Lex Christianorum

Politics and a People: Demos and Ethnos

2012-01-28T07:00:00.001-06:00

“THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY FINDS ITS AUTHENTIC dimension in its reference to people, and should in practice be the organic and organizing unity of a real people," states the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. (Compendium, No. 385) Indeed, the Compendium goes further: "For every people there is in general a corresponding nation, but for various reasons national boundaries do not always coincide with ethnic boundaries."* (Compendium, No. 386)

Drawing from Pope Pius XII's Christmas Radio Message in 1944,* the Compendium defines what it understands as "a people" (un popolo).

The term 'a people' does not mean a shapeless multitude, an inert mass to be manipulated and exploited, but a group of persons, each of whom--'at his proper place and in his own way'--is able to form its own opinion on public matters and has the freedom to express its own political sentiments and bring them to bear positively on the common good. A people 'exists in the fullness of the lives of the men and women by whom it is made up, each of whom . . . is a person aware of his own responsibilities and convictions."

(Compendium, No. 385)

The immediate context of these quotes from Pope Pius XII's Radio Message is in his discussion of the contrast between a "genuine spirit of democracy" and a "specious mirage of democracy, naively taken for the genuine spirit of democracy." For Pius XII, the distinction between an authentic democracy and an ersatz democracy seems to stem from a proper understanding of what "a people" is and its relationship to the organs of governance. It may be fruitful to look at that message further in understanding the message of the Compendium.

What is "a People?

In his discussion of the meaning of "a people," Pius XII clearly rejected a people as an artificial aggregation of individuals coerced or controlled through the power of a state. "[T]he state does not contain in itself and does not mechanically bring together in a given territory a shapeless mass of individuals." The State does not make a people.

Rather, a people is something "organic," something that "lives and moves by its own life energy," or by its own life (per vita propria). "In a people worthy of the name, the citizen feels within him the consciousness of his personality, of his duties and rights, of his own freedom joined to respect for the freedom and dignity of others." This feeling is spontaneous, a deeply felt and real urge that one is part of some organic whole. One connaturally feels solidarity with one's people, as one does one's family, or one's team. This membership or citizenship in one's people is natural, and is something that is not externally imposed by a constitution or by law.

Because of this connatural feeling of solidarity, when one is part of a people, one accepts that people's customs, its classes, its inequalities, in short, the "givenness" of things. It is as if one's people is a body in which one lives, and breathes, and has his civil or social being. Or perhaps better, it is as if one's people is one's larger home, whose arrangement, furnishings, and members--for all their quirks--are one's own. And these givens, even those natural inequalities that are not intrinsically unjust or against charity, are accepted with equanimity--indeed with solidarity and love--as they are part of one's very self since one could not think of being something other than part of one's people:

In a people worthy of the name all inequalities based not on whim but on the nature of things, inequalities of culture, possessions, social standing -- without, of course, prejudice to justice and mutual charity -- do not constitute any obstacle to the existence and the prevalence of a true spirit of union and brotherhood.

On the contrary, so far from impairing civil equality in any way, they give it its true meaning; namely, that, before the state everyone has the right to live honorably his own personal life in the place and under the conditions in which the designs and dispositions of Providence have placed him.

A State does not make a people. A people make a State. The State--its constitution, its organic documents, its governing organs, and its laws and institutions--will reflect the characteristics of the people which form it. "From the exuberant life of a true people," Pius XII explains, "an abundant rich life is diffused in the state and all its organs, instilling into them, with a vigor that is always renewing itself, the consciousness of their own responsibility, the true instinct for the common good."

In the United States, "we the people" existed before the Constitution existed. The Constitution did not forge the people, the people forged the Constitution.

In other words, in an authentic democracy, "the people"--and its organic values, structures, and customs which pre-exist the State--are not formed by the State. Rather, the State and its laws are an expression of the people's customs, values, and traditions. The people are not a product of the State's laws and organs of enforcement. The State is at the service of the people, and not the people at the service of the State. The people and their customs and values, so long as not against the natural law or against charity, ought not therefore violated by the State, but, on the contrary, ought to be given expression and supported by the State. The people are not formed by the State top-down, but the State is formed by the people, from the bottom up.

In rejecting what one which may be called the "Statist" view of a people, Pius XII also rejects the Marxist or Communist notion of "a people." Both the more general "Statist" notion, as well as the more particular Marxist or Communist notion of "a people" is corrupt. These notions really view the "people" as what should be understood as "the masses." As he succinctly states: "The people, and a shapeless multitude (or, as it is called, 'the masses') are two distinct concepts." The "masses," in contrast to "a people," "wait for the impulse from outside," and as a result are "an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits their instincts and impressions; ready to follow in turn, today this flag, tomorrow another."

Pius XII continues:

The elementary power of the masses, deftly managed and employed, the state also can utilize: in the ambitious hands of one or of several who have been artificially brought together for selfish aims, the state itself, with the support of the masses, reduced to the minimum status of a mere machine, can impose its whims on the better part of the real people: the common interest remains seriously, and for a long time, injured by this process, and the injury is very often hard to heal.

For Pius XII, "the masses" are therefore "the capital enemy of a true democracy and of its ideal of liberty and equality." True democracy, true liberty, true equality (which is something different than faceless egalitarianism) can never be achieved through the tyrannous recipe of combining external force over "the masses" in a manner which ignores, trivializes, or suppresses what really has existence, namely, "a people."

The moment one suppresses an organic people with a view of some ideal of a people, that people qua the masses, even in the name of "democracy," one sins against both liberty and true equality. Instead of being the field of moral duty of the individual, liberty becomes a "tyrannous claim to give free rein to man's impulses and appetites"--so-called civil "rights"--to the detriment of others." Instead of being an expression of "true honor, of personal activity, or respect for tradition, of dignity--in a word [of] all that gives life its worth," equality "degenerates to a mechanical level, a colorless uniformity," in short, a vicious egalitarianism. The result is a "specious mirage of democracy," a far cry from the "genuine spirit of democracy." What these false notions usher in is not something organic, a government that is an expression of a people. Rather what these false notions engender is a system where there are elites in power are willing to exploit the masses who are uprooted from their relationship to a people, and so become the unhappy victims of the ruling elite.

Now in both the Compendium's use of the term "a people," as well as Pius XII's use of the term "a people," there is a certain vagueness. The term "a people" contains at least two different concepts which inform it. These two concepts are apparent in our use of the term "people."

For example, we use the word "people" in a different manner when we say, as we do in our Constitution, "We the people" or when we refer to ourselves as the "American people," than when we refer to the "Slavic people" or the "Jewish people." Borrowing from the Greek, the sociologist Emerich Francis usefully separated the notions of "a people" into concepts of a demos and an ethnos.*** There is a people qua demos, i.e., a people understood as a demos, and a people qua ethnos, a people understood as an ethnos.

What, more precisely, is the difference between a people qua demos and a people qua ethnos? A people understood as a "demos," is a people understood in terms of a political concept, a people formed by a political constitution, under common laws, and bound by the ties of citizenship. The American people are a people qua demos. On the other hand, a people understood as an "ethnos," are a people understood as an organic and not political concept, a concept which uses ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, or even racial bases for distinguishing one people from another. Used in this manner, a people qua ethnos are bound together by some ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, or racial tie. A people qua ethnos are similar to, but broader than, notions of tribes, of clans, for there can be many tribes or clans within the boundaries of a people understood as ethnos.† The Kurdish people are clearly a people qua ethnos, and not a people qua demos, bound as they are exclusively by racial, linguistic, cultural, and historical ties.

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*A good example of this phenomenon may be the Kurdish people, who, though certainly "a people" approximately 30 million strong, find themselves divided in that they (organically referred to as "Kurdistan," though Kurdistan is not a state, but an ethnic boundary) fall primarily under the governance of the states of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Obviously, this creates the potential for social friction as the natural desire of this ethnic people for self-determination is frustrated by the fact that they exist under the authority of another people. "Thus the question of minorities arises, which has historically been the cause of more than just a few conflicts." (Compendium, No. 387)
**The 1944 Christmas Message of Pope Pius XII may be found in Italian on the Vatican website as Radiomessagio de sua Santità Pio XII ai Popoli del Mondo Intero, and an English translation may be found at www.papalencyclicals.net.
***Emerich K. Francis, Ethnos und Demos: Sociologische Beiträge zur Volkstheorie (Berlin: Duneker und Hublot 1965).
†An excellent example of this might be the Arabs, who constitute a people qua ethnos, but whose tribal component is extremely important.

Politics is Grounded in Personhood

2012-01-26T03:42:00.003-06:00

THE CHURCH'S SOCIAL DOCTRINE as it relates to the foundation and the purpose of political community, is personalist. "The human person is the foundation and purpose of political life." (Compendium, No. 384). At once, this personalist vision rejects several things. First, it rejects any materialistic--that is, non-spiritual, non-Transcendental--vision of the world. Second, it rejects any political theory that rejects the human as a person, with a particular nature (a nature which he makes not himself, but one which is "given"), and with a particular final end, and ultimate destiny (not one which he makes himself, but again one which is "given").

The political community originates in the nature of persons, whose conscience "reveals to them and enjoins them to obey" the order which God has imprinted in all his creatures: "a moral and religious order; and it is this order--and not considerations of a purely extraneous, material order--which has the greatest validity in the solution of problems relating to their lives as individuals and as members of society, and problems concerning individual States and their interrelations."

(Compendium, No. 384) (quoting Pope John XXIII, Pacem in terris, 258 and Mater et magistra, 450)

The Church's political vision clearly is founded on the natural law, on an order that is part of reality, of what is, an order which is given and is part of our creaturehood and createdness, and order which we do not make for ourselves, an order to which conscience prompts us to conform. This natural order, which is a moral one and is to be distinguished from a mere physical order, is part and parcel of God's creation, of which we are part, and it reflects the divine order. Drawing on the philosophical insights of Plato, Platonists, and Stoics, theologians put it this way: the natural law is nothing but an expression of, a participation in, the Eternal Law insofar as it relates to the human person, a rational creation.**

This natural law is, in its most fundamental expression, found in the two-fold commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as one's self. The Golden Rule is at the heart of politics. As the Compendium expresses it:

Being open to both the Transcendent [that is the God who is "beyond" him, "outside" of him, "above" him] and to others is [man's] distinguishing trait. Only in relation to the Transcendent and to others does the human person reach the total and complete fulfillment of himself. This means that for the human person, a naturally social and political being, "social life is not something added one" but is part of an essential and indelible dimension.

(Compendium, No. 384)

Because this order is found all about us and within us, and is part of the natural order of things, it is something that we "discover," not something we "invent."* Since it is principally founded upon the use of practical reason, which of course is limited, created faculty, it should not surprise us that there may be some development in our understanding of the natural law. It should not surprise us that we may--from time to time, as individuals or even as cultures--get it wrong.

Though the order in which the natural law inheres and which it reflects is a posteriori, that is, it exists prior to, and independent of, our existence, the natural moral law is not something which we know a priori. It is something which we learn a posteriori. It is something we learn through the use of our practical reason, particularly the faculty of conscience, as it is informed with the reality that is both in us (especially our inclinations, what I have called our "intellectual feltness"), and around us (especially the existence of others of our kind as equally "intellectors of being" and "willers of good"). For this reason, the Church recognizes that this "order must be gradually discovered and developed by humanity." (Compendium, No. 384)

The fact that we "discover" the natural moral law means that there may be progressive "discovery" of it, i.e., development in our understanding of it. This development occurs not only in the individual (we learn about right or wrong as we grow and develop and confront experiences following the age of reason; hence the notion of wisdom coming with age), but also in societies as a whole as they develop in time, confront situations to which they have to adapt and from which they learn, and develop their particular mores, traditions, and customs.***

Man, a political animal, does not go about implementing this natural law on his own. To be sure the natural law ought to guide his individual acts. But it is also the basis of political life, of social life, of his life in common:

The political community, a reality inherent in mankind, exists to achieve an end otherwise unobtainable: the full growth of its members, called to cooperate steadfastly for the attainment of the common good, under the impulse of their natural inclinations toward what is true and good.

(Compendium, No. 384)

That is to say, in forming their political institutions and their social life, in coming together and cooperating for the common good, human persons are to give priority to the good over the right. In the Church's view, which is one based upon man as he is, the entire modern liberal construct--which gives priority to the right over the good--is ill-conceived.

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*I use scarequotes because we may be said to "invent" the natural law in the original sense of that word. In Latin, the word invenire (from which our word "invent" obviously comes) means to "come upon," to "stumble upon," "to find," or "to discover." The modern denotation and connotation of the English word "invent," however, is to come up with something, to contrive, produce, or fabricate it, for and by one's self. The natural law is not something we "invent" in this latter sense.
**E.g., St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, Q. 91, a. 2.
***It should be stressed that this development is not always progressive. While generally there is progress in man's knowledge, including his knowledge of the natural law (what Yves Simon calls the "law of progressivity"), it is not something assured, and there are times where regress is possible. For example, two generations ago, contraception, abortion, premarital sex, homosexual sexual acts, and divorce and remarriage would have been recognized for what they were: moral enormities. Modernly, we view these as goods or rights. There has been a huge regress in this area. There is also a "law of regressivity."

Priority of the Good over the Right

2012-01-25T04:02:00.007-06:00

THE CHURCH, RELYING ON REASON AND GUIDED BY REVELATION, has her own political philosophy, or perhaps better, principles of political philosophy. The Church rejects the political visions of Machiavelli, of Hobbes, of Locke, of Hume, of Kant, of Rousseau, of Marx, of Rawls. Instead, against these thinkers of modernity, she offers a personalist vision of politics and a personalist theory of authority. The Church's personalist political philosophy is based upon the nature of man, i.e., the natural law. It therefore holds to a theory that good has priority over right, and not that right has priority over the good.* It is the good that defines right. It is not the right that defines the good.**

The ethical world is divided into two: those who give priority to the good over the right, and those who give priority to the right over the good. Classical ethics and political philosophy emphasizes good over right. Modern ethics and political philosophy emphasize right over good. The classical view is virtue-based. The modern view is duty based (e.g., Kant), utilitarian-driven (e.g., Mills and Bentham), contractrarian (Locke, Rousseau), value-based (Scheler), or based on emotivism (e.g., Hume, Moore, Ayer).

The Church's understanding is classical, not modern. The Church teaches that the modern penchant of holding the priority of right over good is wrong.

According to this classical vision [of the priority of the good over the right], determinations of what is just are dependent upon a prior conception of the good of humanity, of a thick or substantive conception of the good that embraces both the community and individuals. In other words, agreement on what justice is is only possibly subsequent to agreement on what constitutes the proper end or good of humanity. Furthermore, this account entails an hierarchical ordering of goods and merit. What is due person is "not same" but correlates instead with one's role and function, and corresponding excellences [virtue], in the community. Fairness, one could say, is not a matter of strict equality in the modern egalitarian sense but of proportion. Like are treated alike, but unlike are treated differently and this is just.

Bell, 198.***

Frontispiece to Nicole Oresme's translation of The Ethics of Aristotle.
Brussels, Bibl. Royale, MS 9505-6, fol 2v
Upper left: Charles V receives his translation from Nicole Oresme;
Upper Right: Charles V and his family;
Lower Left: A king and his counselors attend a lecture;
Lower right: The expulsion of a youth from a lecture.

The classical construct fell apart for a variety of reasons, including the religious divisions caused by the Reformation, the thinking of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, and the rise of Liberalism which viewed society as a group of individuals, each of whom had interests, ends, and conceptions of the good that were equally valid, and among which visions government had no business of choosing. The abandonment of the notion that man had and end (telos) and that man's good was defined by his nature and its inclinations (good) led to a prioritization of the right over the good and a re-definition of justice.

[I]n contemporary parlance, now the right is given priority over the good. What constitutes justice is arrived at apart from any substantive agreement about what constitutes the good or telos of humanity. Justice in modern liberal social orders becomes essentially procedural. Under the sign of modernity, justice is a matter of arriving at a procedure for securing effective cooperation between and security among discrete individuals pursuing an irrepressibly diverse plethora of self-determined interests and private goods. In this situation, justice is no longer conceived as a unitive force. Indeed, with the arrival of modernity, the general virtue of justice is invariably reduced to "legal justice" and equated simply with following the positive laws of the state, or it is discarded altogether. Henceforth, the particular virtue of justdice moves to center stage and increasingly takes on the fundamentally distributive hue that is commonplace today. Correlatively, "right" becomes a matter of discrete "rights" and these rights, instead of being anchored in a (common) good that is external and prior to the individual, adhere to sovereign individuals who possess them prior to (and frequently over against) any communal bonds. The result is a justice that functions essentially as a police force, as a procedural power that attempts to supervise the competition of rival interests struggling for access to society's resources for the sake of the pursuit of private ends.

Bell, 198-99.

Ultimately, the notion of the priority of the right over the good is self-defeating. It is a slogan intended to avoid the hard thinking that is required to know the good. It is a cowardly retreat into skepticism, into moral agnosticism. As Charles Taylor put it in his Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, "the good is always primary to the right" if for no other reason because "the good is what, in its articulation, gives the point of the rules which define the right."†

As Professor Breen summarizes it:

[C]ontemporary Catholic social thought, as well as the historic Western moral tradition prior to the Enlightenment, rejects the lexical priority of the right over the good proposed by Rawls and others. From this historical perspective, the right and the good are distinct but related. Indeed, the right should be seen as a constitutive part of the good.[1] That is, the reason why the right is desired—the reason why the principles of justice are inviolable and so earnestly sought in social life—is because recognition and enforcement of the right itself is good,[2] not because it is somehow independent from the good.[3]

The modern refusal to face "the good," that is, what man is made for, what is his end, and what inclinations and order is built within the nature that is given to him by his Creator is what is at the heart of its reversal of the classical and Christian principle that the good has priority over the right, and not that the right has priority over the good.

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*John Rawls somehow thought that giving right the priority over good would end the interminable squabbles over what was good. Besides, Rawls despaired of man's ability to know the good, whether through reason or revelation. But in addition to create a political theory based upon indifferentism to truth and moral relativism (and one biased in favor of liberalism and against natural law), it simply results in an interminable squabbling over rights.
**Another way of putting the "right over good" notion is that it is based upon deontological ethics (e.g., Kant), whereas "good over right" is based upon teleological, eudaemonistic ethics (e.g., Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas). Yet another way of trying to distinguish may be borrowed from Sidgwick, who called those theories that prioritize right over good imperative (duty or command defining what is good), and those that proritize good over right, attractive (the good attracting us and defining the right). Theories that stress right over good are typical of modernity. Theories that stress good over right are classical and more adaptably Christian. One's political theory is affected by one's ethical presumptions.
***The reference to Bell is to Daniel M. Bell, Jr., "Deliberating: Justice and Liberation," in eds., Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011) (2nd ed.).
†Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 238.

††John M. Breen, "Neutrality in Liberal Legal Theory and Catholic Social Thought," 32 Harvard J. Law & Policy 555-56. The footnotes are re-numbered from the original text. [1] See AQUINAS, supra note 173, at II-II, Q. 58, arts. 3, 5, 6; see also MORTIMER J. ADLER, SIX GREAT IDEAS 136 (1981) (arguing that justice is in "the domain of the idea of goodness" and that "[t]o act rightly or justly is to do good"). [2] See Smith, supra note 187, at 316 (arguing that "rights are valuable only insofar as they are related to our conceptions of what is good"). [3] Rawls’s rhetoric would seem to suggest that the right refers to a moral quality that is somehow separate, or in Rawls’s words, “defined independently” of the good. RAWLS, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, supra note 230, at 24. Indeed, in stressing that “[i]t is essential to keep in mind that in a teleological theory the good is defined independently from the right,” Rawls seems to suggest that the right could be defined wholly apart from the good. Id. at 25. Likewise, by refusing to “interpret the right as maximizing the good” and by insisting that “there is no reason to think that just institutions will maximize the good,” Rawls seems to suggest that the right and the good are not merely distinct but radically different sorts of values. Id. at 30. Rawls, however, recognizes that the putative priority of the right over the good cannot be the priority of one independent category of moral value over another. He concedes that the right is dependent upon a conception of the good. He also admits that to establish the principles of right, “it is necessary to rely on some notion of goodness.” Id. at 396. Still, he attempts to minimize the importance of this concession by asserting that only a “thin theory” of the good, limited to “the bare essentials,” is needed to formulate the principles of justice in the original position. Id. As Charles Taylor has made clear, however, the principles of justice that Rawls articulates are appealing precisely “because they fit with our intuitions.” CHARLES TAYLOR, SOURCES OF THE SELF: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN IDENTITY 89 (1989). Rawls makes no attempt to move beyond the level of intuition. In large part, that is the method and goal of his book—to set forth a theory of justice that eschews metaphysical commitments. Yet, something else lies beneath the surface. As Taylor rightly cautions: "If we were to articulate what underlies these intuitions we would start spelling out a very “thick” theory of the good. To say that we don’t “need” this to develop our theory of justice turns out to be highly misleading. We don’t actually spell it out, but we have to draw on the sense of the good that we have here in order to decide what are adequate principles of justice. Id. Thus, from the Catholic point of view, the so-called "priority of the right over the good" shows itself to be more of a slogan than a serious principle of moral and political philosophy. It is a rhetorical means of overtly claiming to avoid metaphysical commitments regarding the nature of the good while, in fact, surreptitiously employing those very same sorts of commitments.

Caesar and Christ: The Example of the Early Christian Church

2012-01-23T03:08:00.004-06:00

THE BUDDING CHRISTIAN CHURCH found itself in unenviable circumstances, though we may believe it was all providentially determined to be in the fullness of time. Nevertheless, the young Church was persecuted by the Jewish religious authorities. More significant perhaps were the threats that the infant Christian community presented to the Roman empire, its allegedly "divine" emperor and his false pretensions to divinity.

To be sure, the Christian Gospel was revolutionary in a manner of speaking, particularly in its central doctrines--the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Redemption, the Resurrection, to name a few. These were a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles. (1 Cor. 1:23)

Some of its practices, particularly some of its moral doctrines, were equally revolutionary. Perhaps this revolutionary mindset is best described by Tertullian in his Apologeticum: "All things are common among us but our wives."* The early Church had a countercultural notion of marriage and sexual morality. It also had a countercultural notion of solidarity, of community. With respect to private property it had what the Compendium has called the "universal destination" of goods. (Compendium, No. 178)

But when it came to civil authorities, the early Christian Church lived out the notion of the two kingdoms taught by Christ. Christ was her ruler, but she rendered those things to Caesar that were Caesar's. (Mark 12:17) But she rendered to Caesar not those things Caesar demanded, but only those things that were Caesar's. And the Church was the one who defined those limits,not Caesar. Incipient in this formula therefore were the seeds of persecution, inasmuch as the imperial Caesar resisted any limits on his power, especially limits imposed by what he viewed as an upstart Church. The divine Caesar would grow to hate the religion brought by the "Pale Galilean."

Nevertheless, the "party line" in the Church was submission to properly constituted authority. Not passive submission, and certainly not unthinking submission, but submission "'for the sake of conscience' (Rom.13:5) to legitimate authority," inasmuch as this was seen as responding "to the order established by God." (Compendium, No. 380)

Martyrdoms of Sts. Andrew, Paul, and Peter

If Ephesians Chapters 5 and 6 contains a Haustafel or rule for domestic order, then Romans 13:1-7 might be said to contain the Staatstafel or rule for relationship with civil authorities.

Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer. Therefore, it is necessary to be subject not only because of the wrath but also because of conscience. This is why you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

This is a frequent theme in St. Paul. We find it, for example, as part of his instructions to his friend and fellow bishop, St. Titus. "Remind them [his flock] to be under the control of magistrates and authorities, to be obedient, to be open to every good enterprise." (Tit. 3:1) He suggests, further, that St. Timothy have his flock offer "prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings . . . for kings and for all in authority." (1 Tim. 2:1-2)

St. Peter likewise stresses obedience to authority. "Be subject to every human institution for the Lord's sake," St. Peter states in his first epistle, "whether it be to the king as supreme or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the approval of those who do good." (1 Pet. 2:13-14) He gives a short motto to guide the faithful, clearly adverting to the two kingdoms, the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of Caesar. "Fear God, honor the king," τὸν θεὸν φοβεῖσθε, τὸν βασιλέα τιμᾶτε, Deum timete regem honorificate. (1 Pet. 2:17)

There is already in germ in the notions of St. Peter and St. Paul, a Christian political philosophy. Praying for those of authority--even an unfriendly authority--"implicitly indicates what political authority ought to guarantee: a calm and tranquil life led with piety and dignity." (Compendium, No. 381) Moreover, the "biblical message provides endless inspiration for Christian reflection on political power, recalling that it comes from God and is an integral part of the order that he created. This order is perceived by the human conscience and, in social life, finds its fulfillment in the truth, justice, freedom, and solidarity that bring peace." (Compendium, No. 383) Statecraft is soulcraft.

It is significant that St. Paul invokes conscience, and not principally fear of punishment, as a reason for obedience to civil authority. Similarly, St. Peter enjoins obedience, propter Dominum, "for the Lord's sake." Neither St. Peter nor St. Paul, however, must be seen as advocating the "passive obedience" doctrine which was advanced by 17th century "divine right" political theorists in Scotland and England, and certainly not the "active obedience" doctrine of Hobbes.** Recall that it is the same Peter who stated that he was compelled to obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29) What they are advocating is "free and responsible obedience to an authority that causes justice to be respected, ensuring the common good." (Compendium, No. 380)

Both St. Peter and St. Paul, then, understood that there a limits to the authority and power of the State. "When human authority goes beyond the limits willed by God, [and] it makes itself a deity and demands absolute submission," it "becomes the Beast of the Apocalypse, an image of the power of the imperial persecutor 'drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus' (Rev. 17:6)." (Compendium, No. 382)

This is visionary language, but it is not simply a dream. It is meant to inform the Christian:

This vision is a prophetic indication of the snares used by Satan to rule men, [the Beast] stealing his way into their spirit with lies. But Christ is the Victorious Lamb who, down the course of human history, overcomes every power that would it[self] absolute. Before such a power, St. John suggests the resistance of the martyrs; in this way, believers bear witness that corrupt and satanic power is defeated, because it no longer has any authority over them.

(Compendium, No. 382)

Though the New Testament has a positive view on human authority, it also issues forth something entirely new. As Voegelin puts it, Christianity "de-divinized" the temporal sphere and "de-divinized" the State. Politics was no longer the highest art. Man was meant for an eternal destiny, and this spiritual destiny, and the authority and power that related to it, was not in the hands of the State, but in the hand of the Church, to whom Christ, Lord of heaven and earth to whom all authority had been given, had given it. (Acts 17:24; Matt. 28:18)

Christ reveals to human authority, always tempted by the desire to dominate, its authentic and complete meaning as service. God is the one Father, and Christ the one Teacher, of all mankind, and all people are brothers and sisters. Sovereignty belongs to God.

(Compendium, No. 383) It should be however obvious that until Christ's second coming, that sovereignty, that authority, is exercised by representatives.

The Lord,however, "has not willed to reserve to himself all exercise of power. He entrusts to every creature the functions it is capable of performing, according to the capacities of its own nature. This mode of governance ought to be followed in social life. The way God acts in governing the world, which bears witness to such great regard for human freedom, should inspire the wisdom of those who govern human communities. They should behave as ministers of divine providence."***

(Compendium, NO. 383) (quoting CCC, § 1884)
_____________________________________
*Tertullian, Apologeticum, 39.11 ("Omnia indiscreta sunt apud nos praeter uxores.")
**Passive obedience is the political doctrine that held that it was not lawful, under any condition whatsoever, to take arms against the king or his agents, even if the King's law was believed to contradict the law of God. Though internal assent need not be given to an act considered against the law of God, and in extreme situations it could be disobeyed, it was always wrong to resist enforcement of the law, punishment, and incite rebellion. It was a central tenet of the Tory parties and the Jacobites in the 17th and 18th centuries. Hobbes would not even allow for passive obedience, and advanced the idea that a citizen owes active obedience to the absolute power of the states irrespective of the situation. See De Cive, xiv.23. St. Thomas Aquinas, who deals with the issue in his Commentary on the Sentences II, dist. 44, q. 2, art.2--distinguishes between authority, how it is acquired how, once acquired, it is used. Authority may be acquired legitimately or illegitimately (e.g., violence, bribery). Authority acquired unjustly or illegitimately may be resisted if there is an "opportunity," i.e., if prudent, at least up until such time as the authority becomes regularized through consent of the people or a higher authority. Legitimate authority may misuse its power because it acts "contrary to that for which the authority was ordained" (contrarium ejus ad quod praelatio ordinata est). If it orders obedience against the law of God, it must be disobeyed. If that authority acts ultra vires or beyond the scope of its authority (quia cogunt ad hoc ad quod ordo praelationis non se extendit), then "the subject is not held to obey, but neither is he held to disobey" (non tenetur obedire, nec etiam tenetur non obedire).
***This notion of political authority participating in Providence and having something of "its own" given to it by God is quite beautiful. It might be compared to Islam's negative and constraining view. Borrowing from Aristotle's Politics, St. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between despotic and political rule in his Summa Theologiae: "For a power is called despotic whereby a man rules his slaves, who have not the right to resist in anyway the orders of the one that commands them, since they have nothing of their own. But that power is called political or royal by which a man rules over free subjects, who, tough subject to the government of the ruler, have nevertheless something of their own, by reason of which they can resist the orders of him who commands." S.T., Ia, q. 81, a.3, ad. 2. A Muslim is a slave of Allah: he is to submit to the law, the Shari'a which governs all areas of his life, no questions asked. Under St. Thomas Aquinas's distinctions, Allah is a despot, and his slave, the Muslim, has nothing of his own. There is no freedom even to participate in the Providence of Allah. Allah holds the reins of all power, and gives none to man. There is no discretion in the Shari'a, and it leaves no part of life to the human. On the other hand, Christians view God as quite different. God's Providence involves "political or royal" power, a power which rules over "free subjects," subjects who, though under God's governance, "have nevertheless something of their own." God, in other words, has given man something of his own, the ability to participate in law-making, so that the laws that human societies pass participate in the natural law, which in turn is the eternal law as it relates to God's governance of man. Muslims have nothing of their own. They are not free. They are ruled by a despot. Christians have something of their own--granted that something is a gift of God, but it remains something of their own. They are free. They are ruled by royal and political power, a power which seeks obedience of its subjects--not through violence--but through persuasion, through reason, through grace, through love.

Christ's Third Temptation: The Two Kingdoms and Two Loves

2012-01-22T06:40:00.005-06:00

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW tells us that a scholar, one of the party of the Pharisees, was sent to Jesus in order to stump him with a question on which was the greatest of all commandments:

"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

(Matt. 22:36-40; see also Mark 12:28-32; Luke 10:25-27)

According to Jesus, there are therefore two great loves which should govern our lives: love of God and love of neighbor. It is an error to collapse them into one. It is as much an error to ignore or minimize the former as it is to ignore or minimize the latter. "If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." (1 John 4:20)

It is also an error to suggest there is a contradiction or even tension between the two loves. As Dom Jean Leclercq puts it in his classic Seul avec Dieu (Alone with God), "The soul that loves God in God participates in the love by which God unites all the creatures that He loves . . . . Thus the love of God in God extends to all the creatures loved by God but flows into each of them according to its property capacity."* These two loves are entirely consistent since the former orders the latter.

We live in a world, however, and perhaps always have and always will, in which these two commandments--these two loves--are opposed, are set one against the other as if inconsistent. Either that or the two loves are conflated so that one disappears into the other sort of like the Monophysites say what happened to Christ's human nature as it got completely absorbed into his divine nature. Secularists, for example, seem to stress love of neighbor (as they understand it) at the expense of love of God, and so the love of God becomes absorbed into love of man, and disappears. The product is secular humanism. Islamists, on the other hand, seem to stress love of God (understood more along the lines of submission or slaveship) at the expense of love of neighbor.** For Islamists, the love of neighbor becomes absorbed into the love of God, and essentially disappears. The product may be called theoism, or perhaps Allah-ism.***

In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict XVI suggests that the divine ordering of the two commandments is somehow related to the divine ordering in between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. We cannot ignore this divine ordering, for he observes that "without heaven, earthly power is always ambiguous and fragile." (p. 39) In the same way, without heaven, earthly love is always ambiguous and fragile.

"Only when [the earthly] power [of the kingdoms of this world] submits to the measure and the judgment of heaven--of God, in other words--can it become power for good. And only when power stands under God's blessing can it be trusted." (pp. 39) This would appear to be true for the love of neighbor. It is only when the love of neighbor "submits to the measure and judgment of heaven--of God, in other words," that it can become a power for good.

Christ's Temptation, by James B. Janknegt (1990)

There are two kingdoms, really distinct, with one subordinate to the other. There are two loves, really distinct, with one subordinate to the other.

It seems that Western history, and really the history of the world, is jam packed with a tendency of forgetting the real distinction between the two loves--and so conflating the love of God with the love of neighbor or conflating the neighbor with the love of God. In terms of kingdoms, the tendency is to forget the real distinction between the two kingdoms, and so conflate the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world. In such instances, a kingdom of the world becomes confused with the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of God becomes confused with a kingdom of this world.

There is a constant temptation to conflate, to confuse, to collapse distinctions between the things of God and the things of man, and thereby reduce religion to politics or economics, or promote economics or politics to the level of religion. So men traveling through history are constantly confronted--like Christ--with a third temptation of their own:

The temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power. The struggle for freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus' Kingdom with any political structure, is one that has to be fought century after century. For the fusion of faith and political power always comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria.

(p. 40). It is true that historical circumstances have made the notions of Christian empire or the secular power of the Papacy obsolete, and so the temptation that was particular to that historical setting "is no longer a temptation today." (p. 42) And yet we ought not to fool ourselves that the temptation is still not with us. This temptation "is constantly take on new forms," (p. 39) and so it is like the Hydra, a monster which grows another head or two if one is chopped off.

In fact, this Hydra-like temptation simply shows itself in another way, in a way proper to the historical circumstances we face. Modernly, the temptation is to conflate the love of God into the love of neighbor, so that religion becomes a force by which political, economic, or social progress or justice is fanned, and the God whom we do not see becomes secondary, irrelevant.

[T]he interpretation of Christianity as a recipe for progress and the proclamation of universal prosperity as the real goal of all religions, including Christianity--this is the modern form of the same temptation. It appears in the guise of a question: "What did Jesus bring, then, if he didn't usher in a better world? How can that not be the content of messianic hope?

(p. 42-43)

But as the Pope reminds us in his encyclical on hope, Spe salvi:

Christianity did not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas or Bar-Kochba.

Spe salvi, 4.†

The devil is actually much more wilely and subtle than as presented in the third temptation as narrated in Scripture. "The tempter is not so crude" Benedict XVI states, "as to suggest to us directly that we should worship the devil. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to a planned and thoroughly organized world, where God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes." "Religion thus conceived," says James V. Schall who reflects on this passage, is one that is not so much at the service of God, but "at the service of our own world reconstruction."

The Pope continues his reflections and ties in the modern misinterpretations of Jesus as a sort of political or social messiah as nothing other than forms of the "third temptation." We must understand Christ's messiahship as Christ understood it, within the context of the suffering servant of Isaiah, and not as we want it. And the only way to understand Christ's messiahship is to set it within the context of what Jesus rejected in his third temptation.

Jesus' third temptation proves then to be the fundamental one, because it concerns the question as to what sort of action is expected of a Savior of the world. It pervades the entire life of Jesus. It manifests itself openly again at a decisive turning point along his path. Peter, speaking in the name of the disciples, has confessed that Jesus is the Messiah-Christ, the Son of the Living God. In doing so, he has expressed in words the faith that builds up the Church and inaugurates the new community of faith based on Christ. At this crucial moment, where distinctive and decisive knowledge of Jesus separates his followers from public opinion and begins to constitute them as his new family, the tempter appears--threatening to turn everything into its opposite. The Lord immediately declares that the concept of the Messiah has to be understood in terms of the entirety of the message of the Prophets--it means not worldly power, but the Cross, and the radically different community that comes into being through the Cross.

But that is not what Peter has understood. "Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, 'God forbid Lord, this shall never happen to you.'" (Mat. 16:22) Only when we read these words against the backdrop of the temptation scene--as its recurrence at the decisive moment--do we understand Jesus' unbelievably harsh answer: "'Get behind me Satan. You are a hindrance to me for you are not on the side of God, but of men.'" (Mat 16:23)

(p. 42)

What does this say to us? Those that reject the kingdom of God and opt only for the kingdoms of the world, such as the secularists, and those who confuse the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of the world, such as the Islamists or Allah-ists, deserve the "unbelievably harsh answer" that Jesus gave to Peter: Vade retro me Satanas.

Jesus . . . repeats to us what he said in reply to Satan [in the third temptation], what he said to Peter, and what he explained further to the disciples of Emmaus: No kingdom of this world is the kingdom of God, the total condition of mankind’s salvation. Earthly kingdoms remain earthly, human kingdoms, and anyone who claims to be able to establish the perfect world is the willing dupe of Satan and plays the world right into his hands.

(p. 43-44)

If Jesus does not bring us a political program or an economic program, what did he bring us? The answer is simple: Jesus brought us what we really need, for he knew that man does not live by bread alone:

The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God. He has brought the God who formerly unveiled his countenance gradually, first to Abraham, then to Moses and the Prophets, and then in the Wisdom Literature - the God who revealed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the nations of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and love. It is only because of the hardness of hearts that we think this is too little.

(p. 44)

So let us not worry and say, "What are we or our neighbor to eat? What are we or our neighbor to drink? What are we and our neighbor to wear?" All these things the pagans seek without regard to God. God knows we and our neighbor need them all.

What then are we to worry about? We are to worry about seeking "first the kingdom of God and his righteousness"--which is to say, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength." (Matt. 6:31-33; Mark 12:30) Only after being informed by that love of God are we then to concern ourselves with the "kingdoms of this world," with politics and economics and social questions. Things then are added unto us. Only within that love of God, in other words, are we to love our neighbors as ourselves. (Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31) There can be no social justice, in other words, without the love of God first.

As Schall so eloquently summarizes it:

The affirmation of the first three commandments of the Decalogue about the worship of God is also an affirmation to the second seven, the love of God and neighbor. But the second commandment comes about only by knowing the first and its primacy. This is what the third temptation was about. Jesus is the Son, "the new Jacob, the Patriarch of a universalized Israel." The conclusion remains, behind everything that we think and do, "God is the issue."

In his Urbi et orbi message of Christmas 2010, Pope Benedict XVI referred to priority that must be given to the Kingdom of God--that is, the love of God--as a condition of understanding our role of the kingdoms of the world--that is, the love of neighbor:

We know that his Kingdom is not of this world, and yet it is more important than all the kingdoms of this world. It is like the leaven of humanity: were it lacking, the energy to work for true development would flag: the impulse to work together for the common good, in the disinterested service of our neighbor, in the peaceful struggle for justice.

Love God. Love your neighbor for love of God. Do not fall victim to the Third Temptation. Give preeminence to the first, or you will sour or spoil the latter. Do not confuse the two loves, and do not collapse them into one. Remember, there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world. Do not fall victim to the Third Temptation. Give preeminence to the first, seek it first, and then, and only then, attend to the latter. Do not confuse the two, and do not conflate them. In a nutshell, that is the heart of Catholic social doctrine.
____________________________________________
*Dom Jean Leclercq, Alone with God (Ercam, 2008), 127.
**Qur'an 3:31("If ye love Allah, follow me.") Love of God represents a submission to, or following of, Muhammad and his dualistic teachings which call for struggle and indeed war (jihad) against non-Muslims and which reject a universal love of neighbor. There is nothing similar to the two great commandments of Jesus in Muhammad's Qur'an or in the Sunnah.
***"[T]here is a certain cryptic relation between the notion that we can construct our own world [secularism] and the notion that God, if He chooses, can will evil to be good or good to be evil [Islam]." (Schall) "Both the thesis that God is pure will and that he does not exist end up in the same place, as the Pope indicated in the "Regensburg Lecture." They allow us to do what we want and to justify it on theoretic grounds." (Schall) In terms of moral duty, the Islamist, theoist, or Allahist kingdom is starkly dualist. There is one moral law for the Muslim, there is another moral law for the non-Muslims. So Islam suffers from a moral dualism imposed, the Islamist or Allahist would say, positively by Allah. The Jew, the Christian, and Infidel, and the Muslim "hypocrites" (the kuffar, the mushrikun, and the munafiqun) are a different category of neighbor from the Muslim. So the two commandments of Christ become--under the teachings of Muhammad--something akin to love Allah, and love your fellow Muslim, but the Jew, the Christian, the infidel, and the hypocrite you shall not love. This is the upshot of such ayat of the Qur'an such as Qur'an 5:51 ("O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people"). See also Qur'an 3:10, 28, 85, 118; 5:80; 9:23; 53:29.
†Spartacus (ca. 109–71 BC) was a Thracian gladiator/slave who became a famous military leader of his fellow slaves in the Third Servile Was, an ultimately unsuccessful slave rebellion against the Roman Republic. Spartacus is frequently cited as an example of an oppressed people fighting for their freedom against their oppressors. Notably, he was an inspiration to modern revolutionaries such as Karl Marx (who mentions him as his "hero" in his Confession at Zalt-Bommel, April 1, 1865) and Fidel Castro's comrade-in-arms, the guerillero Che Guevara. Barabbas, of course, was the Jewish revolutionary who was released during the Passover season at the behest of the crowd when given an option by Pilate on whether to release Barabbas or Jesus based upon legal custom. (e.g., Matt. 27:15-26) Simon bar Kochba was a 2nd century Jewish leader who successfully spearheaded the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 A.D. He was head of a short-lived Jewish state, which eventually was re-conquered by the Romans in 135 A.D. As to those whose "struggle led to so much bloodshed" and those who "fight for political liberation," Pope Benedict XVI may have cited Muhammad, a self-acclaimed "prophet" who, more than anyone in the history of the world, fell into the temptation of advocating "the fusion of faith and political power," failing thereby to recognize the price that in such instances "faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria." (p. 40) But surely his recollection of the violent Muslim reception of his 2006 "Regensburg Lecture" and its tangential reference to Muhammad by quoting the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1455-1512) ("Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.") suppressed any inclination at pointing out the obvious.

Christ's Third Temptation: Introduction

2012-01-19T05:46:00.001-06:00

IN THE PAST TWO POSTINGS we have reviewed the Old Testament notion of Yahweh Malak, Yahweh as the real or final king or ruler of Israel. We also looked at the New Testament understanding of Jesus who announces the kingdom of God, and who is, himself, and seminally and mysteriously through the the New Israel,* i.e., the Church which He founded on Peter, the kingdom or ruleship of this Yahweh. We spent some time looking at the Scriptural references to the kingdom of God or, what is the same thing in typically Matthean language, the kingdom of heaven. With this background we are ready to look at the third temptation of Christ as related in the Gospels.* (Matt. 4:8-10; Luke 4:5-8) The version of the Gospel of Matthew is given first. The version in the Gospel of Luke is given next.

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me." At this, Jesus said to him, "Get away, Satan! It is written: 'The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.'"

Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, "I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me." Jesus said to him in reply, "It is written: 'You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.'"

The versions are essentially identical, and it seem little can be gained by contrasting them. What does yield some interesting fruit is the contrast between Christ's assumption of kingship, his preaching of the kingdom of God, and his insistence, immediately prior to his Ascension, that all power under heaven and earth had been given him (Matt. 28:18), with His rejection of the temptation of Satan presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Christ rejects ruleship of all "kingdoms of this world," but plainly accepts ruleship of the "kingdom of heaven" or the "kingdom of God." But Christ's rejection of the "kingdoms of this world" is not absolute. Ultimately, as those revelations in Scripture that point to the culmination of history, the eschaton, make plain, all nations, that is, all kingdoms of this world, will be placed under the ruleship of Christ. But this culmination is by God's proffer and in God's time, not through Satan's proffer and Satan's time. "The kingdoms of the world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed, and he will reign forever and ever." (Rev. 11:15; cf. Matt. 8:11; Daniel 2:44; 7:27)

The Third Temptation of Christ, by Duccio de Buoninsegna (ca. 1308-11)

While Jesus clearly rejected ruleship over the "kingdoms of this world" in the manner offered by Satan--one of which surely included the imperium of the Roman Emperor Augustus, the divinized "Caesar" of the Gospels--he did not for all that "directly oppose himself to the authorities of his time." (Compendium, No. 379) "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's." (Matt. 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25). Indeed, Christ insisted that all authority and the power of the "kingdoms of this world" are ultimately derived from God. (John 19:11; Rom. 13:1) He submitted himself to both religious and civil authorities as being part of the Father's plan, knowing that if he wanted he could easily call in heavenly aid. (Matt. 26:52)

How then are we to fit all this together? A kingdom of God for which we ought to sell all, the "kingdoms of this world," the temptations of which we are to shun, and yet whose authority we are not generally directly to oppose because it comes from God?

In contrasting these two kingdoms, we seem to confront what St. Augustine in his work De civitate Dei called the "two cities," "formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self." Indeed, St. Augustine uses the full talents of his Roman rhetoric to contrast the difference between these "two cities," which is nothing other the contrast between the "kingdoms of this world," the keys of which seem to be on Satan's keyfob, and the "kingdom of God" or the "kingdom of Heaven," the keys to which seem to be with the Lord but lent for a time to Peter, His Vicar:

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength." And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God "glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,"--that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,--"they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, "and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, "that God may be all in all."***

To take this exploration between Christ's kingdom and the kingdoms of this world a littler further, we might turn to the insights of Pope Benedict XVI's private reflections on Christ's third temptation in his book Jesus of Nazareth.† What Benedict XVI suggests in his reflections is that what is involved in the interrelationship between the "kingdom of God" and the "kingdoms of this world" is the proper interrelationship between the two great commandments, which, of course, are a synopsis of the natural moral law in the light of Revelation.

(continued)

____________________________________________
*cf. Rom 9:6, Col. 2:11-12; see also CCC § 877, Vatican II, Ad gentes, No. 5.
**It is given as the second temptation in the Gospel of Luke.
***St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, XIV.28. The text is rich with scriptural references, including Ps. 3:4, 17:2, Rom.1:21-23, 25, and 1 Cor. 15:28. The text in Latin: Fecerunt itaque civitates duas amores duo, terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei, caelestem vero amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui. Denique illa in se ipsa, haec in Domino gloriatur. Illa enim quaerit ab hominibus gloriam; huic autem Deus conscientiae testis maxima est gloria. Illa in gloria sua exaltat caput suum; haec dicit Deo suo: Gloria mea et exaltans caput meum. Illi in principibus eius vel in eis quas subiugat nationibus dominandi libido dominatur; in hac serviunt invicem in caritate et praepositi consulendo et subditi obtemperando. Illa in suis potentibus diligit virtutem suam; haec dicit Deo suo: Diligam te, Domine, virtus mea. Ideoque in illa sapientes eius secundum hominem viventes aut corporis aut animi sui bona aut utriusque sectati sunt, aut qui potuerunt cognoscere Deum, non ut Deum honoraverunt aut gratias egerunt, sed evanuerunt in cogitationibus suis, et obscuratum est insipiens cor eorum; dicentes se esse sapientes, id est dominante sibi superbia in sua sapientia sese extollentes, stulti facti sunt et immutaverunt gloriam incorruptibilis Dei in similitudinem imaginis corruptibilis hominis et volucrum et quadrupedum et serpentium: ad huiuscemodi enim simulacra adoranda vel duces populorum vel sectatores fuerunt: et coluerunt atque servierunt creaturae potius quam Creatori, qui est benedictus in saecula. In hac autem nulla est hominis sapientia nisi pietas, qua recte colitur verus Deus, id exspectans praemium in societate sanctorum non solum hominum, verum etiam angelorum, ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus.
†We shall also rely on the keen insights of Fr. James V. Schall, who wrote a series on Benedict XVI's book, including one piece that specifically reflected on this third temptation, and which also incorporates Pope Benedict XVI's "Regensburg Lecture." See James V. Schall, "God Is The Issue” The Temptation in the Desert and the Kingdoms of This World" in cuorliber.wordpress.com.

The Kingdom of God and His Christ

2012-01-16T03:28:00.009-06:00

IN THE MIND OF HIS DISCIPLES, Jesus was and is and ever shall be King. That is why we pray in the Te Deum:

Tu Rex gloriae, Christe.
. . . .
Tu, devicto mortis aculeo,
aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum.

You are the King of Glory: O Christ.
. . . .
When you had overcome the sharpness of death:
you did open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

But Jesus not an ordinary King with an ordinary kingdom. The kingdom or ruleship Christ claimed for himself was not an ordinary kingdom. Christ's kingdom was a kingdom not of this world. (John 18:36) It was invisible, spiritual, internal, eternal one--though it was among us, about us, around us, and within us in time until the end of time when it would reach its fulfillment. "The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed," Jesus told the Pharisees, "and no one will announce, 'Look, here it is,' or, 'There it is.' For behold, the kingdom of God is among you." (Luke 17:20-21)

It is a strange kingdom whose King finds His earthly manifestation not on a throne, with gold crown, and lush raiment. But rather whose glory is to be nailed to a cross--a cross which St. John Eudes called the thronus amoris igneus, the wooden throne of love--with a crown of thorns, essentially disrobed and naked, and a sign, intended to be mocking, but which, ironically, declares his hidden kingship in the three sacred languages:

IESVS·NAZARENVS·REX·IVDÆORVM
IHΣOYΣ O NAZΩRAIOΣ O ΒΑΣΙΛEYΣ ΤΩΝ ΪΟΥΔΑΙΩN
ישוע הנצרי מלך היהדים

Crucifixion of Christ by Matthias Grunewald (Detail)

The kingdom of God, St. Paul further explains, "is not a matter of food and drink." Rather, it is a matter of "righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit." (Rom. 14:17) This means it is a moral, and even more importantly, a spiritual and supernatural reality, and not a bodily, temporal, or social one. It is not something flesh and blood will inherit, like some sort of human realm or human property. (1 Cor. 15:50) It is not just talk, vain hope, empty words, since there is a real power behind it. (1 Cor. 4:20) Words don't allow us admittance; it requires something internal--repentance, a conversion, a "re-turn" to God--and a fixed intention on only doing the will of God the Father who is in heaven. (Matt. 7:21) This means, keeping the commandments and teaching others to keep the commandments is what this kingdom is all about. (Matt:5:19) It is a secret, a mystery, the knowledge of which has been imparted to to Christ's intimates, (Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10) and yet one which must be proclaimed to the world.

But what a precious secret which is to be proclaimed to the world and, as it were, made unsecret! It is one for which one should sell all he has. It is like a a field one discovers contains treasure, and one covers it up, sells all he he has, and buys it, so as to become rich in the bargain. (Matt. 13:44) It is the pearl of great price, one for which the spiritual merchant will sell all he has to acquire. (Matt. 13:46)

And yet that secret which is to be unsecreted is silent, inexplicable, marvelous, and has an organic tendency to grow and bear fruit. And so the kingdom of God is like the mystery of the seed sown by a farmer, which grows, whether tended or not, and which ultimately reaps a huge harvest. It is like a mustard seed, a tiny seed, but one which grows into a huge tree. It is like yeast which is mixed with dough and which makes it rise. (Mark 4:26-32; Luke 13:19-21)

In a sense, the kingdom of God was present in Christ, and is Christ, since he drove out demons and explained that this was a sing that the kingdom of God had come to us. (Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:20) It, in fact, is also mysteriously, intimately, and indissolubly linked to Christ's Church, which is Christ's body, "the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery," (VII, Lumen gentium, No. 3), the "seed and the beginning of that kingdom," (CCC § 768 quoting LG, No. 5), a "sign and instrument of the kingdom." (Dominus Iesus, No. 18) "In fact, the kingdom of God which we know from revelation, 'cannot be detached either from Christ or from the Church . . . yet while remaining distinct from Christ and the kingdom, the Church is indissolubly united to both." (Dominus Iesus, 18) There is a "unicity" in the "relationship which Christ and the Church have with the kingdom of God." (Dominus Iesus, No. 19)

Because this kingdom exists with us in the Church, so the good wheat grow with the tares in the kingdom's field, there is good fish and bad fish in the kingdom's net, which might confuse us or cause scandal. (Matt. 13:24-30, 47-49) We must however remain faithful to Christ and his Church, as those who reject Christ are not part of a the kingdom of God. (Matt. 21:43) And yet, it is open to admission for those who, at the last moment of their lives, repent, for the first shall be last, the last shall be first.

The kingdom of God though akin to a secret, however, is something for which is preached, for we work for, for which we suffer and experience hardship, even persecution, and the coming of which we wait. (Acts 8:12; 14:22; 28:31, 2 Thess. 1:5, Col. 4:1, Matt. 5:10; Mark 15:43) It is something that sometimes requires the sacrifice of leaving home, wife, family. (Luke 18:29) It is something that requires preparation, wise custody, effort and planning. (Cf. Matt. 25:1-11) It is something which we enter by baptism, so it is closely linked, if it is not in fact equated, with the Church. (John 3:5) It is a difficult acquisition, hard to enter, and difficult to stay in. (Mark 10:24) We do not inherit it without condition, since we are banned from it if we are wicked. (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:21) "Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Gal. 5:19-21)

We are therefore to act forcefully to avoid any sin that threatens to keep us from entering it. (Mark 9:47) The rich whose heart is in their earthly treasure, and who focus upon acquiring riches in gold rather than riches in spirit, have a difficult time accessing the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:23) The selfish, self-regarding, self-sufficient rich are not our model. Rather, we must become innocent, poor in spirit, dependent, receptive, and full of wonder like little children. (Matt. 18:4; 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:17; Matt. 5:3) It is something that, once being in, we ought not to look back, for no one who "set his hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62) The keys to that kingdom were given to Peter, the Rock, and it will be with us until the end of time, for the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. (Matt. 16:18-19)

The kingdom of God, though present even in Christ when he walked on earth, and though present in us even now, and always near (Luke 10:11), will not be fully realized until the end of time, when, according to Scripture, an angel will blow his trumpet and voices in heaven will sing: "The kingdom of the world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed, and he will reign forever and ever." (Rev. 11:15; cf. Matt. 8:11; Daniel 2:44; 7:27) It is something the consummation of which ought devoutly to be wished, and indeed, the Lord taught us to pray to the Lord God, "thy kingdom come," adveniat regnum tuum." (Matt. 6:10; Luke 11:2) And St. Paul prays impatiently: Lord come! Maranatha! (1 Cor. 16:22)

The Kingdom of God was one that did not rely on violence, even justifiable violence, against properly constituted authority. (John 18:36) It was not one that relied upon the sword. It was not one that relied upon "oppressive and despotic power," such as the power "wielded by the rulers of nations." (Compendium, No. 379) And yet the Kingdom of God offered a huge challenge to the kingdoms of this earth.

The kingdom of God ushered in by Christ was one that operated above and beyond and around and within existing kingdoms and kings, those who claimed, falsely in an absolute sense, to have final authority over, and be the real benefactors (euergetai) of, their people, and thereby approach divinity.* (Luke 22:25) Such claims were false because Jesus knew that there was no authority exercised by any magistrate except that it was given to him by God. (John 19:11; cf. Rom 13:1) Such claims were also false because Jesus knew that the only real benefactor of men is God, the God who feeds the birds of the air who store not goods in barns, and who sees to it that the lilies, who neither labor nor spin, have beautiful raiment.

So do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?' All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

(Matt. 6:26-33)

The Kingdom of God operated on a model entirely different from those under which the rulers of the world operated. In a sense it is topsy turvy. The model of leadership was service (diakonos), youth (neōteros), even slavery (doulos). (Luke 22:26; Mark 10:43-44) In this way, the leader was to imitate Christ, the "Son of Man [who] did not come to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many." (Cf. Mark 10:42-45) That is why the Pope, heir to St. Peter's keys, is called the servant of the servants of God, servus servorum Dei.
________________________________
*Interestingly, this is the only instance in the entire scriptures where the word benefactors (euergetai) is used. In Hellenistic thought, "For a man, to benefit others is a way to be divine." For a ruler to adopt the term "euergetai" was for that ruler to imply "an almost supernatural personality," since he gave without receiving. Following Alexander the Great's example, who saw himself as a great benefactor by freeing people from the barbarians and introducing them into Hellenistic culture and governance, many rulers called themselves benefactors of their people, euergetai. Significantly, the benefits given the euergetai were "welfare benefits," in the form of corn, food, shelter, and water. Gloria Vivenza, "Classical Roots of Benevolence," in B. B. Price, ed, Ancient Economic Thought (New York: Routledge, 2005), Vol. 1, 190-91. This seems almost an implied criticism of what we could call a nanny state where we put too much reliance upon the state, and not enough reliance upon God.

"Two There Are"

2012-01-15T02:30:00.004-06:00

“DUO SUNT," SAID POPE GELASIUS I in a letter to Emperor Anastasius, "quibus principaliter mundus hic regitur."* "Two there are by which this world is ruled." Pope Gelasius I merely reformulates what is the teaching of our Lord, and which is part of reality, of what is, in the political world for those who bask in the benefit of Revelation. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar, and to God the things that are God’s." (Matt. 22:21) Since Christ came into this world, the Christian knows that there are two public songs, and not just one, in the world.

The Catholic accepts the duo sunt as part of what is in the political world. There is therefore in the Catholic mind, both Church and State, and a natural and necessary separation of Church and State. But this separation of Church and State does not imply subordination of Church to State. Quite the contrary, though coordinate powers each with its proper sphere, in matters of faith and of morals, the Church is superior, for the State is here incompetent. In Christianity, the State is de-divinized, the Church is de-politicized. The State is not in possession of spiritual power. The Church is generally not in possession of earthly power. These powers are to work together for the common good. Duo sunt.

Both Church and State have public voices; both sing a song. The Catholic, both a citizen and a member of Christ’s faithful, hears both songs and both voices, for he or she knows there are two. But like St. Thomas More’s last words as he approached the scaffold and imminent death, the Catholic is “the King’s good servant, but God’s first.” One song, one voice in particular, the voice of God, the vox Domini Iesus Christi, holds him in absolutely thrall. He hears the song of his Master, whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light, and he hears to song of Caesar, and of the two songs he recognizes the voice of the Lord as the most lasting, the most beautiful, the most true. (Matt. 11:30)

When push comes to shove—and there is progressively more shoving and less pushing as the Western democracies in their recreation of society in man's own image jettison their Christian capital as if but flotsam or jetsam—the Catholic will say with St. Peter, "We must obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29). The Catholic insists there are two voices, but also that there is one more beautiful and lasting than the other—for he hears them both and is able to distinguish them and he knows which is more beautiful—duo sunt.

Pope St. Gelasius I, Charlemagne, and Pope St. Gregory I
From a 9th Century Sacramentary of Charles the Bald

Like the singing Jewish captive by the rivers of Babylon, the Catholic would rather his right hand wither, and his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, rather than forget the words to his song, the song of the sounds of heavenly Zion, duo sunt. (Cf. Ps. 137 (136):5-6) Duo sunt, duo sunt, duo sunt is the leitmotif of his song, a political and religious song which is not monophonic, but diaphonic. His political song has two voices which, if there is to be proper order, must try to sing in harmony.

Modernly, the Catholic is pressed hard between two groups that command center stage, and which have in their hands either power or violence (and there is but a thin line between the two). These two groups cry not duo sunt, but unus est. These are the secularists and the Islamists, and they seem to divide the world between them.

For secularists, the State is all there is; there is no spiritual power. In their zeal for power, the dogmatic secularists cry out like the high priests did to Pontius Pilate: “We have no king but Caesar.” (John 19:15) The modern secular State is the Hobbesian “mortal God,” and there is no immortal God which competes for obeisance, for secularism subscribes to the Nietzschean view that the immortal God—the God of Jacob, Isaac, and Joseph—is dead. For them, Gott is tot.** Since for the modern secular State God is dead and sings no more, it, and it alone, is the final reality: unus est. It calls itself liberal, but it is not, since it can only hear one voice: its own.

The secularist knows no reality outside of what he makes for himself. Man is one dimensional, and he answers neither to God nor to any fixed nature. For the secularist, there is no such thing as an objective reality, one pre-existing him, one founded on nature or nature’s God, one which must be given public voice. But against the voice of the secularist who exclaims unus est, the Church insists in both the reality of the natural law and in the truth of the Gospels. Nature and Nature’s God. Duo sunt.

The secularist does not like this, and he is a proud spirit who does not endure to be mocked. As James V. Schall states in his book The Sum Total of Human Happiness, there is, in the modern world, a real hatred to those who sing the song of duo sunt. There is, he says, "a real hatred of man as he is pictured in natural law and in the Gospels."*** Anyone who insists on this picture of man is likewise hated, is a persona non grata. And so it is in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II adverts to these singers of duo sunt, those "convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it," and he recognizes that they "are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view." (No. 46) In the face of the secularist state, we are unreliable citizens because we believe in an objective reality, because we believe in duo sunt. Christians are not to be included in the public secularist choir which sings songs only of unus est, as it worships not God but only itself.

In the main, secularists like to think themselves liberal, but they are intolerantly liberal. They are tolerant of all intolerance but their own, to which intolerance they are blind. And that intolerance is aimed at particular ferocity at those who insist on an objective reality outside of that which we make for ourselves. This includes those who insist—the way Catholics must do if they are think like a Catholic—of the truth of duo sunt.

To be sure, the liberals being effete do not like blood. But though they wince at drawing blood, they are not shy at wielding power, much less moral suasion. The problem they confront, as James Schall puts it is "how to silence Socrates without the nasty business of killing him, and how to tame the teachings of Christ without putting Him on the Cross."† Their schemes to do this are legion, including ridicule, public banishment, the closing of the public square to them, and—increasingly—legal burdens and legal constraints. There are ominous signs of worse things to come.

Why this foreboding? "The claim that certain actions are wrong," Schall observes, "is implicitly a threat to the [modern] state, which is designed to prevent strife and which is neutral to all values except to intolerance . . . . In this sense, the theory is already in place that makes Christians enemies of the state. We simply await its enforcement, either by converting or coercing Christians to live according to secular norms or by marginalizing or eliminating those who insist in calling wrong what the state guarantees as 'right.'"†† What Schall sees coming is secular dhimmitude. Unless things change, there will be a time where, like Christ, we will be "handed over" to the secular authorities. So, at least, the trajectory appears to be going.

Resurgent Islam falls into the same trap as secularism, but from another angle. For Islam, the Ummah—the Islamic “nation/church” for lack of a better word—is all there is. Islam is composed of “three ds,” din, dunya, and dawla—religion, social life, and state; there is nothing outside of it. In traditional Islam, there is no division of church and state. Islam is comprehensive. In Islam, like in the modern secular state, unus est.

Both the secularist State and resurgent, traditional Islam seem therefore to have divided the world between. One wants to be victorious through military power and advanced technology. The other wants to become victorious (since they do not yet hold the reins of power) like their alleged prophet Muhammad purportedly said in one hadith, "through terror."†††

Both secularist and Islamist refuse the Christo-Gelasian truth of duo sunt. In rejecting the duo sunt, and in accepting the unus est as the only reality, each has succumbed to its particular temptation.

The secularists have fallen prey to the temptation “you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:5) It is the temptation of Satan which, as Milton put it in his Paradise Lost, was enshrined in the political motto "evil be thou my good."‡

The Islamist—as heir to Muhammad’s clumsy fall to the temptation of the kingdoms of this world that Christ nimbly side stepped—has succumbed to the temptation to rule all the kingdoms of this world in the name of Allah. The Muslim historian at-Tabari relates the instance of Muhammad summoning his tribesmen the Quraysh to accept his message that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger. It is this message, Muhammad argues, "through which the Arabs will submit to them and they will rule over the non-Arabs," that is all other nations.‡‡ Rejected in Mecca by his tribesmen the Quraysh, Muhammad was offered political power by the non-Jewish tribes of Medina. Muhammad took what Christ rejected as something offered by the voice of Satan. Muhammad wanted the kingdoms of this world. And Islam has been burdened by the falsehood of unus est ever since, and probably ever shall be, despite the valiant efforts of Muslim reformers whose work of the last two generations appears to have unraveled in the so-called "Arab Spring."

To the secularists, Catholics are the enemy of the state. To political Islam, Catholics are the enemy of God. Like Christ, our Lord, we are “despised and rejected by men,” Isaiah 53:3, Islamists on one side and secularists on the other. This ought not to surprise us. "And you shall be hated by all men for my name’s sake." Matt. 10:22. “Remember the word I spoke to you, 'No slave is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you." They will persecute us because we insist in the truth: Duo sunt.

To the pompous and bombastic voice of the secular State—Caesar divinized, divus Caesar—the Catholic, like Ulysses responding to the voice of the Sirens beckoning him unto shipwreck on the rocky shores of the three small islands of the Sirenum Scopuli, will either put wax in his ears or will tie himself to the mast of Peter's barque so as to reject the siren songs of unus est which lead to the tyranny of relativism, and hold fast to the truth that will spare him shipwreck, the truth of duo sunt.

To the triumphalistic and irrational entreaty of the radical Muslim’s da'wah, like Orpheus and his Argonauts, who faced the same temptation as Ulysses in another time and place, the Catholic will take out his psalter and, like Pope Benedict XVI did in Regensburg, sing the hymns of duo sunt so loudly as drown out the opposing voices of the Muslims who sing the false songs of unus est. They sing of a tyrannous God who is not Father, who did not become one of us, and indeed could not become one of us, and so is a God of a different kind entirely. And while thy sing simplex, they slaughter or oppress their adversaries--such as the Chaldean Catholics in Iraq and Iran, the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Nigeria or Sudan--who sing duplex believing (since they only hear one voice) they have warrant for it. Muslim nations, we were recently reminded by the 2012 World Watch List report by Open Doors, made up nine out of the top ten countries where Christians face the "most severe" persecution.

The moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre ends his splendid book After Virtue by noting that we are not waiting for a secular, relativistic and ultimately meaningless Godot, but rather for a new St. Benedict. But in this respect MacIntyre has got it wrong, or, more accurately, only partly right. What Catholics and indeed all Christians—who confront both dogmatic secularism on one side and dogmatic Islamists on the other—need is not only a new St. Benedict, but also a new Charlemagne.

We need both a St. Benedict and a Charlemagne. Why?

Because we know the political song has two voices. Because political reality is not unus est, but duo sunt.

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*Duo sunt quippe, imperator auguste, quibus principaliter mundus hic regitur, auctoritas sacrata pontificum et regalis potestas, in quibus tanto gravius pondus est sacerdotum quanto etiam pro ipsis regibus hominum in divino reddituri sunt examine rationem. nosti etenim, fili clementissime, quoniam licet praesedeas humano generi dignitate, rerum tamen praesulibus divinarum devotus colla summittis atque ab eis causas tuae salutis expetis hincque sumendis caelestibus sacramentis eisque, ut competit, disponendis, subdi to debere cognoscis religionis ordine potius quam praeesse, itaque inter haec illorum to pendere iudicio, non illos ad tuam velle redigi voluntatem. si enim quantum ad ordinem publicae pertinet disciplinae, cognoscentes imperium tibi superna dispositione conlatum legibus tuis ipsi quoque parent religionis antistites, ne vel in rebus mundanis exclusae ... videantur obviare sententiae, quo, oro te, decet affectu eis et convenit oboedire qui praerogandis venerabilibus sunt attributi mysteriis? ... et si cunctis generaliter sacerdotibus recte divina tractantibus fidelium convenit corda submitti, quanto potius sedis illius praesuli consensus est adhibendus quem cunctis sacerdotibus et divinitas summa voluit praeminere et subsequens ecclesiae generalis iugiter pietas celebravit? ... rogo, inquam, ut me in hac vita potius audias deprecantem, quam, quod absit, in divino iudicio sentias accusantem.
**The statement "Gott is tot," God is dead, first appears in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) in sections 108, 125, and 343. It also appears in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra).
***James V. Schall, S.J., The Sum Total of Human Happiness (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2006), 39.
†Schall, 40.
††Schall, 45.
†††Sahih Bukhari, 4.52.220.
‡"So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, / Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost. / Evil, be thou my good." Paradise Lost, IV, ll. 108-110.
‡‡The History of al-Tabari, Volume VI (Muhammad at Mecca) (New York: State University of New York,1988) (W. Montgomery Watt, trans.), 95.

The Messianic and Davidic Kingship

2012-01-14T06:37:00.005-06:00

IN OUR PRIOR POST WE REFLECTED upon the so-called "Enthronement Psalms" which provide an insight into the people of Israel and how what Voegelin called the "leap in being," that is, the revelation of Yahweh, affected their concept of kingship. For the people of Israel, no earthly king was absolute, and all temporal governing was relative and was underneath as it were, the rule of Yahweh, the King of Kings, for Yahweh malak. It is with this "leap in being" in the area of politics that the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church begins its chapter on the political community.

"At the beginning of its history, the people of Israel are unlike other peoples in that they have no king, for they recognize the dominion of Yahweh alone." (Compendium, No. 377) Yahweh malak.

But Yahweh does not come down from heaven and rule direct in some sort of theocracy. Yahweh rules through the charismatic leadership of Moses, followed by Joshua, and then through his successors in the so called "judges" (shofetim or shoftim [שופטים]--singular shofet). These judges were not judges in our usual sense, but were both political and military leaders that governed Israel after Joshua led them into Canaan. They ruled over Israel for about 350 years (between approximately 1228 B.C. to 877 B.C.) until the last such judge, Samuel, was persuaded by the people to give them a king (melek [מֶ֔לֶךְ]) like the neighboring kingdoms, and he anointed King Saul. (see 1 Sam. 9:16)

Because of Israel's sacred history, its notion of kingship was different from those of its neighbors. It is messianic. In Israel's view, the king is chosen by Yahweh (cf. Deut. 17:15; 1 Sam. 9:16), is consecrated or anointed (mesahehu, from where we get the word Messiah) by and unto Yahweh (1 Sam. 16:12-13), and, indeed is seen figuratively as "God's son," (Psalm 2:7 "my son," (beni [בְּנִ֖י]). Israel's king is not intended to glorify himself, but is meant to "make God's dominion and plan of salvation visible" to the people of Israel. (Compendium, No. 377)

Head of King David, ca. 1145.
France, Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral

Saul, the first king, was a sort of catastrophe, and it was to be his successor, King David, who was to be regarded as the "prototype of the king chosen by Yahweh." (Compendium, No. 378) It is with David that the connection between king and priest, king and messiah, king and sonship, is most clearly developed. For all King David's faults (and they were many), and for all the faults of his successors, the reign of Israel's messianic kings somehow beckon towards a "son of David," who would be the King of kings, a Lord of lords, the Anointed of all anointed. "[T]his tradition," so central to the Old Testament, "culminates in Jesus Christ, who is par excellence 'Yahweh's anointed' (that is, 'the Lord's consecrated one'), the son of David." (Compendium, No. 378)*

Israel's kings failed "on the historical level." Indeed, Israel soon split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, were temporarily rejoined, and then split again between King Jeroboam of the northern kingdom of Israel and King Rehoboam of the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel lasted until it fell to the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C. The southern kingdom of Judah lasted until the 6th century B.C. when it fell to the Babylonians. But this "failure of kingship on the historical level does not lead to the disappearance of the ideal of a king who, in fidelity to Yahweh, will govern with wisdom and act in justice." (Compendium, No. 378)

This hope of a messianic king is a central theme in many of the Psalms, particularly in those psalms called the "Royal Psalms" (Ps. 2, 18 (17), 20 (19), 21 (20), 45 (44), 72 (71), 101 (100), 110 (109), 132 (131), 144 (143)) and those psalms categorized as "Messianic Psalms" which prophecy or intimate the characteristics of the Messiah (Ps. 2, 8, 16, 23 (22), 34 (33), 35 (34), 40 (39), 41 (40), 41 (40), 45 (44), 68 (67), 69 (68), 89 (88), 102 (101), 109 (108), 110 (109), 118 (117)). It is prevalent in the so-called "messianic oracles," most pointedly in the book of Isaiah (Is. 11:2-5) and in the book of Jeremiah (Jer. 23:5-6). These include some of the most beautiful and yearning words in Scripture.

The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, A spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD,
and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD. Not by appearance shall he judge, nor by hearsay shall he decide,
But he shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land's afflicted. He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
Justice shall be the band around his waist, and faithfulness a belt upon his hips.
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.
The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox.
The baby shall play by the cobra's den, and the child lay his hand on the adder's lair.
There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea.
On that day, The root of Jesse, set up as a signal for the nations, The Gentiles shall seek out, for his dwelling shall be glorious.
On that day, The Lord shall again take it in hand to reclaim the remnant of his people that is left from Assyria and Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia, and Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the isles of the sea.
He shall raise a signal to the nations and gather the outcasts of Israel; The dispersed of Judah he shall assemble from the four corners of the earth.
The envy of Ephraim shall pass away, and the rivalry of Judah be removed; Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah, and Judah shall not be hostile to Ephraim.

(Isaiah 11:2-13)

The ideal of the Davidic kingship is expressed in multiple places in Scripture. For example, in the Book of Ezechiel (Ezek 34:23-24; 37:24):

I will appoint one shepherd over them to pasture them, my servant David; he shall pasture them and be their shepherd.
I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I, the LORD, have spoken. . . . .
My servant David shall be prince over them, and there shall be one shepherd for them all; they shall live by my statutes and carefully observe my decrees.

It is anticipated by Zechariah:

Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, Meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.
He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem; The warrior's bow shall be banished, and he shall proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

(Zech. 9:9-10)

The Wisdom literature also describes the ideal of the king who is pure in heart, and who renders just judgments, abhors wrongdoing, and judges the poor with equity. Indeed, put the Proverbs together and you get, as it were, a "Mirror of a King," a speculum regale.**

The king's lips are an oracle; no judgment he pronounces is false.

Kings have a horror of wrongdoing, for by righteousness the throne endures.

The king takes delight in honest lips, and the man who speaks what is right he loves.

A wise king winnows the wicked, and threshes them under the cartwheel.

Remove the wicked from the presence of the king, and his throne is made firm through righteousness.

By justice a king gives stability to the land; but he who imposes heavy taxes ruins it.

If a king is zealous for the rights of the poor, his throne stands firm forever.

(Prov. 16:10, 12, 13, 20:26, 25:5, 29:4, 14)

"There is a gradual unfolding of the proclamation of what the Gospels and other New Testament writings see fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, the definitive incarnation of what the Old Testament foretold about the figure of the king." (Compendium, No. 378).

As St. Augustine said, novum in vetere latet, et in novo vetus patet.*** The new is latent or hidden in the old, and the old is patent or made clear in the new.

We are now prepared to venture from the old into the new.
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*Citations are omitted in the quote. The Compendium cites to 1 Sam. 2:35, 24:7, 11; 26:9, 16; and to Ex. 30:22-32 for the issue of anointment, and to Mt. 1:1-17, Luke 3:23-38, and Rom. 1:3 for the issue of the son of David.
**The mirrors for kings or princes (Latin: specula regale, or specula principum or principum specula, German: Fürstenspiegel) refers to a genre of writings that were typical in the Middles Ages and Renaissance. They are a sort of tutelary or textbook designed to instruct kings, princes, or lesser rulers on certain aspects of rule and behavior. Often, they include histories or examples intended to give models for imitation or for avoidance. The genre was also popular in Islamic circles, probably as a result of the influence of the genre which was popular with the Byzantine rulers.
***This is a paraphrase. St. Augustine actually said the following in his Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 2, 73 (the Heptateuch refers to the first seven books of the Old Testament) when discussing Exodus 20:19:

73. (20, 19) Loquere tu nobis, et non loquatur ad nos Deus, ne quando moriamur. Multum et solide significatur, ad Vetus Testamentum timorem potius pertinere, sicut ad Novum dilectionem: quamquam et in Vetere Novum lateat, et in Novo Vetus pateat.

"You speak to us, and do not let God speak to us lest we perchance die" (Exodus 20:19). This passage signifies a great and lasting truth: that fear pertains to the Old Testament just as love does to the New--even though the New lies hidden in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is opened up in the New.

On God and Government: Yahweh Malak

2012-01-11T03:07:00.006-06:00

SCRIPTURE, WHETHER THE OLD COVENANT OR THE NEW, does not purport to be a political document, a political constitution. There is no normative political institution which is required by Scripture as revealed truth, and so the Church has never theoretically advocated a particular form of government for political society, though perhaps it has historically or prudentially supported one regime over another.

There is however much to be learned tangentially as it were from Scripture regarding political governance, since the truths of God which it reveals provide a real constraint upon earthly authorities--what their responsibilities are, what they may advocate, and what they may do. These constraints exist upon any political form of government, whether we are dealing with a monarchy and a king and his court or a democracy and its president or prime minister and the people.

One huge gift that God, through his chosen people the Jews, revealed is that political power is not to be absolutized. It is not the end of all things. It is not the most important of things.

In fact, it was not the nation, or the city, but Yahweh that was recognized as the source of ultimate political power. It is Israel's gift to the world that the earthly powers are not absolute, but that they are answerable to something greater. This principle was expressed through the notion of Yahweh as king: Yahweh malak.

Yahweh Malak

To the Israelites, Yahweh the Lord was king or was become king, Yahweh malak (יְהוָ֣ה מָלָךְ֮) or malak elohim.* This concept is found in a particularly striking way in the so-called "Enthronement Psalms," identified as Psalms 47, 93, 96-99. These Psalms all acknowledge God's sovereignty over heaven and earth and over all peoples and their kings. They were perhaps used in liturgical enthronement ceremonies, and enjoy a rich breadth of kingship arising from the vagueness of the term Yahweh malak which could mean, Yahweh reigns (or is king), or Yawweh has become king, or Yahweh will reign. The language thus points to an ontological reality, to a temporal circumstance or idealization, and to an eschatological reality or fulfillment. Yahweh is king--whether the earthly powers recognize him to be so. All the earth is his footstool. Yahweh is king--and it is meet and right that the judges and kings that ruled the Jews, and indeed all earthly powers, recognize him to be so. Yahweh is king--when at the end of the world, all things will be placed under his direct rule.

Psalm 47, for example, clearly calls upon all nations--the gentiles as well as Israel--to acknowledge Yahweh, enthroned as the King of Israel, as the universal God, whose universal rule encompasses all nations and is superior to all earthly kings. Yahweh is the King of kings, the Lord of Lords. The Psalm recalls the presence of God in the midst of his people Israel in the Ark of the Covenant, which was placed in the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple.

All you peoples, clap your hands;
shout to God with joyful cries.
For the LORD [Yahweh], the Most High, is to be feared,
the great king [melek]over all the earth,
Who made people subject to us,
nations under our feet,
Who chose our heritage for us,
the glory of Jacob, whom he loves.

God has gone up with a shout;
the LORD, amid trumpet blasts.
Sing praise to God, sing praise;
sing praise to our king, sing praise.

For God [elohim] is king [melek] over all the earth;
sing hymns of praise.
God rules over the nations;
God sits upon his holy throne.
The princes of the peoples assemble
with the people of the God of Abraham.
For the shields of the earth belong to God,
highly exalted.

The same notion is repeated in Psalm 93, another of the Enthronement Psalms. Here, the kingship of God is less related to his revelation to Israel; rather, the kingship of God is linked to his status as creator of the cosmos, the one to whom all natural creation is ultimately answerable, as alpha, its source, as omega, its end. He is the one who brings order out of chaos. Like several of the Enthronement Psalms, this Psalm begins with the invocation Yahweh malak! The Lord is King!

The LORD is king [Yahweh malak], robed with majesty;
the LORD is robed, girded with might.
The world will surely stand in place,
never to be moved.
Your throne stands firm from of old;
you are from everlasting.
The flood has raised up, LORD;
the flood has raised up its roar;
the flood has raised its pounding waves.
More powerful than the roar of many waters,
more powerful than the breakers of the sea,
powerful in the heavens is the LORD.
Your decrees are firmly established;
holiness befits your house, LORD,
for all the length of days.

The universality of God's reign is repeated in Psalm 96. Israel's God is not God over only Israel. He is God--and hence King--over all peoples. It is recognition of God as King that will lead to fairness and justice in the political realm. Here we have a particularly strong hint of the coming of the Messianic King, Jesus, and of the Kingship of God's eschatological fulfillment at the end of time:

Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.
Sing to the LORD, bless his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.

Tell his glory among the nations;
among all peoples, his marvelous deeds.

For great is the LORD and highly to be praised,
to be feared above all gods.
For the gods of the nations are idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and power go before him;
power and grandeur are in his holy place.

Give to the LORD, you families of nations,
give to the LORD glory and might;
give to the LORD the glory due his name!
Bring gifts and enter his courts;
bow down to the LORD, splendid in holiness.
Tremble before him, all the earth;
declare among the nations: The LORD is king [Yahweh malak].
The world will surely stand fast, never to be shaken.
He rules the peoples with fairness.

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them.
Then let all the trees of the forest rejoice
before the LORD who comes,
who comes to govern the earth,
To govern the world with justice
and the peoples with faithfulness.

Psalm 97, which, like Psalm 93, opens with the declaration "The Lord is King," Yahweh malak, repeats the same theme, stressing God's ontological kingship and linking it with his status as creator of heaven of earth, of lightning and thunder, of light, of mountains, of the seas and the islands in it. There is a hint of the darkness of God's mystery, and a praise of God being the fiery source of all justice and right, and the consolation of those who do justice.

The LORD is king [Yahweh malak]; let the earth rejoice;
let the many islands be glad.
Cloud and darkness surround him;
justice and right are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him,
consuming his foes on every side.

His lightening illumines the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.

The heavens proclaim his justice;
all peoples see his glory.

All who serve idols are put to shame,
who glory in worthless things;
all gods bow down before him.

Zion hears and is glad,
and the daughters of Judah rejoice
because of your judgments, O LORD.
For you, LORD, are the Most High over all the earth,
exalted far above all gods.
You who love the LORD, hate evil,
he protects the souls of the faithful,
rescues them from the hand of the wicked.

Light dawns for the just,
and gladness for the honest of heart.
Rejoice in the LORD, you just,
and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.

Psalm 98 continues the enthronement theme, stressing the liturgical celebration, in which even inanimate creation joins, of the God who, not only has historically intervened in the life of Israel, but will come at the end of time to set all things right. The eschatological concept is particularly stressed in this Enthronement Psalm. Earthly Israel is but a sign of the heavenly Israel. There are also images of God as a warrior, one who, like some sort of divine Achilles with his military prowess or a young David with his simple slingshot, accomplishes marvelous deeds with his right hand and his holy arm:

Sing a new song to the LORD,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
His right hand and holy arm
have won the victory.

The LORD has made his victory known;
has revealed his triumph in the sight of the nations,
He has remembered his mercy and faithfulness
toward the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.

Shout with joy to the LORD, all the earth;
break into song; sing praise.
Sing praise to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and melodious song.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
shout with joy to the King, the LORD [hammelek Yahweh].

Let the sea and what fills it resound,
the world and those who dwell there.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
the mountains shout with them for joy,
Before the LORD who comes,
who comes to govern the earth,
To govern the world with justice
and the peoples with fairness.

Finally, we may look at the last of the Enthronement Psalms, Psalm 99. Like Psalm 97, the opening words set the theme: Yahweh malak: The Lord reigns. Here, God's historical intervention in the life of Israel is recalled. And though God has historically intervened in time--to rule the germ of the twelve tribes of Israel in Jacob, to bring his people out of the slavery of Egypt through the acts of Moses the great lawgiver, and sanctify them through the priestly ministry of Aaron, and to rule them through the great Judge Samuel--he is altogether separate from the world--Holy is he! He is hard on those who violate his just precepts, but forgiving to those who turn back.

The LORD is king [Yahweh malak], the peoples tremble;
he is enthroned on the cherubim, the earth quakes.

Great is the LORD in Zion,
exalted above all the peoples.
Let them praise your great and awesome name:
Holy is he!

O mighty king, lover of justice,
you have established fairness;
you have created just rule in Jacob.
Exalt the LORD, our God;
bow down before his footstool;
holy is he!

Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
Samuel among those who called on his name;
they called on the LORD, and he answered them.
From the pillar of cloud he spoke to them;
they kept his decrees, the law he had given them.
O LORD, our God, you answered them;
you were a forgiving God to them,
though you punished their offenses.
Exalt the LORD, our God;
bow down before his holy mountain;
holy is the LORD, our God.

This theme of enthronement is not abandoned by the Christians, and indeed, Christ is he who is enthroned in the manner of Yahweh. These Enthronement Psalms are recalled in in words of the Angel Gabriel in the Gospel of Luke (1:32-33) with specific reference to Jesus: "He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule [or reign as king] (βασιλεύσει) over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."** It reverberates in St. Paul's statement in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:25): Jesus "must reign (βασιλεύειν) until he has put all his enemies under his feet." It is perhaps recalled most vividly in St. John's Apocalypse (11:15, 17-18; 19:6), where the eschatological fulfillment of God's reign at the end times and at final judgment is linked with these enthronement Psalms and with Jesus as Lord and Messiah:

The kingdom of the world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed, and he will reign (βασιλεύσει) forever and ever. . . . We give thanks to you, Lord God almighty, who are and who were. For you have assumed your great power and have established your reign. The nations raged, but your wrath has come, and the time for the dead to be judged, and to recompense your servants, the prophets, and the holy ones and those who fear your name, the small and the great alike, and to destroy those who destroy the earth. . . . . Alleluia! The Lord has established his reign (ἐβασίλευσεν), (our) God, the almighty.

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*There can be some confusion between malak (melek)as "king" and malak as "angel" or "messenger." In Hebrew the words are very similar, yet are different words. The word מֶ֫לֶך (mlk) is "king." The word מַלְאָך (ml'k) is angel or messenger. The root for king is mlk (mem, lamed, kaf: מלך). The root for send is l'k (lamed, alef, kaf: לאכ). (Alef is a glottal stop.) It is from this root that the word for angel or "one sent" (malak or מלאך)is derived.
**Notably, the Greek word ἐβασίλευσεν (he reigns) was used by the translators of the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word malak in the Enthronement Psalms. For example, in Psalm 93:1, 97:1, and 99:1, Yahweh malak (יְהוָה מָלָךְ) is translated as ὁ κύριος ἐβασίλευσεν. The Gospel of Luke and St. Paul seem clearly to point to the enthronement Psalms as well through their similar words.

The Free Market

2012-01-03T03:57:00.001-06:00

THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH undeniably puts great emphasis on the free market as a valuable, indeed "irreplaceable" economic and social institution. (Compendium, No. 349) Drawing largely from John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus annus, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is bullish on the free market and supports it as the best general means to assure proper allocation of scarce economic resources, of achieving economic efficiency, and of benefiting the common good.

The free market is an institution of social importance because of its capacity to guarantee effective results in the production of goods and services. Historically, it has shown itself able to initiate and sustain economic development over long periods. There are good reasons to hold that, in many circumstances, "the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. The Church's social doctrine appreciates the secure advantages that the mechanisms of the free market offer, making it possible as they do to utilize resources better and facilitating the exchange of products. These mechanisms "above all . . . give central place to the person's desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person."

(Compendium, No. 347) (quoting Centesimus annus, 34, 40). The Compendium continues:

A truly competitive market is an effective instrument for attaining important objectives of justice: moderating the excessive profits of individual businesses, responding to consumers' demands, bringing about a more efficient use and conservation of resources,rewarding enterpreneurship and innovation, making information available so that it is really possible to compare and purchase products in an atmosphere of healthy competition.

(Compendium, No. 347)

The free market, then, is generally the best means to achieve a number of desirable economic and social ends, and is justified as an institution to be promoted precisely because of these ends it achieves so efficiently. When the free market carries out these functions "it becomes a service to the common good and to integral human development." The free market, in fact, is precisely valued and judged because of the ends it achieves," and it is the market's social utility--and not the market itself independent of its ends since it is but an instrumental good--that justify it. The free market is an instrumental good, and so it is not as an end, but as a means to an end, in particular, the means to the promotion of the common good, where it finds its value and justification.* (Compendium, No. 348)

For the same reason, therefore, the free market is only justified to the extent that it achieves these ends, as the "free market cannot be judged apart from the ends that it seeks to accomplish and from the values that it transmits on a societal level." (Compendium, No. 348)

For all its value, the free market ought not to be confused with a lawless or moral-less market. Nor should the free market be thought as all encompassing, so that all human goods are thought as commodities. We shall review briefly these two limits on the free market.

The free market must operated within certain moral, institutional, and legal norms, or else it becomes something other than a free market. The free market is not an autonomous, free-for-all area exempt from moral law or from the hand of positive law. The market must always be protected and kept free, and it must be safeguarded from those who would seek to use it wrongly, whether by fraud, manipulation, abuse of economic power, or monopolization.

To "safeguard 'the prerequisites of a free economy" and the benefits of a free market, the State has the "fundamental task" of "determining an appropriate" legal and juridical framework "for regulating economic affairs." This includes assuring "individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services." (Compendium, No. 352) At the same time, the State's role in assuring freedom of markets must not be one where it tries to "direct economic and social policies" and "become abusively involved in the various market activities," and become "authoritarian--or worse, totalitarian" in its supervisory and regulatory role. Wherever State power becomes involved, however, such actions "must be consistent with the principle of subsidiarity." (Compendium, No. 351)

In some extraordinary cases, where the market has clearly failed or does not obtain for whatever reason (e.g., a natural disaster, an economic depression, or some other aberration), the State--again consistent with the principle of subsidiarity--may have a role in "stimulating those [business] activities where they are lacking," by "supporting them in moments of crisis," or by intervention when "monopolies create delays or obstacles to development." In "exceptional circumstances," and for limited time, even "exercise a substitute function." (Compendium, No. 351)

Though there are times government intervention is required, there is a great danger to economic freedom that is posed by an overly-interventionist State, since invariably the prescriptions of the State end up being guided by "bureaucratic logic" and governed by burgeoning "public agencies." Therefore, any State or public intervention "must be carried out with equity, rationality, and effectiveness, and without replacing the action of individuals, which would be contrary to their right to the free exercise of economic initiative." (Compendium, No. 354)

In general, the free market and the governing bodies of the State ought not to be viewed as competitors seeking to occupy the same realm, but as cooperators in the same aim:

It is necessary for the market and the State to act in concert, one with the other, and to compliment each other mutually. In fact, the free market can have a beneficial influence on the general public only when the State is organized in such a manner that it defines and gives direction to economic development, promoting the observation of fair and transparent rules, and making direct interventions--only for the length of time strictly necessary--when the market is not able to obtain the desired efficiency and when it is a question of putting the principle of redistribution into effect.** There exist certain sectors in which the market, making use of the mechanisms at its disposal, is not able to guarantee an equitable distribution of the goods and services that are essential for the human growth of its citizens. In such cases the complementarities of State and market are needed more than ever.

(Compendium, No. 353)

Finally, there are some human goods that simply are not commodities to be traded as if they were pork bellies. Well does the Church state that there are goods that "'by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities,' goods that cannot be bought and sold according to the rule of the 'exchange of equivalents' and the logic of contracts which are typical of the market." (Compendium, No. 349) (quoting Centesimus annus, 40) These include "collective goods and goods meant for common utilization." (Compendium, No. 356) Marriage contracts, orphans, human corpses or organs, the freedom of religion or free speech ought not to be traded as if they were consumer goods.
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*Indeed, as the Compendium makes clear, the "inversion of the relationship between means and ends . . . can make [the market] degenerate into an inhuman and alienating institution, with uncontrollable repercussions." (Compendium, No. 348) It points to a "risk of an 'idolatry' of the market." (Compendium, No. 349) This occurs when one forgets that it is the market that is made for man, and not man for the market.
**It is perhaps unfortunate that the Compendium speaks of the "principle of redistribution," but never defines or provides any clear guidance about this principle in this context. It is not defined as a "permanent principle" in Section 161 of the Compendium. In the context of a free market, it is undefined. Perhaps its most complete statement is found in the context of the rights of workers and fair remuneration, and not with particular reference to the free market in general. See Compendium, No. 303. Its use in section 303 does not appear to fit the context of the free market in general. It seems that the "redistribution" referred to in Section 353 is the natural redistribution that occurs in the voluntary exchange in an efficient market, the result of which is always a redistribution of resources wherein both parties believe themselves better off than before. (Intervention is justified when the "market is not able to obtain the desired efficiency," in other words when the market is for some reason not acting like a free market should.) It is when the market fails to be efficient--in other words, where the exchange is not knowing or voluntary for some reason (e.g., fraud, manipulation, monopoly)--that the State must intervene by law or regulation or as a prosecutor of the public good. The reason behind such intervention is that, in such an exchange, both parties are not better off, and the desirable redistribution of wealth intrinsic in the voluntary exchange, because of a market for some reason unfree, is one-sided and inequitable. Unfairly, the one who lied or the one who is protected from competition becomes richer, while the one who is the victim of the lie or the one who is forced to bargain with a monopoly becomes poorer.

Catholic Entrepreneurship

2011-12-31T03:25:00.006-06:00

THERE IS A POPULAR TENDENCY TO EQUATE the Church's social doctrine with economic socialism, which is a mistake of the first proportion. It is as if there are some Catholics who have forgotten Pius XI's succinct judgment in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: "No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist."*

For those inclined to this view, despite the words of Pius XI, a brief glance at sections 336 through 345 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church should disabuse them of it. It is clear that, within certain moral constraints and requirements of the common good, the Church is on the side of private business initiative, of entrepreneurship. Her commitment to private business initiative is a necessary corollary to her teaching on economic freedom and private property, and her focus on the common good.

"The Church's social doctrine considers the freedom of the person in economic matters a fundamental value and an inalienable right to be promoted and defended." (Compendium, No. 336). One cannot get much clearer than that. "Everyone," the Compendium continues quoting the Catechism, "has the right to economic initiative." (Compendium, No. 336) (quoting CCC § 2429).

Indeed, not only is this a right, it may be a duty to those with particular talents in this area. Everyone, the Compendium continues adverting to Christ's parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28), "should make legitimate use of his talents to contribute to the abundance that will benefit all, and to harvest the just fruits of his labor." (Compendium, No. 336)

"Economic initiative is an expression of human intelligence and of the necessity of responding to human needs in a creative and cooperative fashion." (Compendium, No. 343) Economic initiative gives rise to a "sense of responsibility" which is both an individual virtue and a social virtue. Other virtues that build upon economic initiative include "diligence, industriousness, prudence in undertaking reasonable risks, reliability and fidelity in interpersonal relationships, as well as courage in carying out decisions which are difficult but necessary, bothy for the overall working of a business and in meeting possible set-backs." (Compendium, No. 343) (quoting John Paul II, Centesimus annus, 32)

Any power that squelches, discourages, curbs, and certainly punishes private economic initiative--even in the name of "an alleged 'equality' of everyone in society"--is condemned by the Church's social doctrine. Not only are such policies practically foolish, they militate against the dignity of human beings and their right to economic initiative.

[There are] negative consequences that would arise from weakening or denying the right of economic initiative: 'Experience shows us that the denial of this right, or its limitation . . . diminishes, or in practice absolutely destroys the spirit of initiative, that is to say the creative subjectivity of the citizen.' From this perspective, free and responsible initiative in the economic sphere can also be defined as an act that reveals the humanity of men and women as creative and relationship subjects. Such initiative, then, should be given ample leeway.

(Compendium, No. 336) (quoting John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, 15)

In fact, in the Church's view, there is only one justification for limiting private economic initiative: if the particular initiative--either as a result of its subject matter or as a result of the manner in which it is undertaken--hurts the common good. (Compendium, No. 336) So, for example, no one could claim that he has an inalienable right to private initiative to start a prostitution ring, or trade in illegal drugs, or manufacture dangerous products.

Not only does this freedom allow humans the opportunity for creative self-expression and the building of virtue, there are also great economic benefits--wealth, efficiency, innovation, the meeting of human need--gained by allowing this freedom of business initiative, of entrepreneurship. More than even this, there is the growth in solidarity that is necessarily enhanced by the cooperation that is required for the success of any business venture.

Businesses should be characterized by their capacity to serve the common good of society though the production of useful goods and services. In seeking to produce goods and services according to plans aimed at efficiency and at satisfying the interests of the different parties involved, businesses create wealth for all of society, not just for the owners but also for the other subjects involved in their activity. Besides this typically economic function, businesses also perform a social function, creating opportunities for meeting, cooperating, and the enhancement of the abilities of the people involved.

(Compendium, No. 338)

Since any business venture is necessarily both an economic and a human endeavor, or, as John Paul II framed it, both a "society of capital goods" and a "society of persons," it must comply with both economic laws and moral laws.

"A business' objective must be met in economic terms and according to economic criteria," and this includes "the proper role of profit as the first indicator that a business is functioning well." (Compendium, 339, 340) Profit, of course, is an indicator that "productive factors have been properly employed," of economic efficiency. The Church recognizes the economic necessity that it not realistic "to try to guarantee the firm's future without the production of useful goods and services and without making a profit, which is the fruit of the economic activity taken." (Compendium, No. 340)

But profits are not the whole picture since "a business may show a profit while not properly serving society." The fact that Larry Flynt makes a profit by selling pornography does not justify his ventures. Similarly, profit may be artificially built upon the exploitation of workers. In such a case, the profit is not a reflection of the value of the enterprise, but rather is simply built upon the backs of the workers who are not properly compensated for their labor and so in a sense may be said to subsidize the venture. (Compendium, No. 340) Finally, profit may be the result of ecological irresponsibility, where costs associated with a venture are not internalized by the venture, but are pushed off to others or to future generations. An example of this may be a logging venture that devastates forests, or a company whose product produces dangerous waste by-products which it irresponsibly dumps.

Because profit as a measure of the economic value of a business venture and the moral rights and dignity of those who contribute to the business venture as well as the natural environment are all important criteria, they ought to be viewed as factors in the measuring the success of that business. "It is essential," the Compendium insists, "that within a business the legitimate pursuit of profit should be in harmony with the irrenounceable protection of the dignity of the people who work at different levels of the same company." (Compendium, No. 340) The Church describes this harmonious interlocking as one of "a community of solidarity." The harmonious interaction of the economic motive with the natural environment is what the Church calls "social ecology."

Those who manage the business have therefore a significant responsibility not only to the economic aspects of management, but also to the dignity of those who work in the venture, family life, and the natural environment in which the business operates:

Business owners and management must not limit themsevles to taking into account only the economic objectives of the company, the criteria for economic efficiency and the proper care of "capital" as the sum of the means of productions. It is also their precise duty to respect concretely the human dignity of those who work within the company. These works constitute "the firm's most valuable asset" and the decisive factor of production. In important decisions concerning strategy and finances, in decisions to buy or sell, to resize, close or to merge a site, financial and commercial criteria must not be the only considerations made.

The Church's social doctrine insists on the need for business owners and management to strive to structure work in such a way so as to promote the family, especially mothers, in the fulfillment of their duties, to accede, in light of an integral vision of man and development, to the demand for the quality "of goods to be produced and consumed, the quality of the services to be enjoyed, the quality of the environment and of life in general; to invest when, when the necessary economic conditions and conditions of political stability are present, in those places and sectors of production that offer individuals and peoples "an opportunity to make good use of their own labor."

(Compendium, Nos. 344, 345) (quoting JPII, Centesimum annus, 36)

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*Pius XI, Quadragessimo Anno, 120.

Morality and the Economy

2011-12-28T03:09:00.003-06:00

THERE HAS BEEN A MODERN TENDENCY to put a rift between economics and morality. This was not always the case, as moral sentiments had traditionally been seen as a foundational part of the economic science and an increase in the wealth of nations. Economics was viewed as a moral science.

Beginning with the 19th century, starting with such thinkers as David Ricardo (1772-1823) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and in earnest in William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882)and Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), however, the science of economics was progressively divided from morality and came to be viewed as a stand-alone natural or physical science that was empirically based, so as to be something akin to physics or chemistry with their natural laws which have no regard for morality. There is no right or wrong in the laws of thermodynamics. Nor was there right or wrong in the laws of economics. The market was governed by rational self-interest, and not morals. Political economy became economics. Some have called this process the "scientification" of economics.*

In her social doctrine, the Church insists that this separation of economics and morals is wrong and unwise. She insists on the classical and traditional link between morals and economics not be forgotten. "The Church's social doctrine insists on the moral connotations of the economy." (Compendium, No. 330). While the Church recognizes that economics has "its own principles in its own sphere" which is separate from moral science, she also insists that it is "an error to say that the economic and moral orders are so distinct from and alien to each other that the former depends in no way on the latter." (Compendium, No. 330) (quoting Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 23). "The necessary distinction between morality and the economy does not entail the separation of these two spheres, but, on the contrary, an important reciprocity." (Compendium, No. 331)

As the Compendium puts it: "Just as in the area of morality one must take the reasons and requirements of economy into account, so too in the area of the economy one must be open to the demands of morality." (Compendium, No. 331) Economics must obtain values elsewhere than from economics. "[T]he purpose of the economy is not found in the economy itself, but rather in its being destined to humanity and society" since "man is the source, the center, and the purpose of all economic and social life." (Compendium, No. 331) (quoting Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 63)

The Church insists that there is something greater than economics. A "meta-economic order" exists. Man does not live by bread alone. (Matt. 4:4, Luke 4:4) This seems to be just plain common sense. It is remarkable how this common sense eludes so many modernly.

"The relation between morality an economics is necessary, indeed intrinsic," continues the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "economic activity and moral behavior are intimately joined one to the other." (Compendium, No. 331)

The fact that morality and the economy are intertwined does not mean that economic efficiency is not important. "The moral dimension of the economy shows that economy efficiency and the promotion of human development in solidarity are not two separate or alternative aims but one indivisible goal." (Compendium, No. 332). The term "economic efficiency" means a situation where it is impossible to increase general welfare from the available resources. In other words, any effort to make others better off will make others worse-off to the extent that the gains of one are offset by the losses of the other.

In fact, the Church recognizes that there is a moral duty to assuring "economic efficiency," as the "production of goods is a duty to be undertaken in an efficient manner, otherwise resources are wasted." The words "economic efficiency" quite clearly are a reference to the market economy or free economy. And yet "economic efficiency" has its limits. Economic efficiency cannot be sought in an immoral manner, "at the expense of human beings, entire populations or social groups, condemning them to indigence." (Compendium, No. 332) There is a moral limit to the cost/benefit analysis beyond which efficiency must not go.

So the Church gives its guarded approval of a market economy or free economy and even "capitalism" properly understood. Capitalism is a vague term, and so before approving of "capitalism," the Church defines what it understands as "capitalism."** "In the perspective of an integral and solidary development, it is possible to arrive at a proper appreciation of the moral evaluation that the Church's social doctrine offers in regard to the market economy or, more simply, of the free economy." "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 Church approves of capitalism. This form of capitalism the Church calls a "business economy," a "market economy," or simply a "free economy." (Compendium, No. 335)

While the Church does not begrudge self-interest insofar as it promotes the common good and is undertaken with justice and solidarity in mind, it does seek to distinguish that act from selfishness which seeks private benefit unjustly or in disregard of others. "The growth of wealth, seen in the availability of goods and services, and the moral demands of an equitable distribution of these must inspire man and society as a whole to practice the essential virtue of solidarity, in order to combat, in a spirit of justice and charity, those 'structures of sin' wherever they may be found and which generate and perpetuate poverty, underdevelopment, and degradation." (Compendium, No. 333) Simply put, we may not get rich at another person's expense.

"The economy has as its object the development of wealth and its progressive increase," and so the Church is not adverse--rather she encourages--economic activity. However, she rightly points out that wealth and its increase is something that is measured "not only in quantity, but also in quality." Wealth and progress are not reducible to "a mere process of accumulating goods and services." To be rich and vicious is not qualitatively wealthier or more conducive to happiness than to be poor and virtuous. There is wealth measurable in the specie of virtue.

To suggest that the measure of wealth is quantitative only, and not qualitative also, is an error, in fact is a "treachery" that can enslave us. It leads to a "civilization of consumption" or a "civilization of consumerism." We thus become "slaves of possession" and "slaves of immediate gratification." (Compendium, No. 334) (quoting John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, 28) This is a life of vice, not virtue. It is a life of fools, as we should remember that possessions and gratification of the world's goods does not protect us from the fact that there will be one night where our soul shall be required of us. (Cf. Luke 12:20)

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*A short synopsis may be found in James E. Alvey, "A Short History of Economics as a Moral Science," Journal of Markets & Morality 2, no. 1 (Spring 1999), 53-73.
**The Church does not approve of capitalism if it is understood to be "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." (Compendium, No. 335)

Puer Natus Est Nobis

2011-12-25T04:41:00.006-06:00

PUER NATUS EST NOBIS,
Et filius datus est nobis,
Cuius imperium super humerum eius
Et vocabitus nomen eius,
Magni consilii Angelus.

Cantate Domino canticum novum
Quia mirabilia fecit.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,
Et in saecula saeculorum.
Amen.

A child is born to us,
And a Son is given to us:
Whose government is upon His shoulder:
And His Name shall be called,
The Angel of Great Counsel.

Sing ye to the Lord a new song:
Because He hath done wonderful things.

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be
World without end.
Amen.

Merry Christmas to all.

Our Lords the Poor

2011-12-24T03:29:00.005-06:00

THE EARTH AND ITS FRUITS were made for men, and not for any one man. It is for this reason that all goods--even those legitimately and morally possessed by individual men through the institution of private property--have a "universal destination," one which orders them to the common good.

Christianity redeems and saves man entire, not just man in part. It therefore frees man from not only from his need, but also in his plenitude. This means that it redeems him with respect to his possessions. A Christian will possess his goods in a manner differently from other men, and a Christian society will view property differently from a non-Christian society.

There is, first and foremost, an awareness by spiritual writers that money and property present an intrinsic danger in that man's love of them may be disordered, inordinate, cupidinous. "For the love of money [φιλαργυρια, cupiditas] is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith." (1 Tim. 6:10) "Evil is seen in the immoderate attachment to riches and the desire to hoard." (Compendium, No. 329)

Though money and property are, in themselves good, they must be held and used in a manner that is fitting with the common good, with love of neighbor, and sub specie aeternitatis, under the light of eternity. Witness, for example, the warning of Pope St. Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Rule:

They, therefore, that make haste to an inheritance in the beginning cut off from themselves the lot of blessing in the end; since, while they crave to be increased in goods here through the iniquity of avarice, they become disinherited there of their eternal patrimony. When they either solicit very much, or succeed in obtaining all that they have solicited, let them hear what is written. What is a man profited, if he should gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?

St. Gregory the Great, Liber Regulae Pastoralis, Lib. III, Ad. 21, Cap. 20

St. Nicholas distributing alms to the poor

That the rich man's possession of goods is a channel for him to practice proper stewardship and charity towards his less fortunate neighbor is a central theme in Christian practice from its inception. "'How could we ever do good to our neighbor,' asks St. Clement of Alexandria, 'if none of possessed anything?'" (Compendium, No. 329).* St. Basil the Great reminds the rich in his flock to open the doors of their storehouses so that their "riches reach the homes of the poor."** In his Pastoral Rule, Pope St. Gregory the Great, admonishes those who inordinately hold on to their goods and ignore the plight of the poor:

Those who neither desire what belongs to others nor bestow what is their own are to be admonished to consider carefully that the earth out of which they are taken is common to all men, and therefore brings forth nourishment for all in common. Vainly, then, do those suppose themselves innocent, who claim to their own private use the common gift of God; those who, in not imparting what they have received, walk in the midst of the slaughter of their neighbors; since they almost daily slay so many persons as there are dying poor whose subsidies they keep close in their own possession. For, when we administer necessaries of any kind to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy.

St. Gregory the Great, Liber Regulae Pastoralis Lib. III, Ad. 22, Cap. 21

So the Old Testament prophets, the teachings of Christ, and the call of the Church Fathers all seem to coalesce into the same message: wealth is a great good, but presents an ever-present temptation to those who are in possession of it. It profits nothing for a man to have the whole world, and lose his soul. Wealth must be used in a manner that is properly ordered, underneath the auspices of the great and good God, the wise dispenser of all things. Above all, wealth in a rich man is a means for the practice of virtue, including that most sublime virtue of the poor for the love of God, of charity.

The wealthy Christian will view the poor in the manner of Blessed Fra' Gerard, founder of the Knights of Malta. The poor are our Lords. Domini nostri pauperes. With his wealth he will serve them.
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*Citing St. Clement's Homily "What Rich Man Will Be Saved?" 13 PG 19, 618.
**Compendium No. 329 (quoting St. Basil, Homilia in Illud Lucae, Destruam Horrea Mea, 5 PG 31, 271).

The Internal Economy of Jesus

2011-12-21T03:23:00.005-06:00

JESUS THE MESSIAH "takes up the entire Old Testament tradition even with regard to economic goods, wealth, and poverty, and he gives it great clarity clarity and fullness." (Compendium, No. 325) Christ's teachings regarding the goods of this world, wealth, and poverty usher in "a new manner of social life," one that ought to be reflective of the Gospel values of "justice, brotherhood, solidarity, and sharing." This "new manner," however, is not one that can be brought into being or enforced by extrinsic, positive law alone, as it is based upon and inner transformation brought about by "the conversion of hearts" and the "gift of the Spirit." (Compendium, No. 325) The "Kingdom of God" ushered by Christ is not one which people can point to and say, "Here it is," or "There it is." The reason for this is that the kingdom of God is within the believers. (Cf. Luke 17:21)

Christ seeks an inner conversion and an inner change in man thereby seeking to perfect "the original goodness of the created order and of human activity, which were compromised by sin." However, this inner transformation, a combination of human turning and spiritual gift, will manifest itself in external activity, in fruits.* And so "man is called to render justice to the poor, releasing the oppressed, consoling the afflicted, actively seeking a new social order in which adequate solutions to material poverty are offered and in which the forces thwarting the attempts of the weakest to free themselves from the conditions of misery and slavery are more effectively controlled." (Compendium, No. 325)

This is the elusive Kingdom of God which, though not "of this world," is yet, "at hand," and in a marvelously ambiguous Greek phrase, both within us, and among us, in our very midst, and within our very grasp (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν ἐστίν). (Cf. John 18:36, Mark 1:5, Luke 17:21) That Kingdom of God is found personally in Christ, and continues in Christ's Church. The Kingdom of God, however, will not arrive in its fullness until the end of time when Christ returns and all creation will be truly "all, and in all." (Col. 3:11; 1 Cor. 15:28) (Cf. CCC 671, 782, 1042, 1060, 2816)

Nevertheless, it is manifest in Revelation that "economic activity is to be considered and undertaken as a grateful response to the vocation which God holds out for each person." (Compendium, No. 326)

And in your wisdom have established man to rule the creatures produced by you,
To govern the world in holiness and justice, and to render judgment in integrity of heart.

(Wisdom 9:2-3) It is clear that the world and its benefits are given to man so that it may be tended to, preserved, increased, and perfected. Adam's charge in the garden of Eden was therefore confirmed in Christ's parable of the talents, where the good servants invest the talents, not bury them, and thereby bring about an increase. (Cf. Gen. 1:26-30; 2:15-16; Matt 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-27)

Christ Cleansing the Temple by El Greco

Yet at the same time we must recognized that it is harder for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to enter the eye of a needle. (Cf. Matt. 19:23-24, Mark 10:24-25, and Luke 18:24-25) We are, moreover, not to put our trust in the uncertainty of riches (1 Tim. 6:17), for we know that he who puts his trust in riches will fall (Proverbs 11:28). Instead, we are to seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, and then, and only then, will all these things be added unto us. (Matt. 6:33) We must not forget that we cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon. (Cf. Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:13) Finally, there is a part in our life which must never be affected by utilitarian, monetary considerations. The temple must on occasion be cleansed of economic activity and monetary gain. (Cf. Mark 11:15-19, 11:27-33; Matt. 21:12-17, 23-27; Luke 19:45-48, 20:1-8) Therefore, even if wealthy, we are to be "poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3) so as to be "rich before God." (Luke 12:21)

Economic activity and wealth is not to be viewed as a private affair unrelated to the common good and unrelated to God. Rather, "[e]conomic activity and material progress must be placed at the service of man and society," that is, the common good. In fact, economic activity is not in any manner of speaking evil. Indeed, the economy itself properly ordered within the "faith, hope, and love of Christ's disciples" can be "transformed into places of salvation and sanctification." (Compendium, No. 326)

"Faith in Jesus Christ," the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church tells us, "makes it possible to have a correct understanding of social development, in the context of an integral and solidary humanism." (Compendium, No. 327) The Church's social magisterium, founded upon faith in Jesus Christ and grounded in natural law and the moral teachings and example of Jesus, is therefore a valuable guide to integral human development.

That social doctrine provides us guidance in the "task of collaboration" with others, in our "personal and collective effort to raise the human condition and to overcome obstacles which are continually arising along our way." It also warns us of sin, "which is always attempting to trap us and which jeopardizes our human achievements." At the same time, it assures us that sin is "conquered and redeemed by the 'reconciliation' accomplished by Christ. (cf. Col. 1:20)." (Compendium, No. 327) Economic or social development in a manner that contradicts the Church's social doctrine is bound to harm man, contradict the common good, and result in some sort of failure to render God his due.

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*Christ's teachings in the area of wealth and poverty can be the source of confusion. Two things seem to be behind most misinterpretations of his teachings. The first is the failure to recognize Semitisms in the Gospel, particularly the Semitic penchant for contrasting with extremes. The other is the failure to distinguish counsels from precepts. An example of these kind of Semitisms may be found in Christ's Sermon on the Mount (e.g., Luke 6:20-29). Christ's teaching that one should offer the other cheek, and give one's tunic to one who takes one's cloak, if taken literally as preceptive would result in the abandonment of the right to self-defense and the right of ownership of property. If held normative, it would mean that the violent and the brigand would rule the world and could never be brought to justice. Christ is obviously not advocating a world where injustice is the norm and justice ought not to be enforced. Nevertheless, there is a point behind these teachings that ought not to be lost, and there are instances where literal compliance has brought much fruit. A fictional character that lives up to this is Bishop Myriel in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Another marvelous, this time real, instance is St. Maximilian Kolbe's giving up his life in exchange for Franciszek Gajowniczek at Auschwitz. The lives of the Saints are full of such heroic and extraordinary application of Christ's words. The Precepts are rules that are binding upon all (e.g., you shall not murder). These are the irreducible minimum of the Christian life, and violation of these precepts are sinful, and, if they involve a grave matter and sufficient knowledge and consent, would be mortally sinful Counsels are proposed to those who desire to go beyond the necessary requirements and aim for perfection. They are not binding upon all, but are voluntarily taken by those who wish a more perfect union with, or greater imitation of Christ. Perhaps the most notable instance of this is the story of the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16 ff.) who is asked what he should do to inherit eternal life. Christ states he must keep the precept of keeping the commandments. When the rich young ruler wants more, Jesus counsels him to sell all he has and give the proceeds to the poor and to follow him in the way of poverty. Sadly, the rich young ruler finds the evangelical counsel too burdensome, and loses--not his salvation--but his chance at a greater imitation of, and a deeper relationship with Christ, the God who had nowhere to lay his head. One of the three traditional evangelical counsels is a voluntary life of poverty. The other two are a life of celibacy and a life of obedience, which is to say, a voluntary giving up of one's freedom in submission to the legitimate will of religious superiors. Another instance of this might be the primitive "communism" or communal sharing of goods practiced by Christians and witnessed to in the Book of Acts. See Acts 4:32-35; 2:42-47 (Christians "shared everything they had" and "had everything in common"). As Tertullian put it in his Apolegeticum: "One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives."

Poverty and Wealth: The Old Testament Tradition

2011-12-19T03:00:00.001-06:00

THE BIBLE HAS A NUANCED VIEW on riches and wealth. It recognizes the benefit of abundance, of a flourishing economic life, and it recognizes wealth as a blessing from God, often one tied to obedience to His commandments and fidelity to His covenant. On the other hand, it recognizes the dangers attendant to wealth, and warns the rich to guard their soul, and to be quick not to abuse their wealth and instead use it for the benefit of the poor. The Scriptures absolutely condemn wealth that is ill-gotten--through oppressions, through fraud, or through immoral means such as usury.

Similarly, the Scriptures have a nuanced view of poverty. On the one hand, the Bible often points to poverty as being the consequence of the vice of idleness or lack of industry. On the other hand, it recognizes that the poor are often poor not because of vice, but because of the viciousness of those of the rich and powerful. Some poverty, it seems, is neither the result of vice or oppression, but part of the inscrutable providence of God. Finally, the poor man is often a symbol of how man's soul ought to be seen before God, and, to that degree, the poor are symbols of us all.

In the Book of Proverbs we find a rich and multifarious understanding of poverty. Poverty can be the result of a lack of diligence, of irresponsible behavior, of a shirking of duty.

The slack hand impoverishes,
but the hand of the diligent enriches.
He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son,
but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.

(Prov. 10:4-5)

Labor is the source of wealth, and poverty is caused by idleness. Indeed, the poverty that is the result of lack of diligence, or idleness, is excoriated in Scripture. It is seen as a form of social theft. The Scriptures have a strong understanding of contributive justice. "The man who is slack in his work," the Book of Proverbs says, "is own brother to the man who is destructive." (Prov. 18:9)

All have a duty to work, to be frugal, to use their talents and labor to assure the flourishing of their self, their family, and their tribe. Using very strong language, St. Paul tells the Thessalonians that "if any will not work, neither let him eat." (2 Thess. 3:10). And who can forget his words to Timothy which are harsh against those who fail in their duty of supporting those under their care: "And whoever does not provide for relatives [τῶν ἰδίων, one's own] and especially family members [οἰκείων = household] has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." (1 Tim. 5:8)

Some Scriptures link obedience to God to material blessing, and disobedience to God with poverty. In Scripture, belief in God and fidelity to his covenants and laws, including His injunction to care for the poor, is followed by blessings. (Cf. Deut. 15:4-8; 28:1-38-39; Prov. 22:9).

Nay, more! since the LORD, your God, will bless you abundantly in the land he will give you to occupy as your heritage, there should be no one of you in need. If you but heed the voice of the LORD, your God, and carefully observe all these commandments which I enjoin on you today, you will lend to many nations, and borrow from none; you will rule over many nations, and none will rule over you, since the LORD, your God, will bless you as he promised. If one of your kinsmen in any community is in need in the land which the LORD, your God, is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand to him in his need. Instead, you shall open your hand to him and freely lend him enough to meet his need.

(Deut. 15:4-8) Book of Proverbs links blessings with giving to the poor: "The kindly man will be blessed, for he gives of his sustenance to the poor." (Prov. 22:9)

It follows that disbelief in God and violation of God's moral commandments are often seen as calling forth a judgment from God that results in poverty. For example, in Haggai 1:4-6, the prophet suggests that the people's poverty is the result of their disregard of God's temple:

Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?
Now thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways!
You have sown much, but have brought in little;
you have eaten, but have not been satisfied;
You have drunk, but have not been exhilarated;
have clothed yourselves, but not been warmed;
And he who earned wages earned them for a bag with holes in it.

Not all poverty is of this kind. One cannot simply assume that one who is poor is idle, lazy, and suffers the judgment of God because of sin. The Scriptures recognize that poverty is often the result of unfortunate circumstances whose ultimate reasons are known to God's providence alone. In this sense "Rich and poor have a common bond: the Lord is the maker of them all." (Prov. 22:2) One might here profitably turn to the Book of Job, where--through no fault of his own--the righteous Job loses his family, his health, and his wealth. The unflappable Job suffers through the loss of all his blessings: Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit: sicut Domino placuit, ita factum est: sit nomen Domini benedictum. "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!" (Job 1:21)

There is a form of poverty that is neither caused by the lack of diligence, nor is the result of disobedience of God's commands and a life of sin, but is the result of oppression, of fraud, of injustice. "For there are among my people criminals," says God through his prophet Jeremiah," like fowlers they set traps, but it is men they catch."

Their houses are as full of treachery as a bird-cage is of birds; Therefore they grow powerful and rich, fat and sleek. They go their wicked way; justice they do not defend By advancing the claim of the fatherless or judging the cause of the poor. Shall I not punish these things? says the LORD; on a nation such as this shall I not take vengeance?

(Jer. 5: 26-29) The poor in these instances are the victims of injustice, and their oppressors are excoriated with very strong words.

Woe to those who plan iniquity, and work out evil on their couches; In the morning light they accomplish it when it lies within their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and they take them; They cheat an owner of his house, a man of his inheritance. Therefore thus says the LORD: Behold, I am planning against this race an evil from which you shall not withdraw your necks; Nor shall you walk with head high, for it will be a time of evil.

(Micah 1:1-3)

The rich are constantly admonished to do justice to the poor and the afflicted. "Defend the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed." (Ps. 82:3; cf. Isaiah 1:17; Deut. 24:17) They are admonished to gain their wealth justly.

If a man is virtuous - if he does what is right and just, if he does not eat on the mountains, nor raise his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel; if he does not defile his neighbor's wife, nor have relations with a woman in her menstrual period; if he oppresses no one, gives back the pledge received for a debt, commits no robbery; if he gives food to the hungry and clothes the naked; if he does not lend at interest nor exact usury; if he holds off from evildoing, judges fairly between a man and his opponent; if he lives by my statutes and is careful to observe my ordinances, that man is virtuous - he shall surely live, says the Lord GOD.

(Ez. 18:5-9) But the rich are called to go beyond mere justice, and be generous to the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger among them.

Unions and the Common Good

2011-12-15T04:24:00.003-06:00

LABOR UNIONS PLAY A FUNDAMENTAL EVEN INDISPENSABLE ROLE in the advancing the interests of workers vis-à-vis their employers. Though--like any human institution--the history of unions shows they are the subject of abuse and misuse, their history also shows that they have the possibility of contributing not only to the good of the worker whom they represent, but to the common good as well.

The Church generally supported and supports the right of the workers to peaceful assembly and association. The Church's social doctrine therefore insists that workers have "the right to form associations or unions to defend the vital interests of workers employed in the various professions." (Compendium, No. 305)

Properly ordered, such association of workers, by independently and responsibly advancing the rights of workers and their interests, can contribute to the good of the worker and contribute to the common good as a whole. Properly ordered, then, unions then contribute to the general welfare of the entire population, increasing social justice and increasing its wealth and welfare.

The Church's support of unions must be understood within her vision of labor unions and their function. The function of unions must be understood within the Church's greater understanding of economic life as a whole. The Church does not accept the Marxist notion of a "class struggle," and any view of unions as being "mouthpiece for a class struggle which inevitably governs social life" is to be rejected.

Rather, the Church takes a more Heraclitean view of labor unions. According to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus criticized the poet Homer who prayed that strife should perish among men, since Heraclitus insisted that justice required struggle.* In the relationship between worker and employer, there must be a similar struggle, a struggle for social justice.

It is inevitable that there will be struggles in the achievement for social justice if for no other reason than there are different interests involved between capital and between labor. And unions have a role towards implementing a tenuous peace between capital and labor, not in advancing internecine war.

"Properly speaking," the Compendium of the Church's Social Doctrine states, "unions are promoters of the struggle for social justice, for the rights of workers in their particular profession." (Compendium, No. 306) But the Church's understanding of struggle is nuanced. "This struggle," the Compendium continues quoting John Paul II's encyclical Laborem Exercens,** "should be seen as a normal endeavor 'for' the just good . . . not a struggle 'against' others."

This struggle--while of necessity adversarial--excludes any animosity, any hatred, any strict "us" versus "them" mentality. Any "hatred and attempts to eliminate the other are completely unacceptable." The struggle is one that is engaged in a spirit of cooperation, of solidarity, with an eye toward the common good. Unions must recognize that their rights and the rights of the worker are not absolute. Rather, they must recognized that "in every social system both 'labor' and 'capital' represent indispensable components of the process of production." The common good overrides the right of both employer and worker. (Compendium, No. 306)

Since social justice and not class warfare is the union's end, the union must view itself as an instrument of "solidarity and social justice," and any union ought to shun any misuse of the "tools of contention," such as strikes. (Compendium, No. 306) Indeed, ideally unions are to be disciplined and self-monitoring. They should "be capable of self-regulation," and they must always "be able to evaluate the consequences that their decisions will have on the common good." Unions ought neither to pit themselves against employers nor pit themselves against the common good.

While generally supportive of unions, the Church's social doctrine also promotes the notion of "right-to-work laws" which prohibit agreements between labor unions and employers that would make membership, the payment of union dues, a mandatory condition of employment and which require workplace to be a closed shop. Unions, the Compendium states, must resist "the temptation of believing that all workers should be union members." (Compendium, No. 306)

Unions ought to be more than mere advocates, "defending and vindicating" the rights of the worker. They ought also to have a greater appreciation for their role in greater society, in promoting not only the parochial or private interests of the workers, but the "proper arrangement of economic life" of the nation. They also should play an educative function, "educating the social consciences of workers so that they will feel that they have an active role, according to their capacities and aptitudes, in the whole task of economic and social development and in the attainment of the universal common good." (Compendium, No. 306)

Though unions ought to have a social role and a political voice, they are not "political parties," ought to avoid the quest for political power, ought not to be "too closely linked" to political parties, and at the same time ought not to be forced to submit to the "decisions of political parties." They ought to be independent from the political process, and never "become an instrument for other purposes." Their role is to make the political arena "sensitive to labor problems," and--in a manner independent of partisan spirit--help the political process include the rights of workers as part of the political mix. (Compendium, No. 307)

If unions become instruments of political parties, or if political parties become instruments of unions, there will necessarily be imbalance. Unions in such cases "easily lose contact with their specific role, which is to secure the just rights of workers within the framework of the common good of the whole of society." (Compendium, No. 307)

_____________________________________
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1235a25; Heraclitus: DK22B80. The poet was Homer. See Iliad 18.107.
**John Paul II, Laborem exercens, 20.

The Right to a Just Wage

2011-12-14T04:28:00.001-06:00

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORKERS and their employers is one that is based or ought to be based upon convention--a free and uncoerced agreement between employer and employee. But the relationship is not only conventional, it is also one that has an underlying nature, and so has a natural law and justice associated with it which the convention ought to reflect and certainly not contradict. The convention is based upon the natural relation of employer and employee, is meant to implement it. And just like a conventional law that is unjust is no law at all (lex iniusta non est lex) so is an agreement between worker and employer no agreement at all if it is unjust (contractus iniustus non est contractus).

At its most simple, that employment relationship is between two human persons, and justice is what ought to govern that relationship. Modernly, more often than not, however, the employer is an impersonal institution, an organization, a corporation, a fictional person. Also, the possibility always lurks of a disparity in bargaining power between a monied employer and an unmonied employee. These can affect that relationship adversely, affect the parties' relative bargaining powers, and lead to injustice.

Unfortunately, between bureaucracy and power disparity the human element in the relationship is often lost and abuse and injustice becomes possible. Most often, it is the worker who is at a disadvantage, and it is often a "sad fact" that workers are "underpaid and without protection or adequate representation." Conditions of workers, especially in developing countries, are often so inhumane that they are an offend the dignity and health of workers. to For this reason, the Church has focused on the rights of the worker as against the employer, though the worker certainly has reciprocal rights owed to his employer. The rights are not all one-way.

In order to protect the relationship of justice that ought to exist between the employed and the employer, the Church has been quite insistent on worker's rights, and has been so since she first addressed the social question. "The rights of workers, like all other rights, are based on the nature of the human person and on his transcendent dignity." (Compendium, No. 301) This is to say that the rights of workers as the Church understands them are part and parcel of the natural moral law. These rights are based upon the nature of the employment relationship and the fact that such relationship is one that involves a person.

Though the rights of the worker are based upon the natural law and so immutable, their application in contingent circumstances might vary. (We are dealing largely with determinations of principles, here, not first principles.) For example, how these rights operate in the concrete would be different if we are looking at the employment relationship between one tribesman and another in the village of Mpintimpi in Ghana or the employment between a laborer and his employer in the heart of Milan, Chicago, Birmingham, or Hamburg. They are also historically conditioned. What was appropriate in medieval Paris is not necessarily appropriate in contemporary Paris.

There certain rights of workers that the Church in her social doctrine has identified, and we may aggregate them into what might be called a worker's Bill of Rights. It should be understood, however, that these rights as enumerated in the Compendium presuppose a very advanced economy, and so not all of them may apply or they may not apply in the same way in simpler employment conditions. Some of these rights are more quantitative, while others are more qualitative. Finally, not all of them are the responsibility of the employer, as some are the responsibility of the society at large, or intermediate social or charitable institutions, or of the local, regional, or national governments. Some of these could even be the individual's responsibility to implement (e.g, purchasing insurance and saving money to provide for retirement).

The right to a just (or living) wage
The right to rest
The right to safe and morally acceptable working environments and manufacturing processes
The right to have one's conscience and personal dignity respected
The right to appropriate subsidies necessary for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families
The right to pension and to insurance for old age, sickness, and work-related accidents
The right to social security in connection with maternity
The right to assembly and to form associations such as unions

(Compendium, No. 301)

One of the central features of the relationship between employer and employee is remuneration. Remuneration is the entire package of recompense to the worker in exchange for his labor to the business enterprise. There must be justice between worker and employer, and "remuneration is the most important means for achieving justice in work relationships." When that remuneration is just,that is, when it conforms to natural justice, the Church refers to it as a "just wage." Sometimes it is referred to as a "living wage."

There is a rich Biblical tradition which underlies the Church's insistence that it is a "grave injustice" to "refuse to pay a just wage" or to refuse to give a just wage "in due time and in due proportion to the work done." (Compendium, No. 302) The insistence is found both in the Old and New Testaments. "You shall not defraud or rob your neighbor. You shall not withhold overnight the wages of your day laborer." (Lev. 19:13) "Behold," says the Apostle James in his epistle echoing the Law and the Prophets, "the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts." (James 5:4) It is a deeply traditionalist and conservative spirit behind the Church's insistence that the employer ought to pay a just wage. We are dealing with a moral injunction which trumps economic motive or justifications.

The worker's labor is what allows him to "gain access to the goods of the earth." It is what allows him "the means to cultivate worthily his own material, social, cultural, and spiritual life and that of his dependents." Failure to pay him a just wage shuts him out of this endeavor. It is for this reason that mere agreement between laborer and employer is not an assurance of a "just wage."

Convention is not sufficient if the underlying justice is violated. Unquestionably, free agreement (convention) is an important element of assessing a "just wage." A wage that is forced upon two parties acting in good faith is not just. But agreement, while a necessary condition for a just wage, is not a sufficient condition for a just wage. A wage "must not be below the level of subsistence," and if it is, "natural justice precedes and is above the freedom of the contract." (Compendium, No. 302) (quoting Leo XIII, Rerum novarum).* An unjust wage implies that there has been an unjust distribution of income. Either the employer (through greater profit) or society at large (through cheap goods) has obtained income unjustly.

The economic well-being is not measured exclusively by the quantity of goods it produces but also by taking into account the manner in which they are produced and the level of equity in the distribution of income, which should allow everyone access to what is necessary for their personal development and perfection. An equitable distribution of income is to be sought on the basis of criteria non merely of commutative justice but also of social justice that is, considering, beyond the objective value of the work rendered, the human dignity of the subject who perform it. Authentic economic well-being is pursued also by means of suitable social policies for the redistribution of income which, taking general conditions into account, look at merit as well as the need of each citizen.

(Compendium, No. 303)

There will always be disputes between employer and employees that need resolution. It is a consummation, devoutly to be wished, that those disputes be resolved amicably, fairly, without resort to violence. There are times, however, were resolution through preferred means does not work. In those times, "'when it cannot be avoided, or at least when it is necessary to obtain a proportionate benefit,'" and "when every other method for the resolution of disputes has been ineffectual," the Church recognizes the moral legitimacy of striking. (Compendium, No. 304**) Striking is therefore a "kind of ultimatum," and it must remain peaceful.

Striking is defined as "the collective and concerted refusal on the part of workers to continue rendering their services, for the purpose of obtaining by means of such pressure exerted on their employers, the State, or on public opinion either better working conditions or an improvement in their social status." Striking must not be used, however, to coerce the employer into an unjust bargain. It must not be used as a tool to achieve objectives "not directly linked to working conditions or that are contrary to the common good." Therefore, strikes that expose the public to danger or serious inconvenience (e.g., by policemen, air-traffic controllers) may not be legitimate. Likewise, using strikes as a form of "blackmail" to exact unjust recompense are against the common good.

Striking is therefore a last-means by which the workers obtain by pressure something owed to them by justice. But the morality of striking does not end there. Striking itself becomes "morally unacceptable when accompanied by violence" or if carried out unjustly. It would be morally unacceptable, for example if the strike involved violence against employer representatives, if it involves destruction to property, if it threatens the very viability of the employer, if it seriously inconveniences the public, or when unwilling workers are forced to participate in the strike through threats of violence or other coercive techniques.

______________________________
*Though it might be argued that a laborer is better with some wage than none at all, it seems that that avoids the greater question. First, paying workers non-subsistence wages is hardy a long-term solution and is inhumane since by definition it means that the laborer is condemned to a life of misery. Second, it would suggest that the enterprise has not fairly assessed the value of the labor to the enterprise, or if it has, it means the enterprise is not economically warranted. If the enterprise cannot afford to pay an above-subsistence wage and make a profit, it would appear that the enterprise is either inefficiently run or is producing a product the demand of which does not justify the continuation of the enterprise. It is unjust to expect the worker to absorb this managerial or economic inefficiency through wages that are non-subsistence.
**The Compendium cites to Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 68; John Paul II, Laborem exercens, 20; and the Catechism of the Catholic Church § 2430.

The Right to Work

2011-12-11T06:04:00.003-06:00

THE CHURCH HONORS HUMAN WORK, and sees it as a fundamental good of man. She recognizes it as both a duty and a right. The reason work is both a duty and a right stems from the fact that work is necessary and that it affirms the human person.

Work is necessary for a variety of reasons. It is needed to form and support a family. It is a necessity to support one's right to property. It is needful because it contributes to the common good and to civil peace. The relationship between work and the common good is so intrinsic that the Church views unemployment as a "real social disaster." (Compendium, No. 287) (quoting John Paul II, Laborem exercens)

The Church therefore urges governments to aim, as part of a mandatory objective required by both justice and the common good, to the "full employment" of their citizens. Governments ought to avoid economic policies which frustrate this goal and which result in the denial of, or thwarting of, employment. (Compendium, No. 288)

Governments should also aim to assuring that there be adequate access to education and training. The role of education becomes even more important as the society becomes technologically mature. Also, with the "fluid economic context that is often unpredictable in the way that it evolves," retraining or on-going education is an essential requirement. (Compendium, No. 289, 290)

Finally, there ought to be special solicitude to those who have difficulty in obtaining employment and yet who have both the duty and the right to work: the young, women, less-specialized workers, those with disabilities, immigrants, ex-convicts, the illiterate. (Compendium, No. 289) Special concern should be women, whose "feminine genius is needed in all expressions in the life of society." (Compendium, No. 295). Also, there is frequent exploitation of foreign or immigrant workers to which the State ought to be vigilant to prevent. (Compendium, No. 298) Finally, the exploitation of children and child-labor is a blight that needs to be overcome. (Compendium, 296)

The Church therefore puts a large responsibility upon the shoulders of the State in the area of the employment of its citizens. But her social doctrine ought in no way to be interpreted in a manner suggestive of socialism or Soviet-style central planning. The Church is not advocating by any means politburo-employment. "The duty of the State does not consist so much in directly guaranteeing the right to work of every citizen, making the whole of economic life very rigid and restricting individual free initiative." (Compendium, No. 291)

Rather, the duty upon the State is one of sustaining "business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in times of crisis." The principle of subsidiarity is here of critical importance. (Compendium, No. 291) Employment is to be the result of "an open process" and not government dictates, a process essentially free yet responsible, which does not forget the solidarity among men. There is room here for private, for-profit initiative, and for non-profit, volunteer-type arrangements, the so-called "third sector" between private enterprise and public authority.

With the increased globalization of the world's economy, there is a role also to promote international cooperation among the several nation States "by means of treaties, agreements,and common plans of action that safeguard the right to work." International organizations and labor unions also "must strive first of all to create 'an ever more tightly knit fabric of juridical norms that protect the work of men, women, and youth, ensuring its proper remuneration." (Compendium, No. 292) Whether chronic unemployment is in Yuma, Arizona, or in Harare, Zimbabwe, or in Madrid, Spain, all of us are in some manner hurt.

There is an intrinsic connection between work and family life. Indeed, the Church sees that work is "a foundation for the formation of family life." (Compendium, No. 294) (quoting JP II, Laborem exercens) This is one reason why the Church is so concerned in assuring employment. Work allows marriage and family to flourish. It is needed to sustain the family and to allow for its principle end: the raising and education of children.

It is this intrinsic connection between work and family life, that ought to cause a re-appraisal of the relationship between employer and employee. The employment relationship cannot only be thought of in economic terms or in terms of a private contract, though it has those dimensions. But every employment decision has a familial dimension that ought not to be forgotten. So the Church asks everyone involved in the employment process, "businesses, professional organizations, labor unions, and the State," to "promote policies that, from an employment point of view, do not penalize but rather support the family nucleus." (Compendium, No. 294)

The Compendium also addresses the issue of agricultural labor, which requires a specialized or individualized treatment. In many countries, agricultural labor is particularly important to the national economy. In some countries, particularly in Latin America, land ownership is excessively centralized in what are known as latifundia or huge landed estates. The latifundia system is an inefficient, unproductive, unjust system, repeatedly condemned by the Church as immoral. It is closed to the free market, to wide-spread ownership of private property, to ready alienation of property. It requires attention and, in some countries, "a redistribution of land as part of sound policies of agrarian reform" is a moral imperative. (Compendium, No. 300)

Lord! Give Us Holy Leisure!

2011-12-06T03:41:00.001-06:00

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF ACTION, states Aristotle, is leisure. This is because, in Aristotle's view, leisure is the purpose of all lack of leisure, of all activity, of all busy-ness.* For Aristotle, busy-ness is not an end in itself. This is the classic and Christian view of things. As important as it is, activity, busy-ness, leisurelessness does not take precedence in human life; rather, it is leisure that ought to take precedence. Leisure is the keystone of the arch composed of the voussoirs of busy-ness.

This is the approach to work and to leisure (which the Compendium of the Church's Social Doctrine calls by its biblical name, rest). The Compendium teaches that, as the untiring God rested after creating the world, so must men and women who are created in His image (but who tire) rest. For this reason, the Compendium insists that men and women are to structure their lives to assure that they "enjoy sufficient rest and free time that will allow them to tend to their family, cultural, social, and religious life." This obligation is both social and individual.

It is therefore incumbent upon public authority to see that its citizens are not deprived of their proper rest, and that they are not deprived from their time for divine worship "for reasons of economic productivity." (Compendium, No. 286) Employers also are under an obligation to assure that their employees have an opportunity for rest and divine worship. (Compendium, No. 286) Indeed, "Every Christian should avoid making unnecessary demands on others that would hinder them from observing the Lord's Day." (Compendium, No. 286) (quoting CCC s. 2187)

For us moderns, the authentic notion of rest or leisure that the Compendium insists upon escapes us. We are perplexed at Aristotle's statement which the philosopher Josef Pieper translates as "We are not-at-leisure (ascholoumetha) in order to be-at-leisure (scholazomein)."* Why, we moderns ask ourselves, is the Sabbath day to be kept holy, and why are we to abstain from servile work?

We have lost the ability to understand these matters because we understand leisure or rest as mere lack of work, a "down time" which is used for relaxation, or entertainment. This superficialization of leisure or rest occurred because we have lost the link between leisure and culture, that is the culture of celebration, worship, sacrifice to God (what Pieper calls the divine "cult"). This cult of the divine is intrinsically part of the notion of leisure as Aristotle understands it or rest as the Scriptures understand it.

Pieper attributes the modern inability to understand the concepts of work and leisure and their relationship to the cult of God to an altered conception of the human person and human existence. This changed understanding of who man is and what he is for changed the ethos under which man moves and breathes and has his being. It is this ethos typical of modernity--which Pieper calls the ethos of "total work"--that is responsible for our inability to understand the role of work, its relationship to leisure or rest, and the link leisure and rest have to divine worship.

The modern ethos of "total work" has changed both the meaning of work and the meaning of leisure. And it has completely written God out of the picture in regard to both work and rest. So we cannot follow Aristotle on leisure, nor, more importantly, can we follow the significance of the Biblical concept of rest until we regain something of the pre-modern notion of leisure and rest.

Briefly and simplistically, the way the modern ethos of "total work" came about is this. The Catholic Church, drawing upon the Greek concept of schole, upon such Biblical sources as the story of Martha and Mary in the Gospel of Luke, and the experience of monastic life, divided the Christian life into two: the vita activa, the active life, and the vita contemplativa, the contemplative life. Without deprecating either, the Church gave precedence to the contemplative life over the active life.

Based upon a misapplication of Scripture and the narrow principle of sola Scriptura, however, the Protestant reformers deprecated the contemplative life. From a practical perspective, the Protestants' intense dislike of the vita contemplativa can be seen by their suppression of the monastic orders (and convenient seizing of their properties) wherever they had the the reins of civil power. The Protestants also held a distrust of any holy day and feast day, and so suppressed the whole series of holy days and the celebrations, liturgical and popular, associated with them, freeing these days up for work. The Protestant reformers, then, if they even recognized the vita contemplativa, certainly overemphasized the important of the vita activa. There developed a disdain of leisure and an emphasis on work. The sociologist Max Weber called this ethos the "Protestant work ethic," and the name stuck.

As an example of the Protestant work ethic, Josef Pieper points to a statement by the Lutheran hymn writer Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf quoted by the sociologist Max Weber in his book The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: "One does not only work in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one's work." Indeed, in Count Zinzendorf's view not to be working would mean--not leisure or rest, but suffering and death.** This notion--where work is life and life is work--is the notion of "total work," "total work" under God, but still "total work."It would not have been uttered by one schooled in the Catholic spirit. This concept was imported to the Americas in the form of the black-dressed and dour Puritan, and so it is also called the Puritan work ethic.

Once this Protestant ethos became secularized in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the evolutionary and materialistic theory of Darwin in the 1800s, the already weakened tie to God of work and rest was completely rent. When this happened, we entered into the world of what Pieper calls "total work" without any reference to God. In a world of "total work," work becomes more the preeminent. It becomes absolute.

With the Puritan ethic becoming secularized, it has become even more vicious. Pieper calls this attitude, found in Socialism and Capitalism alike, the attitude of proletarianization. This attitude of work without God and work without bounds speaks of the "inner impoverishment of the individual" who, wed to the notion that--as stated with horrible irony in the gate into Auschwitz--Arbeit macht Frei, work makes one free, he literally works himself into a form of slavery, sort of like someone slowly lapses into alcoholism. In fact, we even call someone who displays this attitude of total work in its extreme a workaholic, suggesting a sort of moral disease.

Insidiously, this notion of "total work" even infiltrated the intellectual life. Traditionally, human knowledge was seen as composed of two distinct ways of thinking, one active and discursive (called ratio), the other receptive and intuitive (called intellectus). This latter form of knowledge was viewed as a sort of intellectual vision, a knowledge gained by "merely looking" as Pieper calls it.*** The notion of intellectus is perhaps most beautifully captured in a fragment of Heraclitus which Pieper translates as the "listening-in to the being of things."† This form of knowledge was viewed as approaching angelic and divine thought. Prior to the Reformation and Enlightenment, it was highly prized by philosophers and theologians both.

As part of his great great Copernican revolution of philosophy, Immanuel Kant rejected any sort of intellectual vision, any "listening-in to the being of things." "The understanding cannot look upon anything," scoffed Kant.†† Kant was not one to exercise the Heraclitean "listening-in to the being of things." All thinking for Kant was labor, and all thought was acquired or produced as if it were a commodity, by raw intellectual effort applied to concepts. In Kant, the notion of "total work" had crept into his head as it were a cancer. And where the notion of "total work" crept in, there was only room for activity, and no room for receptivity. Grace was no longer admitted into thought's realm.

Kant might be called the Pelagius of the intellect. His concept of the intellect was one where there is no need for grace, just self-effort. When everything is built upon self-effort, we become hardened, and develop what Pieper calls a "stoniness of heart," an intellectual quality of "not-being-able-to-receive," and indeed not being able to play.††† One not able to receive and not able to play will find it impossible to celebrate, and celebration is at the heart of the divine service.

The ability to contemplate which is at the heart of the intellectus is not discursively achieved, but is achieved passively by the "leisure of contemplation," the otium contemplationis. This sort of thought is more like play. It is a participation in the Divine Wisdom which "plays all the time, plays throughout the world."‡

The emphasis of the via activa over the via contemplativa, the emphasis on ratio and not intellectus even changes the concept of time. The Greeks distinguished between two kinds of time: chronos and kairos. Kairos was a sense of time which had a sense of opportuneness. It was a qualitative notion, and had an air of indeterminacy, measured by events: the time for harvest (cf. Matt. 21:34), the time for figs (cf. Mark 11:13) Chronos, on the other hand, was quantitative, determinate, discrete. It is the concept we are most familiar with: the sequential, the tick-tock of the clock. The term kairos was used in the New Testament to refer to that opportune time, the fullness of time, when God acts. Kairos is the concept of time invoked by Jesus when he first announces the Gospel. For example, in Mark 1:15, Jesus proclaims, "The time [ho kairos] is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel." This notion of time is imported into the Eastern liturgy when the deacon proclaims to the priest invoking the words of Psalm 118 (119): 126: Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio, "It is time for the Lord to act." The notion of kairos is entirely gone from modern life. Chronos reigns supreme.

The Gospel sees things differently than Kant who took contemplation out of human thought. It sees things differently than the neurotic and frenetic Puritan who linked material success and work with proof of his predestination into heaven, and so by a doctrinal and practical error, took worship out of leisure and put worship into work. It is, as we have seen, more concerned with kairos than with chronos.

The locus classicus of the relative merits of the vita contemplativa and the vita activa, of intellectus over ratio, of kairos over chronos, is the Gospel story which sets forth the way God looks at the relative importance of activity to leisure is the story of Martha and Mary, the sisters of his friend Lazarus. (Luke 10:38-42) Christ, one might remember, decides to stay at the home of Martha and Mary. How do the two hostesses respond to the divine guest? In their response, they are types for us. One type to avoid. The other type to follow.

Almost heedless to her responsibilities, Mary is preoccupied with just one thing: the Unum Necessarium, the divine guest before whose feet she sat. She is contemplation. She is the vita contemplativa. She is intellectus. She is being schooled by Christ. She is at worship. Time for her is kairos.

On the other hand, Martha, in her effort to make Christ welcome, becomes preoccupied with many things. Martha is activity for activity's sake. Martha is the via activa. She is ratio. She is stuck in chronos. She is "total work." In her busyness, she passes right by Christ. Martha was like the harried young postulant who was stopped by Blessed Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and told she was leaving God behind in her great hurry.‡‡ In her state, she cannot worship.

Martha's preoccupation with her work is complete, consuming. She cannot rest. This preoccupation distracts her attention away from the divine guest in her presence. Pontius Pilate would have Christ in his presence and would ask, "What is Truth?" Martha has Christ as a guest and in her frenetic activity does not even have the time for Truth that is under her roof.

Don't both Pilate's skepticism and Martha's "total work" both effectively prevent a confrontation with Truth?

It is important to see not only that we misunderstand the purpose of work, we also have to see that we misunderstand the notion of leisure or rest. It is a modern folly to look at leisure as mere the "lack of work," something we fill exclusively or even principally with entertainment. The Christian is not give the Sabbath so that he can go to the circus with the Pagan. "Believers," the Compendium tells us, "should distinguish themselves on this day too by their moderation, avoiding the excesses and certainly the violence that mass entertainment sometimes occasions." (Compendium, No. 285)

It is also wrong to look at leisure as equivalent to relaxation, something to re-charge the batteries so we can get back to work refreshed.

Leisure must also distinguished from idleness. The leisure the Church and Pieper have in mind is not the leisure of the "leisure class" excoriated by Thorstein Veblen in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class, or the "idle rich" in Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby.

The leisure or rest the Church has in mind is a holy leisure, what the Cistercians called otium sanctum.

Indeed, this holy leisure is the worlds apart from idleness, mere relaxation, or entertainment. It requires a devotion, discipline, and effort of its own. This more rugged form of holy leisure is what the Cistercian Thomas Merton appears to be grasping for when he wrote: "I, for one, realize that now I need more. Not simply to be quiet, somewhat productive, to pray, to read to cultivate leisure--otium sanctum! There is a need of effort, deepening, change and transformation."‡‡‡ St. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of a negotissimum otium,§ a very busy leisure, one that in Merton's words required "effort, deepening, change, and transformation."

It is a tremendous task to learn how to be receptive, how to empty oneself. In fact, the original word from which we derive the word vacation is Latin vacatio, which means to empty oneself out. Monastic writers speak of the need to vacare Deo, to vacate oneself for God. Indeed, this notion is scriptural. The Psalms speak of it: Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 45(46):10) The word "be still" is (in the Vulgate) vacate and in the Greek Septuagint scholasate, a form of the very word the philosophers used to describe leisure.§§ This notion is outside the pale of modern life, and this is why T. S. Eliot in his poem "Ash Wednesday" includes the prayer, "Teach us to sit still." It is what moderns need.

There is, of course, a time and place for entertainment and for relaxation, perhaps even for idleness, but they are not the heart of leisure. Leisure, as the classic study of that subject by the German Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper put it, feeds culture. "Culture," Pieper tells us, "depends for its very existence on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and consequently living link with the cultus, with the divine worship."

The very words used by the Greek and Romans betray the importance of rest, of leisure over the busy-ness of politics, of commerce, of servile labor. Leisure--in Greek schole, in Latin otium--is the root concept. Schole is the word from which our word school is derived, suggesting that leisure is a schooling of sorts. Busy-ness on the other hand--in Greek ascholia, in Latin negotium--is the opposite, the negation of, the absence of leisure. It is something that takes away from, subtracts from, detracts from the root which is one of the introspection of self and the cult of God.

Of course, activity is not to be regarded as evil though it is ordered to leisure. We have a duty to work. And work has a tremendous dignity of its own. Sometimes even activity is the prerequisite to grasping truth. In a letter to William Sessions, Flannery O'Connor seized on a story about Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote the poet Robert Bridges who asked how he could learn to believe, and was told to quit thinking about it and "give alms."§§§ Here, it was right to recommend action over thinking. If one's work is properly ordered and subordinated to leisure, then one can pray along with the Benedictine (in a spirit entirely different from Count Zinzendorf), laborare est orare, to work is to pray. St. Augustine, in his De civitate Dei seems to grasp the balance: Otium sanctum quaerit caritatis veritatis; negotium iustum suscipit necessitas caritatatis. "The love of truth seeks a holy leisure, but the urgency of love undertakes the work that is due." XIX.19

All this reflection is necessary to understand what the Church means when she says in her Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church "Rest from work is a right." (Compendium, No. 284). Within this short statement is included the entire notion of the primacy of leisure or rest over work, of the via contemplativa over the via activa, of intellectus over ratio, of kairos over chronos, of the intrinsic connection between leisure and rest and the divine worship, and of the "urgency of love that makes us undertake the word that is due."

The Church has institutionalized rest, and seeks to have its value recognized in our social life. The "Lord's Day," the Christian Sabbath, is a time specifically set apart for rest. Holidays--as the original word "Holy Day" attests--were the additional days set apart for rest, for the divine cultus. For this reason, the Christian faithful are urged to "refrain from 'engaging in work or activities that hinder the worship owed to God, the joy proper to the Lord's Day, the performance of the works of mercy, and the appropriate relaxation of mind and body.'" (Compendium, No. 284) (quoting CCC s. 2185) "The Lord's Day should always be lived as a day of liberation that allows us to take part in the 'festal gathering and the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven' (cf. Heb. 12:22-23), anticipating thus the celebration of the definitive Passover in the glory of heaven." (Compendium, No. 285) "Sunday is an appropriate time for the reflection, silence, study, and meditation that foster the growth of the interior Christian life." (Compendium, No. 285)

Finally, the Church recognizes that it is proper sometimes to act--to give alms and quit thinking, even in those days especially set apart for leisure or rest. The Church has learned the lesson of her Lord that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, "[f]amily needs and service of great importance to society constitute legitimate excuses from the obligation of Sunday rest." But even then, the exception must not swallow up the rule, but most prove the rule, as the exception "must not create habits that are prejudicial to religion, family life, or health." (Compendium, No. 284) And yet, Sunday in particular, "should be made holy by charitable activity." The end of the worship God--ite missa est--should lead to the service of our brother. Therefore, time should be devoted to "family and relatives, as well as the sick, the infirm, and the elderly."

It is in the hopes of recapturing this entire lost world that the Church urges that "Christians, in respect of religious freedom and of the common good of all, should seek to have Sundays and the Church's Holy Days recognized as legal holidays." But legality alone will not transform our culture of "total work." For that we must pray: Dona nobis Domine otium sanctum! Lord give us holy leisure!

This rejection of the world of total work, the recapture of leisure over work and its relationship to divine worship, of intellectus over ratio, of the vita contemplativa over the vita activa, of kairos over chronos is essential. For only then shall we leave the false gods we worship and be able to receive the God who is Love.

Must bus'ness thee from hence remove?
Oh! that's the worst disease of love;
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath bus'ness, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong as when a married man doth woo.

(John Donne, "Break of Day")

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*Aristotle, Politics 8.1337b (αὕτη γὰρ ἀρχὴ πάντων μία: καὶ πάλιν εἴπωμεν περὶ αὐτῆς. εἰ δ᾽ ἄμφω μὲν δεῖ, μᾶλλον δὲ αἱρετὸν τὸ σχολάζειν τῆς ἀσχολίας καὶ τέλος, ζητητέον ὅ τι δεῖ ποιοῦντας σχολάζειν.) See also Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b4-6 (ἀσχολούμεθα γὰρ ἵνα σχολάζωμεν, καὶ πολεμοῦμεν ἵν᾽ εἰρήνην ἄγωμεν.) "We do business (ἀσχολούμεθα) in order that we may have leisure (σχολάζωμεν), and carry on war in order that we may have peace." Pieper translates it thus: "We are not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure." Pieper, 4, 6. (Of course, Pieper wrote his great work on leisure, Muße und Kult, in German. The version I use is the translation by Gerald Malsbary published by St. Augustine's Press as Leisure, the Basis of Culture.

**"Man arbeitet nicht allein, daß man lebt, sondern man lebt um der Arbeit willen, und wenn man nichts mehr zu arbeiten hat, so leidet man oder entschläft."
***Pieper, 10-11.
†Pieper, 11 (fragment 112, Diels-Kranz)
††Pieper, 10 (quoting Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft) "In Kant's view, then, human knowing consists essentially in the act of investigating, articulating, joining, comparing, abstracting, deducing, proving--all of which are so many types and methods of active mental effort. According to Kant, knowing . . . is activity, and nothing but activity."
†††Pieper, 14.
‡Pieper, 18 (citing St. Thomas, Super Sent., lib. 1 d. 2 q. 1 a. 5 expositio textus) (Ludens, propter otium contemplationis sapientiae.) "Play, according to the leisure of contemplation of Wisdom." and citing to Wisdom 8:30 [sic]. The cite is actually to Proverbs 8:30 (cum eo eram cuncta conponens et delectabar per singulos dies ludens coram eo omni tempore) "I [Wisdom] was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times."
‡‡See The Canonization of Jeanne Dugan, Testimonials,

http://littlesistersofthepoorphiladelphia.org/canonization/testimonials.htm
‡‡‡Thomas Merton, The Other Side of the Mountain: the End of the Journey (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), 113.
§Kenneth Leech, True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1995), 60.
§§The Vulgate iuxta Hebraeos reads: "Cessate et cognoscite quoniam ego sum Deus exaltabor in gentibus exaltabor in terra." The Vulgate iuxta Graecos reads: "Vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus exaltabor in gentibus exaltabor in terra." Understanding leisure in the manner that Pieper does, we can translate this verse as "Be at leisure, and know that I am God."
§§§Letter to William Sessions (July 8, 1956) in Letters of Flannery O'Connor: The Habit of Being (Sally Fitzgerald, ed.) (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1979) , 164. The advice was even more severe. It was to give alms "to the point of sensible inconvenience" under the theory that there is a "difference between paying heavily for a virtue and not paying at all." Bridges misunderstood the advice, responded testily to it, and it was the subject of additional correspondence between the two. See Paul L. Mariani, Hopkins: A Life (New York: Viking, 2008), 211.

The Relationship Between Labor and Capital: Priority and Complementarity

2011-12-03T04:37:00.003-06:00

BETWEEN A MAN AND A MACHINE or between a man and a wad of money which is to be given preeminence? Looked in that manner, it seems incontestable that man is more important that either a machine or money. Neither machine nor money has the dignity of the human person, and neither machine nor money enters the kingdom of God. The question then presents itself. What is superior, man's work, which is an integral part of him and shares in the life of his spirit, or a machine, a stock certificate, or dollar bill, which is dumb, deaf, and mute matter?

To all but the most hardened materialist or hardened ideologue, the answer is obvious. Since human work has a subjective or personal character, it is intimately tied to the human person. For this reason, the Church's social doctrine insists that work is "superior to every other factor connected with productivity." Labor--that is to say human work--has therefore an "intrinsic priority over capital." (Compendium, No. 276, 277)

While there is a priority of labor over capital, that does not mean that these two are enemies and that capital is an evil. Quite the contrary, capital is a great good, for without it work cannot be done. Capital and labor complement each other, and in fact need each other. They are not in opposition to each other, as the Marxist might want to paint them. Though it is true that they are often in an antagonistic relationship, this need not be the case, and is the result of imbalance or reversal of means and ends.

As Pope Leo XIII stated: "Capital cannot stand without labor, nor labor without capital." (Rerum novarum, 11) Or, as Pope Pius XI stated forty years later in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: "It is altogether false to ascribe either to capital alone or to labor alone what is achieved by the joint work of both; and it is utterly unjust that one should arrogate unto itself what is being done, denying the effectiveness of the other." (Cf. Compendium, No. 277)

"United we stand. Divided we fall."

It is this blending of the principles of the priority of human work over capital and the principle of the complementarity of labor and capital which is the heart of the recipe of the social doctrine of the Church as it pertains to the relationship between labor and capital.

Put succinctly, work is an end; capital is a means. It is a general moral principle that as long as the means are licit, the end takes precedence over the means. Are the brush and paint more important than the painter's painting? Are the quill and ink more important that the poet's writing of poetry? Is G. M. Hopkins' pen superior to G. M. Hopkins? Clearly, not.

Looked at another way, from an Aristotelian causal analysis typical of Thomistic philosophy, labor or work is the "primary efficient cause," of production and of wealth, and capital is "a mere instrument or instrumental cause." (Compendium, No. 277) This gives an evident priority to human work, just like the painter takes priority over the paintbrush, and the poet takes priority over the pen. Cézanne's painting takes priority over Cézanne's paintbrush.

When the means (capital) is regarded more important than the end (the working human), or when the instrumental cause (capital) is held in more regard than the efficient cause (the working human), we have what is called the "alienation of labor."* (Compendium, No. 280) The alienation of labor comes about when the relative priority of labor and capital becomes reversed. It is at this point--when capital is prioritized over labor--that we start entering into the possibility of slavery. After all, slavery is nothing else than the complete absorption of human labor into capital.

Such subordination of labor to capital is obviously manifested in numerous social ills: child labor, concealed work, non-work,** underpaid work, exploitation of workers. But it is also manifested more insidiously and less noticeably, perhaps even sometimes self-imposed because of social pressure, in other ways: over-working, work-as-a-career that takes an overweening importance to other human aspects, excessive demands upon work that render family life difficult or impossible, and so forth. (Compendium, No. 280) Therefore alienation of labor occurs both quantitatively and qualitatively. And sometimes the alienation of labor can be very subtle.

Capital is a vague, amorphous term. But essentially, as used by the Church in its social doctrine, it includes the "whole collection of means of production" other than labor. Capital therefore includes the material means of production (physical assets) and the financial resources available for investment in such assets, but it also includes such matters as land, technology, science, or even institutions such as markets. It is everything that is not man working.

While labor enjoys a certain priority, the Church also recognizes that capital and labor are complementary: that one cannot exist without the other. (Compendium, No. 277) Unfortunately, experience has shown that there is a certain antagonism between the two, particularly during times of economic, social, or technological change.

Perhaps the most well-known antagonism between labor and capital is the classical, historical one, one where "the workers put their powers at the disposal of the entrepreneurs, and these, following the principal of maximum profit [and treating the employees as means, not ends, which is to say instruments or things], tried to establish the lowest possible wages for the work done by the employees," using ways that were not respectful of the dignity of the worker. Often, of the two sides of the equation, one was skewed with the bias of unequal bargaining power, and the contract was dangerously close to being one of adhesion. The relationship was dangerously close to a de facto slavery.

To some extent, the Church recognizes that this traditional antagonism has been ameliorated, though it certainly has not disappeared. It often raises its ugly head in sweatshops across the world. But she sees another antagonism arising, one that seems to focus not so much on wage, but on production. The "scientific and technological advances," which the Church recognizes as "a source of development and progress," often come with a price tag that is appended upon human workers. These scientific and technological advances "expose workers to the risk of being exploited by the mechanisms of the economy and the unrestrained quest for productivity."

Again, the danger is that man is viewed as a cog in a machine, as a thing.

That labor and capital need not be antagonistic adversaries is proved by those instances where workers themselves participate in the ownership, management, and profits of a business enterprise.*** And, of course, in small enterprises it is often the case that the owner provides both capital and labor. By structuring enterprises in appropriate ways, the worker is considered to be a part-owner of the business as a result of his work to the venture. We ought to consider business models other than those imposed upon us by historical fortuitousness as a result of their having been fashioned during the Industrial Revolution.

There is no social or economic necessity that requires that shareholders and owners, management, and labor be carved up into discrete uncommunicative categories. It would be healthy, the Church suggests, to think outside the box. We ought to consider other organizational structures which emphasize that labor, "because of its subjective character," might be remunerated by something other than just wage-for-work, but may be remunerated, at least in part, by "right to participate" in the venture itself in exchange for work. There are, of course, myriad ways in which this might be done, none of which are specifically mandated by the Church's social doctrine.

The priority of labor over capital must be understood within the Church's understanding of private property. As we have examined in other postings,† the right to private property is certain and assured in Catholic social doctrine. This, of course, would also include the means of production. These may be privately owned.

Yet the right to private property must be understood as being subject to a sort of "social mortgage," so that private property is subordinated to the principal of the universal destination of goods and to the common good. "Property, which is acquired in the first place through work, must be placed at the service of work." (Compendium, No. 282)

It would be an abuse of one's ownership of property to use it in a manner that would frustrate the work or development of others. For example, suppose you owned a strip of land which gave a farmer access to his crops. Wouldn't it be wrong to use your ownership to shut him out of access to his land and his crops? Or to use it in a manner that would exact from him an unjust toll?

This principle of the universal destination of goods is extended to include the means of production. For this reason, the "means of production 'cannot be possessed against labor, they cannot even be possessed for possession's sake.'" (Compendium, No. 282) (quoting John Paul II, Laborem exercens, 14)

There is something wrong to own the means of production and not to use it to the advantage of all or to use it in a manner that frustrates or impedes the work of others. It is particularly offensive when the means of production are not used or are used to impede the work of others "in an effort to gain a profit which is not the result of the overall expansion of work and the wealth of society, but rather is the result of curbing them or of illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people.'" (Compendium, No. 282) (quoting John Paul II, Centesimus annus, 43)

Private property, the means of production, public property, technology, knowledge, and "the various mechanisms of the economic system, must be oriented to an economy of service to mankind, so that they contribute to putting into effect the principle of the universal destination of goods." (Compendium, No. 283) This is a universal principle, and so these resources must not "remain concentrated in the wealthier countries or in the hands of a small number of powerful groups," impeding the development of developing or underdeveloped areas of the world.

__________________________________________
*It goes without saying that the Church, in using the phrase "alienation of labor," is not invoking any Marxist doctrine, but is using it to describe a phenomenon of estrangement or alienation between human labor and capital caused by the disordering or confusion of ends and means or of efficient and instrumental causality. Essentially, alienation occurs when material goods are held in greater esteem than man and his work which have spiritual, subjective realities. The Church understands the term "labor" quite broadly to encompass any form of human contribution to production. Therefore, she warns: "One must not fall into the error of thinking that the process of overcoming the dependence of work on material is capable of overcoming alienation in the workplace or alienation of labor. The reference here is not only to the many pockets of non-work, concealed work, child labor, underpaid work, exploitation of workers--all of which still persist today--but also to new, much more subtle forms of exploitation of new sources of work, to over-working, to work-as-a-career that often takes on more importance than other human an necessary aspects, to excessive demands of work that makes family life unstable and sometimes impossible, to a modular structure of work that entails the risk of serious repercussions on the unitary perception of one's existence and the stability of family relationships. (Compendium, No. 280) .
**Meaning chronic, systemic unemployment.
***There are a number of employee-owned businesses, where, for example, more than 50% of the stock ownership is held in an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). For a list of the top 100 of such companies in the United States, see the National Center for Employee Ownership's article: The Employee Ownership 100: America's Largest Majority Employee-Owned Companies. Of course, this sort of set-up is not necessarily recommended by the Church. Indeed, the Church does not "necessarily" demand anything in this area, since here we are dealing with prudential, contingent matters, with the application of doctrine, not with the doctrine itself. She leaves the implementation to the ingenuity of individuals. In fact, one could see how the governing body of the ESOP could set itself up as a rival to the individual stock owner, so that the employee ownership becomes one of form and not substance.
†See Property is Yours, Mine, and Ours.

Christ Working for Christ

2011-11-30T03:12:00.010-06:00

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION WAS SOMETHING LIKE Pandora's box. With all the unquestionable increase in human economic development and the increase in wealth and efficiency in productivity and technical progress that the Industrial Revolution ushered in, came a variety of moral plagues and social evils, particularly for the factory worker, the miner, the child laborer, the family in overcrowded tenement, the disregarded poor, all of whom seemed to suffer from exploitation.

For many, these were hard times. The moneyed capitalist and the bourgeoisie who prospered from this Gospel of Wealth which dulled their appetite for the Eternal and their obligations to their fellow man seemed fat enough. But for the exploited class, it seemed like Hope remained bottled up, hidden somewhere.

Then, to make matters worse, all sorts of human devices were thought up as solutions for the moral and social problems: socialism, communism, anarchism. These seemed to pit class against class, brother against brother, and suggested injustice as an answer for injustice, two wrongs to make a right. These were Godless, materialistic recipes to counter a Godless, heartless capitalism. They were but salt in the wound of class warfare.

This Industrial Revolution and the "social question" it raised, presented the Church with a new challenge. When she saw the crowds, she had compassion on them, because they were distressed and troubled, wandering around like sheep without a shepherd. So she looked into her reservoir of knowledge to see what she could offer to alleviate the problem and counter the spurious solutions. Drawing forth from the natural law and evangelical principles, she brought forth the salve of her social doctrine.

The Church's first sally into this area was Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum, literally "Of New Things." This encyclical was, as, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church describes it, "a heartfelt defense to the inalienable dignity of workers," but it also stressed the "importance of the right to property, the principle of cooperation among the social classes, the rights of the weak and the poor, the obligations of workers and employers, and the right to form associations." (Compendium, No. 268)

From Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum to Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in veritate, "the Church has never stopped considering the problems of workers within the context of a social question which has progressively taken on worldwide dimensions."(Compendium, No. 269)

In addressing the social questions raised by the Industrial Revolution and the economic and social changes it brought forth, the Church has had cause to reflect on the meaning of work. Work that is the every-day fact of life for man. Work from which man can derive dignity, but which may in some cases also be impersonal, tainted by injustice, the loss of freedom, and the cause of heavy toil and inhuman suffering.

The Church brings a unique personalistic vision of work, one that finds in it great dignity and great value. For the Church, work is always understood within the context of the human person. The human is never viewed as a commodity, but always as a person, one endowed with body and soul, and one called to an eternal destiny. It is from this personal vantage point that the Church understands work and its dignity.

The Church therefore sees human work from three dimensions: the objective, the subjective,and the social. The first looks first at the work and not necessarily the person doing the work. The second looks at the person doing the work and not necessarily the work done. The third looks at the social aspect of work: how it affects others.

The Church recognizes that work has an objective component. It can be seen as the "sum of activities, resources, instruments, and technologies used by men and women to produce things." The precise boundaries of works therefore changes with the times and with place.

But the Church also sees the more important subjective component of work. In this subjective sense, work is the "actus personae," an act of a person. She recognizes that "work is the activity of the human person as a dynamic being," one made in the image of God and enjoying all the dignity of that image. (Compendium, No. 270) It is this personal, subjective side of work which gives it its dignity, and "which does not allow that it be considered a simple commodity or an impersonal element of the apparatus for productivity." "The subjective dimension of work must take precedence over the objective dimension." (Compendium, No. 271)

From the subjective, personal vantage point, any materialism is excluded. "Any form of materialism or economic tenet that tries to reduce the worker to being a mere instrument of production, a simple labor force with an exclusively material value, would end up hopelessly distorting the essence of work and stripping it of its most noble and basic human finality." (Compendium, No. 271).

Human work, therefore, must recognize "human finality." It must have as its final goal, not work itself or its product, but must have its "final goal in the human person." The "end of work any work whatsoever, always remains man." "Work is for man, and not man for work." (Compendium, No. 272)

There is therefore always a personal, a spiritual part of man involved in work, and for this reason "whatever work it is that is done by man--even if the common scale of values rates it as the meanest 'service,' as the most monotonous, even the most alienating work" retains its subjective value.

Work is never not tied to others. There are invariably social aspects, social connections and interdependency tied to work. One always works with others and for others, and not only for oneself. "Work, therefore, cannot be properly evaluated if its social nature is not taken into account." (Compendium, No. 273)

Work is not an option for man. Work is "an obligation, that is to say, a duty on the part of man." (Compendium, No. 274) (quoting John Paul II, Laborem exercens, 16) In a sense, work may be seen as part of that commandment of loving one's self and loving one's neighbor as one's self. The "Creator has commanded" that man work. That command is not arbitrary, as it recognizes that work is required for a man "in order to respond to the need to maintain and develop his own humanity." Finally, work is a moral obligation "with respect to one's neighbor, which in the first place is one's family," but which may also be seen to including "the society to which one belongs, the nation of which one is son or daughter," and even "the entire human family of which one is a member." Indeed, the duty of work extends beyond our own time, since we are "heirs of the work of generations and at the same time shapers of the future of all who will live after us." (Compendium, No.274)

In trying to understand the Church's personalistic vision of work, we might invoke here the picture of the last judgment presented by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46).

At the end of time, the Lord will separate employers and employees.

And to the employers who understand the dignity of work, the Lord will say, "Come, for you provided me work." And they will respond, "Lord when did we give you work?" And the Lord will respond, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

And to the employees who understand the dignity of work, the Lord will say, "Come, for you worked for me." And these will respond, "Lord when did we work for you?" And the Lord will respond, "Truly I tell you, whatever work you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Think of how the world would differ if the employment relationships were seen as Christ employing Christ and Christ working for Christ.

I'll bet Adam Smith, James Mill, the Comte Saint-Simon, Karl Marx, and Pierre Joseph Proudhon never thought of that.

What a new thing that would be.

We are All Tentmakers: The Duty to Work and Contributive Justice

2011-11-28T02:28:00.004-06:00

IT IS AN UNFORTUNATE REALITY that we tend to think of "social justice" only as something that relates to what people ought to get. Short shrift has been given to what people ought to give. In other words, we pay a lot of attention to distributive justice, but very little is heard about contributive justice.

No one is excused from contributing to the extent of his abilities to the greater society in which he lives. This means that we all have to work to the extent we can, first to support ourselves, next to support those that are "our own," i.e., our families and communities, and finally to support the greater common good.

In fact, as Christians we are to go beyond that and work so that we can give to the poor, to the needy in an exercise of charity. How, asks St. Basil in his commentary on his monastic rules, is one to minister to the Christ who comes in the form the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless stranger, the naked, and "Our Lords" the sick? How are we to perform the works of mercy if we have no means?

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is rather blunt about it: "No Christian, in light of the fact that he belongs to a united community, should feel that he has the right not to work and to live at the expense of others." (Compendium, No. 264) Freeloaders, who are to be distinguished from the truly needy, are anathema; they are parasitically unjust to those upon whom they rely for support.

We need to inculcate in society the spirit of St. Paul who worked (he was a tentmaker) so as not to be a burden to his congregations. He told the Ephesians that "these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions." (Acts 20:34)

While in Corinth, he stayed with the Jewish couple Aquila and Priscilla and "stayed and worked with them" mending and making tents to support himself. (Acts 18:1-3) Any other way of living--to eat food free, to fail to work "so as not to burden any of you"--St. Paul considered "disorderly" and unseemly.

He instructed the Thessalonians while among them "that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should one eat." (2 Thes. 3:10).

St. Paul had a well-developed notion of contributive justice.

Sts. Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla Making Tents in Corinth

The early Christian church anticipated the second coming of Christ (what is called the parousia) as imminent. They were taught that "the form of this world is passing away." (1 Cor. 7:31) Even so, they were expected to work to support themselves and to meet the demands of contributive justice so as to be, as St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, "dependent on nobody." (1 Thes. 4:12) Not only would this comply with contributive justice, but earning money through work also allowed the Christian to supply charity to "those in need." (Eph. 4:28)

In other words, Christians were expected not only to work so as not to take from the common good and therefore act unjustly. They were expected to work so as to be able to give to the common good in charity.

Idleness was viewed with great disfavor. Witness the declamations of St. John Chrysostom against idleness:

Which is the useful horse, the pampered or the exercised? which the serviceable ship, that which sails, or that which lies idle? which the best water, the running or the stagnant? which the best iron, that which is much used, or that which does no work? does not the one shine bright as silver, while the other becomes all over rusty, useless, and even losing some of its own substance? The like happens also to the soul as the consequence of idleness: a kind of rust spreads over it, and corrodes both its brightness and everything else. How then shall one rub off this rust? With the whetstone of tribulations: so shall one make the soul useful and fit for all things.

Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, XXXV.3

In the time of the Apostles, the Graeco-Roman society--fed in large part by the institution of slavery--tended to view servile work as demeaning, inferior. Pitting themselves against the social mores of the day, the Apostles--following the example of Christ the carpenter--taught that all labor is good if done for the glory of God. (1 Cor. 10:31) This was not difficult for them, as the majority of them had been simple fishermen. None owned slaves. None were wealthy. None were born of royal or even noble blood.

All are called to contribute to the increase of the world. "By his work and industriousness, man--who has a share in the divine art and wisdom--makes creation, the cosmos already ordered by the Father, more beautiful. He summons the social and community energies that increase the common good, above all to the benefit of those who are neediest." (Compendium, No. 266)

And if one seeks perfection, as St. Basil told his monks, one will not work for oneself, but for others. "Human work, directed to charity as its final goal, becomes an occasion for contemplation, it becomes devout prayer, vigilantly rising towards and in anxious hope of the day that will not end." (Compendium, No. 266)

There are many Saints who gave of their property and their work to the most needy. Of the many we could cite, we might point to the banking heiress St. Katharine Drexel (1858-1988) who contributed her entire vast estate (estimated at $20 million) and selflessly dedicated her entire earthly labor for the education of the Black and Native American peoples who had been such victims of social oppression and racial injustice.

We do not all have the resources of St. Katharine Drexel. Some of us are mere tentmakers and fishermen. But whether we are poor tentmakers or wealthy banking heiresses, we have a duty in contributive justice to work toward the common good.

Indeed, as Christians, we have a duty to go beyond mere contributive justice and give of our plenty to those who are most in need. We are haunted by Christ's words: "Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me." (Matt. 25:45)

The Word of God Worked: The Biblical Foundations of Work

2011-11-27T03:23:00.010-06:00

“WORK IS NO DISGRACE; it is idleness which is a disgrace," writes the Greek poet Hesiod in his poem, "Works and Days."* Even this noble pagan sentiment fails to capture the Scriptural notion of the nobility of work and our duty to engage in it and sanctify it. Indeed, in the Scriptural view, work is a sort of imitation of God, the entire creation being seen as a workweek in which God brings forth the world out of nothing and gifts it to man so that he may exercise dominion over it and cultivate and care for it. (Gen. 1:28; 2:15; cf. Ps. 8:5-7) In Christ, work is even more ennobled, as we see God in his human nature working in the silent, hidden obscurity of Nazareth, setting for us an example of how work, even the most menial, can be the source of sanctification. In Christ, "human work becomes a service raised to the grandeur of God." (Compendium, No. 262)

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church begins its section on work with a reflection of the Biblical view of work and man's relationship to work. The message that one may take from the Compendium's understanding of the Biblical view of work is that it is a great, but relative good. "Work is part of the original state of man and precedes his fall; it is therefore not a punishment or curse." Work becomes toilsome only after the sin of Adam and Eve, after the fall. (Gen. 3:6-8; 17-19) The soil begrudges its gifts: it "becomes miserly, unrewarding, sordidly hostile." Only "by the sweat of one's brow" will man "get bread to eat." (Gen. 3:19)

The Childhood of Christ by Gerrit van Honthorst

When Christ teaches us to pray, "Give us this day, our daily bread," he is not teaching us to ask for some sort of divine welfare, a life of leisure while bread comes down from heaven as if it were manna. He is enjoining up us also the duty of work as a predicate for the gift of its fruit. "Through work," John Paul II said in his encyclical on human labor, "man must earn his daily bread." The post lapsarian suffering and toil, frustration and burden do not change our essential duty to exercise dominion over, to "cultivate and care for" creation.

Work was part of paradise. Work is part of the world which is no longer a paradise.

Work has a place of honor because it is a source of wealth, a necessary key to flourishing, to fulfillment, to happiness. It is the key to the conditions of a decent life. It is a tool against poverty and hunger. In this world--unless one lives off of the labor of another or off one's inherited or saved capital--work is what will keep body and soul together. "If any man will not work, neither let him eat." (2 Thess. 3:10)

For all its value, however, work and the wealth and money it may bring are not to be idolized. There is such a thing as idols of work, of the marketplace, and of wealth: idola laboris, idola fori, idola pecuniae. The Compendium warns us that one "must not succumb to the temptation of making an idol of work, for the ultimate and definitive meaning of life is not to be found in work." "Work is essential," it recognizes, "but it is God--and not work--who is the origin of life and the final goal of man." (Compendium, No. 257) The work week culminates in the Sabbath rest. "The memory and the experience of the Sabbath constitute a barrier against becoming slaves to work, whether voluntarily or by force, and against every kind of exploitation, hidden or evident." (Compendium, No. 258)

Indeed, the wealth that work may yield--while unquestionably a great good--may also be inordinately loved. "Man," our Lord says, "does not live by bread alone." (Matt. 4:4; Luke 4:4) There are things greater than wealth--justice, righteousness, and charity among them. "Better is a little with the fear of the Lord," Proverbs 15:16 says, "than great treasure and trouble with it." The same message is repeated: "Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice." (Prov. 16:8) We are therefore not to be anxious for earthly goods, like the Pagans. (Matt. 6:25, 31, 34) "But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides." (Matt. 6:33)

There are few things more dangerous than wealth. We know what God has in store for the hoarder who had only his riches in mind, even if these riches were legally and justly acquired: "You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you." (Luke 12:20) In the parable of Lazarus and Dives, the rich man Dives lands in Hades. (Luke 16:19-31) "I tell you the truth," Christ says, "it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." He follows it up with an image which is harrowing to a man of means: "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matt. 19:23-24; Mark 10:24-25; Luke 18:24-25)

The Christian must therefore always subject himself to an examen of conscience, and he may have no better guide than Job:

Had I put my trust in gold or called fine gold my security;
Or had I rejoiced that my wealth was great,
Or that my hand had acquired abundance
. . .
This too would be a crime for condemnation,
For I should have denied God above.

(Job 31: 24-25, 28)

In his life, Jesus gives us an example of Christian work. One must remember than in all Christ's "hidden years," Jesus labored in obscurity. In fact, Jesus "'devoted most of the years of his life on earth in manual work at the carpenter's bench' in the workshop of Joseph." (Compendium, No. 259) (quoting JP II, Laborem exercens, 6) Nothing Jesus did was in vain. Nor must we think these almost thirty years of obscure labor meant nothing to Jesus or to humankind.

In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton said that there was one thing too great for God to show us when He walked upon earth, and that he "sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

In truth there was something other than Jesus' mirth that was not shown us: the almost thirty years of obscure labor in Nazareth: God in humility, poverty, and silence--in hiding--doing "the work of human hands," the opera manuum hominum, of a poor carpenter. It was this mysterious "non-revelation" that so inspired Blessed Charles de Foucald himself to live this "hidden life" outside of Tamanrasset, among the Berber Touareg tribe, in the hostile southern Sahara.

He [Jesus] came to Nazareth, the place of the hidden life, of ordinary life, of family life, of prayer, of work, of obscurity, of silent virtues practiced with no witness other than God, his family, and his neighbors, of this holy life, humble, kindly, obscure, that place where the greater part of humans lead their lives, and where he set the example for thirty years.**

The value that Jesus ascribes to work is apparent in his parables and in his words. Useless servants are chastised for hiding talents. (Matt. 24:46) Hired laborers in the vineyard should accept their agreed wage. (Matt. 20:1-6) The laborer deserves his wages. (Luke 10:7) Servants that are faithful to their masters are held in high esteem. (Matt. 24:46) He views his entire mission as work: "My Father is working still, and I am working." (John 5:17)

"Work," reflected upon in the revelation of Jesus Christ, "represents a fundamental dimension of human existence as participation not only in the act of creation but also in that of redemption." (Compendium, No. 263) The difficulties of work can be part of that cross which, as disciples of our Lord, we are called to carry in imitation of our Lord. Our work, not through any merits of its own, but as a result of the grace of Christ, becomes "an expression of man's full humanity, in his historical condition and his eschatological orientation." (Compendium, No. 118)

_______________________________________
*ll. 309 (ἔργον δ᾽ οὐδὲν ὄνειδος, ἀεργίη δέ τ᾽ ὄνειδος)
**Il vint à Nazareth, le lieu de la vie cachée, de la vie ordinaire, de la vie de famille, de prière, de travail, d’obscurité, de vertus silencieuses, pratiquées sans autre témoin que Dieu, ses proches, des voisins, de cette vie sainte, humble, bienfaisante, obscure, qu’est celle de la plupart des humains, et dont il donna l’exemple pendant trente ans. Charles de Foucauld, "Voyageur dans la nuit, notes de spiritualité 1888-1916", note quotidienne du 20 juin 1916, éditions Nouvelle Cité, page 208.

The Family Manifesto: Families of the World Unite!

2011-11-26T04:00:00.005-06:00

THE COMPENDIUM OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE of the Church has a sort of social manifesto for the family. The political manifesto revolves around the notions of the "social subjectivity" and the "social priority" of the family. It suggests that the family as a institution has certain "family rights." It enjoins upon societies too often structured around false notions of individualism to re-think their basic premises, and to modify their economic, political, legal, and cultural institutions to accommodate the family.

The concept of "social subjectivity" is a concept that is intended to steer us in between two social errors: radical individualism or atomism, on the one hand, and socialism or collectivism, on the other. In the former, only the individual matters, the group does not. In the other, only the group matters, the individual does not. The notion of "social subjectivism" intends to place responsibilities on individuals and recognize their intrinsic dignity, but at the same time stress that whatever we do affects others. We necessarily exercise our subjectivity within society, hence the notion of "social subjectivity."

The notion of "social subjectivity" is a notion that includes not only individuals, but also families. Hence families are not separate cells unlinked with other families. There is, in fact "demonstrations of solidarity and sharing among families themselves," which ought to extend out into "various forms of participation in social and political life." (Compendium, No. 246) The notion "social subjectivity" understands that "people must not be considered only as individuals, but also in relation to the family nucleus to which they belong, the specific values and needs of which must be taken into due account." (Compendium, No. 254)

Una Familia by Fernando Botero

The concept of the "social priority" of the family is one where civil society recognizes the "priority and 'antecedence' of the family." The family ought to be the focus of all civil society, and it "should never fail in its fundamental task of respecting and fostering the family." (Compendium, No. 252) (quoting JP II, Familiaris consortio) Therefore, economic, social, political, legal, juridical, and cultural realms will focus on the family and recognize the priority of the family. This will call for a shifting of values in societies which have--for generations--structured their institutions with an eye toward individualism.

The notion "social priority" of the family means that the family ought to be understood to have preeminent rights to social recognition. The State and all society must recognize the family, must protect, appreciate, and promote the family, understood as the "natural society founded on marriage" between one man and one woman.

There ought to be no confusion between the family and those forms of cohabitation which mock it. The family, "understood correctly," is what is to receive social priority and which has family rights. This is not true for "all other forms of cohabitation which, by their very nature, deserve neither the name nor the status of family." (Compendium, No. 253)

A family is open to other families in solidarity, keeping in mind the common good:

This is a solidarity that can take on the features of service and attention to those who live in poverty and need, to orphans, the handicapped, the sick, the elderly, to those who are in mourning, to those with doubts, to those who live in loneliness or who have been abandoned. It is a solidarity that opens itself to acceptance, to guardianship, to adoption; it is able to bring every situation of distress to the attention of institutions so that, according to their specific competence, they can intervene.

(Compendium, No. 246)

The Church calls upon families to take an active, protagonistic role in forming society itself, in inculcating society and politics with its values. "Far from being only objects of political action," the Compendium states, "families can and must become active subjects." The Church asks families to unite, to work toward seeing that "the laws and institutions of the State not only do not offend but support and positively defendant the rights and duties of the family." (Compendium, No. 247)

The Compendium issues forth a cri-de-coeur that there be a "family politics," one that is transformative of civil society, including its economic, social, juridical, and cultural aspects, so that civil society serves the family's needs. Civil society must recognize the "social priority" of the family. "To this end, family associations must be promoted and strengthened." (Compendium, No. 247) Families have the right to associate with other families and with institutions to better fulfill their purpose, to protect their rights, and to foster the goods and advance their interests.

There is a particularly significant link between family life and economic life. Indeed, in less-industrialized societies the home is the center of economic life. A vestige of this is indicated by the very word economy, which comes from the Greek oikonomia, meaning household management. Even when the household is no longer the center of economic activity, there remains a "very special relationship" between family life and work, one that ought not be give short shrift. (Compendium, No. 249)

The family is in fact a focus, "one of the most important terms of reference," when assessing economic institutions and their morality. Economic institutions that harm the family are immoral. The economy was made for the family, not the family for the economy.

In fact, the existence of the family is what justifies private property. The relationship between labor and the family "has its roots in the relation existing between the person and his right to possess the fruit of his labor." A man is due the fruits of his labor, and he uses these to support his family. By saving money and acquiring property, a family both assures its freedom and is able to insulate against need or future economic demands. Therefore, labor and property concerns "not only the individual as a singular person but also as a member of a family, understood as a 'domestic society.'" (Compendium, No. 249)

The family must not be forgotten in the economic life of a nation. Family life is not independent of economic life as if they operate in two different moral realms. True, economic life must take into account economic laws and the "broad networks of production and exchange of goods and services that involves families in continuously increasing measure." (Compendium, No. 248) But economic life cannot be limited to a one-dimensionality, to a "market mentality" alone. Rather, the economy must be "the logic of sharing and solidarity" not only among families, but also across generations. For this reason, the family "must rightfully be seen as an essential agent of economic life." (Compendium, No. 248)

Work is the engine that feeds the family: "Work is essential insofar as it represents the condition that makes it possible to establish a family, for the means by which the family is maintained are obtained through work." (Compendium, No. 249) Obviously, it is work that allows the family to supported and maintained, and this not only is a monetary sense, "since a family afflicted by unemployment runs the risk of not fully achieving its end." (Compendium, No. 249)

To nurture and protect the intrinsic relationship between work and family, the Church proposes the notion of a "family wage," which she defines as "a wage sufficient to maintain a family and allow it to live decently." (Compendium, No.250) Maintenance goes beyond subsistence, and includes a notion there ought to be an amount beyond mere subsistence so as to allow a frugal and responsible family to save money and acquire property. The ownership of property by families is a "guarantee of freedom." (Compendium, No. 250)

How the "family wage" is achieved is something open to prudential judgment. Obviously, in a healthy economy a "family wage" will be the result of private agreement between and employer and an employee. But where this is not occurring for a variety of reasons, the wage can be supplemented by subsidies, tax credits to the employee or employer which encourage higher effective wages, or other "forms of important social provisions to help bring it about." (Compendium, No. 250)

In modern industrialized societies, one confronts the problem of unremunerated work. There is work done within the family--"housekeeping" by both wives and husbands--whose worth goes unpaid and often unrecognized. One has to recognized the value of "housekeeping" as work that directly contributes to the common good because it is "a service directed and devoted to the quality of life, constitutes a type of activity that is eminently personal and personalizing." (Compendium, No. 251) This work ought to be "socially recognized and valued," and this in concrete terms, through some sort of "economic compensation in keeping with that of other types of work." (Compendium, No. 251) Again, how this is achieved is something relegated to prudential judgment.

There has to be a greater symbiosis between the economy and the family so that families do not feel that they have to avoid having children to assure economic survival. "[C]are must be taken to eliminate all obstacles that prevent a husband and wife from making free decisions concerning their procreative responsibilities and, in particular, those that do not allow women to carry out their maternal role fully." (Compendium, No. 251)

While the State and civil society have as responsibility to safeguard family values, to "promote the intimacy and harmony within families," to assure "respect for unborn life," and to provide for "the effective freedom of choice in educating children," one must also remember the principle of subsidiarity. "[N]either society nor the State may absorb, substitute, or reduce the social dimension of the family; rather, they must honor it, recognize it, respect it, and promote it according to the principle of subsidiarity." (Compendium, No. 251)

The Family as the First School

2011-11-25T06:40:00.004-06:00

THE FAMILY IS MAN'S FIRST SCHOOL, and it is within the family where man is formed "in the fullness of his personal dignity according to all his dimensions, including the social dimension." This includes cultural, ethical, social, spiritual, and religious values. One of the things the family has as its mission is to educate. By fulfilling its mission to educate, the family plays an irreplaceable role and advances the common good of a society. (Compendium, No. 238)

It is within the family where children are raised and formed as human beings. The parental role in this human formation is governed by love, a love which places itself "at the service of children to draw forth from them ("e-ducere") the best that is in them" and which "finds its fullest expression precisely in the task of educating." (Compendium, No. 239) That is why the family may be called the "first school."

Christian parents have a double duty. They must not see to the education of their children in natural virtues, in an authentic humanism. For the Christian, the family is not only the "first school," it is also a "garden" or a "first seminary" "in which the seeds of vocation, which God sows generously, are able to blossom and grow to full maturity."*

The parental duty to educate children comes tied to a right. Parents are the "original and primary" educators of their children, and their duties as well as their rights are "irreplaceable and inalienable."(Compendium, No. 239) The duty is non-delegable. The parent is ultimately responsible for his or her child. Though the parent may obtain the help of other persons or institutions, these always remain in loco parentis, in the parents' place. Importantly, this is a task shared by both parents, and so "the role of the father and that of the other are equally necessary." (Compendium, No. 242)

The State must recognize the preeminent role of the parents, particularly in the matter of religious and moral education of their young. Modernly, the State and its educational bureaucracy is invasive. It tends to be distrustful of parents, and often sets itself in opposition to the values of the parents. Particularly vicious is the relativistic and secular nature of modern education, a nature that is inspired by false educational philosophies and erroneous notions of separation of Church and State and interpretations of the Constitution's establishment clause.

Obviously, the parental charge to educate their children requires the help of civil and ecclesial authorities and scholastic institutions. But these are "agents of education," which means that they remain answerable to the parents as principals. "Parents have the right to choose the formative tools that respond to their convictions and to seek those means that will help them best to fulfill their duty as educators, in the spiritual and religious sphere also." (Compendium, No. 240)

In practice, parents are often stymied in their educational decisions. The system that is currently in place is weighted in favor of the public school, and parents are for financial reasons frequently unable to exercise real choice. The power to tax and the power to allocate tax revenue is entirely devoted to sustaining a public school system to the disadvantage of private, faith-based schools. This state of affairs is unacceptable:

"Parents should not have to sustain, directly or indirectly, extra charges which would deny or unjustly limit the exercise of this freedom." The refusal to provide public economic support to non-public schools that need assistance and that render a service to civil society is to be considered an injustice. "Whenever the State lays claim to an educational monopoly, it oversteps its rights and offends justice. . . . The State cannot without injustice merely tolerate so-called private schools. Such schools render a public service and therefore have a right to its financial assistance."

(Compendium, No. 241)**

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church insists that the family's educational rights includes the notion of "integral education." This includes the mandate that all education be directed to the proper formation of the human person "in view of his final end." It requires recognition of the virtues "of justice and charity." (Compendium, 242) This means that a God-less education is unacceptable. Man's final end is God, and inculcation of the virtue of justice and charity demand a theistic philosophy of education. Secular theories of education--such as the influential progressivist, pragmatist, empiricist theories of education advanced by John Dewey (1859-1952)--are unacceptable.

In the area of sex education, the parental role is particularly to be well-guarded. Sex education is to be presented "in an orderly and progressive manner," one that takes into account the age and maturity of the child. Additionally, sex education is to include "the human and moral values connected" to human sexuality. This means that disordered, immoral expressions of human sexuality--homosexuality, contraception, premarital sex, transgenderism and so forth--will not be taught as authentically human and moral life choices. The objective moral law as it relates to human sexuality ought not to be neglected. "Parents have the obligation to inquire about the methods used for sexual education in educational institutions in order to verify that such an important and delicate topic is dealt with properly." (Compendium, No. 243)

Children, of course, have the full dignity that is theirs as human persons. That dignity is to be respected and any rights that flow from that dignity protected. For this reason, "the rights of children must be legally protected within juridical systems."

One of the most fundamental rights of a child, his "first right," is to "be born in a real family." (Compendium, No. 244)*** With the development of genetic technology and with the recognition of homosexual civil unions and same-sex marriage, this right must be enforced. Children have a right to be conceived, born, and raised in families that are normal, not families that are based upon disordered an inauthentic human values.

Because of their relative weakness and inability to defend themselves, children are too often the victims of great injustice. Their rights are not infringed merely by inadequate access to food, medical care, and education. Their rights are all-too-often violated by such scourges as child labor, child trafficking, pedophilia, child pornography, and child marriage. These wrongs call forth from the Church a most strident demand:

It is essential to engage in a battle, at the national and international levels, against the violations of the dignity of boys and girls caused by sexual exploitation, by those caught up in pedophilia, and by every kind of violence directed against these most defenseless of human creatures. These are criminal acts that must be effectively fought with adequate preventive and penal measures by the determined action of the different authorities involved.

(Compendium, No. 245)

________________________________________
*Message of John Paul II for the XXXI World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

**Quoting the Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family, art. 5b and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's instruction, Libertatis conscientia, 94.
***Quoting from JP II, Address to the Committee of European Journalist for the Rights of the Child (13 January 1979).

The Family: Sanctuary of Life

2011-11-23T17:42:00.000-06:00

THREE TO GET MARRIED was the name of a popular book written by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Marriage involves more than two parties: Man, woman, and the third party, often forgotten in what Bishop Sheen called the "dis-God-ed" generation, is God. The institution of marriage, one must not forget, is not one designed by the will of the parties. The parties enter into the institution by an act of self-donation which certainly requires free will; but they do not define the institution. The institution of marriage, like all of what is, is entirely dependent on God, the God who is the "author of marriage" and who "endowed it with various benefits and purposes."

One of the benefits of marriage is conjugal love. Here, too, God is its author and endowed it with various benefits and purposes. The benefits do not come without responsibilities. Perhaps the most apparent and perhaps the most abused modernly: "Conjugal love is by its nature open to the acceptance of life." (Compendium, No. 230)

Not only have severed the tie between sex and marriage, we have severed the tie between sex and procreation. Modern man has a penchant for separating things that ought to be together and putting things together that ought to be separate.

Holy Family by El Greco

Though sex and procreation are things human persons share with other animals, we must not be fooled that these acts are the same. Biological similarity is not ontological similarity. Whatever humans do involves persons, and this changes the entire matter. Sex involving persons is something entirely different from sex involving brute animals. One cannot forget that the procreative privilege given man is unique in that it leads to creation, together with God, of persons, that is, those with the image and likeness of God.

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church speaks of the "social subjectivity of the family." By its very nature, the family is subjected to society and is therefore subject to the laws of social life. Uniquely, the family is the fundamental cell where human life is transferred from generation to generation, almost in a manner that a baton is passed from runner to runner in a relay race.

This notion of marriage and family as the social vehicles for the "handing down" or tradendere of life itself has been largely lost. "It is necessary to rediscover the social value of that portion of the common good inherent in each new human being." (Compendium, No. 230)

Every human life generated within the family which travels through time is a boon to life in common. Human life continues to burn within families from generation to generation in a "communion of generations" much like the sacred fire of Vesta burned for generations in the beautiful circular Temple of Vesta in Rome attended by its vestal virgins. (Compendium, No. 237)

In this manner every child born to a family is a benefit not only his or her mother, father, brothers or sisters, but also to the entire community into which he or she is born. The family is the temple where the flame of life is transmitted. It is a temple dedicated to the Lord of Life. The family is naturally ordered to serve what John Paul II has called the Gospel of life, evangelium vitae. Every birth ought to declare: Life is good news!

The family is therefore an intensely spiritual society, and the conjugal act that is at the heart of the marriage which is its fire has a spiritual dimension which is forgotten. "Fatherhood and motherhood represent a responsibility which is not simply physical but spiritual in nature." Through motherhood and fatherhood "there passes the genealogy of the person, which has its beginning in God and which must lead back to him." (Compendium, No. 237) (quoting JP II, Gratissimam sane, 10)

"The family contributes to the social good in an eminent fashion through responsible motherhood and fatherhood, the spouses' special participation in God's work of creation." (Compendium, No. 232) For this reason, civil society--including the State--is obliged to assure that its customs and laws support it. Most fundamentally, neither the State nor civil society may impinge or in any manner "violate the right to life, from conception to natural death." Rather, the civil society and the State are obliged to "protect and promote it." (Compendium, No. 231)

Motherhood and fatherhood must be exercised responsibly, with full consideration of a proper hierarchy of values. This means that that married couples must be open to life. Granted, motherhood and fatherhood are not exercised in a vacuum. Couples are entitled to consider the "physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions" which they confront. These present the setting in which responsible parenthood is practiced. Within these constraints or opportunities, couples confront the gamut of possibility from the "duly pondered and generous decision to have a large family" to the "decision, made for serious reasons and in respect of the moral law, to avoid for a time or even indeterminately a new birth." (Compendium, No. 232)

The practice of responsible procreation, however, must be "in respect of the moral law." Some methods of responsible parenthood are to be rejected outright.

The "first to be rejected as morally illicit are sterilization and abortion." Abortion in particular "is a horrendous crime and constitutes a particularly serious moral disorder." Abortion, being an intrinsic evil, is far from being something of right. (Compendium, No. 233)

Any form of artificial contraception is likewise to be rejected. Anyone sensitive to "a correct and integral understanding of the person and of human sexuality" will recognize at once why and how seriously artificial contraception offends against the conjugal act and the natural moral law. "Rejecting contraception and using natural methods for regulating births means choosing to base interpersonal relations between the spouses on mutual respect and total acceptances, with positive consequences also for bring about a more human order in society." (Compendium, No. 233)

The choice to use contraception is not a moral option for the couple. A fortiori, the promotion of contraception by social institutions or States is immoral. "All programs of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilization and contraception, as well as the subordination of economic assistance to such campaigns, are to be morally condemned as affronts to the dignity of the person and the family." (Compendium, No. 234) In this matter, both the U.N. and the U.S. may be the greatest offenders.

Responsible parenthood demands the exercise not of all options, but only of moral options, and the moral decisions do not only involve the decision to prevent conception. They also involve the decision to promote conception. There is no absolute "right to children," and no desire to be a mother or a father justifies immoral means to conceive them.

Modern technology has invaded the temple of the family in a sort of abomination of desolation which separates the procreative act from the unitive act and seeks to replace or substitute for the conjugal act. The upshot is that "the child comes about more as the result of an act of technology than as the natural fruit of a human act in which there is a full and total giving of the couple." (Compendium, No. 235) The immoral techniques that are immoral are legion: the donation of sperm or ova, surrogate motherhood, homologous and heterologous artificial fertilization, and so on. While there are some techniques that "end assistance to the conjugal act or to the attainment of its effects" which are legitimate, there are a whole host of illicit and immoral techniques that ought to be rejected. The ends do not justify the means.

One must also not forget that the child has certain rights to be born or raised within the confines of a natural family. "The unborn child must be guaranteed the best possible conditions of existence through the stability of a family founded on marriage, through the complementarities of the the two persons, father and mother." (Compendium, No. 235) Efforts to provide children to persons involved in some sort of civil union other than a family founded on the marriage of one man and one woman are to be shunned.

Finally, human cloning--defined as "the reproduction of a biological entity that is genetically identical to the originating organism"--is something to be abjured. Whether for reproductive or therapeutic purposes, human cloning is "contrary to the dignity of human procreation because it takes place in total absence of an act of personal love between spouses." It is an "agamic and asexual reproduction" unworthy of man. It represents, moreover, "a form of total domination of the reproduced individual on the part of the one reproducing it." It is a form of technological tyranny. (Compendium, No. 236)

The Family: The Economy of Love

2011-11-22T03:40:00.007-06:00

THE WORD ECONOMY comes from the Greek word oikonomia, which literally means law of the house or law of the hearth. There is an oikonomia, a law of the hearth, a law of the family, and that law is a law of love. The means of exchange in the family economy is not one measured in specie, but one measured in communion.

In the oikonomia, the family "business," investments are made not in securities or manufacturing plants or in fixed assets, but in persons. "The family is present as a place where communion . . . is brought about. It is the place where an authentic community of persons develops and grows thanks to the dynamism of love . . . ." (Compendium, No. 221)

In the economy of the family, profit is of no motive, and there is not thing such as Pareto efficiency; rather, love is at the heart of it all. And love does not think in terms of efficiency or net margins. "To love means to give and to receive something which can neither be bought nor sold, but only given freely and mutually." (Compendium, No. 221) Indeed, love is profligate, wasteful, heedless of efficiency and gain.

In the family economy, men and women not exploited in self-interest, sharp practice, or fraud. No. The relationship is one as distant from mutual exploitation as can be possible, for the dignity of the other is what is at the heart of all labor and effort. It is in marriage and family that the person "is recognized, accepted, and respected in his dignity." The "only basis for value" in this family economy is the dignity of the other, and this results in "heartfelt acceptance, encounter, and dialogue, disinterested availability, generous service, and deep solidarity." (Compendium, No. 221) (quoting JP II, Familiaris consortio, 43) These are the goods that are traded.

What a contradiction is the economy of the family from the economy on Wall Street or even Main Street! Indeed, the "existence of families living this way exposes the failings and contradictions of society that is for the most part, even if not exclusively, based on efficiency and functionality." (Compendium, No. 221)

If the "Occupy Wall Street" folks want to challenge Wall Street greed, be more that adult street urchins, and see a stimulus that works, then the first thing they should do, after taking showers and finding jobs, is to found families. For it is by "constructing daily a network of interpersonal relationship, both internal and external," that the family becomes "the first and irreplaceable school of social life, and example and stimulus for the broader community relationships by respect, justice, dialogue, and love." (Compendium, No. 221) (quoting Familiaris consortio, 43)

The family thrives on this reversal of values, and that is why the law of the jungle that seems to govern businessmen will cast away those things that are most treasured in the law of the hearth: The young--who are treasured for their promise and their innocence, and the elderly--who are treasured for their prior contributions and their current wisdom. The usufruct of the old never declines. The elderly in particular have something to teach us, for "they show that there are aspects of life--human, cultural, moral, and social values--which cannot be judged in terms of economic efficiency . . . ." (Compendium, No. 222)

The elderly are therefore a source of capital never exhausted:

As the Sacred Scripture says: "They still bring forth fruit in old age" (Ps. 92:15). The elderly constitute an important school of life, [one] capable of transmitting values and traditions and of fostering the growth of younger generations, who thus learn to seek not only their own good but also that of others.

(Compendium, No. 222)

At the foundation of the family is a contract. But this is no ordinary contract, one based on the consideration or peppercorn. And it is a contract without any condition, without any escape clause. It is a contract more properly called a covenant, where force majeure based upon fickle feelings is unknown, and where the only "act of God" clause is this: "what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." (Mark 10:9)

When it is manifested as the total gift of two persons in their complementarities, love cannot be reduced to emotions or feelings, much less to sexual expression. In a society that tends more and more to relativize and trivialize the very experience of love and sexuality, exalting its fleeting aspects and obscuring its fundamental values, it is more urgent than ever to proclaim and bear witness that the truth of conjugal love and sexuality exist where there is a full and total gift of persons, with the characteristics of unity and fidelity.

(Compendium, No. 223)

In the greater economy, at least modernly, the ideal seeks to erase distinctions between man and woman: equal work, equal pay. Women and men are to be judged solely on individual merit, without regard to sexual identity. Asexual beings is the preference.

In the economy of the family, this sort of reasoning is unknown:

[T]he Church does not tire of repeating her teaching: "Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarities are oriented towards the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarities, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out. According to this perspective, it is obligatory that positive law be conformed to the natural law, according to which sexual identity is indispensable, because it is the objective condition for forming a couple in marriage.*

(Compendium, No. 224)

In the world at large, unions are measured in terms of convenience, not of permanency. And while it may be acceptable for the consumer to shift loyalties from Kellogg's Frosted Flakes to General Mill's Cheerios, or from the Blackberry to the iPhone, and from Sprint to Vonage, such fickleness is not part of marriage and family life. In the family, loyalties outlast even death.

The nature of conjugal love requires the stability of the married relationship and its indissolubility. The absence of these characteristics compromises the relationship of exclusive and total love that is proper to the marriage bond, bringing great pain to the children and damaging repercussions also on the fabric of society.

The stability and indissolubility of the marriage union must not be entrusted solely to the intention and effort of the individual persons involved. The responsibility for protecting and promoting the family as a fundamental natural institution, precisely in consideration of its vital and essential aspects, falls to the whole of society. The need to confer an institutional character on marriage, basing this on a public act that is socially and legally recognized, arises from the basic requirements of social nature.

The introduction of divorce into civil legislation has fueled a relativistic vision of the marriage bond and is broadly manifested as it becomes "truly a plague on society."

(Compendium, No. 225) (quoting CCC § 2385)

Marriage is a natural institution between two persons, but it is also a social institution since it has "a social dimension that is unique . . . attending as it does to caring for and educating children," with the aim of having them both self-integrated and integrated into social life. That is one reason, among others, that the law ought not to legitimize forms of relationships that are nothing but ersatz marriages or relationships that ape--even mock--marriage.

De facto unions . . . are based on a false conception of an individual's freedom to choose and on a completely privatistic vision of marriage and family. . . . . Making "de facto unions"** legally equivalent to the family would discredit the model of the family, which cannot be brought about in a precarious relationship between persons but only in a permanent union originating in marriage, that is, in a covenant between one man and one woman, founded on the mutual and free choice that entails full communion oriented towards procreation.

The fact is that there will never be anything close to approaching a just society as long as our laws do not recognize the characteristic traits of marriage: a relationship between one man and one woman that is marked by unity, indissolubility and fidelity, and fruitfulness. It must reject other false models of marriage. Similarly, it must promote the unique oikonomia of the family.

Granted, where the social evil reigns as it does in our society, the law may have to tolerate evil. In the current state of Western society, it would impossible to enforce the natural law of marriage. Yet toleration is not promotion. Positively, the law ought not to "weaken the recognition of indissoluble monogamous marriage as the only authentic form of the family." Though it may cut against the grain of specious liberty, there is such a thing as the pedagogy of the law. The law must teach of the importance of marriage and family life as understood by the Church:

It is therefore necessary that public authorities "resist these tendencies which divide society and are harmful to the dignity, security, and welfare of the citizens as individuals, and they must try to ensure that public opinion is not led to undervalue the institutional importance of marriage and the family."

(Compendium, No. 229) (quoting JP II, Familiaris consortio, 81)

Clearly, positive law alone will not cure the social ills we suffer from false concepts of marriage and family. Positive law is a slim reed, and is a poor tool to hold social corruption in check. The cure for our social disease will require the concerted action of the entirety of civil society:

It is the task of the Christian community and of all who have the good of society at heart to reaffirm that "the family constitutes, much more than a mere juridical, social, and economic unity, a community of love and solidarity, which is uniquely suited to teach and transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual, and religious values essential for the development and well-being of its members and of society."

(Compendium, No. 229) (quoting Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family (24 November 1983), Preamble, E)

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*For those Catholics that are tone deaf as a result of listening to the loud music of modernity: this means no civil unions or same sex travesties of "marriage." Later, the Compendium tackles the issue head on when it refers to the demands of legal recognition of homosexual unions. Under the light of authentic anthropology, the incongruity of the demand to accord marital status to such unions is patent. (Compendium, No. 228) By nature, these unions are unopen to life, infertile per se. Moreover, the requisite complementarity is absent. And while homosexual persons (but not homosexual acts!) are to be given the respect due all persons, there is no justification for "the legitimization of behavior that is not consistent with moral law." "By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties." What God has clearly sundered, let no man join.
**A pastoral way of saying what used to be called in the days of a moral theology less pastoral but more accurate: in peccato existens, living in sin. Legally, it was called concubinage.

Marriage, Natural Institution at the Foundation of the Family

2011-11-21T04:30:00.002-06:00

IF SOCIETY IS VISUALIZED AS A BODY, then the family is its vital cell. It is the first natural society, the smallest indivisible unit of society, and is at the center of all social life. It is a marvelous society, one formed by the communion of two human persons in the bond of marriage. Marriage is a permanent union between a man and a woman, persons equal in dignity, yet each with a personhood distinct and complementary. Indeed, it is this complementarity that yields the great fruit of procreation, an office "which makes [the spouses] co-workers with the Creator." (Compendium, No. 209)

Though the family is a natural society, and though it is established through the "free choice of the spouses to unite themselves in marriage," the basic form of the family is not one that can be redefined by man. This is because marriage which is the family's foundation is an "institution that does not depend upon man but on God himself." (Compendium, No. 215) "For God himself is the author of marriage and has endowed it with various benefits and purposes." (Compendium, No.215) (quoting VII, Gaudium et spes, 48) What God has written, no man ought to unwrite or rewrite.

The institution of marriage might be defined as an "intimate partnership of life and love . . . established by the Creator and endowed with him with its own proper laws." (Compendium, No.215) (quoting VII, Gaudium et spes, 48) The institution of marriage, its form, and its laws, are therefore not something that is the result of "human conventions or legislative prescriptions." We therefore tamper with it at our peril. It is a gift given, not a gift we make for ourselves.

"Marriage is in fact endowed with its own proper, innate, and permanent characteristics." (Compendium, No. 216) While culture and societies may color marriage with different customs, at its center, marriage, which has a dignity of its own, remains unchanged. This intrinsic dignity of marriage must be respected and safeguarded. In fact, society is not at liberty "freely [to] legislate with regard to the marriage bond by which the two spouses promise each other fidelity,assistance, and acceptance of children." Rather, society is "authorized [only] to regulate its civil effects." (Compendium, No.216)

The characteristic traits of marriage are four: totality, unity, indissolubility and fidelity, and fruitfulness, but they are all interrelated.

totality: nothing is held back in the mutual spousal self-giving.
unity: the result of the spousal self-giving, which, in biblical language is expressed as the spouses become "one flesh." (Gen. 2:24)
indissolubility and fidelity: this characteristic comes from the total, permanent, and unique bond of marriage.
fruitfulness: the spouses are open to new life, as it is at the heart of their self-giving as expressed in the self-giving conjugal act. "In its 'objective' truth, marriage is ordered to the procreation and education of children." "Nonetheless, marriage was not instituted for the sole reason of procreation." It therefore retains its other characteristics even if "children, although greatly desired, do not arrive to complete conjugal life." (Compendium, No 218-19)

Any custom or law that does not respect these characteristics is unjust. Though we take them for granted, laws allowing for divorce and remarriage are therefore intrinsically unjust. They violate the dignity of marriage, its nature of indissolubility, and are a blemish and a scourge on the society which lives under them. A fortiori, laws that allow for polygamy or same-sex marriage or civil unions are even more execrable, as they make a mockery out of true marriage. Adultery is obviously a practice that is offensive to the characteristic of fidelity, and it represents a great act of injustice against the other spouse. Similarly, the use of artificial contraception violates the fundamental characteristic of marriage of fruitfulness.

Though of divine institution, marriage is something that is intimately human. Indeed, at its heart, marriage requires two reciprocal human acts. The spouses are the dispensers of their own marriage. Marriage arises "from the human act by which the partners mutually surrender themselves to each other," not for a time, but for all their lives.

This mutual giving of self-to-other self which is at the heart of conjugal love is what gives marriage its unchangeable nature. This mutual giving of self-to-other self is a "total and exclusive gift of a person to a person," a "definitive commitment expressed by mutual, irrevocable, and public consent." (Compendium, No. 215) It is not a commitment for a time, for a utilitarian purpose, for convenience. In this mutual giving self-to-other self, nothing is held back. Nothing is reserved. Because of this, marriage by its very nature has permanency.

Marriage is a natural right, a human right. For this reason, "[n]o power can abolish the natural right to marriage or modify its traits or purpose." (Compendium, No. 216)

Of course, the family, and the marital covenant which is at its heart, extends beyond procreation of children. It also includes the important function of the education of children. It is within the family, the "cradle of life and love" formed by a "communion of life and love," that children are "humanized." As children grow within the family, they are taught lessons of virtue, of wisdom, of truth and goodness, and of love as they "develop their potentialities, become aware of their dignity, and prepare to face their unique and individual destiny." (Compendium, No. 212)

The family is "the first natural society," one of divine institution. As the "first natural society" of divine institution, the family has "underived rights that are proper to it" given to it by God. (Compendium, No. 211) "The family possesses inviolable rights and finds its legitimization in human nature and not in being recognized by the State. The family, then, does not exist for society or the State, but society and the State exist for the family." (Compendium, No. 214)

In a country such as ours, where we nourish an unhealthy individualism, the family and hence society tend to suffer. There is a certain danger in this overemphasis on individualism. It is important to nourish health families because they constitute a bulwark against the danger of collectivism, of an overweening State. "A society built on a family scale is the best guarantee against drifting off course into individualism or collectivism, because within the family the person is always at the center of attention as an end and never a means." (Compendium, No. 213)

The conjugal bond and family life ought therefore to be protected and promoted by society and the State. "In their relationship to the family, society and the State are seriously obligated to observe the principle of subsidiarity." (Compendium, No. 214) Of course, this means that the society and the State must not impede, frustrate, or needlessly interfere with the conjugal bond or family life. Therefore, ways of life, customs, laws, and institutions that do not support the permanency of the conjugal bond or the health of family life are to be condemned.

Caritas Christi Urget Nos

2011-11-19T04:20:00.001-06:00

LOVE IS THE FINAL AND PERHAPS MOST identifying value of the Church's social doctrine. When Jesus gave us the new command "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34), he injected a radical new law into the world and an almost impossible standard. It is, in fact, unachievable without grace, but the grace is freely supplied to the willing, which even itself is a grace. This is a law whose perfect achievement requires a total receptivity to grace, a heroic amount of self-abnegation, and an openness to the other. It is "grace upon grace," gratia pro gratia. (cf. John 1:16)

In the Church's view, love as a value is "the highest and universal criterion of the whole of social ethics." (Compendium, No. 204) But in saying this, we need to define terms. The love we are speaking of here is not the sop love of every day talk, of "relationships of physical closeness," as the Compendium delicately puts it and which we see touted on movies and TV. Nor is the love the Church has in mind limited to namby pamby feeling, to "merely subjective aspects of action on behalf of others." This is not love as the Church understands it, love as caritas or agape.

Love as caritas or agape is the font of the other values in their fullness. "[F]rom the inner wellspring of love" the "values of truth, freedom, and justice born and grow." Love is what makes us able to see the other as a friend, as another self, so that "the needs and requirements of others seem as one's own." (Compendium, 205)

What love does to justice when they embrace is perhaps the most remarkable of all. "Love presupposes and transcends justice." This means that love builds upon justice just like grace builds upon nature. For what happens when love meets justice, look to the Cross of Christ, the Cross of Christ which is our law. Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi, filii Dei vivi.

Without justice, there is no love. Without justice, love does not survive. Justice is fulfilled by love, which, of course, means that justice, for all its rock-like beauty, is incomplete. In his book Doctrine of Right, which is the first part of his Metaphysics on Morals, Kant insisted that, in justice, the law of punishment was a categorical imperative which admitted of no exception. "For if justice goes, there is no longer any value in human beings living on the earth."*

Kant is entirely correct. A world without justice is, to be sure, too horrible to behold. However, a world with justice but without love is equally as bad or worse. "Human relationships," the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church tells us, "cannot be governed solely by the measure of justice." (Compendium, No. 206)

What doth the Lord require
But to do justly,
Love mercy,
Walk humbly with thy God.

(Malachi 3:3)

The prophet Malachi requires more that doing justice. He requires us to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.

Justice goes awry without love's mercy, and so justice must, "so to speak, be 'corrected' to a considerable extent by that love which, as St. Paul proclaims, 'is patient and kind' or, in other words, possesses the characteristics of that merciful love which is so much of the essence of the Gospel and Christianity." (Compendium, No. 206) (quoting JP II, Dives et misericordia, 14)

Summum ius, summa iniuria was a Roman aphorism or maxim mentioned by Cicero (De officiis, I.10.33). It is a brilliant, ambiguous saying which can be translated, "extreme justice is the greatest injustice," or an extreme justice is an extreme wrong. For John Paul II, this was a recognition by the pagans that justice requires a tempering spirit, one that is fulfilled somewhat in the human quality of mercy, but most especially in the Christian virtue of love. "The experience of the past and of our own time," John Paul II states in a section of his encyclical Dives et misericordia which is quoted by the Compendium, "demonstrates that justice alone is not enough, that it can even lead to the negation and destruction of itself." (Compendium, No. 206)

Similarly, law alone--whether it is human law or divine law, supposed or real--will ever succeed in inculcating virtue in peoples. This is the great defect of Islam and the great defect of the secular Western positivistic jurisprudential philosophy. "No legislation, no system of rules or negotiation will ever succeed inpersuading men and peoples to live in unity, brotherhood, and peace; no line of reasoning will ever will ever be able to surpass the appeal of love." (Compendium, No. 207)

Here is a truly radical challenge. To take love, which, as St. Thomas teaches in his Summa Theologiae, is the "form of the virtues,"*** and to socialize it or institutionalize it into what the Compendium calls "social and political charity," is the modern challenge of our time. "'Social charity makes us love the common good.' It makes us effectively seem the good of all people, considered not only as individuals or private persons but also in the social dimension that unites them." (Compendium, No. 207)

The early Cistercian monk, Stephen Harding (1059-1134), an abbot of the monastery of Cîteaux, struggled with the governance of a monastic order that was just developing. It was his genius that brought forth a constitution that would guide the developing order and the relationship among the mother abbey and its daughter abbeys. This constitution was called the Charter of Charity or Carta Caritatis.

We need a new Carta Caritatis, a "Charter of Charity," a new world order that is founded not upon secular values, but upon Christian love, upon "social and political charity," a caritas socialis, which is nothing other than identical with solidarity, solidarietas, and which is a "direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood."†

Social and political charity is not exhausted in relationships between individuals, but spreads into the network formed by these relationships, which is precisely the social and political community; it intervenes in this context seeking the greatest good for the community in its entirety. In so many aspects the neighbor to be loved is found 'in society,' such that to love him concretely, assist him in his needs or in his indigence may mean something different than it means on the mere level of relationships between individuals. To love him on the social level means, depending upon the situation, to make use of social mediations to improve his life or to remove social factors that cause his indigence. It is undoubtedly and act of love, the work of mercy, by which one responds here and now to a real and impelling need of one's neighbor, but it is equally indispensable act of love to strive to organize and structure society so that one's neighbor will not find himself in poverty, above all when this becomes a situation within which an immense number of people and entire populations mus struggle, and when it takes on the proportion of a true worldwide social issue.

(Compendium, No. 208)

What an ideal! It is the Christian ideal. And as G. K. Chesterton reminds us in his book What's Wrong With the World, "[t]he christian ideal has not been found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

What on heaven or on earth compels the Church to suggest this love as our ideal? What compels the Church to suggest this difficult ideal which has not been founding wanting, but difficult and left untried?

Caritas Christi urget nos. For the love of Christ urges us on. (1 Cor. 5:14)
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*AA 6:331 f. (Wenn die Gerechtigkeit untergeht, so hat es keinen Werth mehr, daß Menschen auf Erden leben.)
**Other translations could be extreme legalism is extreme injustice, or the greater the justice, the greater the harm. Therefore, it can be interpreted as John Paul II interprets it in his encyclical letter Dives et misericordia as meaning that extreme justice corrupts itself to injustice. It can also be interpreted to mean that excessive legalism leads to injustice. Finally, it can have a more positive construction that the greater the right (that is infringed), the greater the injustice that occurs. One might compare here the saying of Terence in his comedy Heautontimorumenos : "ius summum saepe summast [summa est] malitia" (the greatest law is often the same as the greatest evil).
***S. T. IIª-IIae q. 23 a. 8 co. (forma virtutum)
†Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1939

Iustitia Christi Urget Nos

2011-11-18T02:30:00.005-06:00

JUSTICE IS THE THIRD fundamental value of the Church's social doctrine. As a virtue, justice is classically defined, by the likes of Cicero and Justinian, as the firm resolve to render each his due: suum cuique. It is considered one of the four cardinal virtues, the others being temperance, fortitude, and prudence. In calling justice one of the values of the Church's social doctrine, the Church draws from that cardinal virtue of justice.

In discussing the value of justice, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church does not forget that there is a justice due God as well as a justice due man. Pope Leo XIII's exasperation is evident in the words of his encyclical Tametsi: "The world has heard enough of the so-called 'rights of man.' Let it hear something of the rights of God." We might paraphrase this good pope and say that the world has heard enough of the justice due man, let it hear something about the justice due God.

On second thought, however, it would be more accurate to say that modern man has neither heard enough about the justice due God nor the justice due man, especially regarding the objective component of justice due God or man. Justice, the Compendium reminds us, has both a subjective and an objective component, both of which must be present for real justice to exist.

"From a subjective point of view, justice is translated into behavior that is based on the will to recognize the other as a person." This is an internal attitude.

On the other hand, "from an objective view," justice "constitutes the decisive criteria of morality in the intersubjective and social sphere." (Compendium, No. 201) What this means is that there are objective absolute or exceptionless norms as well as prudential norms that must govern interactions between two people, a person and society, and society as a whole. Both this internal other-regarding attitude and the external conformity to objective morality must co-exist for real justice to exist.

Sincerity is not enough. Legalistic justice is not enough. There must be a joinder of internal attitude and external objectiveness. As Pope Innocent III (ca. 1160-1216) said in his On the Misery of the Human Condition [II.3]: "[S]ome seek justice with justice, others injustice with injustice; and some seek justice by unjust means, while others seek injustice by just means." We are to seek justice with justice.

There is also that sort of justice that is broadly called "social justice." The "social justice" that the Church calls for is not the adoption of some leftist agenda, as if the Church asks us to become rabble rousing followers of the Gracchi, Che Guevara, or Saul Alinsky. Neither does the Church ask us to advocate some partisan plan, left or right or in between. We are, in each and every instance, to be followers of Jesus. Christians march to the beat of a different drummer.

So the "social justice" called for by the Church is not something based upon a worldly philosophy; rather, it is "the most classical form of justice," which in today's age may actually be more rigorously revolutionary than anything dreamed of in the philosophy of Guevara and Alinsky. This classical form of justice includes those kinds of justice classified as commutative (between two persons), distributive (between the community and the individual), and legal justice (between the community and the one who has care of the community), but it goes beyond them.

Social justice is a general term which comprehends commutative, distributive, and legal justice. The notion of "social justice"--the term, by the way, coined by the Jesuit mentor of Pope Leo XIII, Luigi Taparelli (1793-1862), and based upon the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas--is "the justice that regulates social relationships according to the criterion of observance of the law." (Compendium, No. 201) Lawless justice is not justice.

There is some urgency in getting back to the classical notions of justice built upon an authentic Christian anthropology because of the modern mindset of reducing or restricting justice by basing it on other criteria such as utility, autonomy, ownership, or egalitarianism.

Particularly prevalent in our relativist, materialist and secular society is the notion that justice is not an objective reality, but a conventional reality. For conventionalists, justice is something determined by social agreement, by social contract. They mimic the teachings of the ancient philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) who stated that "absolute justice does not exist. There are only mutual agreements among men, made at various times and places, not to inflict nor allow harm." But Epicurus and his ilk are to be rejected. "Justice, in fact, is not merely a simple human convention, because it is not first determined by the law but by the profound identity of the human being."(Compendium, No. 202)

Of itself, the virtue of justice is not sufficient to structure communal life. The virtue of justice can be merciless, cold-blooded, even cruel. It tends to separate, cause rifts, and it is not adept at reconciliation. It is susceptible to capture, to corruption, to hypocrisy, resulting in many complaints such as the one the French writer Anatole France who in his book Crainquebille cynically stated through his character President Bourriche that "justice is the sanction of established injustice."**

It is this susceptibility to failure, self-interest, and blindness in a justice whose quality is--in Shakespeare's words in the Merchant of Venice--"strain'd" or restrained to justice and no other external source that can make justice "even betray itself." (Compendium, No. 174). Justice must therefore be open to, informed by, tempered through, and supplemented with such things as solidarity, love, mercy, and forgiveness, all of whose qualities are "not strain'd."

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*See wiki.epicurus.info/Principle Doctrine 33. (Οὐκ ἦν τι καθ’ ἑαυτὸ δικαιοσύνη, ἀλλ’ ἐν ταῖς μετ’ ἀλλήλων συστροφαῖς καθ’ ὁπηλίκους δή ποτε ἀεὶ τόπους συνθήκη τις ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι.)
**Anatole France, Crainquebille (Wildside Press, 2008), 29.

Libertas Christi Urget Nos

2011-11-17T02:30:00.002-06:00

“FOR FREEDOM, CHRIST HAS SET US FREE," the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians (Gal. 5:1): qua libertate nos Christus liberavit. Freedom is a central value of the Church's social doctrine, along with truth, justice, and love. Libertas Christi urget nos. The freedom of Christ spurs us on.

Freedom, however, is one of those words that is so easily abused in the lips of the libertine, of the moral relativist who considers himself unbounded by objective truth and objective right. "O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!" exclaimed Madam Roland as she bowed before the statute of liberty in the Place de la Révolution before the guillotine severed here head from her body. "O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!"

Many kinds of slavery wear a false frock of freedom to cover their blemishes. But the freedom the Church has in mind is a responsible freedom, not an irresponsible freedom. As John Paul II defined it in his homily in Orioles Park at Camden Yards in October 1995, "freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

It is not the freedom to do what we want, but the freedom to do what we ought that is the "highest sign in man of his being made in the divine image and, consequently, as a sign of the sublime dignity of every human person." (Compendium, No. 199) An irresponsible freedom detracts from the freedom of the sons of God and consequently stains--even eclipses--his dignity. "Every human person," states the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being." (Compendium, No. 199) It is important to note the conjunction: we have a natural right to be "free and responsible," not "free and irresponsible."

Freedom is not something we exercise only in regard to ourselves, solipsistically, egoistically. Such a restrictive notion of freedom is Hell. "Hell," T. S. Eliot had the loveless husband say to his unloving wife in his play "The Cocktail Party," "is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it, merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone." In such a place, there is no where to go, nothing to do. All is restraint. There is no choice. There is no freedom.

In his "Stanzas on Freedom," the American Romantic poet and abolitionist James Russell Lowell asked this question:

Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?

Freedom is exercised not only for oneself, but with regard to others, that is to say, communally. Freedom is necessarily "exercised in relationships between human beings." For this reason, the "meaning of freedom must not be restricted, considering it from a purely individualistic perspective and reducing it to the arbitrary and uncontrolled exercise of one's own personal autonomy." (Compendium, No.199) Heaven is not alone. Heaven is communion, communion with God, and with his angels and saints. To invoke again James Russell Lowe, who answers the question he posed just earlier in the poem and quoted above:

No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!

The Compendium summarizes this quite nicely: "Far from being achieved in total self-sufficiency and the absence of relationships, freedom only truly exists where reciprocal bonds, governed by truth and justice, link people to one another."* (Compendium, No. 199).

While communal and not solipsistic, the cloth of freedom is not dyed one color and does not come in one size, like a Mao suit. Freedom allows for legitimate self-expression within certain moral constraints and constraints required by the requirements of civil society and life in common. Freedom's value allows for the "expression of the singularity of each human person" within the constraints of right and due order. (Compendium, No. 200)

This sort of freedom should be reflected in the civil liberties enjoyed and practiced by those in a well-ordered polity. In a well-ordered civil society, the following are the broad freedoms within which one can express his personal autonomy responsibly:

the freedom to fulfill his personal vocation;
the freedom to seek the truth and profess his religious, cultural, and political ideas;
the freedom to express his opinions;
the freedom to choose his state of life, and, as far as possible, his line of work;
the freedom to pursue initiatives of an economic, social, or political nature.

Naturally, these freedoms are not exercised in vacuo, in a vacuum. They are exercised in communio, within a community. For this reason, they must be exercised within the matrix of a "'strong juridical framework,' within the limits imposed by the common good and public order, and, in every case, in a manner characterized by responsibility." (Compendium, No. 200)

There are some places where freedom cannot go, where it may not enter. For there are places where one goes from freedom to unfreedom, from true freedom to what are just elusive shades and shadows of freedom. Freedom will recognize those limits, and therefore it will "refuse what is morally negative, in whatever guise it may be presented." Freedom accordingly includes the "capacity to distance oneself effectively from everything that could hinder personal, family, or social growth." (Compendium, No. 200) This suggests that freedom is found only in virtue, and never in vice. "Only a virtuous people," wrote Benjamin Franklin unerringly, "are capable of freedom."

In short, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it (§ 1731):

Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

The Compendium summarizes its view of freedom in this manner: "The fullness of freedom consists in the capacity to be in possession of oneself in view of the genuine good," which, of course ultimately is God, "within the context of the universal common good." (Compendium, No. 200)
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*The Compendium quotes the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Libertas conscientia, 26.