Last Thursday we
continued our examination of “The ABC’s of Catholic Economics,” which the
author of an article in Regina Magazine
claimed was realized in the “distributism” of G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire
Belloc. Going through the letters G
through M we found more discrepancies between Chesterton’s and Belloc’s concept
of distributism and what the author of the article claimed was their system,
and what the Catholic Church actually teaches as opposed to what the author
claimed the Catholic Church teaches.
To continue our
commentary, we again remind the reader to keep two things in mind, Chesterton’s
and Belloc’s definition of distributism, and the first principle of Catholic
social doctrine:
 |
| Worker ownership is distributist? Strictly speaking, yes. |
Distributism: 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.
First Principle of Catholic Social Doctrine:
Everything in human society, including any program of social betterment, must
be subject to the precepts of the natural law.
Keeping in mind
that definition and that principle, we continue our commentary:
N is for New Deal, the massive expansion of the State
ushered in by President Franklin Roosevelt and emblematic of the
Welfare-Warfare State of the Modern Age. Distributists, including Dorothy Day,
fiercely opposed this unprecedented government expansion. Peter Maurin
criticized State-based welfare (as opposed to personal charity) as merely
“passing the buck,” and most un-Christian.
Commentary:
Unqualified yes. Justified by the economics of John Maynard
Keynes (who some authorities believe to have been secretly a member of the
Fabian Society), the New Deal was, to all intents and purposes, the
implementation of the proposal of Jacob Sechler Coxey, whose “army” descended
on Washington in 1894 to demand an increase in government debt to fund public
works projects during the Great Depression of 1893-1898. Coxey, who dabbled in theosophy and the Occult, was strongly
influenced by the “New Christian/Neo-Catholic” movement of the nineteenth
century that morphed into modernism. The
New Deal’s Catholic champion was Msgr. John A. Ryan of the Catholic University
of America, whose doctoral thesis, A
Living Wage (1906), was based on the theory that the natural law is
changeable whenever the demands of social betterment require it. Not surprisingly, Msgr. Ryan was in the forefront
of those who egregiously misinterpreted Rerum
Novarum to justify socialism and a vast increase in State power. Msgr. Ryan was heavily influenced by the
agrarian socialist Henry George, whose notions of Christianity were vague at
best and who was involved in the Occult, George’s friend Father Edward McGlynn,
a renegade priest of the Archdiocese of New York who promoted Neo-Catholic
ideas, and Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, a former Catholic turned spiritualist, who
was a strong supporter of George and who was a primary source for Atlantean
studies (having been revealed to him by his spirit guides) for Madame
Blavatsky’s theosophical “bible,” The
Secret Doctrine. Msgr. Ryan was
responsible for destroying Fulton Sheen’s academic career, accusing Sheen of
lying, cancelling his classes, and spreading false stories about him. At one point Msgr. Ryan’s students accused
Sheen of being a traitor to Christ and an enemy of the worker.
O is for
Obedience. The Church teaches us that
there are two forms of law, divine and man-made. We, as Catholics, are obliged
to obey the laws of God as we know them (natural law). As Saint Thomas Aquinas
teaches us, “An unjust law (one not in accord with natural law) is no law at
all.”
Commentary:
 |
| Natural law is the general code of human behavior. |
No. Astonishing many people, it is impossible to
obey divine law, that is, natural and supernatural law, at least in the sense
that there is a specific legal code to follow.
The natural law (prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice) and the
supernatural law (faith, hope, and charity) give general norms only. Duly constituted human authority must take
the general norms of the natural law and pass laws conforming as far as
possible to these norms. In civil
society, human authority is restricted to passing just laws, tempered with
prudence, fortitude, and temperance, and may enforce the law with the coercive
power of the State. Religious authority
may make rules in matters affecting faith, hope, and charity for those who share their beliefs, but under no
circumstances can civil authority enforce these laws — at least, not legitimately. No one may decide for himself on his own
authority which laws to obey. If a law
is clearly wrong, but does not force you to do wrong personally, the proper
response in social justice is to organize and get the law changed. If a law is clearly wrong, and does force you
to do wrong, you may disobey it, but you must also be prepared to accept the
civil penalty for breaking the law.
P is for Pius
XI, the pope of the Inter-War years (1922 – 1939). A great and gifted champion
of the Church and humanity, Pius condemned racism and nationalism (Mit
brennender Sorge), created the Feast of Christ the King to remind
Christians that their first loyalty is to Christ not any earthly sovereign, and
expanded Leo XIII’s teachings on politics and economics.
Commentary:
 |
| "Are you a king?" |
No. Quas
Primas (1925), the encyclical in which Pius XI instituted the Feast of
Christ the King, was not a usurpation of civil authority and the establishment
of a theocracy. It was, in a very real
sense, an expansion of Jesus’s answer to Pontius Pilate’s question, “Are you a
king?” to which Jesus responded, “That is your word for it,” and went on to
explain that His kingdom is not of this world, implying that Caesar had nothing
to worry about from the Reign of Christ the King. How, then, can anyone be both a good citizen
and a good Catholic (or good religious believer of any faith)? By having human authority pass laws in
conformity with the natural law, and people obeying those laws. It is, in that sense, not necessary for
everyone on earth to be Catholic or even Christian to acknowledge Christ as
King of the Universe.
Q is for Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI’s encyclical issue[d] in 1931 confirming
the teachings of Rerum Novarum and expanding them in great detail,
praising workers’ co-operatives and family businesses, while condemning
socialism and unrestrained capitalism.
Commentary:
No. To relegate Quadragesimo Anno (and its “second part” Divini Redemptoris) as a mere expansion of Rerum Novarum is to misunderstand completely what Pius XI was
doing. In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII explained that it is possible for someone
to be both a good Catholic and a good citizen.
This was important, because the claim of the liberals and socialists was
and continues to be that it is impossible to be both a good Catholic and a good
citizen unless the Church changes its teachings . . . which, in the
Neo-Catholic movement and modernism, they proceeded to do. Leo XIII gave the what and the why in Rerum Novarum, but left out the how.
In Quadragesimo Anno and Divini Redemptoris Pius XI explained the
“act of social justice,” by means of which ordinary people can organize and act
directly on the common good, reforming those institutions preventing them from
being both good Catholics and good citizens.
Unfortunately, both Leo XIII and Pius XI, while identifying the vehicle
by means of which ordinary people are empowered (private property in capital),
did not explain how people are to become owners, except to suggest raising
wages so people could save, which is not a good way of financing
ownership. (In his 1935 counterblast to
the New Deal, The Formation of Capital, Dr. Harold
Moulton explained in great detail why past savings are usually the worst choice
to finance new capital, but we don’t need to go into that now.) What is needed at this point is an encyclical
specifically on the three principles of economic justice (Participation, Distribution,
and Social Justice) and an explanation of how modern commercial and central
banking can be used to finance widespread capital ownership without
redistribution.
Tomorrow we will
conclude our commentary on “The ABC’s of Catholic Economics” and answer the
question as to whether distributism is a parody of Christianity.
#30#