Catholic Social Thought – Opus Publicum

“Clericalism” Part 1 – Catholicism’s “Rural Hangover”

Note: I will return to my series on on defending debt collection lawsuits shortly. I am going to mix them in with some thoughts on Eric Voegelin’s under-appreciated lecture, “Clericalism.”

Tucked away in the rear of the first volume of his collected correspondence lies Eric Voegelin’s 1946 lecture, “Clericalism.” Delivered after the close of the Second World War, this short talk, like many of Voegelin’s writings at the time, foreshadow his turn from chronicling the history of political ideas to developing a philosophy of consciousness, particularly in the final two volumes of his massive Order and History. Although Voegelin’s Christianity, to the extent that he was a Christian, could hardly be called “orthodox” by either Catholic or his native Lutheran lights, there is no doubt that he took Christianity seriously and was committed to the Christian intellectual tradition, often in an Augustinian key. Voegelin had also drunk deeply from the well of Aquinas, though there is scant evidence that he ever held Catholic neo-Thomism any closer than arm’s length. He expressed at points admiration for certain papal statements, but they carried no doctrinal weight for him; they could be criticized freely. Before saying more about Voegelin’s lecture, it is important to highlight what Voegelin means by “Christianity.”

Christianity is not a system of social ethics, but a religion. It is a faith concerned with the destiny of the soul; and this faith as such has no direct bearing on the formation of the social environment; it can have a bearing only indirectly insofar as the conduct required of the Christian is not compatible with the exigencies of every social order. Hence the Church cannot develop a positive social program; it can only deal with concrete social questions as they arise, and try, by counsel, to guide the conduct of individuals in such a manner that it will become Christian conduct.

When Voegelin speaks of “the Church,” he almost always has in mind the Roman Catholic Church, even when he touches on Protestant thinkers. Some, particularly contemporary integralists, may take umbrage with Voegelin’s dismissive attitude toward the Church “develop[ing] a positive social program” rather than “deal[ing] with concrete social questions as they arise.” That is fair, though throughout “Clericalism,” and indeed against the European backdrop that intellectually formed Voegelin, he witnessed the pitfalls of Catholics aligning with this-or-that political movement to resist what can broadly be called the de-Christianization of society. To the extent the Church ever articulated something like a social program, it came to the table too late. Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces were already at work; all the Church could do was react, and sometimes react poorly.

By way of illustration, Voegelin casts a glance toward Pope Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (RN). His initial assessment is rather positive: “The Encyclical is in many respects a laudable document, particularly in its analysis of the ideology of class war, but it fails in the crucial point, that is in the discussion of private property. It restates the position of the Church with regard to the justness and necessity of private property for the building of an integral human existence, and insofar it is on safe ground.” What’s so bad about that? Voegelin continues:

The ground becomes less safe, however, when the Encyclical proceeds to berate Marxism flatly for demanding the abolition of private property, without entering into the distinction between property of objects of consumption and long-range personal use on the one side, and property in the instruments of large-scale industrial production on the other side. …[W]e might at least expect of the Papal counsellors that they would offer a more palatable substitute of their own for the condemned solution. But what do we find instead? A concentration of the argument on the property in land. The idea of a Communist society is against natural law because it deprives the individual of the possibility to own his piece of land as the basis of his personal existence. Under a Communist society the industrial worker would not be able to invest his savings in land. Well, our attitudes towards the merits of a Communist society may differ, but, I think, we can all agree that it is not the primary sorrow of the industrial worker in our society to invest his savings in landed property and that a few other factors determine the drive towards a nationalization of industries and planned economy. The later Encyclicals, in particular the Quadragesimo Anno of 1931, have become more cautious in their formulations, but the position is not yet surrendered in principle. The Church is still today seriously handicapped in dealing with the burning problems of industrial society by what we may call its rural hangover.

The “burning problems of industrial society” continued to rage for most of the 20th century with the Church sending what Voegelin would likely call “mixed messages” about how not just Catholics, but all peoples, ought to relate to it. While I have never been shy about arguing that there is a consistent anti-capitalist thread running from RN to the social pronouncements of Pope Francis, the fact that well-funded organizations such as the Acton Institute can take the Church’s social magisterium and tilt it toward pro-market ideology may be a sign of the incomplete, reactive, and somewhat ambiguous nature of that teaching. A certain romanticism, the Church’s “rural hangover,” pointed to a concrete economic situation beyond capitalism because it consciously pointed backwards. After the 1960s, the Church purported to be more “forward facing,” though it seems Voegelin is correct that no comprehensive social program has emerged and there remains more questions than answers lurking about.

Catholics who take RN and the pre-Vatican II social magisterium seriously are few and far between. Even traditional Catholics, those purported champions of authenticity in Catholic doctrine, are routinely lured to embrace market-economy ideology under the guise of “freedom” (or, worse, “rights”). Pockets of “back to the land” Catholics, those eccentric few, still exist; God bless them. However, to say they exert any meaningful influence on contemporary Catholic thought stretches credulity. Although the decades just before and after World War II revealed examples of “Catholic Action” whereby the laity, with the direct or indirect guidance of the clergy, tried to develop on-the-ground responses to industrial society, they too have faded out of history. And now that we have arrived at, or are rather drowning in, post-industrial society, what is to be done?

To listen to Pope Francis, something akin to a socialist solution, understood broadly, may be required, though that is not a popular solution by any stretch of the imagination. Whether Francis and the curia understands the state of the world economy is an open question. What appears evident, though, is that the Sovereign Pontiff understands deeply that something is terribly wrong with it and no amount of misguided faith in the “Invisible Hand” is going to correct it. Integralists may have once had something valuable to add to the conversation if they hadn’t become preoccupied with genuflecting before the altar of raw power while developing their own brand of “QAnon Catholicism.” By casting so many aspersions on Marxism over a century ago, the Church, particularly Francis, will struggle mightily to suggest a socialist solution that can in any sense be called “Catholic.”

There is more to say on Voegelin’s “Clericalism,” but I will leave it there for now. By the close of the lecture, Voegelin expressed enthusiasm for the hope that certain thinkers would keep the light of Christianity burning. They were “the future” and on that score, he was correct. Of course, Voegelin had no idea what that future would look like in 1946.

Mar 06, 2019 Catholic Social Thought Post a Comment

Voris and the Idea of Socialism

The latest episode of Michael Voris’s boorish online show, The Vortex, raises the fear flag on socialism. According to Voris (by way of President Donald Trump), socialism is creeping back into American politics through the Democratic Party. Since, according to Voris, socialism is the natural enemy of the Catholic Church, all Faithful of good will should be alarmed at this outbreak. Never mind, however, that Voris fails to define precisely what socialism is; he simply wants Catholics to be afraid (very afraid).

That socialism has become a political buzzword again is beyond dispute, but what does that mean? The “socialism” promoted by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not particularly radical. For nearly a century the United States has embraced an array of social safety nets and entitlement programs. While Republicans continually call for retracting these programs, they have never mustered the political capital to abolish them in toto. What is potentially different today is the small but growing number of Democrats willing to speak freely about adding on to existing programs along with offering new entitlements such as student-loan forgiveness. Whatever the wisdom of these proposals, it is hard to fathom how American is any more socialist today than it was at the time of the New Deal. It has been more than eight decades since the “Four Horsemen” of the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). I see nothing on the horizon from the new “socialists” that is anywhere near as radical.

All of that aside, Voris’s latest tirade distantly reminded me of recent installment in Bernard Harcourt’s ongoing Praxis 13/13 series at Columbia University. (I wrote last week about the seminar on the alt-right here.) The 8th seminar, “The Idea of Communism,” discusses, inter alia, liberating the idea of communism from the contingencies of history. Communism as realized in the 20th century may leave much to be desired, but that does not mean there is not a more desirable, more pristine, form of communism still available to us. If we can find a way to circumvent historical communism, both in its 19th century Marxist form and 20th century realized iterations, maybe it still has something to “say” to us; maybe it can still save us from the horrors of capitalism (or not). Regardless, according to Harcourt (and many others), it is worth finding out.

Voris, in his own way, is fascinated and terrified by the idea of socialism. It does not matter that neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez are espousing anything resembling historical socialism; what matters is that the idea of socialism—even the very word “socialist”—is sufficient cause to sound the alarm. Resisting the idea is more important than understanding the idea. Voris, and others of his ilk, are uninterested in the concrete proposals of these so-called “socialists,” and with good reason. As a recent article in Jacobite highlights, Ocasio-Cortez—on a limited level—takes inspiration from Catholic social teaching. Should Catholics, including conservatives like Voris, pay attention to this concrete reality, then the specter of Ocasio-Cortez’s supposed “socialism” becomes less frightening. And if that “socialism” becomes less frightening, then Voris and his followers lose the opportunity to leverage a newfound “socialist panic” for their true end, which is the eventual reelection of Trump.

None of this is to say that Catholics should support socialism per se. Then again, given that conservative Catholics, including the neoliberals occupying the seats of power at the Acton Institute, believe that the likes of Chesterton and Belloc waved the red flag in their works, maybe there is no meaningful polemical difference between socialism and distributism (or Catholic social thought in general). Any platform or policy that seeks to lift a single finger of the “Invisible Hand” off the marketplace is anathema. It is little wonder that, in reaction to such stale liberal dogmas, a significant percentage of young Catholics now flee to “socialism” (or some idea of socialism). Granted, most of that is just posturing on social media, but that does not mean it isn’t noteworthy.

Dec 28, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Economics Post a Comment

Uplifting Year-End Thoughts – Part 2

Archbishop Fulton Sheen is remembered for many things, but his thoughts on political economy are typically not among them. On the question of socialism and capitalism—a question which haunts (Western?) Catholics to this very day—this is what the Venerable one had to say in 1952: “Both capitalism and socialism are opposite sins against property. Capitalism emphasizes private rights to property without any social responsibility to the common good; socialism emphasizes the social use of property, to the forgetfulness of personal rights.” Although Sheen did not present a “theory” or a “model” of a well-ordered economy in detail, he did suggest that “[t]he… solution is one in which the rights to property are personal, but the responsibility is social.”

To get a fuller sense of what Sheen has in mind, it is necessary to go back to his February 7, 1943 address where, inter alia, he sets forth the following principle regarding wages: “[W]hen an industry is unable to pay a wage sufficient not only for a moderately comfortable life but also for savings, the difference should be made up either by industry pooling a percentage of all wages paid, or, in default of this, by the State.”

Sheen goes on—in the spirit of papal documents such as Pope St. Pius X’s Fin Dalla Prima Nostra and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno—to argue for greater cooperation between capital and labor, noting that neither the right to profits on the one hand nor the right to organization (or unionization) on the other are absolute; both are subservient to the common good. Where Sheen may have fallen short is with regard to his belief that democracy is the best way to ensure that the rights of capital and labor are protected without infringing upon the common good. Although Sheen is right to note that historically political power was held in the hands of capital, his faith that greater democratization would provide labor with a greater balance of power did not come to fruition. Sheen did not anticipate the extent to which capital, through control of advertising, mass marketing, and social media, would be able to manipulate the voting direction of labor, leaving capital firmly in control.

At the same time, it does not appear that Sheen anticipated the extent to which capital would go to curry favor with Christianity, specifically Catholicism. In the United States today, the Acton Institute—which is run by and directed primarily toward Catholics—houses some of the leading Christian apologists for capitalism, specifically the “good” of the free market, unfettered rights to profits, and the conflation of the common good with material social-welfare gains. No doubt Sheen would be horrified to learn that an institute presided over by a Catholic priest would come out against minimum-wage laws, promoting so-called right-to-work legislation, and argue that a “just wage” is the prevailing market wage. To Acton, of course, this is a non-issue; Sheen was not an “economic scientist” in the way the denizens of the Cato and Mises institutes allegedly are. Sheen’s concerns, by Acton’s lights, are those of an ill-informed man relying on theological and doctrinal statements which, by virtue of their “unscientific” nature, can be left to the side by faithful Catholics.

As I mentioned in my previous post, many Catholics today, particularly in the United States, are fundamentally confused about what the Church actually teaches concerning political economy. A certain brand of youngish Catholics, rightly concerned with the ubiquity of capitalism, recently made a serious intellectual and moral misstep by believing that socialism (of a naively Marxist variety) will save them. Others have chosen to give up the fight altogether by aligning either with Actonite ideology or embracing, in one form of another, the emptyheaded economic nationalism trumpeted by the Trump Administration. There have of course been some nods here n’ there toward the poor, the underclass, the downtrodden, etc. all in the name of Pope Francis’s ostensible “papacy of mercy,” but much of that has come from the liberal wing of the Catholic Church, the same which believes that entitlement programs and centralized redistribution is all it takes for a country to align itself with the tenets of the Gospel.

Ultimately, it is hard to shake the notion—the fear—that Catholics today no less than Catholics in the previous decades have lost their sense of what being here is for. Material concerns are prioritized over spiritual ones, and “things economic” have replaced “things moral.” Granted, in an age of iPhones-for-all and incessant streaming services which banalize culture just as easily as they corrupt the intellect, there is little reason to be this dreadful state of affairs. It’s important to keep in mind that for a certain breed of Catholic between, say, 21-35, posturing on social media with indistinguishable microbrews and books they’ve barely read is an easy substitute for the hard work of restoring all things in Christ. Prayer has given way to pedestrian Tweeting and man’s final end is no longer Heaven, but the special kind of hell that is social recognition.

Dec 19, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Economics Post a Comment

Uplifting Year-End Thoughts – Part 1

A strange phenomenon seems to be overtaking the Catholic world, or at least that minority portion of the Catholic world that spends way too much time on web-logs, online magazines, and other forms of social media. Just as it seems that conservative-to-traditional Catholics are prepared to shake off liberalism once and for all, there has been a noticeable decline in thoroughgoing Catholic critiques of economic liberalism. That is not to say they’ve disappeared altogether. The Distributist Review, for instance, still publishes, and Thomas Storck has a new book out. However, the waters have been muddied a bit. The ill-conceived, ill-designed, and ill-executed Tradinista! “project” (debacle) seems to have taken the wind out of some Catholics’ sails. Maybe a few too many have bought into the idea that to oppose markets is to embrace socialism, something which the Tradinistas! had no qualms over.

Some thought, with the election of Donald Trump, that Catholics no less than other conservatives would begin to embrace economic populism. The problem with this “hope” is that few seem to understand what economic populism is. Moreover, Trump isn’t really interested in that line of thought anyways; his presidency is one built upon contradictions and fueled by the ever-dwindling hope that the blue-collar workers and rural poor who helped get him elected will be better off economically by 2020 than they were in 2016.

Catholics, as best as I can tell, haven’t paid much mind to such things. Liberal Catholics, of course, continue to advocate for economic centralism with a thick, federally backed menu of entitlements and welfare transfers. They are rightly suspicious of not simply economic populism, but the rolling back of government funding for everything from healthcare to food stamps. They see Trump’s economic vision, and the economic vision of the Republican Party, as antithetical to Catholic social teaching (CST). Maybe. The problem is that instead of critically reviewing the economy as a whole, seeing where liberalism has created serious moral and material pitfalls, they naïvely look to the federal system to correct market failures and inequality. Starting from the top and working back down is exactly what CST recommends against; but unsurprisingly the liberal Catholicism’s ignorance of true social principles matches that of their slightly estranged conservative brethren.

Traditional Catholics, historically, were the torch bearers of CST, albeit with some occasional blind spots. Unlike conservatives who love to latch onto the “Lockean” portions of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and rework John Paul II’s social magisterium into an apologia for free-market capitalism, traditionalists see a golden thread in CST running from the pontificate of Pius IX all the way through Pius XII. Rerum Novarum is great, but so, too, are papal documents such as St. Pius X’s Notre Charge Apostolique and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. The Catholicism nurtured by these cornerstone teachings and, indeed, the Church’s millennia-long theological and philosophical reflections on society, politics, economics, etc. produced, in the first half of the 20th century, a rich body of literature on (re)building Christendom from the ground up. Where has that thinking gone today?

Sadly, the temptation to be “relevant” has gripped the contemporary Catholic imagination, even the imaginations of those who find so many aspects of liberalism abhorrent. These Catholics will go on about the importance of the environment, abolishing the death penalty, and other social-justice issues, but they have little to say about how to make small businesses flourish; the corrosive nature of the ostensibly “free market” on communities and ecclesiastical life; the immorality of peddling inessential goods and services on Sundays; and so on and so forth. They are silent on the social rights of Christ the King and perils of democracy. They may speak of what “the Gospel” dictates while texting on their smart phones, filling their online shopping bag at J. Crew, and positing pictures of their dinner n’ drinks online in order to broadcast an unearned air of “sophistication.” If this is the brain trust of the Catholic Church and, more specifically, CST, then any hope of vanquishing economic liberalism as a justifiable “option” for committed Catholics is, at best, a fool’s hope.

Aug 14, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Integralism 8 Comments

A Remark on the Racist Right

A great deal has been made of this past weekend’s events in Charlottesville, Virginia where the “Unite the Right” rally descended into violence. That’s not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how many pundits and social-media “experts” are only now coming to the realization that racism and bigotry in the United States is not confined to fever swamps and southern mountains. For decades, civilized white America has patted itself on the back with the self-confident belief that racism, by and large, had been eradicated from everywhere except the peripheries of society. The election of Barack Obama in 2008, so the story went, proved that America had overcome the race problem. All the while disparate groups identifying as neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, nationalist, and, eventually, alt-right had begun leaning on increasingly more subtle and complex arguments for why race—and indeed racism—still mattered. America, they claim, is on the verge of losing its white-European-Christian-whatever identity; the time to stand up and fight has finally arrived.

Of course, how many “soldiers” of this particularly distasteful manifestation of the Right are available is something of an open question. By most accounts, only a few hundred folks attended the “Unite the Right” rally. And while there are plenty of racist trolls lurking around social media, many are anonymous, cowardly, and lacking anything resembling a coherent outlook. So now the media, indeed white America as a whole, is at risk of compensating for its prior dismissal of the race issue by overblowing the extent to which ideological racism shapes the thinking and political choices of a noticeable swathe of Americans. The reason this is a risk is because racial issues, like gender issues, tend to obscure one of the deepest problems in the United States (if not the West), namely class. But few people want to talk about that.

There is another risk that should also be noted: giving the racist Right a deeper (but ultimately false) sense of their own power and influence. Make no mistake about it: “Unite the Right,” a rally involving anything but a proper sampling of the American population, is now being heralded as a victory for no other reason than it has upset the Left so. Those who adhere to the true principles of the Right or, rather, principles often associated with the Right but only have coherence and meaning if moored to the Catholic tradition should worry about this. While there can be no doubt that civilizations must be defended if they are to be preserved, it is only Catholic civilization—Christendom—which warrants defending. The racist Right’s nationalism, fueled by such idiotic pieties as “Southern pride” and “Western values,” is devoid of any sense of the common good; whatever its purposes, the salvation of souls is not among them.

Unfortunately, too many Catholics (meaning any Catholic, anywhere) have been enchanted with the racist Right and its wobbly nationalistic outlook. Instead of identifying with the Church and working for the restoration of all things in Christ, they cling to the useless hope that by marginalizing minorities, mindlessly halting immigration, and touting the “glories” of America, they are somehow engaged in a holy crusade that finds favor with God. The reality is that the only thing pleasing to God is the re-Christianization of society, of bringing to Christ His lost sheep (of which there are hundreds of millions in America alone).

Although it should go without saying that integralists can have nothing to do with the raw nonsense spouted by the racist Right, certain remarks popping up on social media compel me to point to an early piece I wrote for The Josias that makes clear the racism and nationalism being promoted in certain circles has nothing to do with integralism or Catholicism. Catholics are not concerned with the color of man’s skin but the state of his soul. The civilization we seek to rebuild has nothing to do with the heritage of a country infused with the false principles of liberalism, but everything to do with the timeless principles articulated and defended by the Church for centuries. Ultimately, we have no use for secular presidents and legislative bodies that serve the interests of elites. It is Our Lord Jesus Christ, not liberalism, which we wish to see reign over society, and until He does again, our work for the rights of God, modest though they be for the time being, will never cease.

Aug 08, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Politics Post a Comment

John Zmirak’s Silliness Continues

At this point there is little use highlighting how out-of-step John Zmirak is with the Catholic Church’s social doctrine. For years, Zmirak has attempted to blend his idiosyncratic form of the Catholic religion with secular liberalism, choosing to side with the latter when any conflict presents itself. In a recent piece for The Stream, a garbled mess of hysteria and hyperbole, Zmirak once again takes umbrage with Catholics who, following the timeless teachings of the Church, oppose liberalism. For reasons which are difficult to discern, Zmirak opens his salvo by attacking the “Tradinista!” collective which, if you haven’t heard, went belly up months ago due to petty infighting and intellectual incoherence. By the close of his article, Zmirak conflates the positions of these wannabe socialists with those advanced over at The Josias. Perhaps someone should have informed Zmirak that The Josias, through its editor Elliot Milco, never had much time for the inanities of the “Tradinista!” project.

Zmirak’s confusion does not end there. One of the focuses of his piece is this idea that Catholics who reject liberalism—including integralists and those who follow the Church’s traditional doctrine on religious liberty—believe that the stae, the Church, or Church and state acting in concert should actively persecute non-Catholics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of what one thinks about the status of Dignitatis Humanae, it has never been maintained that the spiritual or temporal authorities should coerce non-Catholics into accepting beliefs against their will. The issue comes down to whether or not an individual or religion has the right to promulgate error. When Catholics speak of coercion, it is the coercion necessary, for example, to stop Mormons spreading error door to door or prevent Muslims from publicly rejecting Christ.

As for the Church’s right to coerce baptized Christians through penalties, Zmirak panics at this suggestion—but why? Has no one told him what excommunication is? Does he know nothing of the suspension of priests and bishops from their duties for certain infractions? The Church’s denial of the sacraments to Protestants and others who reject Catholic teaching is a form of coercion, arguably the most powerful form available. While I doubt that Zmirak would advocate for the Church to remove all ecclesiastical penalties from the table so as to not be accused of coercing anyone, it seems that he has not thought his position through with much rigor.

Or maybe he has. It’s not out of question that Zmirak knows that he is appealing to some of the basest prejudices of his readers in order to advance his private cause against those who take Catholicism more seriously than liberalism. By leaving the impression of angry mobs armed with pitchforks and torches marching toward the local synagogue in his readers’ minds, Zmirak may be trying to shame his opponents into walking back their ideas or, at the very least, making certain compromises with the liberal order. Thankfully, that is not going to happen. What Zmirak fails to understand is that illiberal Catholics (whatever their particular affiliation) did not set out on the hard path of resistance only to abandon the fight at its earliest stage. The Catholics Zmirak has no time for are the very sort who take the Church’s teachings seriously and will not forego the instructions of reason and revelation simply to get along with a socio-political ideology which, odds are, will recede into the darkness in the centuries (if not decades) to come.

Zmirak may not want to accept this, but it matters not. He can continue to pander to the lords of this world; the rest of us have business elsewhere.

Aug 01, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Political Economy Post a Comment

Joe Carter Doesn’t Get It

I have no idea if the Acton Institute’s Joe Carter has ever been described as a stupid man, but he’s making a pretty powerful case that he’s an ignorant one. In his second lamentation on the apparent rise of “socialism” among conservative Christians, he speculates why 20-somethings might be attracted to socialist ideas while ignoring the fact that many Christians (specifically Catholics) who oppose the Acton Institute and the free-market ideology it promotes are neither in their 20s nor have been “burned” by the marketplace. Carter, like so many free-market apologists, prefers to take a condescending approach to those who disagree with him by purporting to unveil psychological and material causes behind his opponents’ arguments. In the end, Carter might as well just called those who apparently hold to “socialist” ideas lazy, immature, and uneducated. And even if he did, he would still be missing the mark.

Those who stand fierce against the Acton Institute and all of its works are those who are committed not to their personal self-interest but rather to the social magisterium of the Catholic Church. Promoting just wages and solidarity isn’t an “option”; it is a duty that all faithful Catholics are bound to uphold. Even in an age where the capitalist system militates against the true principles of Catholicism, Catholics must, with prudence, do all they can to ensure that their public behavior comport with the social doctrine of the Church. It is to Christ, not capitalist greed, that Catholics look to, or at least should. Carter, through his association with Actonites, no doubt realizes that many Catholics have no compunction about ignoring what the Church teaches in order to make false deals with the world. Indeed, the Acton Institute itself is run primarily by Catholics who would rather sit at the feet of Mises and Rothbard rather than Leo XIII and Pius XI. It is nothing short of a scandal that these men can continue to work against what the Church teaches without reprisal.

As I have discussed before, for Carter, almost any form of public regulation of the market is “socialism,” which in effect means that the guidance offered up by Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, etc. all falls under the banner of socialism since all of their writings contemplated the need for the state to step in under various circumstances to uphold the common good. As such, it is difficult to take his critiques very seriously. Perhaps he wrongly thinks that if he refers to a certain idea or instruction as “socialist,” it will instantly send Catholics running for the hills lest they be sullied by so terrible a term. Or maybe Carter thinks that he can lean on the Church’s longstanding condemnation of socialism in order to propagate the (false) idea that capitalism and capitalism alone provides the only sure and faithful path for Catholics to follow if they wish to fulfill the precepts of the Church. Certainly there are some Catholics like that, but their error cannot be taken as received wisdom. While socialism must be resisted at every turn, so does capitalism. This is what Carter cannot or will not understand. For him there are only two paths present, but those who are willing to open their hearts and minds to the Church know better.

In the end there is no need for faithful Catholics to be bothered with Carter’s carping. He will, to the best of his ability, try and throw up accusations against those who reject the lies of economic liberalism, but to no avail. There can be no appeal to “economic science” or materialism or base self-interest which can overcome the truth which only Christ’s Church teaches. It is not to Wall Street but the Cross where we must go, and if that places us out of step with the present age, an age shaped around entertainment and greed, then all the better. Let the economic liberals have their home in this world, for they have received their reward. The rest of us can look to our final end, which is Heaven.

Jul 28, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Economics, Political Economy 2 Comments

Strain, Carter, and Socialism

The kerfuffle over Andrew Strain’s recent First Things website article criticizing the idea of free markets is starting to die down despite the Acton Institute’s Joe Carter having a panic attack over the specter of socialism haunting ostensibly conservative Christian publications. Carter’s rebuke to Strain (and others) is nothing more than the same old, same old. Almost all forms of public regulation, by Carter’s lights, constitutes socialism. It’s not entirely clear where Carter draws the line, or if there is room in Carter’s liberal-economic outlook for measures like antitrust law, environmental protections, and labor standards. What rings strange in Carter’s ill-conceived attack is his insistence that Strain himself is a socialist for no other reason than the latter suggested that Pope Pius XI, author of the towering social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, offers up alternatives to free-market capitalism. In a brief Twitter exchange with Carter, he made it known that Strain might consider reading later papal documents which condemn socialism. Carter is apparently ignorant of the fact that Pius XI, like his predecessors, condemned socialism outright and no Catholic thinker worth his salt has ever suspected Pius of harboring crypto-socialist ideas.

The real problem here is that Carter, like so many “Actonites,” subscribes to a Manichean worldview with the capitalists on one side (“Children of Light”) and the socialists (or communists) on the other (“Children of Darkness”). There can be no “third way,” nor apparently sensible regulation of the market. And by “sensible regulation” I mean nothing more than the sort proposed by some of Carter’s fellow, but far more learned, economic liberals. Consider, for instance, law professor Richard Epstein’s more balanced take on the market. While Epstein is a strong advocate for private law doing the heavy lifting of protecting rights and redressing wrongs, he has defended the use of antitrust law to prevent monopolization and other restraints on trade while leaving room open for some public regulation to address collective action problems and the tragedy of the commons. Although I remains skeptical of many of Epstein’s claims, not to mention his reliance on neoclassical economics, his consequentialist approach treats the market as an effective means of maximizing social welfare while not ignoring the market’s imperfections.

Beyond this, the crucial issue for Strain and other faithful Catholics (which excludes Carter) is what does the Church teach? For well more than a century, the Church’s social magisterium has set forth clear principles for the proper economic ordering of society. Although no pontiff has ever claimed to provide a sure-fire roadmap for how particular economies are organized, none have dismissed the fact that a just economy demands just wages for workers; social, moral, and religious protections; solidarity; and the application of the principle of subsidiarity. Although these principles are best upheld at the local level through intermediary institutions, some form of public regulation is expressly contemplated by the Church’s magisterium. Moreover, the Church has never been blind to the need for social safety nets for the least well off in society and that moderate taxation, rather than being a form of theft, is indispensable for maintaining public order and justice.

Granted, some Catholics in recent years have jumped the rails a bit on these measures, believing—wrongly—that what they find in the Church’s social magisterium is a mandate for highly centralized regulatory schemas, entitlements, and massive wealth transfers. Their errors, however, do not justify scrapping Catholic social teaching as a whole, nor setting aside what great pontiffs like Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI taught. Sure, Pope Francis, with his penchant for off-the-cuff remarks and imprecise rhetoric, may have temporarily handed pro-socialist Catholics an apparent justification for their beliefs, but at the end of the day the timeless social principles of the Church—principles which cannot be squared with true socialism—remain to guide us up to the present day.

Jun 25, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Political Economy, Politics, Uncategorized Post a Comment

#ActonU 2017 Has Come and Gone

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I was not automatically extended a scholarship to attend this year’s Acton University event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Maybe next year. Much to my surprise, Acton did extend an invitation to Elizabeth Bruenig, someone who has never been shy about her association to the Christian Left or hesitant to critique the free-market ideology promoted by the Acton Institute. In a live-streamed panel discussion also featuring Acton head honcho Fr. Robert Sirico, Bruenig offered an eloquent presentation of her socio-economic views, including her skepticism that economic liberalism—if not liberalism as a whole—can provide a clear pathway to ameliorating poverty. Sirico, as he is wont to do, opened up the discussion by noting that to the extent there were disagreements to be had, they were disagreements over matters of prudence, not principle (or, in his words, dogma). No doubt due to time constraints, Bruening was unable to call Sirico to task for this oft repeated, but rarely defended assertion. For as several writers have noted over the years, including Thomas Storck in an excellent article on Acton and Catholic teaching, it is doubtful that Sirico’s brainchild fully upholds the Church’s social magisterium.

What Acton does accomplish with remarkable success is leading Christians (mostly Catholics) down the path of liberalism—if not libertarianism—while artfully dodging criticism by appealing to its alleged internal diversity. So, for instance, when Acton is confronted with the fact that it heavily promotes the heterodox “Austrian School” of economics, including offering several lectures on the topic at Acton University, Actonites opine that nowhere in the Institute’s mission statement does it claim to adhere to Austrianism despite borrowing Austrian-based concepts such as “human action” (a.k.a. the “science” of “people do things”) in its statement of principles. The silence is deafening when Acton and its adherents are asked why they do not teach other schools of economics in its lectures or unmask the shortcomings of Austrianism, of which there are many. Instead, Acton hides behind the claim that they promote “sound economic principles” without openly revealing where those principles are drawn from or discussing the numerous critiques of those principles that have long been in circulation.

And this, dear readers, is only one of many reasons why Acton’s “university” is nothing of the sort. It is not a place of learned disputation or the free exchange of ideas; it is a four-day long indoctrination program meant to provide a highly biased presentation of the Christian social tradition as fully compatible with capitalism and liberalism. Equally appalling is the fact that Acton endeavors to distort the thought and image of some of the modern Church’s greatest leaders, including Pope Leo XIII. In a course entitled “Abraham Kuyper, Leo XIII, and Modern Christian Social Thought,” Acton Senior Fellow Jordan Ballor brings together the social thought of a professed heretic in Kuyper with a pope who condemned economic liberalism, rejected the idea that the state did not owe particular duties to the Catholic Church, and promoted the social kingship of Christ. Leo XIII had nary an ecumenical bone in his body when it came to Protestantism and, in 1900, condemned Protestant proselytism toward Catholics in Rome.

As it currently stands, there is no counterweight to Acton’s propaganda machine. Because the Acton Institute supports capitalist interests, it is a well-funded enterprise that has achieved a global reach. By providing forums and funding for research projects that fit within its liberal vision, Acton claims to furnish important research on poverty, human flourishing, and the economy without having to submit such work to the usual channels of peer review and criticism. Moreover, too many Christians of a conservative bent remain enthralled by Acton’s claim that it stands as a bulwark against the excesses of the contemporary liberal state, including centralization, heavy handed regulation, and onerous redistribution schemes. While of these problems do exist, both in the United States and abroad, the way to address them is not through centuries-old liberal ideology, but rather the timeless truths of reason and revelation which the Church, as the pillar and ground of truth, has always taught.

So the question remains: Will Catholics follow the easy and seductive path of liberalism, one which holds out the hope of peace in this world and material comfort, or the narrow path taught to all men at all times and in all places by Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church? That question, though always pertinent, has taken on greater importance at this juncture in history where an increasing number of persons, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, are beginning to see that the promises of liberalism are empty declarations backed by false principles. Where will these disenfranchised souls turn? Acton would have them double down on the liberal project, even against their own self-interests—temporal and eternal. Holy Mother Church, on the other hand, would have them come to know the truth and work for the restoration of all things in Christ, a project which will only succeed once liberalism in all of its guises has been overcome.