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tonyrey
Guest
Irrefutable! Jesus told us that all of us are brothers and sisters who should care for one another.
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Irrefutable! Jesus told us that all of us are brothers and sisters who should care for one another.
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Abu
Guest
False.
Such myopia shows the contempt in which selfists hold Bl John Paul II, also one of the greatest intellects in Catholicism, who emphatically encouraged free enterprise:
‘If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.’ Centesimus Annus, 1991, #42].
Since here capitalism = free economy, and reaffirmed by Bl John Paul II is the ‘fundamental human “right to freedom of economic initiative.” ’ (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Human Concerns), Encyclical, 1987, #42), and initiative = enterprise, it is clear what the pope means.
Original Sin has ensured that we have to work at whatever we do, that we are not equal in talents, initiative or virtue which has to be nurtured, and the Church ensures that we can know what is right, just and true.
Catholics should know that the free enterprise system was developed by the Catholic Late Scholastics of many religious orders, although many were Jesuits. It is quite unreasonable to be discussing economic systems without knowing the facts. How could the economic system of free enterprise be “unjust” when it has enabled billions to be rescued from eking out an existence as was the norm before its development? What this great system needs, as in everything in life, is moral people to be engaged in it. The vocations of the entrepreneur, manager, and staff in a business are fabulous. As St Escriva of Opus Dei has taught: “work is a prayer”!
There is a solid basis of economic Catholic thought from the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century the Late Scholastics who were Thomists (followers of St Thomas) “writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social; organization.” They “observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value…” For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them as the first real economists. (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8).
As correctly-termed, free enterprise is precisely what has enabled untold millions to escape from poverty. Without the great contribution of the Industrial Revolution, sparked by Catholic economic and social thought and action in the West, we would still be eking out an existence as before that development. Catholic teaching, especially social teaching outlines the morality of this interaction.
It is the economic approach that has revolutionised the standard of living of billions.
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tonyrey
Guest
The unChristian nature of capitalism is clearly demonstrated in the UK under the present Conservative government where ministers are millionaires, many children go to school without breakfast and the poor have to choose between eating and heating…
The competition advocated by capitalist systems amounts to the law of the jungle and has resulted in gross inequality throughout the world where many people are hungry and die as the result of malnutrition.
The competition advocated by capitalist systems amounts to the law of the jungle and has resulted in gross inequality throughout the world where many people are hungry and die as the result of malnutrition.
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Qoeleth
Guest
Capitalism bascially refers to a system in which capital generates further capital. It is possible to have free enterprise in a non-capitalist system. For example, the artisan who sells his products or hires his skills is exercising free enterprise. However, the rich person, who employs others artisans for a wage to work in his factory, and makes a profit from what he owns (the factory, and the capital to employ artisans) is a capitalist. There is a world of difference. In fact, capitalism can often be contrary to free enterprise (e.g. large supermarkets destroy the business of corner shops, factories destroy the opportunities of individual tradesmen).
So, while JP II advocated free enterprise, he did NOT advocate wholesale capitalism.
It seems the ideal system is one in which everyone has enough material resources to live- not as ‘charity’ but as a human right. While some may have a bit more than others (reflecting differences in effort, skill, luck, etc.), the differences should be kept within a limit that does not offend fundamental human dignity and fraternity.
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wcknight
Guest
Neither system in the extreme serves mankind Well. Pure socialism takes away incentive to excel and move ahead. If everything is given to you why work which is precisely the problem some early Christians had in a socialist setting.
Capitalism as seen in the early 1900s and to some extent the last couple of decades, saw a huge exploitation of the poor In favor of the wealthy. It causes a bigger and bigger divide between the poor and the large business owners. Recent tax breaks for the rich are blatantly self serving and a clear example of the perverted golden rule, the folks with the most gold make the rules. We are seeing a new class of super wealthy individuals while unemployment rises among the under educated.
Unemployment and under employment is the worst consequence or symptom of capitalism. A system where folks who want to work and can’t is one that is seriously flawed.
Capitalism as seen in the early 1900s and to some extent the last couple of decades, saw a huge exploitation of the poor In favor of the wealthy. It causes a bigger and bigger divide between the poor and the large business owners. Recent tax breaks for the rich are blatantly self serving and a clear example of the perverted golden rule, the folks with the most gold make the rules. We are seeing a new class of super wealthy individuals while unemployment rises among the under educated.
Unemployment and under employment is the worst consequence or symptom of capitalism. A system where folks who want to work and can’t is one that is seriously flawed.
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Abu
Guest
False.
The very term “capitalism” is a derogatory term coined by Karl Marx, and that’s perhaps why Bl John Paul II dislikes it, as he makes clear as he emphatically affirms free enterprise in Centesimus Annus.
His requirements naturally emphasise a strong system of law based on sound ethical and religious principles:
‘42. But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.
‘40: Here we find a new limit on the market: there are collective and qualitative needs which cannot be satisfied by market mechanisms. There are important human needs which escape its logic. There are goods which by their very nature cannot and must not be bought or sold. Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help to utilize resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all they give central place to the person’s desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person. Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an “idolatry” of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.
‘41. Marxism criticized capitalist bourgeois societies, blaming them for the commercialization and alienation of human existence. This rebuke is of course based on a mistaken and inadequate idea of alienation, derived solely from the sphere of relationships of production and ownership, that is, giving them a materialistic foundation and moreover denying the legitimacy and positive value of market relationships even in their own sphere. Marxism thus ends up by affirming that only in a collective society can alienation be eliminated. However, the historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.
‘43. The Church has no models to present; models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another.84 For such a task the Church offers her social teaching as an indispensable and ideal orientation, a teaching which, as already mentioned, recognizes the positive value of the market and of enterprise, but which at the same time points out that these need to be oriented towards the common good.’
In addition to sound laws, as in EVERY aspect of human endeavour, the sound morality of the PEOPLE involved is what makes ANY system worthwhile.
So, the revered Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI felt it necessary to teach that “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36)
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Bob_Crowley
Guest
I remember my old pastor, who was conservative to his bootlaces, once admitting, “I sometimes wonder if communism wasn’t God’s idea, but the devil got to it first.”
He went on to quote “From (every man) according to his ability, to (every man) according to his need”, which was a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program, according to Wikipedia.
Then he said “It’s got an almost Biblical ring to it.” But then he went on to say “You’d never get the churches to agree to it now.”
I think it’s a bit like the Reformation. I think God wanted the Church cleaned up, and Luther was the man who was supposed to light the fire. But I suspect Luther was expected to die for his faith as a martyr, and the Reformation would have been wrought internally.
Instead Luther took refuge with two German princes, neither of whom was known for holy righteousness (to put it mildly), and Western Europe was plunged into extreme violence with Christian killing Christian all over Europe, with divisions that still resonate today, five hundred years later.
I think the devil got hold of it, ditto with Communism. Instead of an economic system outlined by Marx’s quote above, we ended up with Lenin, Stalin, mass murder, the gulags and the systematic suppression of all religion, particularly Christianity.
Of course the last people who would want to admit this scenario might have an element of truth in it will be the rich.
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tonyrey
Guest
:thumbsup:All forms of social and economic extremism are evil - as history has demonstrated.
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tonyrey
Guest
I like your parting shot!
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tonyrey
Guest
In the UK one million young people are unemployed.
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empther
Guest
It’s amazing how even the simplest concepts are beyond the ability of some people to understand. 
The implication of capitalism is that every person has the opportunity to “get his piece of the pie”. Even somebody who can’t work for a living will, as implied by capitalism, be taken care of by the workers, because there is nothing to keep the workers from doing this,
unlike socialism and communism where only the government can take care of the unemployable ( yeah, good luck with that! :bigyikes: ) because the workers are too poor to do it,
or an oligachic society in which the rich minority have everything such as pre-Revolutionary France.
So why do we have the poor in the US? Because there are simply too many people who will not work when in fact they could. There are always people like that. Since there is no way to differentiate between the people who can’t work and those who won’t, there are too many such people for the government and private philanthropy to make prosperous.
Such has been human nature since… always.
A capitalist system is not based on inequality of resources.
The implication of capitalism is that every person has the opportunity to “get his piece of the pie”. Even somebody who can’t work for a living will, as implied by capitalism, be taken care of by the workers, because there is nothing to keep the workers from doing this,
unlike socialism and communism where only the government can take care of the unemployable ( yeah, good luck with that! :bigyikes: ) because the workers are too poor to do it,
or an oligachic society in which the rich minority have everything such as pre-Revolutionary France.
So why do we have the poor in the US? Because there are simply too many people who will not work when in fact they could. There are always people like that. Since there is no way to differentiate between the people who can’t work and those who won’t, there are too many such people for the government and private philanthropy to make prosperous.
Such has been human nature since… always.
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Paddy_Walker
Guest
A few ideas;
- why is there only capitalism, socialism, communism. why not pick the best bits from all these and other systems to make a new user friendly society.
- why can’t we just get rid of money altogether and solve the inequality problem that way, or,
- why can’t we give everyone 1 million dollars and just let them get on with life.
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Qoeleth
Guest
Please, don’t be discouraged, if you find these concepts difficult to understand.It’s amazing how even the simplest concepts are beyond the ability of some people to understand.
Let me explain again. The Gospel teaching is this: “Whoever has two cloaks, give one to the person who has none.” Now, in order to implement this approach, countries with Christian values authorise the government to take the extra cloak (in the form of taxes) and give it to those without a cloak (in the form of social security).
However, there is often are often un-Christian element, which wants to revert to a pagan “Survival of the fittest” approach. These un-Christian groups fights against taxes on the rich and social security.
I understand, in the US, there are even some groups who argue against the right to universal public health care. Presumably these groups are all radical social Darwinists.
We don’t need to differentiate between those ‘can’t work’ and ‘won’t work’. They are all human beings, and all have a need, and therefore a natural right, to food, clothing and shelter. This is not charity- it is justice.
Have you ever considered why some people “Won’t work?” It’s not, in most cases, because they expect to live lives as some kind of wonderful, endless party- many have given up hope, and feel totally useless and alienated to the economic and political system.
The guilt lies on the entire system.
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Abu
Guest
It really is quite pathetic how narrow-minded some are, choosing to ignore this teaching of Christ on work, the specific words of Christ that find a particularly lively echo in the teaching of the Apostle Paul. This is specifically rejecting St Paul and Sacred Scripture. Foolish erroneous statements – abysmal ignorance – should be corrected
The imposters feel that they are better than the great St Paul who emphasises:
“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” [2 Thess 3:10].
In the Encyclical Letter* Laborem Exercens*, 1981, #26, Bl John Paul II, pointed out:
‘The teachings of the Apostle of the Gentiles obviously have key importance for the morality and spirituality of human work. They are an important complement to the great though discreet gospel of work that we find in the life and parables of Christ, in what Jesus “did and taught”.’
“SOCIAL INJUSTICE”, where government subsidies reward the good-for-nothings who “refuse” to work and steal from those who do work to do so.
When you love your neighbour you encourage those “refusing to work” to face reality and God’s creation and get out and find work; you help others to produce goods and services, you don’t indulge their destructive whims and fancies.
Eradicating poverty has to be done one step at a time. Right now there is enough food to feed everyone. That has been so for many decades.
Further, between 1990 and 2010, their number fell by half as a share of the total population in developing countries, from 43% to 21%—a reduction of almost 1 billion people.
tinyurl.com/ldjt6go
The revered Fr James V. Schall, S.J.:
‘Much of world poverty has in fact been reduced or alleviated, as a recent essay in The Economist has shown. Christians often seem not to know that this change has happened or why it happened.’
[tinyurl.com/ldjt6go]](http://tinyurl.com/ldjt6go])
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empther
Guest
So now it’s “food, clothing and shelter”, which sounds more reasonable and less offensive than the “inequality of resources” you talked about in post 1.
As for…
… every city in the country has homeless people. Why? Because if a city provided homes for every homeless person,
the city would soon be filled with homeless people from all over the country.
People have noticed up here in Maine that in recent years there has been a large influx of the welfare crowd into the state. For example: there are people who moved here from distant Alabama. Why did they come all this way? Because Maine pays higher welfare than Alabama.
It’s always this way. Some people make it impossible for all people to be nice to all people all the time. Ask any priest how often he gets hit for a handout wherever he goes with his Roman collar.
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Abu
Guest
That pastor sure was wrong. Pius XI declared emphatically in Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #120:
“We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.” (#128).
This is disconcerting particularly when one recalls Pope John Paul II’s incisive analysis of communism in his 1991 encyclical letter, Centesimus Annus: that it’s “fundamental error” was “anthropological in nature.” ’
“Capitalism” is used as a whipping boy when following Karl Marx and his class prejudices. He used the word “capitalism” to mean a despised exploitation of “workers”, because he wanted to gain power and control everything, including the “workers”.
The falsehood that free enterprise (Marx’s “capitalism”) rejects virtues and the common good is exposed by the fact that the first examples of free enterprise appeared in the great Catholic monasteries, about the ninth century. (John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages, St Martin’s Press1969, I; cf. op. cit (Stark) p xii, 55-58), and the virtue of work, gleaned from St Paul and the esteem in which Jesus held work, were “evident in the sixth century by St Benedict, who wrote in his famous rule: ‘Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the brothers should have specified periods for manual labour as well as prayerful reading’…” (Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, Random House, 2005, p 62). It is very much Catholic teaching, therefore, as based on faith and reason.
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LightandHeat
Guest
I think any comprehensive look at Catholicism and Communism would rule out any serious Catholic from believing in a Marxist state. As for socialism, again if it is more pure socialism then I would say the two are not compatible, unless you are talking about Sweden-style socialism which is actually a mixed economy which tends toward market regulation and some economic redistribution through progressive taxation and the institution of the welfare state. This sort of “socialism” (again this is actually a mixed economy) is not a question of absolute morality but of prudence. Coincidentally, it appears likely that our current Pope would like favor this type of approach.
Look, I favor free enterprise in general with the caveats (environmental regulations, consumer safety). I also oppose big government and tax raises generally. But let’s get real here. The economy is not some (name removed by moderator)ut machine where the “talented and industrious” always come out wealthy and the “untalnted and lazy” are all the poor people. Plenty of people in my life who are wealthy aren’t amazingly talented or industrious, they had the right kind parents who sent them to the right kind of school, hired the right kind of lawyer when they got in trouble and had the right kind of connections. Plenty of “poor” people I know are plenty talented and rich in spirit, but maybe don’t have the right kind of skills that are valued in today’s economy.
There is no need to uncharitable to make a political point.
Look, I favor free enterprise in general with the caveats (environmental regulations, consumer safety). I also oppose big government and tax raises generally. But let’s get real here. The economy is not some (name removed by moderator)ut machine where the “talented and industrious” always come out wealthy and the “untalnted and lazy” are all the poor people. Plenty of people in my life who are wealthy aren’t amazingly talented or industrious, they had the right kind parents who sent them to the right kind of school, hired the right kind of lawyer when they got in trouble and had the right kind of connections. Plenty of “poor” people I know are plenty talented and rich in spirit, but maybe don’t have the right kind of skills that are valued in today’s economy.
There is no need to uncharitable to make a political point.
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Qoeleth
Guest
Is it consistent with the Gospel to describe any human being as a ‘good-for-nothing’?
Yes, there are criminals and lazy people in the world. But remember, every criminal is a child of God, and a brother of Jesus first. Many have just fallen on bad luck, or are a victim of bad backgrounds, and/or bad genetic luck.
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Qoeleth
Guest
Benedict’s vision was of a community without individual ownership, in which everyone was given according to their particular needs. He makes provision for the weaker brother to do less work, and the stronger ones to do more. He emphasis that we should tolerate the physical and moral weaknesses of others. The word tolerate in Latin also includes the meaning of ‘carry’ or ‘support’
Also, the RB 48, to which you refer, makes it clear the work is to be kept in check. The main work is the Opus Dei (i.e. prayer), followed by Lection Divina (reading). Time is set aside for resting. According to the RB, four hours a day should be spent on work (from prime to the fourth hour). If necessary, an extra two hours may be added. This reflect a very different attitude to the ‘capitalist’ attitude to work.
There was a time in the past when a lot of people thought the Benedictine motto was “Orare est laborare” (To pray is to work.) Of course, this was a mistake. In fact, the motto is “Ora et labora” (Pray and work). The meaning of it is that prayer (Opus Dei) is given priority over other work. “Nothing is to be prefered to the Work of God.”
I’ve never heard of this Gilchrist work. The view the free enterprise originate in Monastries in the 9th Century, is one, however, which should be treat “cum grano (aut forsitan cum multis granis!) salis.”
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Qoeleth
Guest
The best response is to thank the Lord for visiting them in the form of a beggar, and give whatever they can, and remember every dollar given in alms will be repaid in the only currency that does not fail.
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