The Church does Not Categorically condemn 'socialism; We All Live forms of Socialism. Read the wikki Def of the word, please. The USCCB has Authority on the Catholic Clergy, and they over us, on some matters. Details, Details, that’s what makes life interesting, on CAF too. why avoid what the Church and Popes have said about extreme wealth and Power?
Seems to me that discussions of “socialism” get involved in arguments about its definition very readily. The same is true of 'capitalism". The same is true of “wealth”. I don’t think anyone would seriously argue that this country has elements of what might be very broadly thought of as ‘socialistic". I’m not sure western civilization has ever been totally free of it, if you think of it in terms of redistributive policies of any kind whatever. After all, if some medieval lord served a banquet for the poor of the parish on Christmas and paid for it out of his own lands’ income, it’s still “socialistic” or “redistributive” in the sense that the lord had “his” lands to the exclusion of others, but which were still in the parish, and received “in kind” payment for tenants to farm it.
And it hardly needs to be said that “capitalism” in a very general sense, could be said to predate recorded history itself, and probably never existed in the “pure” state some seem to espouse, even during the early Industrial Revolution.
Thinking of it in terms that broad (which I don’t think Pope Leo XIII intended when he condemned “socialism” root and branch) I think we can look at the whole context of the social encyclicals (and Catholic traditional teachings including, but not limited to Augustine, Aquinas and the Scholastics) to consider what, exactly, is “going too far”.
As to measures we consider “socialistic” in its wide modern (and at least American) sense, we ought to first consider what the Popes have said they favor and disfavor and why.
All social encyclicals say there is, or can be, a level at which private, local and Church efforts at relief of those who do not have the means of a decent life, are inadequate, and must be addressed by the larger state. But that is said with the caveat that emphasis should be placed on solving those problems at the most proximate level, and ONLY when those are clearly inadequate should there be resort to the highest levels of the state.
I don’t think we really know what can be done more proximately than at the federal level. It has been so long that the federal government has appropriated the role that nobody has any real concept of what it would be like if such responsibilities devolved to more proximate levels of aid. Certainly, with federal and state governments appropriating about half of the fruits of everyone’s labor, the present condition would not be a fair test.
The encyclicals stress the importance of reasonably ready individual and family acquisition of productive, inheritable assets.
And yes, the Popes also caution about overdependence on big business. First, because it can “crowd out” individuals’ acquisition of assets. Second, it encourages consumerist mentalities. Third, and this applies to government as well, overdependence on some overarching institution leads to overinfluence by those entities, whereas the popes’ position is that moral and philosophical views should be formulated at the family level and the level of the Church. Neither government nor business is the proper moulder of morality.
Aquinas and Augustine would have added that neither truly believes in “love” which, economically, is the distributive method within families and to a lesser degree among those we know personally and with whom we have affiliation of some kind. Business and government moralities are based on assumptions of economic distribution based on personal aggrandizement.
It is argued by Aquinas in particular that emphasis on distribution based on personal relationships is natural, whereas emphasis on distribution based on assumptions of personal aggrandizement is unnatural to human beings. (Long story, that one)
When is redistribution excessive, then? One might properly argue from Catholic doctrine and traditional thought, that it is excessive when it becomes destructive of the family and reduces the abilities of families to form and to express “love” among its members by distribution of resources reasonably necessary to them.
We can look at the declining population rate, the declining family formation rate and the gradual reduction of earnings from work, and it’s not too difficult to think we have gone too far, particularly when one observes that reduction in earnings from work exactly parallels increases in transfer payments enforced by governments. We can observe too, that all are related to the ups and downs of abortion rates. It isn’t too difficult, then, when a government promotes abortion and increased transfer payments, to realize that it’s going in the wrong direction.
But neither does that mean a society has no moral obligation to provide a decent situation for those who cannot help themselves. In my opinion, this society does not do a very good job of that despite all of the programs and, in the effort, neither party is in any way superior to the other despite the rhetoric.
