Whatever the social teaching, I would say HOW you apply them is important. How much force do you use ? Do you let conscience and free will act on Church teachings? or do the social teachings come with a Heavy enforcement hand?
You ask what sorts of public policies you would like to see be enacted. That sounds like using the force of law.
We see the gov’t using tax structure, zoning regulations, endless laws and regulations to steer the size of families smaller, make a one income family almost impossible, and other choices individuals make. Will social teaching on the environment with the focus on carbon credits make it a law for one child – some people are talking extra taxes on a second child, and very high taxes on a third child because they harm our world. We see since FDR, social security and welfare, we have money taken from us, much which goes to running the system, and some goes to benefit the target people. Prior to those systems people, churches, and communities directly helped those in need , without part of it going to support a bloated system. The end result is some people think " I give enough in taxes, that poor person can go to gov’t programs for help " Rather than helping human to human directly.
On worker’s rights or environment, we have seen the laws on getting more rights help in the short term but in the long term end up costing jobs, which hurt the family. Would church teaching on the environment save the spotted owl and cost timber jobs which hurt kids ?
On each issue it REALLY depends on how the people in power want to enforce it, just look at how Catholics in charge Rep Nancy Pelosi and Sen John Kerry enact their understanding of the Catholic faith and social teachings.
With some charities going to gov’t to get tax money that is taken from people under the force of law, then is there free will ? The faith based groups have the structure of gov’t behind them.
So how would I apply the teachings ? by teaching and encouraging; But not by “enacting” .
Justin: we live in a republican democracy, one where people are free to remain or to go as they will, and to vote as they will for the candidates of their choice. Voting is an exercise of free will, and choosing to remain within the system even if your candidates do not win is an exercise of free will. The majority of citizens in the US have exercised their free will by voting for politicians over the years who will create systems of government aid. Your presence as a citizen who remains here signals that though you may disagree with your fellow-citizens, you consent to the system that the majority have freely chosen to construct through their elected representatives.
Government social programs have serious failings but they more are more effectively accessible to all citizens who need them for a given social problem. The failings of private charity are the lack of uniform availability as well as the tendency of voluntary support to wax and to wane. Local food pantries right now are simply giving less-and-less-and-less to more-and-more-and-more needy: as the economy goes down, fewer and fewer people are able to give less and less to sustain the pantries, while the need for those pantries increases.
Prior to the New Deal, we depended heavily on private charity–almost exclusively in fact–and people starved while farmers destroyed the wheat, eggs, milk, and produce that they could not sell at the prices they needed to sustain their livelihood. The New Deal did not end the Great Depression–there is good reason to believe that it sustained it by driving capital out of the markets and limiting needed growth through arbitrary bureaucratic rules–but it allowed us to soften the suffering of millions who would otherwise likely perished or been incredibly brutalized by poverty.
Federal welfare programs have their own problems: they tend to create long-term constituencies (not just the recipients of aid, but also the agency employees, who develop a vested interest in sustaining their own jobs). I’ve already pointed out how expensive they can be: the costs of such programs come from the pockets of people who are then limited in how those people can use their own earned resources for good. They can be bureaucratic, causing them to be inefficient in the way they utilize their funds.
Nonetheless, government aid programs give the needed hand-up to a lot of people who would otherwise be left behind. Our economy and our nation are stronger for the existence of federal aid programs, despite their failings. I do not believe we would be a world power in the modern global economy without them.
I don’t think we can get away from government systems of aid, but I think that our current systems leave a lot to be desired. I say again that my impression of the social teachings of the Catholic Church tend to do a good job of addressing both ends of the spectrum: those teachings say to laissez-faire capitalists and libertarian economic conservatives–you cannot design a just social order that takes no consideration of the weakest, most-unfortunate, and least-advantaged among yourselves.
Yet those same social teachings, it is my impression, would say to the socialists and communists–you cannot, in justice or morality, pursue confiscatory policies which deny people their basic rights to own property and productive means of living, in search of a dream of an earthly Utopia.
I think the Church is a critic of both ends of the spectrum, at least from what I have heard over the years. I’m hoping some folks who have actually read those social teachings in some depth and given some thought to how they should be applied will weigh in on this thread.
