What I think he’s arguing is that “excessive” is a rather a subjective word and history suggests that establishing principles on vague and subjective notions leads to worse tyranny.
I can’t see that it’s any more intrinsically vague that the principles underlying just war or any other government policy. Of course you have to look at specific circumstances, and of course a straightforward “no one can have more than X amount of wealth” policy is crude and unwise (I don’t think it’s unjust or contrary to Catholic teaching, just not the best way to get the job done).
Nearly everything the Church says about what governments should do (other than “protect innocent life”) is “vague and subjective” in the sense that there’s a general principle that needs to govern the actions of the government, but lots of room for debate on how it should be applied. It seems to me that many “conservative” American Catholics want to use this room for debate as an excuse to rob the principles of all meaning whatsoever.
The trouble is that God refuses to be elected to government position.
But God calls on us to live in this world according to the principles of justice and right reason. And insofar as Christians participate in government at all, these principles should guide their actions.
He gives us the choice to choose good or evil and live out the consequences.
I hear this “free will” argument routinely from both left and right–invariably as an excuse for avoiding a serious discussion of some question of justice. If you followed this principle consistently, there would be no laws at all–or law would be based on purely pragmatic considerations (precisely the position against which the Pope argued so eloquently in his recent speech to the German parliament). I hear it from pro-choice folks as a reason why abortion shouldn’t be against the law. It’s a bogus argument. Law restrains the exercise of free will in the interests of justice and the common good. It doesn’t
take away free will.
Using force to make people charitable doesn’t work.
If yo mean “make people have charity in their hearts,” sure. If you mean “make people act in a way that benefits rather than harming the neighbor,” then of course using “force” (i.e., law) to do so can work. Otherwise there would be no point having any laws at all.
The coercive power of the state can be used to coerce people not to commit evil deeds in many cases and to punish them when they do. But government has been a pretty spectacular failure in coercing people to cultivate virtue.
How? Does modern government even
try to do this? I don’t think the failure is spectacular at all. I think that of course any success is going to be very limited. But law
does have a pedagogical function. If the law says “you should do X,” people will, by and large, come to think that X is good, and vice versa. That’s the main reason to be opposed to gay marriage–it will inevitably shape how people think about marriage. (Of course, the fact that many people push for gay marriage shows that our understanding of marriage is confused in the first place.)
Furthermore, the point of laws taxing the rich to provide for the poor (the main way in which the principle under discussion is applied in our society) isn’t primarily to get the rich to cultivate virtue (in this case, it’s probably true that such laws will not have that effect), but to provide for the needs of the poor, which is one of the basic ethical mandates
for society according to Scripture and Christian tradition.
Edwin
