Dissent From Catholic Social Teaching: A Study In Irony - Inside The Vatican

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“the public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes; otherwise, that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each man shall have his due.”
“Public administration” refers to the government. This is not the obligation of the individual businessman.
You are attempting to redefine the term, and it appears that you are conflating it with free-market economic theory.
“Redefine” the term? Where has it been defined? That’s part of the problem: no definition has been provided. I was asked for my definition, which I provided. If you have a different definition you are welcome to provide it as well.
 
"Public administration” refers to the government. This is not the obligation of the individual businessman.
I agree with you. That’s precisely the role of government in promoting social harmony, especially where business is unable or unwilling, win/win.
 
Good call. I tried looking it up (Buckley’s “Mater si, Magistra no”), and while I was unable to drill down to the original editorial, it appears to have been not a bold rejection of Mater et Magistra, but a perhaps light-hearted characterization of some conservative Catholics. The editorial was titled “Going the rounds in conservative circles: ‘Mater si, Magistra no.’”.
 
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While the idea that paying wages their just due makes sense, what about the fact that people like families need a certain amount to life on to meet basic needs, the problem then is that the people who oppose raising the minimum wage are also the ones who generally oppose strengthening the social welfare system in a time where living costs especially housing is a crunch for many people. Granted, if the anti-side minimum wage side offered an alternative like increasing access to affordable housing to reduce rent, that’s be one thing but they don’t seem to do so.

@Ender these issues are deeply personal to people, real life issues that bit the bottom life for people, might I ask your response there? Maybe it wouldn’t be an issue if the Republicans weren’t so bad.
 
How do you make sure, you don’t become anti-clerical in one’s criticism like how people have seemed to have grown disenchanted with the Holy Father as of late (including me, but that’s a different story), also there are reasons why the priesthood and religious ended up developing their position, they probably attained their stances due to experience from working with the poor and marginalized which reinforced their beliefs in Social Justice (also, isn’t the Church meant to be above politics), also their stance seems to be supported by history with countries that fell to communism and socialism due to poor social conditions.
 
each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work
Leo XIII
Everyone is entitled to a living wage, as determined by Pope Leo XIII.
Each one = everyone
Has a natural right= is entitled to
What is required in order to live= living wage.

Other than defining wage as “what one earns through one’s work”, ir seems like a reasonable paraphrase.

What do you think is “interpretation”? How is that relevant to the discussion?

NB this definition of a living wage has been quoted numerous times in this discussion, including by you, as well as being referred to in the original article.
 
the problem then is that the people who oppose raising the minimum wage are also the ones who generally oppose strengthening the social welfare system in a time where living costs especially housing is a crunch for many people.
People oppose raising the minimum wage because they (I) believe it is counterproductive, and that it will in fact hurt the people it is supposed to help. Raising the minimum wage is a bad idea; it is bad economics. Even if no other program was implemented, resisting raises in the minimum wage is always a good thing.
How do you make sure, you don’t become anti-clerical in one’s criticism
I am very careful to limit my objections to instances where the clergy are offering prudential judgments. It is not a case of disagreeing with the clergy per se, but of disagreeing with judgments that seem unwise or incorrect.

@Ender these issues are deeply personal to people, real life issues that bit the bottom life for people, might I ask your response there? Maybe it wouldn’t be an issue if the Republicans weren’t so bad.
That people strongly believe something doesn’t mean it’s true, and opposing something one believes is harmful can hardly be condemned as bad. Mistaken perhaps, but never bad.
Of course they can. Every man has certain moral obligations toward his brothers and sisters and those fellow humans have the right to see those obligations fulfilled.
Really? I’m sure you know of people who aren’t making a “living wage”. If we all have a moral obligation toward them then why haven’t you made up the difference between what they earn and what they need? Why, if “every man has certain moral obligations”, should the obligation to provide additional funds fall only on the employer? If you believe in a “living wage” for everyone why do you exempt yourself from providing it?
 
Even if no other program was implemented, resisting raises in the minimum wage is always a good thing.
Still though, if not a minimum wage increase, what then? Shouldn’t there be a strong alternative such as affordable housing development since a lot of those places with pressures to raise the minimum wage are cities where working class families and folks are having a difficult time especially with rent? Regarding poor families, isn’t this a failure on the Republicans who made welfare reform more about restricting benefits to poor single mothers rather than helping them out of poverty like replicating the Jeremiah Program (admiteddly that would be expensive but what if it would have been worth it in the long rum by winding down child and family poverty and reducing related costs like poor academic achievement and mass incarceration traced to poverty)?
seem unwise or incorrect.
Or imprudent?
 
What is required in order to live= living wage.
You have taken what the pope said and changed it into what you think.

Pope Leo XIII was writing in a time when the Industrial Revolution was well on its way, and we need to consider what was being replaced: a system in which people had access to “commons,” or commonly held property.

So in England, each town had a small area which was divided up according to the size of the family and which the family worked to raise their food. There were fields in which each family could graze a small number of livestock. There were woods where people could go and gather fuel to cook and to heat their homes with.

Neighbors would gather extra wood for those unable to gather their own, etc.

In such a way, each person was able to obtain the necessities of life.

This does not translate to a living wage. Wages did not need to cover all the expenses of a family.

Now, not only do we no longer have the commons, we have an incredibly high level of necessities which must be paid for in cash.

I think the issue of wages must take the lack of commons into account.
 
Neighbors would gather extra wood for those unable to gather their own, etc.

In such a way, each person was able to obtain the necessities of life.
The other half of the definition from Leo XIII is “the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work.” That seems to exclude sharing in the commonly held property as the way to procure what one needs. He is quite clearly dealing with industrialized society, not the “village” you describe, where wages, what one earns through work, have replaced more concrete property.

Your analysis might be a good critique of what Leo says. He may be relying on pre-industrial thinking and trying to adapt it to the industrialized economy. But the overall point here is conservatives rejecting papal teaching, not that papal teaching is correct. So no matter how true your critique might be, it is just another example of conservative rejection of papal teaching.

But maybe you think you are paraphrasing, not critiquing? If so, you would have to explain how your idea fits with the statement about earning by work.
 
But maybe you think you are paraphrasing, not critiquing?
Definitely paraphrasing, not critiquing. To me, it is important to understand that society provided what was needed to sustain oneself (a plot of land to grow vegetables, a well from which to draw water) with the (name removed by moderator)ut of one’s own effort.

With industrialization, that stopped being the case. We needed money for everything. There was no other way to obtain the necessities of life.

Additionally, the “necessities” increased. There was no longer a well from which to draw water, so we needed to pay for water, and we started using water in new ways so we needed a lot more water.

Hence families with everyone, including toddlers, working 12- to 16-hour days 6 days a week just to keep afloat.
 
I am not sure I disagree with anything you say, so I wonder why you are phrasing it as a disagreement? In particular, you objected to “What is required in order to live= living wage“ but you assert “ We needed money for everything. There was no other way to obtain the necessities of life.”

One way of addressing this issue would be to resurrect the commons in some form. That could place less pressure on the employer to provide wages that “procure what is required to live.” This should be some part of the solution, I think.

We have a different situation here, where there are no commons and “There [is] no other way to obtain the necessities of life.” Earning from their work is portrayed as the only way the poor can get what is needed to live. Wages have to be enough to “procure what is needed” in that situation.
 
The fact that the employer is often wealthier, and more intimately connected to the employee, however, means that they have a greater share of the responsibility.
One has no moral responsibility to act if one cannot act. The idea that “employers” in a society operate outside the constrains of society is incorrect.

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Private property capitalism is a closed system. Entrepreneurs who start enterprises acquire scarce resources from society, convert these resources into goods or services that they hope consumers will purchase. If consumers value the product or service more than the price asked then the business is ongoing. The price the enterprise asks is a function of what society wants for the scarce resources required by the enterprise.

If society imposes a higher minimum wage then employers must raise prices to maintain the status quo. If consumers decide that the higher price is greater than the value of the good or service offered then the enterprise ends. The scarce resources (including all the labor employed) are returned to society for reallocation or to be unemployed.

The enterprises who price their product or service on what the “market will bear” as opposed to “cost plus” a reasonable profit are very few in number. Our system of free enterprise ensures that that situation prevails in time, e.g., patents expire, new firms enter a profitable industry, products are reverse engineered, better processes are replicated by other firms, etc.

A main difference between socialism and free enterprise private capitalism is the number of recoverable mistakes. In private capitalism, the mistakes may be many, small and all, with little pain, will be recoverable. In socialism, the mistakes may be few, will always be huge and recovery will be very painful.
 
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“BEATS by Dre” are basically $30 headphones being sold for $200 because they have the celebrity name attached to them.
If true then you would be able to cite comparable ~ $33 headphones offered by someone. What is more likely is that the variable cost of BEATS maybe ~ $30 but the fixed costs of plant and the development of technology are ~ $150 per headphone.
 
Each one = everyone
Has a natural right= is entitled to
What is required in order to live= living wage.

Other than defining wage as “what one earns through one’s work”, it seems like a reasonable paraphrase.
I disagree; I don’t think it captures what Pope Leo said at all.
The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work.”
Let’s take the last clause first. It is certainly not true in our society that the poor can procure what they need to live only from their wages. The proliferation of social programs attests to that. That alone would change the application of the encyclical.

More significantly, however, is the fact that Leo said the individual has a right to procure what he needs. What he did not say is that someone else has an obligation to provide it. You have a right to go wherever you want, but no one else has the obligation to take you wherever you choose. You have turned one person’s right into another person’s duty, but that’s not an accurate interpretation of the document.
 
Still though, if not a minimum wage increase, what then?
In this case doing nothing is preferable than doing something harmful.
Shouldn’t there be a strong alternative such as affordable housing development since a lot of those places with pressures to raise the minimum wage are cities where working class families and folks are having a difficult time especially with rent?
Given that Democrats have had a virtual monopoly of control over most big cities why is it that the Republicans are blamed for the problems their citizens face? Yes, there are federal government subsidies for many things, but housing problems are mostly city problems.
Regarding poor families, isn’t this a failure on the Republicans who made welfare reform more about restricting benefits to poor single mothers rather than helping them out of poverty…
You make the assumption that Republicans oppose social programs because they are indifferent to the poor rather than because they think those programs - like raising the minimum wage - are harmful. Besides, the Democrats had total control of Congress for two years, including a veto-proof Senate, why weren’t these problems resolved then?
 
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mrsdizzyd:
universal living wage at either the federal or state level is absurd
I gather from your and others’ remarks that the term “living wage” may be understood, in the media or in the context of politics, as universal, uniform, federal, or state.

I’m looking at the slightly bigger picture of a problem in need of a solution. Minimum- or low-wage workers can’t support a family. Some say it is their fault. Some say, “It is their problem, not mine.”

I say it reveals a failure of charity, a failure to love our neighbor.

If our neighbor is suffering in poverty while we are living richly, that is unjust. If we do not bring about justice in this world, Jesus will set things right in the next; see the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
Something tells me that Pope Leo would have had something to say about single mums, and asking where are the fathers?
Do we think Pope Leo might have suggested something to young women? Such as “remain virtuous until married”?
Is Crocus et al advocating that? I think not! 🤣

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Some more quotes from “Rerum Novarum”:

Crocus et al - - are you behind these as well?
  1. “Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family.”
  2. “46. If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.”
  3. “A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father.
  4. “And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed.”
    1. We now approach a subject of great importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right notions are absolutely necessary. Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances.
  5. " Those who rule the commonwealths should avail themselves of the laws and institutions of the country; masters and wealthy owners must be mindful of their duty; the working class, whose interests are at stake, should make every lawful and proper effort; and since religion alone, as We said at the beginning, can avail to destroy the evil at its root, all men should rest persuaded that main thing needful is to re-establish Christian morals, apart from which all the plans and devices of the wisest will prove of little avail."
 
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