News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 26

While world leaders seem to flail about with no idea what to do about world problems — or, worse, know exactly what to do to gather ever-increasing amounts of power into their own hands — we have been seeing signs that word of the Just Third Way is starting to spread.  Recently we had a number of people remark to us that were it not for CESJ and the Just Third Way, they would have given up hope.  And there are some good things not only to hope for, but to work for:

Who’d Have Thought It?

Back in the eighteenth century the Good Doctor, Samuel Johnson, chastised his Boswell . . . who happened to be James Boswell . . . for ostentatiously giving a gratuity of one shilling (12 pence) for a service for which the customary remuneration was 6 pence.  If memory serves, it was the tip to a porter for helping hand down passengers’ baggage from a coach.

Taking Shortcuts

Are encyclicals getting too long?  And is anybody reading (or understanding) them?  Judging from all the acrimony over, say Amoris Laetitia (not technically an encyclical, but we’re making a point here), the answer is “no.”  The longer and wordier encyclicals get, the less impact they seem to have.  The message(s) tend(s) to get lost in all the explanations and qualifications.

Multi Verbi: “On the Length of Encyclicals”

A few days ago someone commented concerning Gregory XVI’s Singulari Nos, “On the Errors of Lamennais,” at a little over fifteen hundred words, “Man, encyclicals used to be so short!”  Yet the same pope’s Mirari Vos, “On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism” — arguably the first “social encyclical” — from two years earlier, clocks in at a little over four thousand words in the English version, leaving Singulari Nos in the dust.

De Lamennais Excommunicates the Pope

Today we present our “Man Bites Dog” feature: what happened when Pope Gregory XVI in the encyclical Mirari Vos corrected the hero of our story, the Abbé de Lamennais.  Some authorities consider de Lamennais the forerunner of liberal or social Catholicism (see, e.g., J.W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000, 225-226).

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 25

This past week we’ve probably been finding out more about the history of social justice and the way the term was coopted by the socialists, modernists, and New Agers than we really want to know, but that we need to know.  And there have been a few more recent events as well —

The Forgotten Encyclical: Mirari Vos

Yesterday we looked at the errors made by the Abbé Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamennais and why they were wrong.  This is important because the errors de Lamennais made eventually became the foundation of what many people think is authentic Catholic social teaching — and they are wrong.

The Theory of Certitude

Joseph-Marie comte de Maistre

Yesterday we looked at the Abbé Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamennais’s rather one-sided notion of the separation of Church and State: that the State must not attempt to control the Church, but that the Church must have complete control of the State.  De Lamennais’s ideal society was a democratic theocracy, in contrast to the theory of Joseph-Marie comte de Maistre (1753-1821) that the ideal society was a monarchic theocracy. . . .

Separation of Church and State

Yesterday we looked at the Catholic Church’s condemnation of “freedom of conscience” . . . which sounds pretty shocking until you find out that “freedom of conscience” as it was being used when Pope Gregory XVI condemned it had about as much to do with religious freedom as “free love” had to do with marriage and family, or “free thinking” had to do with reason.  “Free” was just a good-sounding word to stick in front of something to hide its real meaning.

Freedom of Conscience

While researching the origins of Rerum Novarum (1891), probably Pope Leo XIII’s best-known encyclical, we came across something that needs a little explanation, especially in the twenty-first century.  No, we’re not talking about how Leo XIII’s careful analysis of the evil of socialism and mandated alternative of widespread capital ownership was transformed by vested interests into a condemnation of capitalism.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 24

As summer gets underway next week, people in the Just Third Way are taking the opportunity to get various projects moving again.  In that, we’re doing a bit better than a lot of governments around the world who seem baffled about what to do — largely because they don’t yet know about the Just Third Way.  But we’re doing what we can —

How to Redeem the Non-Owning Worker

Yesterday we looked at a few of the papal statements underscoring the importance of widespread private property in capital.  As thinkers through the ages have noted, people are either owners, or they are owned — one way or another . . . and the worst way to be owned (not that there is any good way) is to be owned indirectly by having the system or those who control the system keep people in a permanent condition of dependency.

“The Redemption of the Non-Owning Workers”

Yesterday we looked at the situation of the non-owning worker, and briefly touched on the matter of the fair wage, which many people assume to be the essence of social justice.  Much to the surprise of such people, however, it turns out that neither wages nor private property is the essence of social justice.  Both wages and private property come under individual justice.  As Pope Pius XI explained in § 79 of Quadragesimo Anno,

Child or Slave?

Yesterday we looked at the ancient Roman custom of the peculium and how knowing about it helps us understand what the heck (or heaven) Jesus was talking about.  That’s all very nice, of course, but how does this esoteric historical knowledge have any relevance for the modern day and age?  After all, it’s interesting to know that the otherwise daunting Roman pater familias with his terrible potestas that (in theory) included the power of life and death over his children and slaves would train them to enter society by letting them manage capital . . . but so what?

The Peculiar Peculium

Last week we started looking at the “Parable of the Talents,” and found what seemed to be one or two anomalies in it.  Not in the message, of course.  That is pretty straightforward: use your God-given talents or you will answer for it.  What seemed a little odd was the parable itself: a slave owner hands over large sums of money to some slaves and goes on a trip.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 23

The Just Third Way continues to move forward.  There have been a number of events this week suggesting that the ideas may be starting to work into the general consciousness, and may soon start stirring up some enquiries about solutions to some of the more pressing world problems.

Wage and Other Slavery

At first glance, Jesus’s “Parable of the Talents” in Matthew 25:14-30 seems straightforward — and it is.  The message is obvious, especially to an audience that understands English, a language in which by coincidence the word for the unit of measurement used, the talent, is the same as the word commonly used for ability, capacity, or aptitude, i.e., talent.  The message of the parable is, use the gifts God gave you, or you will be held answerable for wasting them.

"The Ronald Reagan of France”

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an interesting piece about President Emmanuel Macron of France, comparing him — at least on the charismamometer — with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.  As the article by Walter Russell Mead of the Hudson Institute stated, “[Macron] is approaching the job like a French Ronald Reagan. . . . Reagan presented himself as a heroic and transformational leader.  This is what Mr. Macron has been doing.”  (“Has France Found Its Ronald Reagan?” The Wall Street Journal, 06/06/17, A15.)

Half Right is Still Half Wrong

Recently someone sent us the link to an article by Steven Kates published in 2010 on “The Failure of Keynesian Economics.”  As everyone who reads this blog knows — or should know — we’re not ones to let mere antiquity determine whether or not something is true; we don’t hold with those who worship the past any more than with those who reject it out of hand.

“The New Christianity”

Last week we had a short series on “What is Socialism?”  One of the people who commented on it when it was posted in a “distributist” forum tried to make the case that distributism and Catholic social teaching are pretty much the same thing (indicating an inadequate understanding of the difference between application and principle), and that both distributism and Catholic social teaching are socialist . . . in a non-Marxist way, of course . . . unless you’re into the “Theology of Liberation,” which raises other issues such as what you mean by theology and liberty.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 22

There has not been much visible movement in the Just Third Way this week, although there has been a great deal of research and scholarship accomplished, particularly in the understanding of how basic concepts of truth and justice have been corrupted by special interests over the centuries.  As for the news,

What is Socialism?, III: Why It’s Wrong

Yesterday we looked at a correct understanding of private property: it is both a natural right that is absolute in the sense that every human being has the right to be an owner, and a set of manmade and socially determined rights and duties that define how an owner may use what he or she owns.  Today we look at why socialism, defined as the abolition of private property in capital, is wrong, that is, contrary to nature.