What would be a "traditionalist" spin on Catholic Social Teaching?

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RCIAGraduate

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And would any of you have an interesting or unique ideas (perhaps creating cooperatives as a practical example of distributism or revitalizing mutual aid societies) to help implement or practice Catholic Social Teaching within the framework of society? Do you think traditionalist would have a unique take on reading and interpreting the Social Doctrine of the Church, if so how?
 
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Did I say something wrong or do just no voices (lack of interest)( at the moment?
 
RCIAGraduate said:
Do you think traditionalist would have a unique take on reading and interpreting the Social Doctrine of the Church, if so how?
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Yeah, i think they (we?) would put a pretty heavy focus on the acceptance of usury by nearly every society and people on earth. This would require a real hard look at bankers.
 
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Nothing wrong. You asked a very thinky question and your target audience needed to ponder for a bit. The bump should help.
 
Oh dear, I have been thinking about becoming a banker. 😅

On a more serious note, debt has seem to be an issue (student loan debt being an obstacle to things like starting a family, a business or acquiring assets like buying a home or preparing for retirement (or is that also going to be an issue for those with mutual funds)? Is it me or do Americans get stuck or trapped in a debt cycle which could be an obstacle to social mobility and economic advancement?
 
I’m not sure I understand you. Until about, I don’t know, some time in the middle of the 20th century the whole of Catholic history is “traditional.”
Education for the masses? Traditional. Hospitals that take in everybody? Traditional. Papal
Encyclicals discussing workers’ rights? Traditional. Everything about the Church’s social teaching is traditional. Revolutionary in its time, yes, but it all belongs to our rich history.
It would take less time to list the things in Catholic social justice that could be called revolutionary within the last century or so. Catholic “revolutions” happen when the same fundamental principles are re-applied in a context of greater practical knowledge or changing practical conditions, I guess.
 
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Traditionalist people don’t seem to focus much on this, I get the impression their focus is more on the form of the mass.
 
A traditionalist spin could be this - the aesthetics of the liturgy (clothes, music etc.) is it truly indifferent to the interests of the poor?
A rich man sees golden things and beautiful art in the rich home he owns.
A poor man sees no gold, no artistic beauty for most of his life based on ensuring the basic needs of his life. At home he sees a barn. He goes to Church and what does he see?
 
A really high number of Catholics perform their charity in-parish and via donations. I don’t know I could say those who are most fond of the old forms of the liturgy have a higher proportion in that category.
 
Art at home is for personal enjoyment and for personal hospitality.
Art at church is for love of God and love of neighbor. It edifies everyone, rich and poor, parishioner and stranger.
 
I don’t doubt that it’s just it doesn’t seem to be the main topic of conversation
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I don’t doubt that it’s just it doesn’t seem to be the main topic of conversation
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I took you to mean that traditionalists aren’t concerned with Catholic Social Teaching and I’m not quite sure the original question isn’t unknowingly implying that Catholic Social Teaching is somehow outside of the “traditional” realm. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When the Church was still “all-traditional,” I suppose lay people did less of the work that consecrated religious did and certainly they had consecrated religious around to organize it. If there is a “traditional” spin on Catholic Social Teaching, it would be that collaboration with consecrated religious is a huge part of the work of the laity. The laity still did a lot of the outreach to the poor back then, of course their Catholic consciences still informed their voting and their politics, but there were so many more religious congregations that collaboration would have been far more common and perhaps the usual (although not the universal) rule.

I don’t think there is any “traditional spin” other than that to put on Catholic Social Teaching–that is, if you want to dedicate yourselves radically to serving the poor, consider joining a religious community and really give your whole life to it. Traditionally, there wasn’t an idea of a vocation to remain single for the Kingdom but not to be in a community that required obedience of some kind. To remain single wasn’t forbidden, but it was not an extra vocation in its own right. The possibility of getting married or joining a religious congregation was always open, so being single wasn’t a “destination,” so to speak.

Other than that, the teachings already ARE traditional. To put a “spin” on them would be a departure from tradition, not a contribution from it. To find a “traditional spin,” I guess I’d suggest going back and finding what it is about the response to Catholic Social Teaching that has been lost, and how do traditionalists now try to revive what ought to be revived? That would be a traditionalist “spin,” I suppose.
 
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Yes, there is nothing to spin. As a Traditionalist, there are some things that need to be recovered in the outside world and I would discourage any speculation regarding who is or is not doing this or that. However, since our human nature has not fundamentally changed over the last 50 years, I suggest reading a little history. Church history and books approved by the Church. I suggest:

Christian Principles And National Problems by the Rev. Anthony L. Ostheimer, Ph. D. and the Rev. John P. Delaney, S.J., Ph.D. A part of The Catholic Social Studies Series, Rev. Charles J. Mahoney, Ph. D., Editor.
Permissu Superiorum:
Jacobus P. Sweeney, S.J. Provincial

Nihil Obstat:
Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D., Censor Librorum

Impramatur:
Francis J. Spellman, Archbishop
New York, New York

Copyright 1945

This was the background that formed my understanding of society and my place in it.
 
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RCIAGraduate said:
Did I say something wrong or do just no voices (lack of interest)( at the moment?
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I think it was putting the word “traditionalist” in the title. I took it to mean those for example who are deeply attached to Catholic conservatism, the Latin Mass, etc. But I don’t think that is your goal here after reading a bit.
RCIAGraduate said:
On a more serious note, debt has seem to be an issue (student loan debt being an obstacle to things like starting a family, a business or acquiring assets like buying a home or preparing for retirement (or is that also going to be an issue for those with mutual funds)? Is it me or do Americans get stuck or trapped in a debt cycle which could be an obstacle to social mobility and economic advancement?
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Absolutely. Debt is a massive issue and my spouse and I have worked very actively to make sure it is not a part of our lives. If we hadn’t been good savers and weren’t servicing debt from cars or school, we’d have lost our house due to a long period of unemployment, which hopefully will be done in the next few days (prayers!). Debt is delaying virtually everything, especially for the millennials trying to make a start in the world or the baby boomers trying to retire. Either exploding school debt or not being able to ride out the stock market’s current decade long run, which is what has saved my situation.

I really don’t understand why school and medical care has to be so expensive. In many of our peer countries medical care is substantially cheaper, even outside public services. University, especially on the continent is not something everyone does post their basic schooling. In Germany, as best I understand, a test after 6th grade will determine what sort of schooling trajectory you are on. For example is trade schooling or the university a better track. This makes education much cheaper. Higher education is a no frills public university, technical university (Fachhochscule), trade school etc. Some of these are sponsored by private industry too. There are definitely professions where a degree isn’t necessary or whose entry level is low enough that say a High School Diploma is enough and on the job training (but formal or not) will move the person up the industry career ladder.
 
PJH_74 said:
I think it was putting the word “traditionalist” in the title. I took it to mean those for example who are deeply attached to Catholic conservatism, the Latin Mass, etc.
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When I think of a traditionalist, I think someone who wants the baby that without vigilance could have gone out with the bathwater. Sure, sometimes, also the old bathwater, too, but I’d consider that more generally “resistant to change” than traditionalist.

In other words, I think of a traditionalist as some who values the patrimony of the Church and wants to protect it for those who seem to them at least to want to clear out storage space for new “treasures” when those are not yet of proven worth.
 
PJH_74 said:
I really don’t understand why school and medical care has to be so expensive. In many of our peer countries medical care is substantially cheaper, even outside public services. University, especially on the continent is not something everyone does post their basic schooling. In Germany, as best I understand, a test after 6th grade will determine what sort of schooling trajectory you are on. For example is trade schooling or the university a better track. This makes education much cheaper. Higher education is a no frills public university, technical university (Fachhochscule), trade school etc. Some of these are sponsored by private industry too. There are definitely professions where a degree isn’t necessary or whose entry level is low enough that say a High School Diploma is enough and on the job training (but formal or not) will move the person up the industry career ladder.
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(a) The government does not manage prices. Unlike everything else people buy in the free market, when it comes to health care consumers want what seems to be the best and the newest, not the most cost-effective.
Competition and innovation are expensive in other ways. When a hospital first gets a new MRI, it is really expensive but if the next hospital over has one, they need to compete by having the latest equipment. The hospitals have to bill for that equipment in order to pay for it before it is obsolete.
(b) Our complex system makes billing complex, time-consuming and therefore expensive to provide
(c ) Medical school is expensive and self-funded, whereas in places like Germany it is nearly free. The salaries here have to attract the most ambitious and gifted students, because they’re not going to rack up that kind of debt and spend so many years in a competitive school without a lucrative career to pay for it.
(d) Uninsured people are cared for, not left on the streets, so that cost is eventually borne by those who do pay taxes and pay for health insurance.

We also have lower wait times and a more rapid rate of innovation, especially in cancer care. That costs $$$, but people come here from around the world for cancer treatments. Possibly because of our lower wait times, we also have a higher fraction of adults that report being in good health (in spite of our fondness for food and lifestyles that are not conducive to good health).

I think this opinion piece has a lot of good points:


Back to “traditionalists”…there did used to be care for the poor that was provided by religious orders. When health care got to be as complicated as it now is, that model didn’t really work any more. Even religious orders find that sending their members to nursing or medical school or to get a degree in education is a lot more expensive than it once was. That is a function of the same sorts of factors.
 
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@PetraG I agree with you wholeheartedly on the health care answers. I was really asking a rhetorical question in the sense that I really don’t understand why people are happy with this status quo. The point about the uninsured being paid for one way or another is often the point I make to people who are opposed to any sort of universal healthcare.
 
I’m not sure how to answer this question because even within traditionalism, there are cultural differences worldwide between people that otherwise have common traditionalist views about church doctrine and the mass.

For example, I’ve known American traditionalists and British traditionalists, having lived in both countries, and they don’t necessarily have the same views about things like politics, healthcare and role of government and how to apply Catholic social teaching.

The only thing that I can think of that isn’t even necessarily “traditionalist spin” but what should be a basic grave concern for every Catholic is the fact that Catholics shouldn’t be forced to compromise on certain morals in the name of “social justice”. A lot of Catholics seem to have this misguided idea that social justice and concern for things like poverty or the environment justifies things like abortion and contraception. But I don’t even think someone has to be a “traditionalist” to feel this way. Yet more and more I’m seeing Catholics unwilling to compromise being referred to as a traditionalist, which I find odd.

More or less, I’ve never seen a general consensus on social teaching even among Catholics, let alone traditionalists. And the idea that traditionalists don’t care about social issues is absurd.

Pope St. Pius X, beloved among traditionalists, was also a lion for the poor, heartbroken about the onset of World War I and very popular among common people during his life.

“I was born poor, I lived in poverty, I wish to die poor .”
 
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Compromising things which should not be negotiable is the first problem. Second, there are “ideological colonizations” that consist of groups working very hard to promote abortion, contraception and wrong views about the family.

Being unwilling to support wrong ideas is part of what makes me a Traditionalist. I don’t mind the label.
 
Yeah… I just find it strange because it’s only been a recent phenomenon to be labeled as such in my experience, but if it makes me a traditionalist, so be it.
 
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