Having trouble with social teaching

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TheRealJuliane said:
I am glad that you brought this up, but every thread on this forum that mentions “social teaching” or “social justice” seems to always attract the socialists who put forth their own agendas and start arguing with the OP that socialism is what Jesus would have wanted, or what Jesus really was all about.

:confused:

The term “redistribution of wealth” is the wrong one to use, I believe, since it has connotations of seizing private property and giving it to others. Of course we already do that in the form of income tax and other taxes, but that specific term has become a red flag to many people
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Yes, usually in this context in English one would say spread the wealth, not redistribute wealth, since redistributing implies something much different!
 
the-american-catholic.com/2010/01/21/liberal-capitalism-and-catholic-economic-theory/

Given such an understanding of the role of government and the common good, in comparison to its actual contemporary reality, Pope Pius XII’s reflection is spot on:

*“The main reason for the decadence of society is that today the common good is ignored, disowned, ridiculed, and betrayed. There is a race for selfish pleasure and a coalition of private and corporate interests against the common good.”

Too often the unquestionably consistent and unanimous papal criticism of laissez-faire liberal capitalism and its almost inherent opposition to the common good is ignored by modern society, Catholics included.

XII in Rerum Novarum criticized liberal capitalism noting the “enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses.” This statement remains exactly right, particularly given the varying, but similar figures, stating that an incredibly small minority of people own beyond-staggering percentages of global wealth. Forty years after Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI declared that “a veritable economic dictatorship” was forming. The Holy Father argued that these disorders, by and large, resulted from the divorce of economic science from natural law morality and social ethics:
“The ultimate consequences of the individualist spirit in economic life are those which you yourselves…see and deplore: Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. To these are to be added the grave evils that have resulted from an intermingling and shameful confusion of the functions and duties of public authority with those of the economic sphere—such as, one of the worst, the virtual degradation of the majesty of the State, which although it ought to sit on high like a queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent upon the one common good and justice, is a slave, surrendered and delivered to the passions and greed of men. And as to international relations, two different streams have issued from the one fountain-head: On the one hand, economic nationalism or even economic imperialism; on the other, a no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance or international imperialism whose country is where profit is.”*
 
The Holy Fathers, in harmony with the developing body of Catholic social thought, establish that it is the government’s foremost responsibility, adhering to certain principles and within the legitimate constitutional framework of a nation’s system of governance, to be a steward of the common good and to regulate the exercise of ownership to facilitate the universal destination of goods. The reason is rather straightforward: if man is to attain his destiny through upright living in the temporal order, it is most important to realize that this temporal order (political, economic, social) does not itself constitute by its organization, institutions, structures, and spirit, an obstacle to the supreme destiny of the human person and of mankind. For this reason, the service of the common good is primarily the proper mission of the State. Pope Pius XII virtually verbatim makes this precise argument, stating “all economic and political activity of the state is ordered towards the lasting realization of the common good.”

This perspective, which takes a positive disposition, strikes a chord with the Aristotelian idea that the fundamental role of the State is to create, within the constraints of legitimate political and ethical principles, a society of virtuous citizens. All activities of the State are pre-ordained, as it were, toward this end. It is self-evident that this perspective contradicts the Enlightenment disposition toward negative role of the government, which reduces the role of the State to police and defense functions and to providing categorically necessary social goods, and guaranteeing maximum autonomous freedom via minimal regulation. The limitations of government is certainly recognized in Catholic social teaching, but the Church’s understanding of the proper role of government in society arises from her discerning its place in the grander scheme of things—in the economy of salvation—in which everything has its place and function.

I my self certainly don’t have any trouble understanding what i being said here. It very clear that it does not support the liberal capitalism, capitalism free form the dictates of the state toward a** common good**.
 
Totalitarian states do not allow freedom of worship - the Church (any church) is always dangerous to regimes such as Communism.

You are looking for a utopia. Our home is in Heaven, not trying to bring about Heaven here on earth. Men will always be selfish sinners. Some of us are trying to rise above our “sin natures” as the Baptists like to call it. Many others are fully engulfed in their sins, like a fish in water, and they do not even see or recognize sin as such. Oddly enough, these are the very people that socialists want to give even more power to. Seems a little strange to me.
 
Excellent quotes, both helpful. I suppose many of you are right. I’m used to a straight dichotomy as an ex-laissez-faire capitalist as gov’t bad, freedom good (though I really supported lisence, not true freedom). I realize there’s no perfect gov’t, but I just want to be in line with Church social teaching. It seems, in my own perception, that Church leaders support the welfare state lite, and I’m worried because I don’t support nearly the same kind of legislation they do.
 
addictedkoala said:
It seems, in my own perception, that Church leaders support the welfare state lite, and I’m worried because I don’t support nearly the same kind of legislation they do.
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If anyone tells you that our Church leaders support the “welfare state”, I would be very skeptical of that person’s grasp of Catholic social teaching. Some people like to cling to this or that quote from a bishop to promote their own political agenda, but that doesn’t make it so.
 
Joe_5859 said:
If anyone tells you that our Church leaders support the “welfare state”, I would be very skeptical of that person’s grasp of Catholic social teaching. Some people like to cling to this or that quote from a bishop to promote their own political agenda, but that doesn’t make it so.
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ok, maybe this also goes back to my own problem of looking up quote context not as often as I should. I don’t have any examples of one at the moment, just a general feeling I suppose, but like I thought, it may be a knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion of anything remotely being involved in gov’t economically that I need to work on
 
addictedkoala said:
ok, maybe this also goes back to my own problem of looking up quote context not as often as I should. I don’t have any examples of one at the moment, just a general feeling I suppose, but like I thought, it may be a knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion of anything remotely being involved in gov’t economically that I need to work on
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Absolutely, it is important to understand the entire teaching, because the teaching (which may be found in different documents) is sort of round rather than linear, wholistic rather than either/or. The Church teaches us not to go too far in this direction, and not to go too far in that direction: neither socialism nor free-market anarchy.

Virtues work in the same way, so it seems to be pretty common!
 
Joe_5859 said:
If anyone tells you that our Church leaders support the “welfare state”, I would be very skeptical of that person’s grasp of Catholic social teaching. Some people like to cling to this or that quote from a bishop to promote their own political agenda, but that doesn’t make it so.
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Just in case you miss it, i posted this again

catholicity.com/commentary/hargrave/05601.html

*Beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the Church, to use the phrase of Pope John Paul II, declared her “citizenship status” and began to take a more active interest in social and economic questions. While that encyclical was primarily concerned with the socialist revolutionary threat against the right of private property, Leo also had something to say about the role of the state with respect to the poor and laboring masses. He wrote:

[W]hen there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.

This concern for the poor in general and the poor worker in particular has been a consistent theme of Catholic social doctrine since the time of Leo’s writing (1891, not long after the Bismarckian reforms). The Church has recognized a de facto bill of rights for the working class in all countries, rights that are “based on the nature of the human person and on his transcendent dignity.” These rights are drawn from the many social encyclicals that have been written in the last 120 years, and are summarized and listed in paragraph 301 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

They are:
Code: 
*** The right to a just wage.**
* The right to rest.
* The right to a working environment and to manufacturing processes that are not harmful to the workers' physical health or moral integrity.
* The right that one's personality in the workplace should be safeguarded without suffering any affront to one's conscience or personal dignity.
* **The right to appropriate subsidies necessary for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families.**
* The right to a pension and to insurance for old age, sickness, and in case of work-related accidents.
* The right to social security connected with maternity.
* The right to assemble and form associations.
If the state takes away welfare, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will stave to death. No pope or Christian can support that. You don’t seem to want to understand. This is no different to murder. People can twist the truth and blame the victim however they want, but its not going to change the reality of our situation; and whether its justice in this world or the next, we can be sure that justice will be served. So i would be careful about what it is that you support.
 
St_Francis said:
Absolutely, it is important to understand the entire teaching, because the teaching (which may be found in different documents) is sort of round rather than linear, wholistic rather than either/or. The Church teaches us not to go too far in this direction, and not to go too far in that direction: neither socialism nor free-market anarchy.

Virtues work in the same way, so it seems to be pretty common!
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I agree overall with this statement, except that I have one concern. It appears that people are assuming that the extreme, the “direction” is Socialism. When, frankly, it’s Communism. Then Socialism.

And if someone argues that Communism is a political ideology, it’s both political and economic, because Communism and Socialism both involve control of the political and economic freedoms. Then Capitalism is the other extreme. I just wanted to clarify, but I do agree with this statement. 👍
 
markomalley said:
quote from St John Chrysostom:
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This is an excellent quote, which I will put to good use in future discussions with acquaintances, along with a lot of other good points you make on this topic. It is the same with war in the world. Until there is peace in the hearts of men, which only comes from Jesus Christ, there will be no true & lasting peace. And that is the key, we seem to forget about changing hearts these days when it comes to social justice.
 
Abu said:
I’m not confusing anything as I have not referred to any economic policies, just referred to the relevance of Catholic social teaching.
The recent financial crisis in the U.S. has the hallmarks of the same interventionist policies that deepened and prolonged previous ones. As Federal Reserve chairman between 1987 and 2006, Greenspan acted even more irresponsibly than the Fed officials in the 1930’s who he criticized over the “excess credit” that directly brought about the Great Depression. Rather than, “sopping up the excess reserves,” Greenspan added even more, transforming a stock market bubble into a housing and consumer spending bubble of historic and unprecedented proportions.
Very true.
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In discussing this, a certain amount of research is needed to weed out any assumptions. First of all, the Church is not left or right. These labels are convenient only to those who regard the government as the only absolute authority in their lives.

Mr. Greenspan said plainly that he believed in free markets, and by free he meant virtually unregulated. He was later ‘shocked’ to see one aspect of human nature called greed ignite the current global downturn. The groundwork was laid by the elimination of laws that made it possible for people who could barely make their minimum monthly credit card payment to get mortgages. As a banker/mortgage expert friend of mine told me at the beginning of the “crisis” - What happened to the rules? These mortgages were later chopped up into units and resold.

The crisis was also contributed to by those who artificially raised home values. Wall Street knew there was a ceiling, but like musical chairs, they hoped to wring out the last penny before the music stopped. But, it stopped, and the market was awash in fake money, just as it was in the last Great Depression, and the exact same tactics are being used today to get us out of it.

rense.com/general85/depres.htm

Wall Street runs this country, not the President.

Back to the OP. If you check recent history, sometimes debts are forgiven for small, poor countries. The bishops do not get a cut for their actions. They only desire a world that promotes policies so that all human beings might live in dignity.

God bless,
Ed
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
If the state takes away welfare, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will stave to death.
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Before welfare in the United States, when were people starving to death? Also, my wife is from Panama, with no welfare, and there are not people starving to death in Panama. Welfare does not solve the problem of the poor. If it did, why do we still have so many poor within our country? Star Parker, a fomer welfare recipient, has a good idea what will work, and again it starts with a change of heart, which only comes from Christ.

urbancure.org/starparker.asp
 
MindOverMatter2
If the state takes away welfare, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will stave to death…i would be careful about what it is that you support.
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Blinkers over the condemnation of the Welfare State by the popes is one reason for the malady in society, and it involves the various interventions that sap the right to economic initiative, distort human nature and throttle free enterprise.

St Augustine taught that wickedness was not inherent in commerce, that price was a function not simply of the seller’s costs, bit also of the buyer’s wants, and it was up to the individual to live righteously. [Politics I, 1254]. Thus he gave legitimacy to merchants, and to the deep involvement of the Church in the birth of free enterprise. [Stephen P Bensch, *Historiography: Medieval European and Mediterranean Slavery 1998, p 231; Cf. Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 57,58, 254].

Randall Collins has noted that innovation and specialization in the monastic estates was “a version of the developed characteristics of capitalism itself… the dynamism of the medieval economy was primarily that of the Church.” [Randall Collins, *The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, 1998, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p 47].

Free enterprise was developed by Catholic Late Scholastics and has enabled the banishment of the dire poverty which preceded it, part of how the Church built Western civilization. **Pope John Paul II acclaimed the free economy that recognises the “fundamental role” of private property and the freedom of mankind to economic creativity, as “the path to true civil and economic progress” within “the fundamental and positive role of business, the market”… “and the resulting responsibility for the means of production.” **Centesimus Annus #42, 1991].

Another hang up is over wage fixing.
On fixing a wage, in Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, Pius XI asserted “the condition of a business and of the one carrying it on must also be taken into account; for it would be unjust to demand excessive wages which a business cannot stand without its ruin and consequent calamity to the workers.” (#72). Even here, this does not consider the effect of reduced employment if the business still operates at all.

It is vital to realise the development in Catholic Social teaching that has occurred. On wage fixing the Catholic Late Scholastics favoured leaving wage determination to the ‘common estimation’ of the market, since any other method is inherently arbitrary and leads to endless complications.

Here, Fr Brian Harrison, O.S., in* Religious Liberty And Contraception *is helpful (John XXXIII Fellowship Co-op (Australia), 1988, p 22-23), concerning “the practical order: human rights and duties.”

“But for a certain norm of action to be a matter of doctrine, it would clearly have to be proposed as a universally binding norm – one which is of certain validity always and everywhere. Thus, we could not elevate to the status of doctrine a norm which is proposed provisionally, and as subject to possible future correction after future consideration; nor one which is a particular ad hoc decision applying to given circumstances which might turn out to be transitory; nor, finally, one which is a concrete directive designed to give practical force to a doctrine which is in itself too broad or general to have much effect without such further application or specification. (An obvious example of such a doctrine would be the teaching – both natural and revealed – that a labourer deserves a just wage.)”
 
edwest2
He [Greenspan] was later ‘shocked’ to see one aspect of human nature called greed ignite the current global downturn. The groundwork was laid by the elimination of laws that made it possible for people who could barely make their minimum monthly credit card payment to get mortgages. Wall Street runs this country, not the President.
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In Congressional testimony October 23, 2008, Greenspan thought he had erred on financial deregulation. *The New York Times *wrote, “a humbled Mr Greenspan admitted he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.” What a confused “concession” as a sort of mea culpa following the financial meltdown!

The root of the crisis can be found in the federal finagling going back to the Carter era. The Federal Reserve was created by an act of Congress, its chairman government appointed, endowed with monopoly privileges, and with principles opposed to those of the free market because dedicated to central economic planning, – the discredited idea of the twentieth century.

Economist Larry Kudlow and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Steve Moore point to the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) that purported to prevent denying mortgages to black borrowers - by pressuring banks to make home loans in “low and moderate-income neighborhoods.” Under the act, banks were to be graded on their attentiveness to the “credit needs” of “predominantly minority neighborhoods.” The higher a bank’s rating, the more likely that regulators would say yes when the bank sought to open a new branch or undertake a merger or acquisition. (30/3/2008)
The debacle of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), Fannie May and Freddie Mac, that bought loans from the Banks and often bundled them as mortgage–backed securities for sale to investors, enabled the banks to issue more mortgages, fuelling the inflation of home prices by artificially diverting resources into mortgage lending. These are known as sub-prime mortgage securities. Adjustable rate mortgages, fueled by people speculating in house purchases, and artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve, were a major factor in defaults as prices fell in 2006.

Federal intervention creating a feeling of prosperity stimulates the boom-bust cycle, resulting in an inevitable crash. The free market is always blamed for that crash. These artificial booms, wrote economist Henry Hazlitt, must end "in a crisis and a slump, and . . .worse than the slump itself may be the public delusion that the slump has been caused, not by the previous inflation, but by the inherent defects of ‘capitalism.’ " (What You Should Know About Inflation, 2nd ed., Van Nostrand, 1965, 18).
The same political establishment now blamed the banks and Wall Street for the subprime mortgage crisis.
More intervention cannot solve previous interventions which have distorted free enterprise.
 
Dear MindoverMatter2;

The “…common good…” as spoken and written by the Pope and upon which you rest your premise of “condtional ownership of property” and “redistribution” is paramount to declaring that the Pope wishes socialism to be the One World Goverment, and that is not the case.
You have taken the Pope’s term of "common good’ and extrapolated it into your personal vision of how the world should be according to MoM2 - which is not democratic and not part of the republic in which you live - although you may be writing from France.
Clearly you are passionate about your postion, but your passion is misguided and I would challenge you to find the definition of the “common good” intended by the Pope in his writings. Your saying it, doesn’t make it so.
 
Julian0404 said:
Dear MindoverMatter2;

The “…common good…” as spoken and written by the Pope and upon which you rest your premise of “condtional ownership of property” and “redistribution” is paramount to declaring that the Pope wishes socialism to be the One World Goverment, and that is not the case.
You have taken the Pope’s term of "common good’ and extrapolated it into your personal vision of how the world should be according to MoM2 - which is not democratic and not part of the republic in which you live - although you may be writing from France.
Clearly you are passionate about your postion, but your passion is misguided and I would challenge you to find the definition of the “common good” intended by the Pope in his writings. Your saying it, doesn’t make it so.
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The Church has recognized a de facto bill of rights for the working class in all countries, rights that are “based on the nature of the human person and on his transcendent dignity.” These rights are drawn from the many social encyclicals that have been written in the last 120 years, and are summarized and listed in paragraph 301 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

They are:
Code: 
*** The right to a just wage.**
* The right to rest.
* The right to a working environment and to manufacturing processes that are not harmful to the workers' physical health or moral integrity.
* The right that one's personality in the workplace should be safeguarded without suffering any affront to one's conscience or personal dignity.
* **The right to appropriate subsidies necessary for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families.**
* The right to a pension and to insurance for old age, sickness, and in case of work-related accidents.
* The right to social security connected with maternity.
* The right to assemble and form associations.
 
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