Free love.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed defending Rep. Paul Ryan against critics of his budget plan — including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The authors — Antony Davies, identified as an economist, and his wife Kristina Antolin, identified as a theologian — lead with their chins.
Someone is twisting the Catholic Church’s teachings on caring for the poor, but it isn’t Paul Ryan. His controversial budgetary ideas demonstrate that he has a better grasp of Catholic social thought than do many of the American Catholic bishops.
The culmination of centuries of theological and philosophical thought, the church’s teachings cannot simply be satisfied by a government edict to “feed the poor.” Commanding “Let there be light!” works fine for God, but for mortal beings, edicts don’t carry the same punch.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has long supported government interference in the economy as a means to help the poor. But we suspect the bishops haven’t fully thought this through: If God really did favor a top-down approach to poverty reduction, why wouldn’t He establish a government with the power to wipe away poverty on demand instead of leaving things to chance and the possibility that someone like Mr. Ryan would come along and mess up His plans?
If only someone could come up with a way to reduce the poverty of thought on display in this op-ed, I’d subject myself to any form of government coercion. Where to begin? For starters, hop over to the Catholic Moral Theology blog, where Jana Bennett — a theology professor at the University of Dayton — offers several examples of papal teaching endorsing the role of government in addressing the needs of the poor. How long, O Lord, will we have to endure the ministrations of libertarian-leaning Catholics who won’t acknowledge the long-standing teaching of the church that charity is not simply a private matter?
While I suppose one shouldn’t expect too much theological subtlety from an economist, I can’t help asking: What kind of theologian would argue that God does not favor governmental action to relieve poverty on the basis of his failure to establish a political system that could eliminate suffering by fiat? That may be what passes for theological thought on the pages of the Journal, but it’s not the sort that ought to survive a serious theology program in the United States. God hasn’t established a top-down cure for cancer either. Does that mean he’s waiting for heroic self-starting job-creators to band together to ensure its defeat? Should the National Cancer Institute close up shop? (A more legitimate theological question would be: What kind of God would set the conditions of existence in such a way that allows me to come across such claptrap in a major newspaper, but let’s put a pin in theodicy for now.)
It’s always touching to see the Journal‘s op-ed page glow with compassion for the neediest among us, but not when it takes the form of brazen concern-trolling. “Perhaps we dehumanize the poor when we treat them as nothing more than problems to be solved, and we dehumanize the rich when we treat them as wallets to be picked.” Yes, let us pause for a moment, furrow our brows, and reflect on the deeply dehumanizing force of our kleptocratic system of taxation. And then let’s snap out of it and recognize something that’s even more degrading: going hungry.
Davies and Antolin fail to grasp another important point: poverty is a divider, not a uniter. Yet they claim that “wealth and poverty are catalysts for bringing the rich and the poor together in community, and community is the hallmark of the church’s mission on Earth.” Put that way, it sounds delightful. Like a family picnic — minus the food. Regrettably, the economist and the theologian fail to take up the question of how the wealthy can catalyze poverty.
They’re more concerned about the coercive power of government. ”Charity can only be charity when it is voluntary. Coerced acts, no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned, cannot be moral. If we force people to give to the poor, we have stripped away the moral component, reducing charity to mere income redistribution.” This is Catholic moral reasoning turned inside out. Actually, I’m not sure it even counts as secular moral reasoning. Or reasoning at all. Was there an editor at the Journal who asked herself, or the authors, whether traffic signals are immoral because they force people to stop for pedestrians? The community accepts coercive laws because we know that the common good requires them. Put another way, from a Christian point of view — one that might interest someone who identifies as a theologian — we tolerate and even welcome such coercion because we know we are fallen. And for Catholics, the morality of an act is not judged only by the means through which it is carried out. Intent and effect matter too. That’s why it’s not morally illicit for a poor, starving person to steal an apple to feed himself.
Davies and Antolin close where it seems all contemporary conservative Catholic opinion writing must: the contraception mandate. They’re confused about that too.
The bishops dance with the devil when they invite government to use its coercive power on their behalf, and there’s no clearer example than the Affordable Care Act. They happily joined their moral authority to the government’s legal authority by supporting mandatory health insurance. They should not have been surprised when the government used its reinforced power to require Catholic institutions to pay for insurance plans that cover abortions and birth control.
Where were Davies and Antolin when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops repeatedly warned that the Affordable Care Act would result in federally funded elective abortions? (Indeed, they still make that claim.) Apparently they haven’t spent too much time on the USCCB website. If they had, they might have noticed that the U.S. Catholic bishops do not assert that the contraception mandate amounts to an abortion mandate (even while overplaying the scientific certainty of the endometrial effects of emergency contraception). Of course, that might distract Davies and Antolin from their overriding interest: big government.
To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien (a devoted Catholic), the government does not share power. Paul Ryan knows this. The bishops would be wise to listen to him.
As much as the bishops may appreciate Davies and Antolin’s willingness to share their advice, on this matter I suspect most will keep their own counsel. And shrug.
“To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien (a devoted Catholic), the government does not share power.”
I wonder if this is a reference to Gandalf’s rejoinder to Saruman: “only one hand at a time can wield the One”. Meaning the One Ring. So to explicate the metaphor: the government is personified as a fallen wizard with an insane lust for the Ring of Sauron that can bind all the other Rings of Power to its will. That is insightful – insightful of how the authors view government programs. Paul Ryan seems like a reasonably decent fellow; I think he deserves better surrogates.
(I write this as a service to Jean Raber, because I expect she will not be able to sleep until the quote has been supplied).
I’m no LOTR expert, but I wonder whether the authors are actually quoting the film adaptation, and not the book.
I will say this – and please don’t construe this as my agreeing with the authors, because I don’t think they quite get around to making this specific argument, although they kind of loiter in its neighborhood and maybe even drive by it at one point.
First of all, I think the on-the-ground reality in the US at this time is that the poor need both types of programs: government programs and private charity programs. I trust that I don’t need to make the argument that the gaps and deficits for provision of basic human needs like food, clothing and shelter would be appalling without government programs. I would add that government programs by themselves also aren’t sufficient. Around here, the food pantry shelves of private charities empty pretty quickly, and virtually all of them could use more donations than they receive.
I also think, based on what our outreach clients tell us, that private charities treat people in need better -more humanely – than the people who staff government programs do. I’m sure there are exceptions. But in general, governments aren’t in the business of being ministries as we use that term. This is one of the reasons, in my view, that public-private partnerships are very good for the poor. Not only are organizations like Catholic Charities transparent and effective, but they also treat their clients with dignity and respect. But Catholic Charities would be a fraction of its scope without government funding.
First of all, I think the on-the-ground reality in the US at this time is that the poor need both types of programs: government programs and private charity programs.
Jim Pauwels,
According to the current article in The Economist about the finances of the Church in the United States, $4.7 billion was given to the poor by Catholic Charities in 2010, and 62% of that came from local, state and federal government agencies. I am wondering in what sense Catholic Charities can be considered “private” when so much of its funding comes from government?
Whether or not Davies and Antolin wrote the blurb that appears beneath the headline of their article I don’t know. In any case, it reads, “Acts coerced by government, no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned, cannot be moral.” As noted above, close to $3 billion worth of taxpayer money went to Catholic Charities in 2010. Apparently that was not moral.
“Coerced acts, no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned, cannot be moral.”
I don’t usually find the WSJ to be downright stupid, but this is. Who edited this?
“”Charity can only be charity when it is voluntary. Coerced acts, no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned, cannot be moral. If we force people to give to the poor, we have stripped away the moral component, reducing charity to mere income redistribution.” This is Catholic moral reasoning turned inside out. Actually, I’m not sure it even counts as secular moral reasoning. Or reasoning at all.”
Grant: I think you are fighting fire with fire here. To be sure, the authors of the op-ed go too far in saying that, “no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned,” legally required action “cannot be moral.” Of course, intentions and benefits matter in judging moral action regardless of the presence of coercion. However, the intuition that there is a tension between charity and the law is one that is widely held and has some theological weight to it. I think that most theologians would say that love is meant to be freely given, and if love is coerced, it is being diminished in some way. This is why we ought not to have laws against divorce, even if we might consider it morally tragic, and the same might be said about abortion. We cannot legislate that one love one’s spouse or child, no matter how appalled or saddened we might be when we find such love lacking. This is simply to recognize that, as Augustine might have it, the “City of Man” is not the “City of God.”
Of course, this brings us to your point about being fallen. I would agree that laws can help us learn to behave in ways that correct for our misshapen desires, but according to the Christian story, such desire can only be fully redeemed in and through a love freely given and freely received. So, at best, law is a stop-gap measure to keep us from totally devolving into a state of (un)nature. Law cannot be used to bring about the Kingdom. In short, law does not correct our fallen nature, only grace does. Law just keeps us from killing each other in the meantime.
This brings me to my final point. It seems that both you and the WSJ authors make a mistake in trying to theologize civil law. According to some theorists, like John Rawls, civil law is neither about achieving the common good nor is it about protecting unfettered individual liberty (aka. the right to be moral). It is primarily about preserving the conditions for justice as fairness with social stability as its primary goal. The fact of the matter is that unfair societies in which, for example, there are huge wealth disparities are unstable. So, “income redistribution” is a very sensible way to ensure that individuals have free and equal access to material needs (e.g., food and healthcare) and economic opportunity (e.g., education), which ultimately will make for more stable and safer communities.
Where the WSJ folks go wrong is in failing to see that this is the minimum that basic “eye-for-an-eye” justice requires. They misconstrue it as an attempt to legislate Christian charity, but, of course, Christian charity goes far beyond this. What Christians are called to is a love that goes far beyond the bounds of fairness to the point of self-sacrifice. It’s not enough to make sure the poor person before you has the shirt he requests, but one must give him one’s cloak as well. Christian charity aimed at the Good is sacrificial giving, which, indeed, cannot be coerced. Legally mandated “income redistribution” is mere justice aimed at stability, which is neither moral nor theological. It simply makes good instrumental sense.
So, I think the WSJ folks are right to say that (Christian) charity cannot be legislated, but they are completely mistaken as to what charity actually is.
I did not and never would suggest that civil law redeems. But I don’t know what kind of theologian would argue for a justice devoid of theological content.
“Law is a necessity, only a necessity.” Raissa Maritain in her Journal.
She might also have said that justice is a necessity, if only a necessity. If I were starving, I daresay I wouldn’t care whether you were giving me food out of justice or out of charity. Feeding the hungry is the exact same ontological reality in either case, and in this respect justice and charity are equal.
Antolin describes herself as a theologian, but I haven’t found any indication that she has any professional post or qualification. David Tracy would say we are all doing theology, and I hope he’s right in some respects. But I also believe that certain professional qualifications and context help determine one’s authority and expertise. Are there such thresholds to call oneself a Catholic theologian? Or to distinguish a theologian from someone with a sophomoric crush on Ayn Rand?
David N – you’re right, most of Catholic Charities’ funding comes from government grants. But there are many, many other Catholic charitable endeavors, most of which are on a minuscule scale compared to Catholic Charities but which are cumulatively important, and quite of a few of them rely strictly on private donations.
Grant: What is the status of the theological content you imagine justice requiring? Some accounts of natural law would argue that justice can be understood on the basis of natural reason alone without any explicit reference to God or other theological precepts. Of course, for the theologian, this justice is still grounded in God as its source, as indeed human reason itself is. So, theology would come in when asking after the metaphysics of justice (i.e. What makes justice just?), but to simply know what is required for justice (i.e What is a just society?), Thomas Aquinas, for example, would happily say that any rational being can come to perfectly reasonable and true conclusions without making any appeal to revelation or God. If you are saying that from the perspective of faith, justice always has theological content (because all that is comes from God), then, of course, no theologian would deny this. However, if you are saying that in order to know what is just, one must be a believer, then I think there are plenty of theologians who would disagree.
This is why I think Rawls can be perfectly right about “justice as fairness,” while leaving room for theologians to say that love and morality go beyond justice and are ultimately the source of the just itself insofar as Love is the source of all creation, including the human reason by which we know the just.
That is not really responsive. But of this I have no doubt: nonbelievers, even nonbelieving theologians, can do the right thing.
If we had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people it’s actions on behalf of those in great need of a helping hand might well be an expression of the charity referred to in Matthew’s gospel. As it is, we have either a laissez fair or coercive government whose policies draw the ire and consternation of the opposing parties. On top of this, those who lean to the left theologically insist that Christ favors dems over the GOP and vice versa. The solution, methinks, requires the identification and election of those whose stated quest for social justice is backed up by a track record of generous personal charity. If this happens the libertarians will have little room for criticism.
Checking out another question in Aquinas yesterday, I came across this. (I’m just remembering his words.) “An infidel, a Muslim or a Jew, can govern justly”.
Perhaps at this point I should add that although Thomas was quite tolerant of infidels, Muslims and Jews, he was as intolerant of heretics as the worst of the medievals. (One of his greatest works, the Summa Contra Gentiles, presents arguments for Catholic missionaries to the Muslims which the missionaries might use to persuade the Muslims to convert to Christianity.)
He thought that non-Christians could honorably disagree with the Church out of ignorance, but that heretics *chose* to disagree with Church teaching, and so were punishable. No doubt this lack of understanding of at least some dissenters has reinforced the Vatican’s historical rigid intolerance of dissent. In other words, he would not agree that dissenters had a right, much less a duty, to disagree with Church teaching, for the simple reason that they are not ignorant of the truth. Dissent was always for him a matter of sinning, not honorable doubt.
Well, we’re never going to get rid of the notion that governments should and must fill every pothole on the road to material perfection, but we can at least hold them back from making a royal mess of things. In that noble endeavor, libertarians are an absolutely indispensable counterweight to progressives. Both have got a piece of it right, but both are teeth-grinding purists – nothing but total victory counts. God save us.
“How long, O Lord, will we have to endure the ministrations of libertarian-leaning Catholics who won’t acknowledge the long-standing teaching of the church that charity is not simply a private matter?”
A long time, if Americans elect Romney-Ryan-Rand, as they are perfectly capable of doing.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (G. Santayana) Private charity has not been sufficient at least since the industrial revolution, and was amply demonstrated in the United States during the 1930s.
David Gibson:
Perhaps by now you have come across this list of M.A, recipients listed at the latest commencement at Vincent Seminary, PA.
Kristina Antolin Davies of Greensburg was born the youngest of thirteen children on the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. Her parents, Viktor and Ivanka Antolin, were refugees of World War II and of the ensuing communist regime in Slovenia, Yugoslavia. After completing Catholic grade school and high school, she attended The Catholic University of America and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in Political Theory. She spent time in Spain, studying and teaching English as a Second Language and worked for Voice of America. After graduation, she worked as a conference planner in Washington, D.C., and as an English as a Second Language instructor at West Virginia Wesleyan College. In 2003, three weeks after the birth of her sixth and final child, she began her Masters work at Saint Vincent Seminary. She graduates this year with a master of arts degree in theology and a concentration in Sacred Scripture.
For what it’s worth, I have an M.A. in Theology and have taught in the field (high school, college and adult levels) for quite a few years. I would never call myself a theologian. But, maybe that’s just me.
Honestly, I don’t think the authors’ reasoning has anything to do with Catholic social teaching so much as it has to do with reflexive disdain for government. The famous comment of MLK:
“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” And if enough other people think it is also important, not to say, the only possible moral outcome, then it becomes a dominant theme in their legal jurisprudence.
Under the theory espoused by the authors, taken to extreme, no widescale social change such as civil rights laws can ever be considered a reflection or requirement of morality or social values so long as even one person feels “coerced” by the law, in this case, to treat a disfavored group fairly. That view basically pegs society to the views of individuals, even if they are in the minority, rather than the collective majority, of a nation’s citizens. It’s as if a collective identity is not even possible. The reality is, in our constitutional democracy, on most issues, only a clear majority of people need to be convinced of something to make it happen. If a clear majority of people believe that the moral thing to do is to embed the feeding and housing of the poor such that it becomes a legal entitlement, then it happens and it is fully consistent with the desired moral outcome of the majority.
The real distinction they are trying to make, of course, is one that delegitimizes any organized effort by the Church as a whole to characterize such legislation as a moral imperative, or even, really, the better moral outcome. But this would be true of any action, in any setting, involving any group of people that can be styled as collective, because the collective outcome might undermine (or nullify the need for) individual effort. It misperceives the role of law, which is, that people are entitled at some level to ignore the individual in favor of the group outcome if the outcome is considered so important or desirable that you do not want it left to the whims of individual moral action. A truly charitable person will breathe a sigh of relief that his charity is no longer necessary and rather than pining that he no longer gets to show his goodness as a charitable individual, he will move on to the next unmet need he perceives himself capable of ameliorating.
(The acid test of their “theory” is whether they believe it holds true for issues beyond “charity.”)
Helen, thanks for that. Again, I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s theological acumen, but you strike me as much more of a professional in the field.
Thought this might be of interest – from a recent meeting of the Catholic Conversation Project:
http://catholicmoraltheology.com/how-not-to-discuss-catholic-social-teaching-with-the-bishops/
Money quotes:
- “What I find curious about this op-ed piece is that for all their attempt to argue that Paul Ryan has a better grasp of Catholic social thought, they don’t themselves actually cite anything directly from Catholic social teaching, nor do they themselves exhibit awareness about CST or suggest any specific ways in which Paul Ryan best supports CST.”
- “But aside from this sort of thinking that is insulting to the bishops and which smacks of arrogance about their own apparently superior knowledge about God and God’s purposes, it is not the case that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has “long supported government interference in the economy.”
- “The authors here equate individual charity with the distinctive functions of government, and they seem to conclude that therefore via the principle of subsidiarity, the individual takes precedence over the state. Individual charity is to be preferred over the supposed coercion of government.”
And to address the issue of credentials and who is a theologian:
http://catholicmoraltheology.com/the-catholic-conversation-project-faith-in-the-public-square/
Points:
- “The first place that the theologian enters the public square is in the classroom”
- “….spoke of the “connatural theologian,” the theologian who, though unlearned, knows the faith. “My grandmother was a theologian”
Nancy Danielson: Stop posting here. Stop creating new accounts on our website. You are not welcome here.
” “….spoke of the “connatural theologian,” the theologian who, though unlearned, knows the faith. “My grandmother was a theologian””
Whenever Catholic philosophers or theologians start justifying a position by appeal to “connatural knowledge” you can be sure that there are no rational justifications available for the position. What connaturality amounts to is “I feel it is so”. Not “I know it”, but “I feel it”.
A Time Magazine contributor helpfully calculates a range of Christian tax rates (presumably income and wealth tax rates). She may not be a theologian, but, even better, she’s associated with Harvard and thus speaks with almost infallible authority.
“As near as we can tell, Jesus would advocate a tax rate somewhere between 50% (in the vein of ‘If you have two coats, give one to the man who has none’) and 100% (if you want to get into heaven, be poor). Mostly, he suggested giving all your money up for the benefit of others. And Jesus made no distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor; his love and generosity applied to all.”
http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/14/why-paul-ryans-budget-unchristian/
Ann Olivier:
My grandmother knew a lot of home remedies for illness and they worked, but I would not call her a doctor.
Helen –
I certainly don’t want to disparage the knowledge of people who learn outside of schools. My own grandmother had eight kids, and she knew an awful lot about children’s symptoms and diseases. Sometimes she’d diagnose a grandchild’s illness before the doctor did. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom out there, and in my experience, at any rate, there are more genuinely open minds outside of academe than inside, though there also are some clam-minds out there as well.
What I find to be unjustified is the common appeal to one’s feelings to justify what thinks one knows. Yes, there are many different sorts of knowledge, and it might even be the case that some feelings do sometimes reveal — or help to reveal — what is so. But I fail to find any justification for feelings, especially feelings alone, as revealing what is so or not so. And letting feelings set our norms is positively dangerous. Feelings could justify anything.
The psychologists are quite interested in the subject, of course, and there happens to be an article in this month’s “Psychology Today” (“Sixth Sense”) which covers such things as “gut reactions” and paranormal experiences as revealing what is so or not so. I am sympathetic to PT’s attempts to explain away the fact that sometimes such “knowledge” does in fact prove accurate. Essentially PT tries to show that it is coincidence that accounts for such claimed “verification” by experience, though I’ll give PT credit, it doesn’t rule out the paranormal as impossible.
But I should also add that philosophers these days are very much interested in this general problem: what *should* we call “knowledge”? If I predict that there will be four devastating hurricanes to hit New York City this summer based on my “gut feelings”, and I turn out to have been right, should we call that “knowledge” or not? It’s a difficult area of philosophy, actually, and not resolved yet. (Check out Gettier problems, if you’re interested.)
Anyway, my main problem is that sometimes we persuade ourselves that we have real knowledge when we don’t really have it, and such wishful thinking can do a lot of harm, whether we call it “gut reactions”, “second sight”, or the “connaturality” oft the Thomists.
The relevance of all this to religious faith and belief is, of course, obvious.
Ann Olivier:
“I certainly don’t want to disparage the knowledge of people who learn outside of schools.”
Neither do I but that doesn’t mean that I do not value credentials.
Patrick: I think it’s safe to say that Jesus’ teachings have little practical value for the organization of the State, let alone the tax code. And he seemed to be well aware of this, e.g. “my Kingdom is not of this world.” So, I think most importations of Catholic Social Teaching into politics are irrelevant distractions, and I feel much the same way about similar appeals to Catholic Sexual Morality as people try to apply it to social policy (e.g. abstinence-only sex ed). How’s that for something that both “liberals” and “conservatives” can be upset about?
Eric –
So what are your grounds for your own social ethics? And what kind of ethics do you favor?
Individualism vs. Collectivism and equating government action with immorality is a Ayn Randian concept, not a Christian one. When will they just admit that that square peg will never fit in the round hole of social justice?
And when will people wake up to the fact that economic theories — from the Marxist to the neo-Classical, Austrian and all their variants — are simply secular religions with some fancy numbers and graphs in search of a god? We could save some time if we just trotted out the old golden idol, crossed off “Baal” and engraved “Free Markets”.
Frank –
Except that the Mammonists love having the government pay for the military, the police, education, medical research, roads and other infrastructure, and, sometimes, the courts. Their problem is that they want other people to pay for it all. Government welfare for the rich, as the phrase goes.
Ann: I think a broadly construed humanism that recognizes the ability of reason to work out the baseline rights and duties that we owe to one another can get us pretty far. This humanism is, of course, not incompatible with a theological account of ethics, but it does not rely on theological principles for its rational coherence. One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite theologians, Herbert McCabe, is that “there is no such thing as Christian ethics.” This is to say that it is simply by virtue of our humanity that we seek to enter into stable ethical communities, which can function perfectly well on the basis of reason alone. Such ethics has very little to do with the supererogatory demands of the Christian Scriptures. I see Thomas, Kant, and Rawls as being in this humanistic tradition that leaves room for a faith that goes beyond the mundane questions of practical reason without undermining their proper everydayness. If you want more than a stable political order, as most people do, then you go to the theologians to talk about God and the ultimate ends of humanity. In this vein, I think it’s clear that Jesus thinks that talking about the tax code is a waste of time, theologically speaking. Hence: “Give to Caesar…”
Eric,
Where does Rawls say the only reason for justice is social stability?
The first purpose of politics is justice, including distributive justice, which is about making sure that everyone has what is due to him or her as a member of the community. As Michael Walzer pointed out in Spheres of Justice, the criterion according to which we decide — as a community — what is due to someone will depend on the particular good involved; there is no single criterion for the distribution of all goods. For some goods (e.g., food, shelter, health care), need is the basic criterion. For others (education), ability is. The reduction of justice to criminal justice is at the root of the Republican Party’s antipolitical ideology.
Pace Eric, the value of justice does not derive from the value of social stability. A political arrangement that is fundamentally unjust but effectively imposed is not on a par with a just political arrangement whose stability does not depend on tyranny. Sometimes democracies are stable; sometimes they aren’t. In the long run, all tyrannies fail; but, as Keynes remarked, in the long run we’re all dead. Justice is not an instrumental virtue; justice is not prudence. To quote G.A. Cohen (Rawls’s best critic on the Left) “justice just is justice” — not crowd control, not envy, not vengeance.
“I think a broadly construed humanism that recognizes the ability of reason to work out the baseline rights and duties that we owe to one another can get us pretty far. This humanism is, of course, not incompatible with a theological account of ethics, but it does not rely on theological principles for its rational coherence.”
Why, Eric, I do believe your first sentence makes you something of an Aristotelian, and the second one joins you to the Thomists.
Allow me one word of advice — don’t trust theologians (e.g., McCabe) tell you what philosophy/ethics is.
Matt: I’ll have to track down the Rawls reference, though I did not say that Rawls thought that the only reason for justice was stability. Rather I think the idea is that a perfectly just society will be stable, given that people will be relatively free from need (as you describe). Thus, we’re talking about a “natural” stability not a violently imposed stabilty, which is inherently unstable. This, I take it, is why tyrannies always fail. Pace Barbara’s quotation from MLK, this kind of need-based stability is quite a lot indeed, and it gets us nowhere close to theology.
Ann: Thanks for the advice, but I think that was McCabe’s point. The theologians should stick to God and leave ethics and philosophy to the rest of us.
Incidentally, a Christian “politics” strikes me as deeply unstable and not very fair: every relationship is radically preferential, each is owed all in excess of need, sacrificial love replaces self-defense, forgiveness and mercy replace punishment, the sinner returns to a celebration rather then a trial… This is hardly what one might call the picture of a just society, distributive or otherwise.
Eric,
You wrote: “According to some theorists, like John Rawls, civil law is neither about achieving the common good nor is it about protecting unfettered individual liberty (aka. the right to be moral). It is primarily about preserving the conditions for justice as fairness with social stability as its primary goal.”
I believe that is a misrepresentation of Rawls’s theory.
Rawls did not believe the primary goal of justice was social stability. It would be truer to say that he believed the primary goal of the state was justice. Justice itself has no goal; justice is the goal.
One could also say that, for Rawls, inequality was only fair because, and insofar as, it served the common good — understood according to the maximin principle. That is, no one deserves more than anyone else by any baseline measure of personal desert, but if the worst-off are better off in a society that permits inequality than in one that doesn’t, then — and only then — there is sufficient reason for inequality. Only then is inequality just.
Matt: I suppose people can disagree about Rawls, though I’m not sure that you and I do. I was admittedly a little hasty in saying that stability is the goal of justice as fairness, though Habermas, with whom I am more familiar, has critiqued Rawls on these grounds. It might be more precise to say that social stability is how we know that the end of justice is being served. What does a just/fair society look like? It is stable without the threat of violence.
My main point, though, is that this notion of justice is far more modest than a Catholic account of the common good. Rawls is very careful to remain agnostic when it comes to moral questions that take the Good as their telos. So, I certainly agree that justice is the end of politics, but this end stops pretty short of goodness as the end of morality. Related to this, I also stand by my previous suggestion that political rationality is instrumental. Rawls’ original position, as many have pointed out, is an exercise in straight forward distributive calculation. Do we want more? Yes. Is a properly functioning social order a good place to start? Absolutely.
Eric,
I’m pretty sure we do disagree — and not only about Rawls.
As far as I know, Rawls never argued that justice was only an instrumental good. Since arguments about politics are finally arguments about what a just society looks like, and justice itself is not instrumental, neither is what you call “political rationality.” If we sometimes speak as if it were, this is only because we often take the answers to the most important political questions for granted. For example, we assume that maximum economic growth is obviously the main purpose of economic policy and then debate what kind of policy is most likely to achieve growth. But there are those who would dispute that growth ought to be our government’s main economic goal. And this dispute, like many others, is finally about what counts as a good political arrangement.
It’s true that Rawls wanted to exclude religious arguments from public discourse about how best to order our political communities, but not because he was opposed to any public discussion of the good. He simply thought that faith-based beliefs — or any belief that made appeal to goods that transcended the (secular) welfare of the political community — were not relevant to debates about public policy. Now, I think that he was too narrow in his view of what sort of arguments ought to be admissable in a liberal democracy, but not that he or his political philosophy was indifferent to the good (small g).
Somewhat paradoxically, Rawls also believed that one of the ingredients of a good society’s political arrangements was a refusal to commit to any of the various competing visions of the good life. One can argue about whether this points up a fundamental incoherence in Rawls’s political philosophy. Is it really possible to separate ethics from political philosophy as cleanly as he tried to? I doubt it. But, again, this doesn’t mean he believed political philosophy was reducible to technical discussions of policy. It just means that, for Rawls, the principles by which we collectively decide to govern our lives together could not be derived from the principles by which each of us decides how to live his or her own life.
“Incidentally, a Christian “politics” strikes me as deeply unstable and not very fair: every relationship is radically preferential, each is owed all in excess of need, sacrificial love replaces self-defense, forgiveness and mercy replace punishment, the sinner returns to a celebration rather then a trial… This is hardly what one might call the picture of a just society, distributive or otherwise.”
Well, if you put it that way, it does seem rather silly.
Christian social teaching, though, seems to be capacious enough for both distributive justice and private property; for the right to defense and sacrificial love; for punishment, forgiveness and mercy; for peace and just war; for universal human rights and an elite; for commercial activity and the common good; for capital and labor; and so on.
Matt: I think at the heart of our dispute is a question concerning the limits of the political. Rawls says in Political Liberalism that his account of justice is limited to the political and “leaves philosophy as it is” (375). By this, he intends to limit himself to what he considers “reasonable” proposals as to how we should live our lives together, and he intends to leave questions of truth to “comprehensive doctrines” that go beyond the bounds of his admittedly limited account of justice within this limited conception of the political.
This is only paradoxical, if, as you seem to say, one expands politics and political justice to include disputes about what counts as “a good political arrangement.” Rawls’ account of politics tries to bracket the question of the “good” from the start, and simply deduces from an already existing political order those values that allow it to function as a “freestanding” order legitimated by an (implicit or explicit) “overlapping consensus” of the governed. “Political Liberalism” is the name for the network of values (e.g., citizens as free, equal, reasonable and rational) that undergird democratic regimes, but Rawls says that one could have “some conceptions of right and justice belonging to political philosophy [that] may be conservative or radical; conceptions of the divine right of kings, or even of dictatorship, may also belong to it” (374). So, as long as we are within a political order, there are presupposed values guiding our sense of what counts as a “reasonable” conception of justice, which we employ in solving the problems specific to that particular order.
Now, this does not mean that we cannot have any “public discussion of the good.” It simply means that when we do, we are no longer engaged in politics as such. When we ask questions concerning the goodness or truth of the values that are presupposed by the political order, we are raising doubts as to the legitimacy of that order from our perspective as morally autonomous persons. By contrast, “political autonomy is specified in terms of various political institutions and practices, as well as expressed in certain political virtues of citizens in their thought and conduct — their discussions, deliberations, and decisions — in carrying out a constitutional regime” (400). So, within the practice of politics “virtue” is relative to the specific demands of an already agreed upon “constitutional regime,” which is what I mean when I say that political rationality is instrumental. It is a means not an end.
This, however, does not preclude moral questions that go beyond politics to inquire after the ends of a “good” society. It simply brackets them out of the pragmatic considerations of the State, so as not to mire politics in potentially endless disputes between competing conceptions of the “good life.” I sense that you are somewhat allergic to this kind of bracketing, but I think it is a pretty good description of what politics is mostly about, i.e. solving problems.
As a final note, I think that Rawls shares your intuition (as do I) that “maximum economic growth” is not the “main purpose of economic policy,” but I don’t think this involves us in a debate about the ends (goodness) of our present political order. The problem with it is that it seems empirically inconsistent with the values that are already presupposed by political liberalism, insofar as it trades on maintaining a high level of systemic inequality. So, as Marx might say, it introduces an internal contradiction within democracy itself. This is an empirical question, however, concerning the extent to which capitalist economy can be stabilized enough to be compatible with the ends of democratic politics. I don’t think it’s a question of competing political goods.
“I think at the heart of our dispute is a question concerning the limits of the political.”
Seems to me there is also a question of the limits of the church. While the church cannot enact civil law (thank God!) or support a political candidate, it does have a role and obligation to be prophetic, to comment on public policy as it impinges on the rights and dignity of people. This would seem especially true in a nation where the general public, including Catholics, elects its leaders.
Much here is said about charity. Indeed, Christian teaching promotes charity, and it does create a stable society. The Romans knew this when they gave the plebian class panem et circenses, and Lyndon Johnson knew it when he signed War on Poverty legislation.
However, I think the deeper question is one of justice. Does our economic system create poverty? Are some citizens prevented from participating in decisions that affect their well-being through ignorance (poor educational opportunities) or through coercion (e.g. voter id laws). The bishops and WSJ are woefully silent on these matters.
I’m going to agree with Ann Olivier that this op-ed is downright stupid, although for me the sentence that clinches it is But we suspect the bishops haven’t fully thought this through: If God really did favor a top-down approach to poverty reduction, why wouldn’t He establish a government with the power to wipe away poverty on demand instead of leaving things to chance and the possibility that someone like Mr. Ryan would come along and mess up His plans? It seems to me a publication that would print that must have nothing but contempt for the intelligence of its readers.
As for who edited it, I don’t know, but j’accuse Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page director, Fox News commentator, and author of the most downright stupid entry in the War on Christmas boondoggle I’ve ever come across (and that’s saying something).
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Mollie –
I wonder if the Journal, since Murdoch bought it, just doesn’t care about making sense, it only cares about selling copies.
There should be a law against one person owning so many newspapers as he does. It necessarily distorts the political conversations. Two to a customer, I say.