Own it
Matt Cavedon of the Acton Institute writes that I and other “leftists” are trying to “own” the pope’s new encyclical, Caritas in veritate. Since private ownership is the summum bonum for the folks at Acton, maybe I should take this as a compliment. But there’s plenty of encyclical to go around, and I don’t mind sharing it with Acton’s policy experts, as long as they’re willing to read it.
Cavedon complains that Catholic leftists are overlooking the importance of subsidiarity in the pope’s thought. The term “subsidiarity” has a kind of talismanic power for free-market conservatives who are looking for a handle on the church’s social teachings. Subsidiarity, they say, means the smaller the better; and it applies, they say, to government. This is, as Cavedon would put it, not incorrect, but by themselves these two half-truths don’t quite add up to the whole truth.
In fact, subsidiarity is a broad principle about propriety of scale, and it does not apply only to government. Although it implies what we might call a preferential option for the local, it also implies a symmetry between economic power and political power. As small as possible, yes — but also as big as necessary. If you are going to insist on keeping all political power local, you must also insist on keeping the power of capital local. Conversely, if you are going to defend economic globalization, as free-market conservatives do, you will need to find some kind of global political authority that can check the power of multinational corporations.
True, the pope never says exactly what such an authority would look like: it might be nothing more than a closely coordinated coalition of states; it might be nothing less than a supranational government. Whatever it is, it will not be a village council or a chamber of commerce. One of the many provocative arguments of Caritas in veritate is that there is a political arrangement that corresponds to every level of community, from the most local to the most universal. To have the U.N. take up a job that a municipal government can do just as well or better is a clear violation of subsidiarity. But it is no less a violation of subsidiarity to expect municipal governments by themselves — and separately — to head off abuses by companies that make their products in one place, sell them in another, and distribute the profits to investors who live in neither place.
Wherever the word “subsidiarity” occurs in the encyclical, the word “solidarity” is not far away. “Subsidiarity” is mentioned just twelve times, beginning half way through the document (paragraph 47); “solidarity” is mentioned forty times, beginning near the beginning (paragraph 11). The pope understands solidarity as an animating principle of democracy — the motive force that keeps democratic government from becoming a mere procedural arrangement. He also seems to understand it as a common denominator of justice and charity, operative at every level of community. Solidarity goes beyond politics, of course, but it does not go around it.
This means that any account of Catholic social teaching that overlooks solidarity or tries to depoliticize it won’t get very far. Some conservative thinkers, such as Michael Novak, seem uncomfortable with the word because they associate it with totalitarian rhetoric, but Pope Benedict seems to like the word even more than most popes. For him, it has more important associations:
The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centers, by means of a variety of instruments, including favorable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labor market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State. (paragraph 25)
The people at Acton may believe that the State has no business being social — that it should fight our wars, imprison our criminals, and then get out of the way so that the rest of society can take care of itself. But this antipolitical program is at odds with the entire trajectory of Catholic social teaching, from Rerum novarum on. The church has always insisted that distributive justice is as much a concern of the state as criminal justice, and Benedict in particular claims that a lack of distributive justice undermines the “social cohesion” that markets, and civilization itself, require:
Through the systemic increase of social inequality, both within a single country and between the populations of different countries (i.e. the massive increase in relative poverty), not only does social cohesion suffer, thereby placing democracy at risk, but so too does the economy, through the progressive erosion of “social capital”: the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and respect for rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil coexistence. (paragraph 32)
Free-market conservatives think it is a mistake for governments to worry too much about economic inequality and “relative poverty.” In this, they have a substantial disagreement not only with Catholic leftists, but with Pope Benedict himself. They should address this disagreement frankly rather than papering it over with pages and pages of vague talk about subsidiarity.
Is it conceivable that subsidiarity might be applicable to church governance?
Questions for Mr. Cavedon:
-Are “leftist Catholics” something like “Commonweal Catholics?” Would he care to define terms?
-What does he have to say about the common good the Pope keeps stressing, especially in the political area?
“But it is no less a violation of subsidiarity to expect municipal governments by themselves — and separately — to head off abuses by companies that make their products in one place, sell them in another, and distribute the profits to investors who live in neither place. ”
Smashing post, Matthew. With a solid conclusion.
Matthew, I think you may have inadvertently pulled a bit of a switcheroo there. In your citation, the pope refers to “social” inequality (which I take as being unequal before the law, social barriers to advancement, and things like that). You take free market conservatives to task for ignoring “economic” inequality, with I think is fundamentally different from social inequality. From what I know, free market conservatives don’t ignore economic inequality; it’s just that they’ve concluded–irony of ironies–that it makes sense to have a preferential option for the poor. They believe the free market best serves the needs of the poor.
Now, you may feel that the poor are not better off in a free market system, but I don’t think it’s fair to imply that free marketers therefore don’t care about the poor.
Agree with Bill. Mr. Boudway – economic and financial experts talk about roughly 20 mega-regions that produce, manage, control, invent, and innovate 80% of more of all the world’s resources. These mega-regions are the new paradigm in terms of globilization. It is true that Friedman’s “The World is Flat” explains one concept of globilization which B16 says is neutral – neither good nor bad……concept that technology has decreased distance, trade, delivery, etc. But, these mega-regions are the other side of the world is flat. It indicates that the world is facing a new paradigm shift – the mega-regions will continue to grow, become richer, become larger. The rest of the world will lose innovation, control, finances, creativity, education, etc. – in fact, it poses a reality of class warfare between these huge regions and everywhere else.
For example, 3 cities in China control more than 65% of all their economic/financial riches. 16% of the population lives in these 3 cities. The rest of China survives on less than $2 dollars a day.
Many of these regions cross national boundaries – the paradigm shift is that economic/financial realities are no longer controlled by nation states – they transform them. We are caught (not unlike the UN) between the “old” concept of nation-states controlling economies to the “new” concept that mega-regions actually control economies – so, B16 actually appears to be prescient.
Bill:
Many of these regions cross national boundaries – the paradigm shift is that economic/financial realities are no longer controlled by nation states – they transform them. We are caught (not unlike the UN) between the “old” concept of nation-states controlling economies to the “new” concept that mega-regions actually control economies
Well put. That is precisely the new reality and the “modern” conception of statehood is being transformed particularly in Europe where they are facing a historical crisis of identity.. Critics of the European Union said that what the European Union amounted to was essentially a United States of Europe. I think that is precisely what is occurring.
But even that model, the USA model, is unable to resist or control economies.
Here is what Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, writes in today’s Irish Times:
The theme of God’s love has been a focal point of the writings of Pope Benedict XVI. In his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, published last week, the pope takes up the relationship between charity and truth in the context of the social and economic realities of our world.
Some might ask should justice rather than charity not be at the heart of the church’s social doctrine? In the Christian vocabulary the word charity is not about handouts or vague benevolence.
“Charity is at the heart of the church’s social doctrine – every responsibility, and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine, is derived from charity, which according to the teaching of Jesus is the synthesis of the entire law” (n.2).
Justice prompts us to offer others what is due to them. For Pope Benedict, charity goes beyond justice, “because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other . . . Charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving” (n.6).
Christian charity is about gratuitousness, a giving not just of things and ideas but of self, without any of the price tags or packaged portions typical of consumer society. Christian charity is the counterbalance to a consumerist and utilitarian way of life.
What have charity and gratuitousness to say to the realities and mechanisms of economic life?
What has a papal encyclical, which is primarily a religious document, to say about the mechanics of economic and social development? The encyclical does not as such present fixed recipes for development. It draws inspiration from an understanding of a God who is love and who shares his life with us.
What might be the place of the idea of sharing in today’s competitive, market and profit-driven economy? The encyclical recognises the irreplaceable role of the market but notes that “without an internal form of solidarity and mutual trust the market cannot fulfil its proper economic function”.
The economy serves the common good but economic growth on its own will never respond to all the needs of social development. Development needs both economic growth and solidarity.
But the originality of the encyclical is in how it explores ways of illustrating that economic growth and solidarity are not two totally parallel tracks: “solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity and not only outside or after it”.
Pope Benedict takes up the concept of integral development as set out by Pope Paul VI 40 years ago: development of every person and of the whole person. There cannot be holistic development unless we address the spiritual and moral dimensions of the theme. Justice can only be attained by people who live justly.
Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the common good.
The sharing of goods, from which authentic development proceeds is not guaranteed by merely technical progress of relations of utility but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good.
This requires “a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise” (n.40) since “investment always has a moral as well as an economic significance”.
In a wide-ranging reflection, the encyclical addresses many of the aspects of our current world order and especially the challenges of globalisation which the pope describes as “the explosion of worldwide interdependence”.
A section addresses the role of migrants noting that “no country can be expected to address today’s problems of migration on its own”, but clearly reminds that migrant workers “cannot be considered as a commodity or a mere workforce. They must not be treated like any other factor of production. Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance” (n.62).
The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued today is the human person in his or her integrity. The pope expresses his anxiety about “a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitiveness in the global market” (n.25). He stresses “the priority of the goal of access to steady employment for everyone” (n.32.) He notes the continuous call of the church’s teaching to the importance of workers organisations.
If only I had time, I would read the encyclical as a prism through which to evaluate the way the church and the Vatican state are run.
Isn’t it a sign of poor discipline that the ghost-writers like Stefano Zamagni are boasting of their contribution to the Encyclical? See http://www.euronews24.org/world/the-pope-on-capitalism-encyclical-charity-in-truth/
Jesuit social ethicist Hengsbach says the Encyclical is scrap-paper put together by too many hands and hopelessly nebulous in its reference to “Truth”. http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/interview_dlf/997549/
Similar reaction from Emonds SJ http://fuerwahrheitundrecht.blogspot.com/2009/07/schock-nicht-mal-papst-kann.html
Father O’Leary,
Professor Stefano Zamagni was one of the official presenters of the Encyclical at the Press launch by the Vatican. He clearly played some part in the process. Perhaps he might even have added a few of George Weigel’s “red lines” — orrore!
As for the German SJs: though I realize their comments are brief, if you are in touch with them you might suggest they (re-) read the documents of the latest General Congregation of the Society of Jesus before sniping away at greater length. Should they find that assignment too churchy, they might at least peruse President Obama’s “Notre Dame Address” and his challenge to find common ground.
Matthew: Fantastic post. Right on the mark. One might add that the Acton “fantasies” also ignore all the ways present governments actually subsidize and enable large, privleged economic actors via subsidies, cheap oil, bailouts, etc.
On “flat world”: Um, the world is NOT flat. Friedman appears to believe that technology can make it so, but any “flat” world is an (optical?) illusion. Friedman’s mega-regions are built on the backs of the exploited laborers who feed and clothe them, the debtors who send money to them, and the fossil fuels that run them. That is, on injustice in every way that is criticized by Benedict.
On the Church: Y’know, “leftists” could own the whole Church, not just the social encyclicals, if we just stopped turning around and trying to turn our social ethics into an ecclesiology. They are not the same.
“Is it conceivable that subsidiarity might be applicable to church governance?”
In many respects, it already is.
“From what I know, free market conservatives don’t ignore economic inequality; it’s just that they’ve concluded–irony of ironies–that it makes sense to have a preferential option for the poor. They believe the free market best serves the needs of the poor. ”
Hi, Mark, this is an important point about conservatism, and I think it does characterize a certain brand of “good conservatism”, but it needs to be qualified in a couple of important ways. 1. Not all free-market conservatives give a rat’s patootie about the poor; in fact not a few make it a badge of honor to scorn them as “losers”. (This is why I am not a Republican.) 2. FWIW – my work with St. Vincent de Paul and Catholic Charities has convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if government subsidies to the poor were discontinued and charitable aid were to be funded strictly by personal kindness and the vagaries of the free market, the poor in the US would be worse off to an extent that would be unimaginable to most of us. The sad and hard fact is that, in order to provide basic human rights such as housing, basic health care and mental health treatment to the poor in the US, government aid needs to be considerably increased.
“As for the German SJs: though I realize their comments are brief, if you are in touch with them you might suggest they (re-) read the documents of the latest General Congregation of the Society of Jesus before sniping away at greater length. Should they find that assignment too churchy, they might at least peruse President Obama’s “Notre Dame Address” and his challenge to find common ground.”
Please enlighten us on what the documents say? Do they forbid Jesuit ethicists to give their opinion on Vatican documents? I know that Jesuits live under a fearful regime of censorship, but I am not aware of a recent tightening.
Or are you referring to the much controverted Fourth Vow?
Looking up Hengsbach, SJ. who is 72 years old tomorrow, I see he is an eminent figure, whose critical observations on the Encycllical it would be unwise to dismiss as insignificant; see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedhelm_Hengsbach
Jim Pauwels is right that subsidiarity is applied to church government. But it should be noted that as regards the relations between papacy and episcopacy the constant trend of the last thirty years has been to reduce subsidiarity rather than encourage it further.
Funny how references to the Encyclical are bereft of quotes from the text and focus instead on the American reaction to it. This becomes a comic exchange between detractors and laudators of a text that neither side has bothered to read. Mind you, it is not a very readable text. There are whole paragraphs that seem to say nothing very substantial, such as the discussion of the common good, near the start, or the following statement on Truth:
“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[Pop. Prog.] She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church’s social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations.”
The idea of social doctrine assembling fragments into a unity seems to reflect the patchwork composition of the text itself.
Father O’Leary,
thank you for that pellucid quote. But I do question your reading of it .
The Pope writes: “This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free.”
Thus it is not the “social doctrine” which assembles into unity. It is the Church’s proclamation of the truth who is Christ. Its social teaching derives from the truth of Christ, as Gaudium et Spes also affirms.
No, the last sentence talks of the social doctrine assembling the fragments of truth into a unity. This idea of social doctrine as a corpus, an assemblage, etc. is very odd, since social doctrine must be the most contextual of the Church’s teachings, responding to the signs of the times. True, the text adds that the assembled truth is then mediated within changing life-patterns. This whole methodology seems very topheavy for me.
Father O’Leary,
I realize, of course, that you were focusing upon the last sentence of the quote from the Encyclical that you gave. .
My suggestion was that the whole paragraph is a lucid whole, and that the import of the last sentence can only be grasped within the context of the whole, and, in particular, from the two immediately preceding sentences.
Indeed, those sentences but reiterate the opening paragraph of the Encyclical whose Christocentric vision reflects that of Gaudium et spes.
There is much to reflect on/chew on/ and perhaps disagree on in the encyclical.
BXVI though asks us to put aside our subjective views and ideologies.
Meanwhile major issues continue to brew aboout our global world, its governance and attendant problems.
We seem to have forgotten about the still steaming Honduran issue, for example where issues of local rights, intervention, governance and the Church’s role deserve lots more attention.
Maybe arguing more from the secific to the general might ease some of the argumentation around views.
Oh, by the way, an excellent Editorial from the Jesuit Editors at America about the encyclical to our American ideologues.
I think we should avoid the word “ideologue” whenever possible, since it usually just means someone whose ideas you disagree with. People on the right are ideologues to those on the left, and vice versa. Both are ideologues to those whose ideology is to mistake the middle ground for the high ground. Of course the pope is neither an American conservative nor an American liberal; simply to say this, again and again, as if it were an original insight is not very helpful to anyone. Similarly, the observation that the encyclical challenges all of us, no matter what our politics, is a only a truism unless it is followed up with a specific interpretation of the encyclical that does more than try to balance the books: “Conservatives will be upset because the pope says x and y; but liberals will be upset because he says w and z. How cunning the pope is!”
With trepidation, I disagree with Mr. Boudway.It’s precisely because so much of what passes for political discourse is spin/ideology, that we need to both identify it and try to oppose it.
This issue, for xample, was very evident in the Bush administration on science isues involving climate change.
At the Sotomayor hearings, much hazari on “activist judges” was put forward; in another blog, someone posted that what you think about judges depends on your opinion. True enough that tha’s what you may think, but there are profesional standards, national professional groups that evalauate that should as well as real experience over some time (in this case, say, in the courts) to weigh isues.
We are making a mistake encouraging people to hear what they want to hear instead of encotraging notions of objectivity based in facts and professional judgement rather than political persiflage.
No need for trepidation, Mr. Nunz. Disagree boldly: it’s no sin. But ideology does not mean spin, and even spin is usually not a very good term for the arguments of those with whom you disagree. Its conjugation is alarmingly irregular: You spin, they spin, I (or we) interpret. I’m all for professional standards, but their importance — and what counts as “real experience” — is also a matter of ideology, in the properly neutral sense of the term. Because the term is so rarely used in that sense, and so often in a vaguely pejorative way, I still think it’s best to avoid it — unless you are willing to define it. When we on the left, speaking entre nous, describe those on the right as ideologues, we are doing exactly what you say we shouldn’t: telling ourselves what we want to hear and engaging in persiflage rather than real debate.
Matthew, then, without tepidation , I continue to disagree with your last post, which I just saw.
I think you’d be hard pressed to reduce professional standards and best practices developed by professionals as “ideology.”
When a professional in a given field, as opposed to someone speaking out of their personal opinion, offers thought -i think that weighs more heavily on me.
I would clearly agree that we should limit labelling (and I’ve been guilty as have most of us here of that.)
But spin constitutes semantics used for political advantage (in politics and in Church matters.)
Consider today’s NPR Morning Edition report on the “words” used in the health care debate -often developed in think tanks (I’d say ideological think tanks and that they should be described as such!)
So I think Ronald Steele, for example, is being an ideolgue when he calls the Obama health plan an “experiment” as a word developed as par tof the process to torpedo the plan.
The real divisions among us here on matters Church or politics are often dealt with in lazy language, its true.
But that lazy language is often rooted in ideology whose source is often blurred in the privacy of blogdom and should be identified as such.
Bob,
You’re opposed to the misuse of language by people who use tendentious characterizations to replace or distort real argument. So am I. It’s just that I think the term “ideology,” as it’s commonly used, is an example of such misuse. If people would stick to the original meaning of the word, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. The American Heritage Dictionary (Commonweal’s house dictionary) offers two definitions of “ideology”: “1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, a group, a class, or a culture. 2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.” The word’s more recent and pejorative connotation actually takes it out of useful service. All that I learn about a statement when you (for example) criticize it as ideological is that you don’t approve of it. I learn nothing interesting about the argument itself. If you use the word in its original sense, I at least learn that the argument you’re describing belongs to a larger world view, outside of which it may be unintelligible. Built right into the word is the noble word “idea,” and the problem with Ronald Steele’s language is not that it’s full of two many ideas but rather that it’s intended to preempt real thought. True, he is also appealing to what we think we know (in this case, about experiments), and one could plausibly claim that ideology is just a word for whatever we think we know. But in that case, we’re all ideologues. As the debate over the Sotomayor appointment should have made clear, no one arrives at a controversy unburdened by a worldview.
I’ll let you have the last word, mMatthew, but it’s clear that in matters of faith and politics, which is why so many folks avoid those topics, people use speciuos arguments to support their view, using semantics, matras, and other forms of spin(derived from deceptive kinds of “english” one uses in hitting or throwing a ball).
The kind of apologetics we see in the Church to ‘refute” matters that are not ‘orthodox” for some is an example we frequently see here.
Defending one frame without being open to others is the problem of ideologues -if you think we all operate that way or you don’t like that definition, OK, but that’s my view.