What does official Catholic teaching say about "welfare states"?

[Holly3278]

Hey everyone. I often hear criticism of “welfare states” here on the forums. However, I do not understand why it is criticized. Is there an official Catholic teaching which would cause people to be against welfare?

I guess you could say that I am biased and that I am for welfare because without my Medicaid, Disability, Food Stamps, and HUD subsidized housing, I’d be in a very large and very bad mess. In other words, I would quite possibly be homeless, without medical care, and possibly starving.

 

[Abu]

Holly3278 #1
Hey everyone. I often hear criticism of “welfare states” here on the forums. However, I do not understand why it is criticized. Is there an official Catholic teaching which would cause people to be against welfare?

Not against “welfare” but against the State Welfare that overrides the community and Church welfare. Why haven’t you taken the time to check the Church’s teaching?

For instance:
catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7538#PartV

A welfare or “nanny” state, offering cradle-to-grave security and attempting to provide for all human needs, expands the state beyond its proper scope and violates the principle of subsidiarity. Pope John Paul II explained in Centesimus Annus:

“Malfunctions and defects in the social assistance state [or welfare state] are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the state. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” (Centesimus Annus, 48)

This overreaching by the state leads to situations that are both inefficient and detrimental to human welfare:
“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the social assistance state leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbors to those in need.” (Centesimus Annus, 48)

When should the state intervene and when should governmental authority refrain? Such questions are difficult to answer outside of the concrete situation, for they depend upon prudential judgments about particular situations. People of good will, including Catholics who are attempting to put into action Catholic social teaching, may legitimately disagree about whether a given piece of legislation or governmental intervention is warranted to alleviate a social problem. Many social questions, such as, “Should this welfare benefit be offered to people in this particular situation?” do not admit of an answer that would be binding upon all Catholics. Nevertheless, all Catholics are obliged to work to find solutions to contemporary social problems in light of the Gospel and their best practical wisdom.

 

[ClearWater]

I think the problem is not so much for people of legitimate need, but there always seems to be people who will take advantage of the system. Further, some people can work but don’t want to. There really do exist people who are quite lazy, and if they can find a way for the government to pay for their every want and need, they will! They are quite real!

Some people want the government to do it all for them. They become overly dependent on it and never learn to do anything for themselves. They don’t have a work ethic, real pride. It’s terrible, because these people give everybody else, in legitimate need, a REALLY bad name!

Further, they take the legitimate resources for themselves.

It’s much better to do as…was it St. Vincent de Sales said? I think it was him who said (when possible, of course), that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for one day. If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime!

 

[LisaA]

Hey everyone. I often hear criticism of “welfare states” here on the forums. However, I do not understand why it is criticized. Is there an official Catholic teaching which would cause people to be against welfare?

I guess you could say that I am biased and that I am for welfare because without my Medicaid, Disability, Food Stamps, and HUD subsidized housing, I’d be in a very large and very bad mess. In other words, I would quite possibly be homeless, without medical care, and possibly starving.

Abu provided references regarding Catholic teaching. You need to distinguish between a situation where someone truly needs the assistance and that where people are gaming the system. As Abu noted the Catholic social teachings include the dignity of work and subsidiarity provides multiple benefits, one of which is the more direct contact between the recipient and the provider whether it’s government or charity. Not only does this allow providers to also benefit from following the teaching of Christ and honoring God’s gifts, but it allows the recipient to be treated as a human being, not a number or faceless medical record. Further subsidiarity decreases the kind of fraud and waste that has become an unfortunate characteristic of our government’s ever increasing remote control of the populace. It is much easier to defraud a bureaucrat thousands of miles away than your local STdP food pantry.

Food stamps and lately disability have become poster child programs for fraud. I watched Congressional hearings earlier this week regarding the EXPLOSION of disability claims. Most were nebulous…stress, anxiety or soft tissue back injuries. Judges rubber stamp the applications. It’s no skin off their nose right? Apparently since Obama took office more disability claims have occurred than new jobs generated. It has become utterly ridiculous. Attorneys and medical/mental health providers were grilled by their complete lack of thoroughness with regard to the claims…for which they were paid… and to their credit a few seemed embarrassed…that they’d been CAUGHT and were on national TV confessing their disgraceful action.

Ditto with Food Stamps as Obama has greatly decreased the standards for eligibility. When I was in college I wouldn’t have qualified nor would I have been eligibile for Food Stamps but it’s now very common for young people who are able bodied and who could work to get as much out of the system as possible. I see EBT being pulled out at restaurants, fast food places, as well as grocery stores. Is this a good use of our tax dollars? When I was a poor college student I lived on canned fruit cocktail and cottage cheese. Now I see students at Whole Foods buying luxury food items. It’s not the old beanie weenie, let’s make do with what we can anymore.

That’s on me and my millions of fellow Americans who work to pay for slackers and there are a lot of them. The disgust we have for people who do not deserve assistance increases with each outrageous story. Further as it sounds you are legitimately receiving assistance, you should be more outraged than anyone. Money that could assist those who TRULY need it is instead being wasted on those who don’t.

I truly wish Catholic Social Teaching were employed by our government. We’d have a better society and those in need would not be subservient to those in greed.

Lisa

 

[triumphguy]

vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html

COMPENDIUM OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

V. THE RIGHTS OF WORKERS

a. The dignity of workers and the respect for their rights

1. The rights of workers, like all other rights, are based on the nature of the human person and on his transcendent dignity. The Church’s social Magisterium has seen fit to list some of these rights, in the hope that they will be recognized in juridical systems:

• the right to a just wage; [651]
• the right to rest; [652]
• the right “to a working environment and to manufacturing processes which are not harmful to the workers’ physical health or to their moral integrity”; [653]
• the right that one’s personality in the workplace should be safeguarded “without suffering any affront to one’s conscience or personal dignity”; [654]
• the right to appropriate subsidies that are necessary for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families; [655]
• the right to a pension and to insurance for old age, sickness, and in case of work-related accidents; [656]
• the right to social security connected with maternity; [657]
• the right to assemble and form associations.[658]

These rights are often infringed, as is confirmed by the sad fact of workers who are underpaid and without protection or adequate representation. It often happens that work conditions for men, women and children, especially in developing countries, are so inhumane that they are an offence to their dignity and compromise their health.

 

[Wargoski]

My personal beliefs are that if u are in real need of welfare then u deserve it. If your just lazy and mooching off the system then its an awful thing. I personally am on Disability and it took along time to get on it but my doctors all said that I needed it. But those just find something out of there pocket to use then that’s wrong.

I don’t know the Church’s position but I am sure someone has some advice

Good Luck and God bless.

 

[Holly3278]

Not against “welfare” but against the State Welfare that overrides the community and Church welfare. Why haven’t you taken the time to check the Church’s teaching?

Hello Abu. I want to thank you and everyone for the information that you and others provided. However, I wanted to answer your question as to why I haven’t taken the time to check the Church’s teaching.

The reason why is because I did not know exactly where to look. I get so overwhelmed with the tons of information that is available online that many times I find it to be much more convenient and easy to ask on here. Another reason why I asked on here is because I am not very intelligent and I wanted to be able to ask questions if I needed to do so.

As for ***Centesimus Annus, ***I would love to read it but I find many encyclicals very difficult to understand because of theological terminology. I also have a hard time sitting down and reading a long publication and most encyclicals are upwards of 15 standard letter size pages. I have difficulties concentrating.

 

[eamonnroma]

How then do you decide who is legitimate and not?

I think the problem is not so much for people of legitimate need, but there always seems to be people who will take advantage of the system. Further, some people can work but don’t want to. There really do exist people who are quite lazy, and if they can find a way for the government to pay for their every want and need, they will! They are quite real!

Some people want the government to do it all for them. They become overly dependent on it and never learn to do anything for themselves. They don’t have a work ethic, real pride. It’s terrible, because these people give everybody else, in legitimate need, a REALLY bad name!

Further, they take the legitimate resources for themselves.

It’s much better to do as…was it St. Vincent de Sales said? I think it was him who said (when possible, of course), that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for one day. If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime!

 

[Abu]

Holly3278 #8
I have difficulties concentrating.

Fair enough. Ask again if needed.

God bless

 

[markomalley]

As for ***Centesimus Annus, ***I would love to read it but I find many encyclicals very difficult to understand because of theological terminology. I also have a hard time sitting down and reading a long publication and most encyclicals are upwards of 15 standard letter size pages. I have difficulties concentrating.

The section talking about “the role of the State” within CA is in Article 48 (not all that long in of itself):
48. These general observations also apply to the role of the State in the economic sector. Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. Hence the principle task of the State is to guarantee this security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly. The absence of stability, together with the corruption of public officials and the spread of improper sources of growing rich and of easy profits deriving from illegal or purely speculative activities, constitutes one of the chief obstacles to development and to the economic order.

Another task of the State is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the State but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society. The State could not directly ensure the right to work for all its citizens unless it controlled every aspect of economic life and restricted the free initiative of individuals. This does not mean, however, that the State has no competence in this domain, as was claimed by those who argued against any rules in the economic sphere. Rather, the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of crisis.

The State has the further right to intervene when particular monopolies create delays or obstacles to development. In addition to the tasks of harmonizing and guiding development, in exceptional circumstances the State can also exercise a substitute function, when social sectors or business systems are too weak or are just getting under way, and are not equal to the task at hand. Such supplementary interventions, which are justified by urgent reasons touching the common good, must be as brief as possible, so as to avoid removing permanently from society and business systems the functions which are properly theirs, and so as to avoid enlarging excessively the sphere of State intervention to the detriment of both economic and civil freedom.

In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called “Welfare State”. This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.100

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need. One thinks of the condition of refugees, immigrants, the elderly, the sick, and all those in circumstances which call for assistance, such as drug abusers: all these people can be helped effectively only by those who offer them genuine fraternal support, in addition to the necessary care.

 

[markomalley]

vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html

I have found it very helpful, when reading compendia, such as this one…or the CCC…to look carefully at the footnotes in order to understand what is really being taught here.

To take one of the examples you cited,

the right to a just wage; [651]​

The footnote references Laborem Exercens Article 19.

To understand what is really being taught by that example, it would do us well to refer back to the cited document.

LE 19 has the following to say about a “just wage”:

The key problem of social ethics in this case is that of just remuneration for work done. In the context of the present there is no more important way for securing a just relationship between the worker and the employer than that constituted by remuneration for work. Whether the work is done in a system of private ownership of the means of production or in a system where ownership has undergone a certain “socialization”, the relationship between the employer (first and foremost the direct employer) and the worker is resolved on the basis of the wage, that is through just remuneration for work done.

It should also be noted that the justice of a socioeconomic system and, in each case, its just functioning, deserve in the final analysis to be evaluated by the way in which man’s work is properly remunerated in the system. Here we return once more to the first principle of the whole ethical and social order, namely, the principle of the common use of goods. In every system, regardless of the fundamental relationships within it between capital and labour, wages, that is to say remuneration for work, are still a practical means whereby the vast majority of people can have access to those goods which are intended for common use: both the goods of nature and manufactured goods. Both kinds of goods become accessible to the worker through the wage which he receives as remuneration for his work. Hence, in every case, a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the justice of the whole socioeconomic system and, in any case, of checking that it is functioning justly. It is not the only means of checking, but it is a particularly important one and, in a sense, the key means.

This means of checking concerns above all the family. Just remuneration for the work of an adult who is responsible for a family means remuneration which will suffice for establishing and properly maintaining a family and for providing security for its future. Such remuneration can be given either through what is called a family wage-that is, a single salary given to the head of the family for his work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse having to take up gainful employment outside the home-or through other social measures such as family allowances or grants to mothers devoting themselves exclusively to their families. These grants should correspond to the actual needs, that is, to the number of dependents for as long as they are not in a position to assume proper responsibility for their own lives.

This is immediately followed by a discussion of a mother’s role and how societal economic circumstances should not require a mother to work outside of the home.

Pay particular attention to the last paragraph in the above extract. What John Paul II is advocating is that compensation be adjusted based upon the family circumstances of the individual employee in order to allow the man to go out and raise the family without the woman or the children having to generate income in order for the family to provide for their needs.

In other words, “you’re a family man, you need a bigger salary” or “you’re still living with your parents, so you don’t need to be paid that much.”

How would that type of thing play out in Canadian society? I know it would go over like a lead balloon down here in the States…in fact, I would bet that it is against Federal equal employment opportunity law and an employer that tried to do such a thing would end up in court within seconds of attempting to implement such a scheme.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of a “family wage” is a good one. I think that economics are one of the chief problems that have led to the demolition of the family. And I think the norm of having both spouses in the workplace have led to the depression of wages due to an increased supply of available labor. But I also realize that our society is nowhere near ready to accept such a thought.

Anyway, do you see what I am getting at about going through the footnotes and looking up the references?

 

[triumphguy]

Yes, I read the footnotes - they are often very enlightening

That’s right - a “just wage” is not equal pay for equal work, but adequate pay so that a husband can look after his family in some sort of modest dignity.

That will never happen in the UK, USA or Canada.