Can a Catholic be a social democrat?

[Joe_Hill]

As Father Fr. Robert Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute (U.S.A.), explains… “Benedict does see a role for the state here [in wealth redistribution], but much of the needed redistribution is the result of every voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange.”

With all due respect to Father Sirico, he is quite an outspoken libertarian even more so previous to his becoming a catholic priest. While he is indeed correct in his interpretation that you quoted above, his previous position, along with the position of the Acton Institute that he founded, had not been consistent with what the Holy Father’s has expressed in Caritias in Vertitate.

It might well be that he has had a change of heart due to recent events and/or the encyclical itself. Much like his change from his Pentacostal preaching, his socialism, his radical libertarianism and his conducting of gay marraige services.

ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/fr-robert-sirico-gay-marriages-he-once-performed

He wrote in the National Review Online

I am not sure who such conservative defenders of “unbridled capitalism based on greed” are supposed to be. Perhaps Fr. Reese has the disciples of the atheist Ayn Rand in mind, but they are hardly representative of those modern defenders of the market economy such as Rocco Buttiglione, Wilhelm Röpke, and William F. Buckley. I think it is a fair prediction to say that any pope would come out against any system “based on greed.”

wdtprs.com/blog/2009/07/fr-siricio-about-dissenters-and-the-upcoming-social-encyclical/

Reassuring?

Except that this 2011 June only one month before he wrote that he wote a semi-apologetic for Ayn Rand here

patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Who-Really-Was-John-Galt-Anyway-Robert-Sirico-06-09-2011?offset=0&max=1

I respecfully decline to take the socio-economic and moral-political advice of Father Sirico over that of the Holy Father. Especially from a man who has displayed radical shifts of political, moral and spiritual opinion.

I believe we would understand better the meaning of the Caritas en Veritate by studying the encycle itself rather than be distracted by either what “liberal” catholics or “libertarian” catholics have to say on it.

Peace.

 

[Abu]

Personal prejudices, and labelling people, won’t help to understand *Caritas et Veritate *or any Catholic teaching, and Fr John De Celles confirms that the Pope is clear on what he means by wealth redistribution when he uses it to mean increasing the share of wealth of the poor by normal market economic activity such as, better jobs, increased profits, etc. [CV 42].

 

[chevalier]

The bishops did not object to the result, except for some harsh statements about the suporters of RPP. Not because of RPP’s views on economy, but because of their views on Church-state relations, abortion and gay marriage.

There used to be much talking about PO’s stance on in vitro fertilisation especially. Unfortunately, it died out. Then there was, equally unfortunately, just a little talking about how PO, a nominally Christian-Democratic party, effectively ended the matter of the citizen-supported bill restricting abortion. Actually, even the socialists from SLD, who would normally not only oppose the bill but submit their own one to relax abortion laws even further, commented negatively on the formal side of PO’s behaviour. (For the record, the other side of the debate, PiS, also had its own moments of failing to stand for the pro-life cause, including a dose of meandering around in vitro.)

It is sad how PO manages to pass itself for a Catholic party but it’s also sad how it actually stops trying to. There’s less and less reliance by PO on emphasising Church ties. Something they did all the time a couple of years ago.

 

[Joe_Hill]

Personal prejudices, and labelling people, won’t help to understand *Caritas et Veritate *or any Catholic teaching, and Fr John De Celles confirms that the Pope is clear on what he means by wealth redistribution when he uses it to mean increasing the share of wealth of the poor by normal market economic activity such as, better jobs, increased profits, etc. [CV 42].

I think sticking to the encyclical rather than comments on it, would help us understand what the Holy Father means.

As for personal prejudice, not at all.

Unless, taking the teaching of the Pope over that of a priest is somehow a prejudice.

Let’s keep this nice, okay?

 

[chevalier]

An American free man gets cancer. The insurance company, um, sorry, death panel reviews his insurance, finds that he failed to mention an unrelated disease when signing the contract, thus rendering it void, despite 20 years of regular payment. But, he can pay for the treatment himself if he gets a second mortgage on his house. Which is not his to begin with, because there is already one bank having mortgage on it. But that’s good: it will teach him to read insurance contracts more carefully next time.

I have a solution:

Void that contract under contract law. Hit the insurer with a nice culpa in contrahendo lawsuit (hybrid tort-contract) or penalise it into oblivion under unfair competition/consumer protection legislation, or even solid insurance legislation, for luring its potential clients into void contracts, not like criminal fraud would be totally out of the question in select few most blatant cases of misleading the signatories. In Poland, you could actually send the insurer’s lawyers out the court’s door by use of Article 5 of the Civil Code, i.e. the social morality clause.

Or just have an important government official (the president for all I care) put on the jacket and tie and narrate every bit of the insurer’s defence at trial to the insurer’s potential clients and send trial transcripts to all of its shareholders. Probably even better solution.

And let’s not forget to disbar a couple of lawyers while at it.

There is nothing wrong with “welfare” in a society – it is simplistic to imagine that State Welfare does not do what Bl JPII accuses it of. “Moral decay” comes from any human vice, and is facilitated by excessive State intervention as Bl JPII warns: “avoid enlarging excessively the sphere of State intervention to the detriment of both economic and civil freedom.”

The problem is to understand what Pope Benedict XVI means by “pursuing justice through redistribution.”

In Caritas in Veritate, the latest social Encyclical (2009), Benedict XVI has explained that “Space also needs to be created within the market for economic activity carried out by subjects who freely choose to act according to principles other than those of pure profit, without sacrificing the production of economic value in the process.” (#37).

Though I’d like to emphasise the part about “other than those of pure profit”, with also the caveat that entrepreneurs can’t really be left as the only judges of those principles they will be following. There must be regulation to prevent the results of acting on a pure profit, especially pure short-term profit, motivation. To be honest, most corporations nowadays do seem to engage in some form of “social responsibility”, although there’s a lot to complain about. Let’s take the hypothetical case of a monopolist having the option to sell a product at $100 or at $200, losing many customers (in some cases unable to afford the product rather than unwilling) in the latter case in return for turning a slighly larger profit. We can’t really legislate against it or prosecute it as a crime. But I’d be in favour against refusing to extend legal protection to the secrecy of such actions.

 

[fons_vitae]

Not really. I guess you can, but you’re asking whether someone can be a Catholic and reject the teachings of the Church at the same time. It’s kinda possible, but not really. Accepting the authority of the Church is one of the things that it means to be Catholic. If you are a heretic, you’re pretty much just a Protestant.

Uh, I’m not trying to be a heretic, really. I converted from a Protestant sect–I don’t need to experience a replay.

 

[fons_vitae]

Whoa, hold on XD… I appreciate the points being brought up, but I’m thinking now that this is a matter of nomenclature. There appears to be as many versions of socialism as there are capitalism.

I think the “socialism” justly condemned by the hierarchy is of the revolutionary, violent sort, not the ideal which other groups (a pacifist anarcho-syndicalist, for instance) may reach toward. Much like someone on the right may desire more and more capitalism while not desiring law enforcement to be handed over to private security agencies.

In short, it looks like capitalism and socialism are two extreme poles of the same continuum… one can advocate either, just as long as neither becomes “unfettered” and dehumanizing.

Compare:
Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno: “…no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

With:
Pope Benedict XVI, “Europe and Its Discontents”:
*"But in Europe, in the nineteenth century, the two models were joined by a third, socialism, which quickly split into two different branches, one totalitarian and the other democratic. Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight to the radical liberal positions, which it developed and corrected. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it became the political party of the Catholics, who had never felt at home among either the Protestant conservatives or the liberals. In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.

The totalitarian model, by contrast, was associated with a rigidly materialistic, atheistic philosophy of history: It saw history deterministically, as a road of progress that passes first through the religious and then through the liberal phase to arrive at an absolute, ultimate society in which religion is surpassed as a relic of the past and collective happiness is guaranteed by the workings of material conditions."*

 

[fons_vitae]

(Also… come to think of it, social democracy was created to counter dogmatic socialism, just like the welfare state counters off-the-rails capitalism.)

 

[fons_vitae]

Okay, now some theory.

First, let me introduce you to a very useful tool – the Political Compass: politicalcompass.org/analysis2 Please follow the link and have a look at the graph. (You can also take the test on the website, to see where YOU are on the graph).

Heh, already did… I’m in the middle on libertarian vs. authoritarian, about three squares to the left.

Also, the more that I research this, the more I see that mainstream social democracy sells itself as Third Way anyway, between state socialism and neoliberal capitalism >.< … apparently my first sources were too fringe, lol.

 

[Abu]

fons_vitae
the welfare state counters off-the-rails capitalism

There is no such thing in any State, and Catholic Social Teaching condemns the Welfare State.

“In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called “Welfare State”. This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” Centesimus Annus, #48].

 

[fons_vitae]

There is no such thing in any State, and Catholic Social Teaching condemns the Welfare State.

Remember, I came from a right-libertarian background… I still have plenty of skepticism of the State in reserve for when the time requires it.

 

[Joe_Hill]

There is no such thing in any State, and Catholic Social Teaching condemns the Welfare State.

“In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called “Welfare State”. This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” Centesimus Annus, #48].

hmm

I believe that such a narrow quote leaves out the rest of the whole picture of the point of view that Giovanni Paolo II

“The individual today is often suffocated between two poles represented by the State and the marketplace. At times it seems as though he exists only as a producer and consumer of goods, or as an object of State administration. People lose sight of the fact that life in society has neither the market nor the State as its final purpose, since life itself has a unique value which the State and the market must serve.”

“[A] person’s superfluous income, that is, income which he does not need to sustain life fittingly and with dignity, is not left wholly to his own free determination. Rather the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church constantly declare in the most explicit language that the rich are bound by a very grave precept to practice almsgiving, beneficence, and munificence.”

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html

 

[fakename]

Let me ask this, is speculation wrong? Because I was looking over the CCC again and it specifically said it was but the Catholic Encyclopedia, I think, would’ve been amended to be in line with the magisterium. Also, not everything in the CCC is magisterial too so is speculation as such wrong?

 

[essie7777]

hmm

I believe that such a narrow quote leaves out the rest of the whole picture of the point of view that Giovanni Paolo II …snip snip for space!

Unfortunately those people who use any question to begin advocating the the Church is anti-welfare state all seem to have a few things in common:

1. They never put all the quote from the Papal papers in their quote (or move the text around as they see fit)
2. When challenged they don’t answer but will direct you to very obvious political writings – some that even are hostile to Catholics.
3. If you push for an answer they just stop commenting in the thread. See the first thread listed below.
4. Have a habit to use other people’s interpretation of the encyclicals to justify their point of view (usually because if they examine the Pope’s FULL comments they don;t have justification for their opinion). If you look through the other threads you see the same quotes all the time from the same sources…again if you challenge this you simply get the quotes again … it can get repetitive.

Before you start what may well be a frustrating conversation it may be worth looking at these threads below: Each of these have extensive posts by the commentators who advocate against the welfare state and advocate the Church’s supposed support of the free economy with no worker protections.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=632366 - Does the word “Social” in the name “Catholic Social Teaching” create a danger of Socialism?
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=613768 -What is wrong with Capitalism
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=626466 - Pope Benedict XVI calls for “the redistribution of wealth”–a blow to Free Market Theology?
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=629261 -Am I a dissenter if I reject Catholic teaching on Just Wage and Labor Unions?

…
It is a shame as its an interesting discussion, as the other threads have been as well, until it become a free economy political rally!

 

[kama3]

Void that contract under contract law. Hit the insurer with a nice culpa in contrahendo lawsuit (hybrid tort-contract) or penalise it into oblivion …]

The problem with a private insurer is that most of these are publicly owned companies, and so, they are legally required to make profit. The only way for an insurer to make profit is to maximize income while minimizing payout. Hence, the system actively encourages behaviors such as the one described above. Your take on this is to legally force the insurer to behave nicely. The socialist take on it is to make the insurer state-owned, so it does not need to produce profit, hence the motivation for such actions largely dispappears.

 

[kama3]

However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order,

Emphasis mine. Centessimus Annus does not state the Welfare State is inherently evil, but it condemns excesses and abuses, and malfunctions and defects of the Welfare State.

A student of the Swedish system will easily name a couple of excesses and abuses present there. Strangely though, institutions like Heritage Foundation never enumerate them, and instead push macro-scale view which has no relation to real world data. This is because these excesses and abuses are related to things like family law and euthanasia and you can’t see these in macroeconomic data.

 

[kama3]

Not in the spirit of discord I’m just asking, how one could interpret “The civil power cannot reach this end by taking away from the rich in order to give to the poor…”

to mean “we accept progressive taxation”? Although I believe that the church accepts progressive taxes, I don’t think that this could be the reason why.

Because income tax doesn’t deprive you of what you already have.

As for the question of whether being forced to work improves moral character, I think that it is easy enough to see how work can cause pre-occupation and how this latter could keep someone away from immorality.

I agree here, but that was a largely sarcastic remark. Abu quoted a rhetoric which said that Swedish citizen is a serf, but an American citizen is free. I fail to see how a person who is forced to work to pay for higher education is more free than a person who doesn’t have to and can choose to spend time partying, working, volunteering for charity or whatever. I also fail how to see how a person who graduates being heavily in debt, is more free than a person who graduates without debt, as a person in debt is not free.

Also, consider the following. Under “perfect” socialism, one who doesn’t wish to work doesn’t have to, and can live off welfare. Thus, an individual is free to work or not. Now, I don’t support such arrangement because it creates a free rider problem and becomes detrimental to the society as a whole; nevertheless, as far as individual freedom is concerned…

Also, it may be bad to say “haha”; for it seems to be flippant.

I apologize, but I couldn’t resist after Abu quoted standard neo-con rethoric, which is so trivial to falsify that it makes me laugh .

I’m not sure how “socially democratic” Sweden even is or perhaps how “capitalistic”
America is. Sweden, according to the Heritage Foundations Econ lib. index. has been (for the past decade or so) actually economically freer than the US in several key categories: investment, and business, while it is about equal to the US in most of the other indexes except in labor and spending, where it is ironically less free.

Well, Sweden (and Nordic countries in general) are textbook examples of social democracy. You do not get more social democratic than them.

The economic freedom has more to do with the quality of government bureaucracy than it has to do with the taxes. The Nordic countries generally have low corruption levels, transparent government and high levels of social trust, which results in a very level playing field. In the US, on the other hand, you have large corporations openly buying favorable legislation.

 

[essie7777]

Emphasis mine. Centessimus Annus does not state the Welfare State is inherently evil, but it condemns excesses and abuses, and malfunctions and defects of the Welfare State.

Good point!

A student of the Swedish system will easily name a couple of excesses and abuses present there. Strangely though, institutions like Heritage Foundation never enumerate them, and instead push macro-scale view which has no relation to real world data. This is because these excesses and abuses are related to things like family law and euthanasia and you can’t see these in macroeconomic data.

I think every nation that runs a welfare state has room for improvement, checks and balances need to be in place and changes made when abuses go to far.

In general though a good democracy. with a strong politically minded and active population ultimately answers to the people and it can be hard for any abuses to continue longer term as people speak out and don’t allow it. As you mentioned good democracy has transparency in what they do. You get to see all the dirty laundry per se.

The economic freedom has more to do with the quality of government bureaucracy than it has to do with the taxes. The Nordic countries generally have low corruption levels, transparent government and high levels of social trust, which results in a very level playing field. In the US, on the other hand, you have large corporations openly buying favorable legislation.

I live in the US but am British by birth. I firmly believe in a welfare state, as i was brought up on the tenet that a country can only be as moral and strong based on the reflection of how it treats its most vulnerable member.

Because income tax doesn’t deprive you of what you already have. snip snip for space!.

Income tax comes down to people’s perception to a certain extent, i have seen on CAF threads that Europe has income tax from 50-70%. Whilst in the strictest sense this is true --if you happen to be earning in excess of six figures per year and only in a very few circumstances. I have only lived in four European countries but all of them are what is called “pay as you earn”, and the general average amount is usually around 20% across the board of the European countries. It can vary but not by much.

If you look at the UK example, everyone has a tax free amount of 8115GBP per yr (about $14-15000), tax is paid on the money ABOVE that figure.

People who earn below the poverty line which varies year to year are excluded from taxes, or pay just 10% on earnings above this tax free amount. The basic rate (that paid by most people is just 20% on earnings up to 37000 ($70-72000). Earnings above that are subject to incremental changes and the highest rate is just 40% but only for earners up to 150,000GBP($280-290000) Anyone earning more than that is subject to 50%.

Now i haven’t put that down to annoy and bore people but to give an example, that in reality the tax system is fair to what people earn and fairer than the gneral perception of tax paying countries with welfare states. The UK is not going to charge someone 50% tax if they only earn the equivalent of $20000 per year. And when you look at it in the manner, if you presume an average person earns $30000 per year, after tax they take home around 25000GNP per year after their allowance.

Its when you look at what they get for that tax, the picture seems to make the cost of the tax seem more than fair. British people can go to a doctors whenever they like, all expenses are covered; they get good quality “free education”, if they are sick or have an accident they get paid from their company for up to six months, then the government steps in and will pay a reduced amount for the duration of certified illness. If they are laid off from work their tax contributions can be used to help them keep afloat, the government offers free retraining for people who have been out of work for 12 weeks or more.

I suggest that in an non welfare state the cost of buying just one of these protections is more than the tax an average person would pay each year.

It’s just an example … but maybe a bit of food for thought???

 

[Joe_Hill]

My warm thanks to **essie777 **and **kama3 **for their informative and inteliigent posts.:clapping:

 

[fakename]

user "fakename":

Let me ask this, is speculation wrong? Because I was looking over the CCC again and it specifically said it was but the Catholic Encyclopedia, I think, would’ve been amended to be in line with the magisterium. Also, not everything in the CCC is magisterial too so is speculation as such wrong?

I’m assuming that since speculation is called wrong when it manipulates prices through artifice and greed, that speculation is not inherently wrong.

True? I don’t think that someone who buys and sells options is necessarily evil.