Does the word "Social" in the name "Catholic Social Teaching" create a danger of Socialism?

[LemonAndLime]

“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”

How in the world do you see that as an ENDORSEMENT of the welfare state? He wasn’t endorsing anything, he was simply pointing out what some countries did as an attempt to respond to needs and demands. In no way was he actually endorsing anything.

I find your endorsement of any European system completely disgusting. Their sheer belief in God has been consistently dwindling according to numerous pieces of poll data. The moral state of further social affairs in that part of the world is entirely appalling. The last thing I’d ever want in this country is Europe’s gay loving, abortion loving, “tolerant,” politically correct, feminazi, sexed up culture. ESPECIALLY the sexed up culture. The day that all comes here is the day I leave. There is no fear of God, and no respect of human dignity in European socialist society. And don’t pretend that moral order and economic order are entirely separate. The only reason the Church concerns itself with economic systems is purely because of the moral implications.

If you believe America should adopt a more left economic policy with greater aid for the needy, that’s entirely fine. But how you could consider adopting a European system in order to achieve that, as I said, is downright appalling.

Hey, we’re not all bad. Some of us aren’t oversexed, abortion-crazy and undignified human beings, thank you. I fear God. And I respect human dignity. I work as a carer.

But hang on, the allegations about sexualised culture and feminazism can be equally levelled at the USA. I didn’t realise your side of the pond was so much more morally superior and didn’t have these problems. Sort your own country’s moral problems out before you start criticising the ENTIRE of Europe, which consists of many different cultures and economic problems. Thank you.

 

[essie7777]

The animated sign was a tongue in check comment based on post#55 and #56 … get serious -surely there’s room in CAF for a sense of humor allowed!

"I find your endorsement of any European system …snip snip for space…

Wow how you get all that from two words is remarkable!

 

[Abu]

Facing Reality
Two very different people illustrate reality

commentarymagazine.com/article/the-case-for-pessimism/
The Case for Pessimism
Mark Steyn — November 2011
"Now consider the people who went rampaging through the streets this summer in London. These are the children of dependency, people who have been marinated in stimulus within an inch of their lives, and they’re good for nothing but lobbing concrete through store windows so they can steal the latest models of electronic toys. They tore apart a city that, within living memory, governed a fifth of the earth’s surface and a quarter of its population. When you’re imperialist on that scale, you make a lot of mistakes. But nothing the British did to any of their subject peoples in far-flung corners of the globe compares with what they did post-imperially to their own population.

"These are the great-grandchildren of a tiny island that stood alone against the Germans during the Blitz in that terrible year after the fall of France. If those Britons of mid-century were to come back, they would assume they had landed in some bizarro alternative universe—until, like Charlton Heston rounding the corner and seeing the shattered Statue of Liberty poking up out of the sands, they realize that the Planet of the Apes is their own. The evil of big government is not that it is a waste of money, but that it lays waste to people. [My emphasis].

"And yet, even in my deepest and most pessimistic vision, I can see a different future for the United States. For as the past few years have taught us, the great thing about the United States is that it is not Europe. When the economy headed south in 2008 and 2009, everywhere around the planet, people besieged their parliaments, asking them, “Why didn’t you, the government, do more for us?” They did it in Iceland. They did it in Bulgaria. They did it in Lithuania. They did it in Greece. They did it in the United Kingdom. They did it in France.

“The United States is the only country in the world where a mass movement took to the streets in 2009 to say we could do just fine if you, the government, stayed the hell out of our pockets and the hell out of our lives. That fact, that populist refusal to be Europeanized, represents the best hope for this country. Those now-caricatured, much-maligned Tea Partiers moved the meter of public discourse significantly back in the direction of sanity. And that includes Barack Obama.”

It’s very interesting that reality has caught up with Alan Greenspan:
investorsfreshnews.com/?p=2891
**Wednesday, January 04, 2012
By Alan Greenspan in the Financial Times
The Tea Party tsunami and the welfare showdown **
“The emerging fight over the future of the welfare state, a paradigm without serious political challenge in eight decades, is accentuating the centre’s decline. The welfare state has run up against a brick wall of economic reality and fiscal book-keeping. Congress, having enacted increases in entitlements without visible means of funding them, is on the brink of stalemate. As studies by the International Monetary Fund have demonstrated, trying to solve significant budget deficits mainly by raising taxes has tended to foster decline. Contractions have also occurred where spending was cut as well, but to a far smaller extent.” [My emphasis].

 

[essie7777]

As …snip snip to save space

Abu the thread readers are STILL waits for you to answers the questions/comments and conflicting points brought up that don’t follow your opinion — i did helpfully list all these for you in the following posts:
Post#52

CLICK TO SEE FIRST LIST OF IGNORED QUESTIONS AND POINTS THAT CHALLENGE YOUR OPINION

Post#53

CLICK TO SEE SECOND LIST OF IGNORED QUESTIONS AND POINTS THAT CHALLENGE YOUR OPINION

And let not forget the majority of these points were raise in post#33 a lot of posts back now.

Seems you don’t have anything to say on these SPECIFIC issues with your argument and that still seems a little bizarre if your position is so strong.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

[SIGN]Go Europe![/SIGN]

 

[Swiss_Guy]

I find your endorsement of any European system completely disgusting. Their sheer belief in God has been consistently dwindling according to numerous pieces of poll data. The moral state of further social affairs in that part of the world is entirely appalling. The last thing I’d ever want in this country is Europe’s gay loving, abortion loving, “tolerant,” politically correct, feminazi, sexed up culture. ESPECIALLY the sexed up culture. The day that all comes here is the day I leave. There is no fear of God, and no respect of human dignity in European socialist society. And don’t pretend that moral order and economic order are entirely separate. The only reason the Church concerns itself with economic systems is purely because of the moral implications.

If you believe America should adopt a more left economic policy with greater aid for the needy, that’s entirely fine. But how you could consider adopting a European system in order to achieve that, as I said, is downright appalling.

Er, there are Catholic BISHOPS who support European welfare systems (albeit Christian Democratic systems ). I find it downright appalling that you have such a negative view of Europe and are making large and sweeping generalizations . And btw, you’re taking that one post way too seriously.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

As the Church does not speak with a forked tongue and is clear, that cannot compute.

The Church supports the welfare of all, and the State in Catholic Social Teaching is allowed only supplementary interventions for urgent reasons re the common good, and these must be as brief as possible to avoid encroachment on economic and civil freedom (CA #48), but when this is “vastly expanded” (CA #48) to a Welfare State Bl JP II’s condemnation of the Welfare State follows.

Condemned because as Bl JPII emphasises in Centesimus Annus #48: **“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” **[My emphasis].

In fact, Bl JP II closes CA #48 with a resounding condemnation of the Welfare State whose inadequacies he has earlier emphasised “are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected.”

Bl JPII is clear: “In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need. One thinks of the condition of refugees, immigrants, the elderly, the sick, and all those in circumstances which call for assistance, such as drug abusers: all these people can be helped effectively only by those who offer them genuine fraternal support, in addition to the necessary care.”

It doesn’t matter whether the State is called “social democratic” or “Christian democratic” but, yes what matters is that a State supports and encourages the political/economic philosophy developed by the Catholic Late Scholastics so beneficial for the whole world – that the primary role of government is to support families in solidarity, and the role of the Church in subsidiarity, for the common good, and they did emphasise that policies to attain the common good should never run against the natural order and natural human rights. [Analysed by Bernice Hamilton in *Political Thought

, p 5; see Christians For Freedom, Dr Alejandro Chafuen, Ignatius, 1986, p 160].

What I meant was that it depends what is meant by a welfare state. Of course the Church isn’t schizophrenic.

And a Christian democracy does exactly what you described after it. papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13grcom.htm

And maybe I should clear up where I stand. I am against government programs, but I am for government spending on programs. So the government can tax you and your taxes go to a program, but the program is run by a private group that cares about the people it is serving unlike the government. This is essentially what Germany does (in CDU governed areas) from what information I’ve gotten on their welfare system. pitt.edu/~heinisch/concept.html#corporatist

 

[ljpgoodwin]

Dear socialcath101,
Would it not be good to have one Sunday per year in which each homilist in the Church would give a homily on CST?

Every time you hear a homily on the dignity of life (that is against the death penalty or abortion) or any other biblical issue, you are hearing about Catholic Social Teaching. CST is the teaching of the Gospels using social morality language. Just like Theology of the Body is the Gospel using the language of sexual morality. They are the same thing.
There is a very big difference between being liberal and being a socialist. Conservative does not equal capitalism. It is possible to be liberal and a very good Catholic and democratic capitalist.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

I’d like to retract statements by me endorsing the welfare state. The welfare state violates subsidiarity. At the same time though, I’m not saying the state shouldn’t be completely uninvolved. It should step in only when necessary. I still think that too many people think welfare state=any government involvement.

 

[Matilda_Bennett]

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