EU president’s praise for Catholic teaching welcomed as bishops urge citizens to vote in elections to stop "nationalist threat"

[Vouthon]

To quote the encyclicals again:

Christian tradition has never upheld this right [to private property] as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: The right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone.

Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”), Pope John Paul II, 1981 #64.

23.These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.

No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life. In short, “as the Fathers of the Church and other eminent theologians tell us, the right of private property may never be exercised to the detriment of the common good.” When “private gain and basic community needs conflict with one another,” it is for the public authorities “to seek a solution to these questions, with the active involvement of individual citizens and social groups.”

Populorum Progressio (“On the Development of Peoples”) , Pope Paul VI, 1967

Hence why Pope John Paul II bluntly stated that the church’s teaching on private property “differs from the program of capitalism”.

 

[josie_L]

Because we were never meant to toil as per God’s Divine plan, but man fell and changed those plans thereby forcing man to labour for his needs.

But what system pray tell does the Church advocate that does not include some aspects of capitalism or capitalism in some form?

My point being the church does not condemn capitalism in toto as it condemns socialism, it could not because its origins are found within Catholicism.

 

[Vouthon]

Because we were never meant to toil as per God’s Divine plan, but man fell and changed those plans thereby forcing man to labour for his needs.

But what system pray tell does the Church advocate that does not include some aspects of capitalism or capitalism in some form?

My point being the church does not condemn capitalism in toto, not as it condemns socialism

He’s not talking about “labour”.

In the encyclical he’s praising labour, toil, as something necessary, it’s called laborum excerns after all.

What he’s talking about is an economic system called capitalism that arose in modernity, which he explicitly states is a “reversal” of God’s natural order, of his natural law, something that goes against God’s will.

Thats what he says.

What part of this don’t you get? Your exasperating me with this needless obfuscation.

 

[josie_L]

Then explain to me what system does the Church advocate since capitalism is so anathema to church teaching???

It can’t be socialism or capitalism, so what is it???

 

[josie_L]

Capitalism didn’t arise in modernity as I’ve already mentioned and sourced.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is the profit motive that Pope Paul VI condemned as inherently at odds with the Catholic understanding of economics (because it is a staunchly MATERIALIST doctrine that absolutizes material, financial gain as the greatest good in economic life),

I have never seen (and not in your posts in this thread either) Any Pope say profit is inherently at odds with the Catholic understanding of economics.

Furthermore, you parenthetically add that profitability absolutizes financial gain as the greatest good in economic life. I don’t think anybody believes that (well perhaps J.D. Rockefeller did) and I challenge you to show authoritatively where the Church holds that as a doctrinal matter.

Even St. Thomas Aquinas defined “justice in trade” as an exchange in which both parties give that which they value less for that which they value more. That’s “profit”. Never mind that it’s subjective in each party’s thinking, it’s objective in terms of the good each item will bring. Mother trades some herbs from her garden for some money, then trades the money for milk for her child. In each case, she is trading that which she values less for that which she values more. Subjectively, she sees more value in the milk than in the money or the herbs. Objectively, the milk will do more for her child than the herbs or the money would.

My part of the U.S. is called the “Ozarks”. That’s an Anglicization of “Aux Arcs”, the name given to the region by French-speaking Indians to French explorers. It just means “where the bows are”. It’s because of the wood known as “Bois d’Arc” (bow wood) or Osage Orange. It makes the best bows imaginable, and was traded hundreds of miles away, largely up river valleys like the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri as well as lesser rivers like the White, the Arkansas, the Kaw and many others. Why did Indians carry bundles of Bois d’Arc hundreds of miles to trade for rarities like the soft stone for pipes or the glass-like obsidian or even a load of dried, smoked buffalo from the prairies? Because they were giving to others that which they valued less for that which they valued more. And the purveyors of the pipe stone and the obsidian and the buffalo did the same.

All profited. All work is performed in order to gain access to the scarce resources of the earth. And people do it willingly in order to profit in terms of goods or a proxy for goods like cash.

 

[Vouthon]

The church doesn’t advocate any system or concrete proposal. It criticises and commends, variously, those that the secular world comes up with throughout the ages.

And it’s seen many come and go - Roman clientele or patronage economics, feudalism etc.

The pope is not equating capitalism with labour, he’s saying that it perverts the nobility of labour by making man an instrument of production and profit.

 

[Vouthon]

I have never seen (and not in your posts in this thread either) Any Pope say profit is inherently at odds with the Catholic understanding of economics.

You misunderstand me.

The church says that that (to quote Pipe Paul VI) that as per capitalism, “profit should not be the seen as they key to economic progress” and that “development cannot be limited to mere economic growth.”

Not that making profit is inherently evil but that economics should not be entirely based around it to the exclusion of it’s greater focus, which should be the human person and people at the centre of economic life.

 

[Vouthon]

@Ridgerunner Also, can you give me your verdict of what John Paul II said in my previous quote:

In all cases of this sort, there is a reversal of the order laid down from the beginning by the words of the Book of Genesis: man is treated as an instrument of production. Precisely this reversal of order should rightly be called “capitalism”

I’m having a serious problem getting Josie to concede it’s explicit meaning.

 

[Vouthon]

Capitalism didn’t arise in modernity as I’ve already mentioned and sourced.

Now your making absolutely no sense.

Perhaps another poster can give you a primer on the history of the origins of capitalism. It’s a fairly recent phenomenon in human history developing from circa. 15th and 16th century onwards, after the decline of medieval feudalism.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Some years ago when I was feeling particularly glum about what I did for a living, it suddenly struck me that I was giving people more value than they were giving me. How did I know that? Well, people don’t part with money readily, and yet they would do it voluntarily in order to get my services. That told me how valuable my labor was to them, and how they actually gained by spending their money on it.

I never forgot that moment of epiphany. And I never thereafter resented “paying my way” or “slaving for the man”. The “man” after all, valued me more than he did his money.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Perhaps another poster can give you a primer on the history of the origins of capitalism. It’s a fairly recent phenomenon in human history developing from circa. 15th and 16th century onwards, after the decline of medieval feudalism.

I can’t agree. It’s as old as trading a fine specimen of Bois d’Arc for a handful of sharp stone spear blades.

 

[Vouthon]

I can’t agree. It’s as old as trading a fine specimen of Bois d’Arc for a handful of sharp stone spear blades.

How can anyone believe that?

It’s a conflation of barter and trade with the system of capitalism, a system that John Paul II himself states in that encyclical had an “early” phase in modernity (he refers to “early capitalism”), after the exit from medieval feudalism.

I’m seriously being driven nuts here by folks liberal use of terminology.

 

[Ridgerunner]

With all due respect to both of you, I can’t because I don’t have the larger context. Udoubtedly this is a snippet from a much larger work.

 

[Vouthon]

With all due respect to both of you, I can’t because I don’t have the larger context. Udoubtedly this is a snippet from a much larger work.

I’ve provided the larger context earlier in the thread and one is free to check the section number online to see the original encyclical.

 

[Vouthon]

Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”) , Pope St. John Paul II, 1981 #30.

 

[josie_L]

The church denoumces liberal/ individualistic capitalism, i.e., not every form of capitalism, in fact, popes justify aspects of capitalism and/or capitalism if is tethered to justice and equality.

So capitalism in and of itself is not a system incompatible to church teaching like socialism which is REJECTED in totality:

Just as the unity of human society cannot be founded on an opposition of classes, so also the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching. Destroying through forgetfulness
or ignorance the social and moral character of economic life, it held that economic life must be considered and treated as altogether free from and independent of public authority, because in the market, i.e., in the free struggle of competitors, it would have a principle of self-direction which governs it much more perfectly than would the intervention of any created intellect. But free competition, while justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly cannot direct economic life…

Quadragesimo Anno (“After Forty Years”) , , Pope Pius XI, 1931 #88.

You are misinterpreting the words of John Paul II when you disregard the totality of all that was taught by previous popes, i.e., John Paul’s would compliment not contradict what has already been taught.

Loading…

www.cctwincities.org

 

[josie_L]

No, it didn’t and the two sources I gave you contradict what you say.

The rise/origins of Capitalism began prior to the 15th century.

 

[Vouthon]

The church denoumces liberal/ individualistic capitalism, i.e., not every form of capitalism, in fact, popes justify aspects of capitalism and/or capitalism if is tethered to justice and equality.

Capitalism in itself is condemned as a reversal of God’s plan, just like socialism in itself (i.e. Marxist collectivism), but not everything going under those labels falls under the proscription and thus conflicts will Catholic Social Doctrine…has been my consistent argument from the beginning of this discussion.

And I’m completely right in saying this.

 

[Ridgerunner]

How can anyone believe that?

It’s a conflation of barter and trade with the system of capitalism, a system that John Paul II himself states in that encyclical had an “early” phase in modernity (he refers to “early capitalism”), after the exit from medieval feudalism.

I think it’s quite easy to believe. Do you really think the stone napper didn’t have a cache that he kept because he knew he could trade it for nearly any other commodity stone age men had? Do you think the Indian with a well-sharpened stone axe only cut one branch of Bois d’Arc and immediately traded it for a deer hide and then had nothing with which to trade again? I think it far more likely he would cut several at a time and store some of them in his tent.

Indeed, most Indian-on-Indian wars were about stealing stored surplus commodities. Money is nothing more than a proxy for e.g. stored filet mignon, tickets to the opera, or gasoline.

Around the time of the Civil War, there was no cash money I this part of the country. But there were farmers and herders and makers of this and that. There were also millers. Farmers would take their grain to the mill. Having no cash, they would give the miller some of the grain. The miller would grind the grain and use his “pay” to make whiskey, which he would put into bottles and jars of particular size. Those were used as money. Besides being a recreational thing, whiskey was considered medicinal. If you wanted to pay a blacksmith for shoeing your horses, you paid him in whiskey. If you wanted a watermelon from a neighbor’s garden, you paid in whiskey. If you wanted cloth from a peddler, you paid for it in whiskey.

Whiskey was money, just as spear heads were money, just as a bank CD or a paycheck is money. It’s all value I can use to get something I value more.