On Sunday, July 14, 1833 at Oxford University in England,
the Reverend John Keble (1792-1866) ascended the University Pulpit and preached
his scheduled “Assize Sermon.” An
“Assize Sermon” is preached in the Church of England at the opening of a term
of the civil and criminal courts — “the Assizes” — hence the name. The sermon is officially addressed to the
judges and officers of the court and is intended to exhort them to do their
duty and render justice.
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| Rev. John Keble |
The Assize Sermon for 1833 was a little different that
year. Published later under the title,
“National Apostasy,” the sermon is credited with launching the Oxford
Movement. The Whig (liberal) government
had recently decided to shut down ten Church of Ireland bishoprics and merge
them into others as a cost cutting measure.
On the surface, the decision sounds reasonable, and
Keble’s reaction comes across (especially today) as a trifle hyperbolic, even
hysterical. The fact is that although
the Church of Ireland was legally established as the official religion of
Ireland and was supported out of tax monies collected from the (Catholic)
native Irish, hardly anyone attended services.
Most people attended Catholic services, recently legalized, just as they
had when Catholicism was illegal.
Eliminating a few redundant bishoprics (and the stipends and
other expenses that went along with them) seemed a politically wise thing to
do, not to mention being fiscally
responsible. Why, then, did Keble label
the merging of bishoprics “national apostasy” and launch a movement that has
had repercussions down to the present day?
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| Robert Owen |
We believe the answer can be found in the proposals of
Robert Owen (1771-1858). Owen has generally
been ignored in the annals of Christian socialism for his explicit rejection of
all religion, but Christianity especially.
This has relegated Owen to a presumed minor role when, in fact, his
influence has been pervasive and lasting.
Much to the surprise of people who attempt to separate all
the various forms of socialism from Marxist communism, Owen was an inspiration
to Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) as well as Claude Henri de Rouvroy,
comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and François Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837), and possibly — although
the connection is not explicit — Hugues-Félicité
Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854),
especially since he spent a great deal of time in England at the height of
Owen’s influence.
Marx and Engels greatly admired Owen, especially for his
rejection of religion. During the
writing of The Communist Manifesto (1848), they debated whether to use
the new term socialism for their proposals, but they decided instead on the
older term communism. This is because
they felt that Owen’s followers had preempted the term socialism, but those
same followers had also betrayed Owen’s principles by adding a religious veneer
to the pure socialist ideal. Marx and
Engels condemned both other socialists and adherents of traditional
Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, for promoting the opiate of the
masses.
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| Karl Marx |
Socialism did not start to catch on, however, until it
became explicitly religious and promoted as a replacement for traditional forms
of Church and State. Even Marx’s
“scientific socialism” under the label of communism is a religion, with
Collective Man substituted for a transcendent God.
Thus, the anxiety of today’s socialists to prove that
their socialism and Marxism (or Germany’s National Socialism, or Italy’s fascism,
or any other form of state or community control over private property or any
other natural right, such as democratic or religious socialism — control over
natural rights being the essence of all forms of socialism) have no connection
with each other is, at best, badly mistaken, or delusional. At worst, of course, are those socialists who
are aware that any distinction between all the various forms of socialism is merely
a difference in degree, not in kind, but attempt to cover it up.
Fortunately, however, those who are fully aware that all
socialism is fundamentally the same (despite, e.g., the constant teaching
and reminders of the Catholic Church) and seek to deceive others are rare. Either they quit socialism altogether like
Orestes Brownson and fight against it, or persuade themselves that there must
be differences, after all, and continue as “Christian” or “democratic”
socialists.
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| Henry George |
The fact remains, however, that the fundamental error of
socialism is not the abolition of private property per se, although Marx’s
summation of communism is, taken broadly, simple fact, as all socialism
abolishes private property as a natural right.
Henry George tried to argue that ownership of land and natural resources
is not a natural right, but that ownership of anything created by human beings
out of land and natural resources is a natural right.
The Fabians corrected George’s contradiction with a
greater error by asserting that all socialism abolishes private property except
when it doesn’t — meaning that private property is not a natural right, but
something granted by the collective when or if expedient. It is the shift of the source of natural
rights from the individual human person made by God to an abstraction made by
man, usually the collective or some form of the State.
Thus, Pope Pius XI spoke nothing less than the truth in Quadragesimo
Anno when he declared,
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| Pope Pius XI |
117. But what if Socialism has really been so tempered and
modified as to the class struggle and private ownership that there is in it no
longer anything to be censured on these points? Has it thereby renounced its
contradictory nature to the Christian religion? This is the question that holds
many minds in suspense. And numerous are the Catholics who, although they
clearly understand that Christian principles can never be abandoned or
diminished seem to turn their eyes to the Holy See and earnestly beseech Us to
decide whether this form of Socialism has so far recovered from false doctrines
that it can be accepted without the sacrifice of any Christian principle and in
a certain sense be baptized. That We, in keeping with Our fatherly solicitude,
may answer their petitions, We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a
doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly
Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which
we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic
Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.
118. For, according to Christian teaching, man, endowed with
a social nature, is placed on this earth so that by leading a life in society
and under an authority ordained of God[54] he may fully cultivate and develop
all his faculties unto the praise and glory of his Creator; and that by
faithfully fulfilling the duties of his craft or other calling he may obtain
for himself temporal and at the same time eternal happiness. Socialism, on the
other hand, wholly ignoring and indifferent to this sublime end of both man and
society, affirms that human association has been instituted for the sake of
material advantage alone.
119. Because of the fact that goods are produced more
efficiently by a suitable division of labor than by the scattered efforts of
individuals, socialists infer that economic activity, only the material ends of
which enter into their thinking, ought of necessity to be carried on socially.
Because of this necessity, they hold that men are obliged, with respect to the
producing of goods, to surrender and subject themselves entirely to society.
Indeed, possession of the greatest possible supply of things that serve the
advantages of this life is considered of such great importance that the higher
goods of man, liberty not excepted, must take a secondary place and even be
sacrificed to the demands of the most efficient production of goods. This
damage to human dignity, undergone in the “socialized” process of production,
will be easily offset, they say, by the abundance of socially produced goods
which will pour out in profusion to individuals to be used freely at their
pleasure for comforts and cultural development. Society, therefore, as
Socialism conceives it, can on the one hand neither exist nor be thought of
without an obviously excessive use of force; on the other hand, it fosters a
liberty no less false, since there is no place in it for true social authority,
which rests not on temporal and material advantages but descends from God
alone, the Creator and last end of all things.
120. If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth
(which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based
nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable
with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are
contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true
socialist.
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| John Henry Newman |
So, while they may have different names, and may apply the
abolition of private property in different ways (e.g., asserting like
the Nazis that individuals may own privately until society’s need becomes
greater or the nominal owner is not using it properly), all forms of socialism, whatever they may be called, and how much the
different groups of adherents may loathe and even slaughter one another, are in
essence the same thing: the exaltation of an abstraction created by human
beings over human beings created by God, and thus the abolition of God as well
as private property.
Where, however, does Robert Owen fit in, other than the
fact that virtually all modern forms of socialism claim to trace their
philosophy and origin to him? And what
has this got to do with the Oxford Movement and John Henry Newman? That is what we will address in the next
posting on this subject.
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