A few days ago on
FaceBook we came across a reposted article from Regina Magazine (“Inspiring.
Intelligent. Catholic.”), an
internet journal “interested in everything under the Catholic sun . . .
[seeking] the Good, the Beautiful and the True” — surely a laudable goal,
regardless of your religion or lack thereof.
The article was “The ABC’s of Catholic Economics” by either Beverly
Stevens or William Schultz, possibly both — it wasn’t clear, and a visit to the
website didn’t make it any clearer.
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| Rev. Heinrich Pesch, S.J. |
Unfortunately,
right off the bat the title of the article caused alarm bells to go off. As the solidarist economist Dr. Franz Müller,
a student of the great Father Heinrich Pesch, S.J., the “redeemer” of solidarism,
always reminded people, there is no such thing as “Catholic Economics” or any
other science. To insist that your
science requires faith for its validity debauches science and degrades
religion.
Reading the
article, it turned out that the title was not the only difficulty. Of the twenty-four entries in the ABC list (K
and L were omitted for some reason), five (about 21%) were not relevant to the
topic, eighteen (75%) had serious problems, and one (about 4%) we could agree
with without reservation. It became
questionable whether what was being promoted was truly Catholic social doctrine.
Rather than
simply declare it is a bad article, however, it seemed more useful (and fair)
to go through the entire piece and explain what, specifically, we objected
to. In order to ensure strict fairness,
we have quoted the entire article verbatim (all quotes are in boldface type) so
that it is clear we did not distort, twist, or misquote anything. The article starts with the statement,
Are Catholics supposed to be
Socialists? Capitalists? Believe it or not, the Catholic Church has its own
perspective on the “dismal science” of Economics — one that most Catholics have
never heard of. It’s called “Distributism” and it’s all about common sense.
Now, before your eyes glaze over, here’s how it works.
 |
| Hilaire Belloc |
According to its developers G.K.
Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, “distributism” is a loose theory of
socio-economics based on the natural law assumption that it is better to be an
owner than not to own, with a preference for small, family owned farms and
artisan businesses and enterprises. When
enterprises must be large, workers should own the company through equity shares,
presumably that carry the vote and pay dividends.
Following the brief
introduction, the article launches into the “ABCs”:
A is for Agrarianism, which is at the heart of Catholic
economics. The idea that families and small towns or villages can solve most
problems without interference from national governments is integral to all
Catholic social doctrine.
Commentary:
No. Respect for the dignity of the human person under God and
conformity to the natural law are integral to Catholic social doctrine. The specific arrangement of the economy or
society is a matter of complete indifference as long as these two requirements
are met.
B is for Belloc, Hilaire, the co-creator, with G.K
Chesterton, of the formal term for Catholic economics, Distributism. As
a working term, Distributism was considered more descriptive than anything
else, and the two were essentially unsatisfied with it. Lacking any suitable
alternative, however, they spent the better part of two decades explaining its
practical application, and updating its doctrines as new papal teachings were
introduced.
Commentary:
 |
| George Bernard Shaw |
No. Neither
Chesterton nor Belloc was ever able to come up with a way to apply the
principles of distributism, although Belloc came closest with his An Essay on the Restoration of Property
(1936). Belloc’s proposal, however, was
past savings-based, thus relying on government carrying out de facto redistribution by imposing
legal disabilities on the rich in favor of the non-rich. George Bernard Shaw cornered Chesterton on
this very point in an early debate when Shaw demanded to know how distributism
could be implemented. Instead of
admitting he didn’t have a program (which admission he made later in print . .
. after Shaw kept after him on it), Chesterton avoided the question. This gave Shaw all the leverage he needed to
conclude that distributism was merely another form of Fabian socialism, like
guild socialism or social credit, and to declare that Chesterton did not
understand socialism.
C is for Chesterton, G.K., Belloc’s dear friend and one of
the most brilliant English-language authors of all time. Chesterton was a
journalist, a poet, a novelist, and a fierce debater, challenging the enemies
of Christianity wherever he found them; his most famous debates were against
American atheist Clarence Darrow, Anglo-Irish socialist George Bernard Shaw,
and English science fiction great Herbert George Wells.
Commentary:
 |
| Clarence Darrow |
Qualified
no. Chesterton was a poor debater, a
fact of which Shaw took full advantage.
Audiences came to watch the entertaining fireworks, often missing the
very serious points both men were trying to make. Chesterton only held his own because he
refused to budge from his position, and could usually counter Shaw’s and others’
wit and repartee with his own. In an
informal debate in 1923 soon after Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism —
which outraged Shaw — Shaw stormed out of the room because Chesterton refused
to admit that becoming a Catholic was stupid, and he couldn’t get a rise out of
Chesterton, who (at least publicly) took Shaw as a big joke and often played to
the crowd for laughs. Fierce
debater? Hardly.
D is for Day,
Dorothy, the most famous American champion of Distributism. Day, a faithfully
orthodox Catholic despite her reputation as a maverick, founded the Catholic
Worker movement and newspaper to spread the ideals of blessed Franciscan
poverty, the dignity of labor, and charity.
Commentary:
 |
| And the star of Bethlehem was red. |
No. Day’s understanding of Catholic social
doctrine tended to slip into the “Neo Catholic” principle that all things,
including the natural law, are subordinate to the need for social
betterment. The true Catholic principle
is that all things, including social betterment, are subordinate to the natural
law.
E is for Economics, Catholic. The Popes, seeing the need
to address the dangers of modernism and its attendant pathologies liberalism
and socialism, formalized the Church’s teachings on economics and the relations
between workers and employers in a series of encyclicals beginning in 1891 and
continuing through to the present day.
Commentary:
No. There is no such thing as “Catholic
Economics,” any more than there is Catholic math, Catholic biology, or any
other science. There can be economics
consistent with the principles of natural law, and thus with Catholic social
doctrine, but a specifically “Catholic Economics”? No.
F is for Family,
the basic social unit of the Catholic economic system. The traditional family
living self-sufficiently on the land is the ideal promoted by Distributism; it
is based on the example of the Holy Family.
Commentary:
No. First (as noted above) there is no such thing
as a “Catholic economic system.” Second,
the family is the basic unit of society, not just the economic system. The Family is not based on the Holy Family —
as effect cannot precede cause, that would imply that there were no families
before the Holy Family existed — rather, the Holy Family is the exemplar for
the Family, not its origin.
We will continue
our commentary tomorrow.
#30#