You will never accept that OmamaCare is an unjust law against our basic freedom of religion.
Quite the contrary, I am much more likely to accept that than the rest of your argument. I agree that forcing Catholic institutions to cover contraception is wrong, and my [Episcopal] priest, who is politically very liberal and does not agree with the Catholic position on birth control, entirely agrees (though admittedly, he’s one of the very few mainline clergy I’m aware of who stands with the Catholic Church on this issue, very much to his credit).
What I’m asking is what about the basic provision of the law (not the incidental issue of contraception) is unjust
according to Catholic teaching.
You seem unwilling or unable to answer this question.
Therefore, I submit that ObamaCare is pure socialism
It’s obviously not “pure” socialism. It may be socialism by your very broad definition, but for the purposes of my challenge you need to show that it is socialism
in the sense intended by the Popes who condemned socialism. I think that will be pretty hard for you to do.
But then, I suppose I shouldn’t expect much in the way of verbal precision or intellectual seriousness from a person who thinks the childish slur “OmamaCare” is witty.
and against the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the intent of the Founding Fathers.
I’ll trust Chief Justice Roberts over you on the Constitutional issue, thank you very much. But in fact that’s irrelevant to my challenge. I asked about justice, not constitutionality; about Catholic teaching and natural law, not about the intention of a bunch of 18th-century gentlemen.
Socialism conflicts with the natural law regarding private property.
Socialism being defined here as the complete abolition of private property, which ObamaCare certainly does not do.
"If man, [according to Aquinas], has the right to own, control, and use private property, the State cannot give him this right or take it away; it can only protect it."
Where does Aquinas say this? You give no citation. Aquinas did not believe that private property was a natural right. In fact, in ST II/II Question 66, article 2, he raises the point that according to natural law all things are held in common. In his reply to objection 1 he clarifies what this means:
Community of goods is ascribed to the
natural law, not that the
natural law dictates that all things should be possessed in common and that nothing should be possessed as one’s own: but because the division of possessions is not according to the
natural law, but rather arose from
human agreement which belongs to positive
law, as stated above (57, 2,3). Hence the ownership of possessions is not contrary to the
natural law, but an addition thereto devised by
human reason.
For Aquinas, private property is not a fundamental natural right but a legitimate, useful, indeed necessary human convention. Its purpose, however, is the common good. Indeed, Aquinas explicitly says that rulers have the authority to take the property of their subjects for the common good (“state” wasn’t really a concept in the 13th century), and even use violence to do so (Article 8 of the previously cited question, reply to objection 3):
It is no robbery if princes exact from their subjects that which is due to them for the safe-guarding of the common
good, even if they use
violence in so doing: but if they extort something unduly by means of
violence, it is robbery even as burglary is. Hence
Augustine says (De Civ. Dei iv, 4): “If
justice be disregarded, what is a king but a mighty robber? since what is a robber but a little king?” And it is written (
Ezekiel 22:27): “Her princes in the midst of her, are like wolves ravening the prey.” Wherefore they are bound to restitution, just as robbers are, and by so much do they
sin more grievously than robbers, as their actions are fraught with greater and more universal danger to public
justice whose wardens they are.
Leo XIII did appear to believe that private property was a natural right. But as far as I know even Pope Leo never said that taxation was illegitimate.
There’s a “bait-and-switch” frequently going on here in “conservative” American arguments about this. Folks will sound like libertarians in the way they talk about taxation, and then back away by saying that of course reasonable or legitimate taxation (for defense, for instance) is OK. But the lines being drawn seem pretty arbitrary.
Traditional Catholic teaching has
never rejected the government’s right to tax. You may think that present levels are too high and that the common good can best be furthered in other ways. You may be right. But it makes no sense to cry “socialism” when the government is just using its acknowledged power to tax for the service of the common good.
***Pope Pius XI … made it clear that no Catholic could subscribe even to moderate Socialism.***The reason is that Socialism is founded on a doctrine of human society which is bounded by time and takes no account of any objective other than that of material well-being. Since, therefore, it proposes a form of social organization which aims solely at production, it places too severe a restraint on human liberty, at the same time flouting the true notion of social authority.
Bl. John XXIII, Encyclical Mater et Magistra, 1961
Yes, section 34. The problem is that the Pope didn’t define “moderate Socialism.” You and those who think like you claim that this means that anything
you choose to label socialism is condemned by the Church. But that’s obviously illogical. Neither of the Popes in question (John XXIII or Pius XI) had the benefit of your expertise in defining socialism (unless you claim to have been one of John XXIII’s advisors in drafting this document?).
John XXIII is summarizing Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, sects. 113-20. What’s notable about this passage is that Pius XI explicitly says that “moderate socialism” has come very close to a legitimate Christian position. He insists that even this moderate socialism cannot be reconciled with Christianity
not because of its specific social proposals (which he admits are basically legitimate) but because of the underlying materialistic philosophy and the idea that everything, including personal liberty, takes second place to the efficient production of goods resulting in material prosperity.
It therefore follows that anything that
doesn’t clearly rest on this material philosophy and doesn’t make the efficient production of material goods its primary goal does
not come under the condemnation of these two Popes and is not “socialism” in their sense. You and many other contemporary Americans are radically misusing the term “socialism” and twisting the teachings of the Popes.
At the same time, pro-capitalist economists have made a very strong case that in fact material prosperity and efficient production are best served by the free market. And many Christians are arguing that in that light, the best way to serve the poor is to promote capitalism. This seems to fall into precisely the same false way of thinking condemned by the Popes in the case of socialism. Socialism is condemned not because it gives the government the authority to care for the common good (which is just classic Catholic social teaching), but because it subordinates moral and spiritual considerations to economic ones. But today it is the advocates of
capitalism who most often do that.
Here’s a specific passage from Mater et Magistra (section 20), illustrating how far the Pope thought the state could and should go in furthering the common good (more detail is found in Quadragesimo Anno):
As for the State, its whole raison d’etre is the realization of the common good in the temporal order. It cannot, therefore, hold aloof from economic matters. On the contrary, it must do all in its power to promote the production of a sufficient supply of material goods, “the use of which is necessary for the practice of virtue.” (7) It has also the duty to protect the rights of all its people, and particularly of its weaker members, the workers, women and children. It can never be right for the State to shirk its obligation of working actively for the betterment of the condition of the workingman.
ObamaCare may not be the best way of fulfilling this duty, but it is clearly an attempt to do so. It does not come anywhere near abolishing private property and it has no necessary connection to materialism–quite the reverse, if your arguments and those of other “conservatives” are correct!
Therefore, ObamaCare is not unjust according to Catholic teaching, and the condemnations of socialism on which you rely to heavily may actually apply to some versions of free-market capitalism advocated today.
Edwin
