of dependence and even foster situations of localized oppression and exploitation in the receiving country.”[42] (Here the Pope applies this specifically to foreign aid, but the argument is easily applicable to domestic assistance, as well.) One can recognize Belloc’s warnings about the welfare state in the Pope’s concerns here.

Finally, the Pope brings up modernity’s worst violation of proper social principles, its consistent violation of the principles of life. “Openness to life,” the Pope teaches, “is at the centre of true development.”[43] Only a respect for life will allow societies to “promote virtuous action within the perspective of production that is morally sound and marked by solidarity, respecting the fundamental right to life of every people and every individual.”[44] Yet states continue to permit or compel violations of life, often justified by trumped-up concerns of population growth. “Against such policies, there is a need to defend the primary competence of the family in the area of sexuality.”[45] In other words, until our society defends the family and abandons abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and its many other offenses against life, true development—the implementation of Catholic social teaching—is impossible.

Space does not permit a complete exposition of the many good aspects of this encyclical. Pope Benedict offers a great deal of new insight and wisdom to Catholic social teaching, insight and wisdom which reinforces the principles that distributism has derived from past encyclicals and advocated for over a century. The reader is encouraged to read the encyclical itself to see some of these; the author also intends to update his own Distributism: A Catholic System of Economics to reflect them. It will take many years for the depths of this encyclical to be fully plumbed, and all distributists, not to mention all Catholics, should be grateful to the Pope for his insight.

Pope Benedict’s insight is not limited, however, to reaffirming and reapplying the teachings of his predecessors. It includes some responses to new economic challenges, responses which the Pope formulated by relying firmly on traditional Catholic social principles. To these insights I will now turn my attention.

Footnotes for Part I:

1. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 2.
2. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, no. 24.
3. Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno.
4. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, no. 5.
5. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 9.
6. Id.
7. But the encyclical is ambiguous on this question. See Part IV of this series.
8. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 4.
9. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 6.
10. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 7.
11. Id.
12. Id.
13. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 11.
14. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 23.
15. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 14.
16. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 21.
17. Id.
18. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 65.
19. Id.
20. Id.
21. Id., no. 34.
22. John Paul II, for example, noted that the market “[seems to be] the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. But this is true only for those needs which are ‘solvent,’ insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power, and for those resources which are ‘marketable,’ insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price.” Centestimus Annus, no. 34.
23. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 36.
24. Id., no. 36.
25. Id.
26. Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno.
27. John Paul II, Centestimus Annus, no. 48 (he refers to it as the “Social Assistance State”).
28. Id.
29. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, no. 52 (stating that individuals only have freedom to use their possessions as they will “so far as this is possible without jeopardizing the common good and without injuring anyone”).
30. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 24.
31. Id.
32. Id.
33. Id.
34. Id.
35. Id.
36. Id., no. 27.
37. Id., no. 40.
38. Id., no. 63.
39. Id., no. 64.
40. Id., no. 59.
41. Id., no. 58.
42. Id.
43. Id., no. 28.
44. Id.
45. Id., no. 44.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Obamacare: A Distributist Perspective

Obviously, all I can work with here is the text of the bill that the House of Representatives has been working with, HR 3200, which I found at the House’s website. Our legislative system is so crazily convoluted that it’s impossible to say what, if any, relationship any bill eventually passed, if any bill is passed, will have with the current text. Furthermore, the bill is over a thousand pages long, and much of it is convoluted and borderline incomprehensible. However, the bill as it currently stands, and as much of it as I have read, is extremely concerning for me, as a Catholic and a distributist.

First, of course, any federal health care bill must receive significant suspicion from a distributist. Distributists are quite tightly wedded to the principle of subsidiarity—it’s one of the bedrocks of distributist thinking—and so any reform brought on at such a high level must necessarily be seen with considerable doubt. For those who don’t know, the principle of subsidiarity is the notion that the smallest possible unit of society ought to perform a given task; putting tasks more properly done at a lower level upon a higher is fraught with risks, most especially waste, corruption, and an inability to respond to the needs of the lower levels of society. Higher levels of government or society are not as knowledgeable about local conditions which might render their broad-ranging programs ineffective, nor are they as knowledgeable about local needs which might require services other than those their broad-ranging programs can provide. So distributists, all other things being equal, would much prefer to see a state-level reform of the health care system, rather than a federal one. Even better would be much more local reforms.

Are local systems possible? Certainly. The first hospitals in the Western world, of course, were Catholic hospitals, and they treated the poor—and everyone else—for free. In other words, they were operated on a purely charitable basis, generally by religious, who didn’t expect payment for their work because they were doing it for the glory of God, not for their own pocketbooks. To this day, in fact, nurses are often still addressed as “sister” in parts of Europe. In London, as an example, there were four hospitals run by the Catholic Church. When Henry VIII began his unmitigated pillage of religion to satisfy his own lust and greed, he seized those four hospitals and closed them down. He later reopened one, congratulating himself on his charity. But that’s the way it worked: local religious orders opened hospitals where they saw a need. Medical science was not very far advanced at that time, and thus there were many fewer hospitals than we moderns would expect; however, the guiding principle was charity, and the Church provided nearly all of it.

There’s no reason why the Catholic Church could not continue providing low-cost or free health care, based on donations made by concerned citizens. In many places, the Church still does so, as do many other private organizations. If health care were provided primarily by charitable organizations, citizens would have much more disposable income to dedicate to donations to health care organizations, further facilitating their funding. Furthermore, localities could provide incentives for charitable health care, including tax breaks, donations of land, or even direct funding. This would give local citizens more control over their own health care, a goal that any distributist must respect.

Of course, this is extremely simplified, nor is it the only means by which a locality might provide for the health care of its citizens. But the bottom line is that the principle of subsidiarity argues for local control of the reform of the health care system, or the lack thereof; higher levels of society are likely to be unresponsive to local needs and not knowledgeable about local conditions, which will make their programs less effective and less efficient.

However, while there are strong grounds to oppose the bill simply as a federal program trying to usurp a properly local function, let’s set that aside for a moment. Let’s assume that we’ve determined not only that health care reform is necessary, but also that localities and even states simply cannot handle the task. We have a federal bill for health care reform before us. What should a distributist think of it?

For my part, I think it’s clear that no distributist can condone the bill as it stands. Even beyond its violation of the principle of subsidiarity, it violates notions of the family which distributists hold sacrosanct.

The bill begins with an enormous number of definitions, most of which simply pass the buck to other federal statutes for their content. One of those defined in the section, however, is that of “family,” and the definition as given should give distributists serious concern. “The term ‘family,’” the bill tells us, “means an individual and includes the individual’s dependents.”

Surely, this is a curious definition; a family normally involves, at the very least, more than one person. A quick search of a dictionary reveals a number of definitions, all of which involve a group of people of some kind. This one, however, states that a family is “an individual.” Certainly, it also includes his “dependents,” but doesn’t have to. What does this mean for distributists?

First, this definition is perfectly open to, and is conducive of, definitions of the family that distributists should adamantly oppose. By refusing to cite to a married couple, man and woman, it opens the door for literally any type of “family” that our increasingly degenerate society decides to recognize. Cohabiting couples; homosexual couples, whether “married” or not; all of these easily fit into the definition of family as described here, provided that one of them is a “dependent.” The definition of “dependent” doesn’t help any, either; it is left entirely up to “the Commissioner,” the only proviso being that it “includes a spouse.” Note that here, too, there is no mention of a spouse of the opposite sex, a pretty glaring omission given the enormous controversy currently ongoing about the subject.

Just in case anyone was wondering about this interpretation, the bill later commands that there be no “discrimination” in providing health care benefits, explicitly states that insurance coverage shall not be limited based on “personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high-quality health care or related services.” In other words, family insurance coverage can’t be limited merely because it’s for a non-family, a status which is “extraneous to the provision of high-quality health care.” Clearly, the bill intends to recognize and provide the same benefits to non-families as to families, which fact alone should earn distributist opposition.

In other words, the bill violates the notion of the family as, at a minimum, a man and his wife with a variable number of children, plus other relations by blood or adoption as may vary with circumstance. It recognizes, or allows “the Commissioner” to recognize, almost any arrangement of individuals as a family. No distributist can consider this acceptable.

Of course, the bill isn’t all bad. Plans are required to provide maternity care, something that many families (including mine) have to pay for separately now. Nor is it as bad as some people think it is. For example, it does not appear (as far as I could see) to mandate coverage for killing babies in the womb; on the other hand, it does allow an advisory board to recommend certain procedures be necessary coverage, and that board may well make abortion a mandatory part of health benefit plans. (Plus, see the Postscript.) Furthermore, on pages 79-80, we see that only “smaller” and “smallest” employers (basically, those with fewer than 20 employees) are covered by the bill within its first two years, which may well encourage employees to go to smaller businesses rather than larger ones for that limited time.

However, overall the bill has to be considered unacceptable from the distributist perspective. I urge all distributists to oppose it.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Postscript: Ryan Grant has written an interesting analysis of the bill, including a summary from Matthew Staver of Liberty University detailing some of the things to which a Catholic might object. I encourage those interested in a deeper analysis of the bill itself to look there.

Postscript: The Review‘s own Ryan Grant has informed me that Mr. Staver’s analysis, as cited in the first postscript, is not entirely accurate. A page-by-page review of the problems identified by Staver’s analysis has been conducted by the Blue Boar, which should prove more informative.

The Mixed Blessing: Caritas in Veritate, Part I

Let me begin by saying that I’m a big fan of Pope Benedict XVI. A big fan. His Holiness was unquestionably the best of all the candidates eligible for election to his sacred office, and he’s clearly done enormous good for the Church; first among his good deeds must be counted the freeing of the traditional rites of the Western Church in Summorum Pontificum, as well as the major steps forward he has made in reconciling with the Society of Saint Pius X.

His latest encyclical is no exception; overall, it’s a boon for the Church, as I fully expected it to be. It contains numerous reaffirmations of the perennial social teaching of the Catholic Church, blazes new ground in some areas, and makes explicit what was only implicit in some earlier writings. What many previous pontiffs left unsaid, assuming that their readers would have a basis in Thomistic philosophy, this great pontiff has been forced to make explicit, and he has done so. In this way, Caritas in Veritate must be received with great joy by the faithful, particularly those conscious of Catholic social teaching.

On the other hand—and in these sad times there is nearly always another hand—the encyclical leaves off a good deal of what was great and powerful in past statements of the Church’s social teaching. Most especially, it is completely devoid of any acknowledgment of Christ the King, though it does (without, of course, using those words) acknowledge in some ways the role that Christ must have in earthly kingdoms. Among some other omissions, this is troubling, and faithful Catholics steeped in the tradition of the social teaching of the Church cannot but think it so.

Perhaps most troubling, of course, is that the official version of this encyclical has still, after over a month, not been released yet. A perusal of the Vatican web site reveals translations of the encyclical into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, and Polish; however, no copy of the document in the only official and authoritative language of the Church, Latin, can be found. Granted, four of the seven translations available are in languages descended from Latin, but this is hardly a substitute. No matter how helpful vernacular translations of papal documents might be (and they are helpful in many ways), there can be no replacing the authoritative Latin text, against which translations may be compared for accuracy. There is no such text available at this time, so everything contained in the translations must be considered only tentative. Indeed, many of the problems that some Catholics have, rightly or wrongly, identified with the encyclical could well be due entirely to poor translations; Catholics above all other religions should know the damage that poor or deliberately misleading translations can do.

I’ve waited a long time to comment on the encyclical. Mostly this has been due to an inability to get it completely read; also, however, I’ve wanted to sit back, see the reactions, and read the words of others on the subject to see what my own response would be. Well, I’ve completed reading the document, and I’ve seen many responses, and I think I’m ready for my own. I’ve divided my response into several parts; this division is partly selfish, of course, as it is easier to write as well as to read such commentaries in smaller increments. The plan should be simple, as follows:

• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Reaffirming Traditional Teachings
• Part III: New Teachings, Traditional Principles
• Part IV: Questions from the Traditional Perspective
• Part V: Conclusion

A part will be published each week until the series is concluded. As the parts are written, they may prove amenable to division themselves, in which case they will be so divided.

As a faithful Catholic, I hasten to add that any criticisms or questions I may raise regarding the words of His Holiness in this encyclical are not meant in any way as denials of his rightful authority. Pope Benedict XVI is the Vicar of Christ, the Servant of the Servants of God, and as such is entitled to religious deference and will always receive it from me. However, as Ryan Grant rightly points out in his recent article on the subject, Catholics may withhold their consent from papal teachings which are not ex cathedra in certain circumstances. I have not done so in any case in which I have not seriously considered the circumstances, and ask everyone else to do the same.

And so I embark upon the encyclical; may Christ the King guide me, His Mother pray for me, and may St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and my own patron saints and guardian angels pray for me to read rightly, understand correctly, and judge wisely throughout this endeavor.

Praise be to Christ the King!