Can It Happen Here? Part II: The Solution

 Last week we took a look at a book with a hook in a nook with a cook.  That in itself is not unusual, even without a visit from Dr. Suess.  We read a lot of books.  We even write a lot of books.

What Would Trajan Do? Part I

 Once upon a time, in the glory days of the Roman Empire, Pliny the Younger had a problem.  It seems certain slaves of the lesser sort — those who had been condemned to slavery for criminal activities — had managed to insinuate themselves into the ranks of municipal slaves.

Five Levers of Change: Politics

Aristotle

Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Despite what “politics” means to most people, it is not something to avoid.  In the Aristotelian, philosophical sense, politics refers to the behavior of human beings as “political animals” having both individual and social aspects. In this broad sense, politics refers to the art of securing and maintaining fundamental human rights of all persons without harm to other individuals, groups, or the common good as a whole. Social justice is the particular virtue directed to the common good by means of which this social order is structured, reformed, and maintained.

Separation of Church and State

It’s often astonishing how much words and phrases can change meaning or have a different meaning depending on the time and place.  “Money,” for example, used to mean a means of carrying out economic transactions, the consideration in a contract, or “all things transferred in commerce,” to quote Black’s law dictionary.

Rights and Wrongs About Rights

Recently in a discussion about something else entirely a question came up about rights and duties.  This is an important topic in the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, for “personalism” derives from “person,” and “person” — legally speaking — is that which has rights.  This is important in the greater scheme of things because it is by exercising rights (especially life, liberty, and private property) that we become “virtuous,” that is, more fully human . . . which, according to Aristotle and other philosophers, is the reason and purpose of life.

A Short Treatise on Sovereignty

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, the political doctrine that all government revenue should come only from taxation is based on the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the human person.  Whoever pays the costs of government controls government, unless politicians can figure out a way to hide the fact of who is really paying, as is the case when the government can create money.

Left or Right, What’s the Difference?

Frequently in our research we’ve come across claims such as Marxist communism and Fabian socialism are two different things, that Nazism isn’t/wasn’t real socialism, that fascism and Nazism were/are right wing, and so on, so forth, etc., etc.  Of course, it might be helpful to define what we mean by “left,” “right,” and “center.”

Karl Marx, the Great Reductionist

A short time ago we got a request to comment on Karl Marx as “the second economic reductionist.”  In the context of the discussion this referred to the socialist movement which, to make a very long story short and oversimplify greatly, began in the early nineteenth century with Henri de Saint-Simon’s declaration in his posthumous book, Le Nouveau Christianisme (1825) that what would in a few years be known as “socialism” was “the New Christianity.”

Interfaith Catholic Action? Why Not?

In a recent article, His Auxiliary Excellency Bishop Robert Barron opined (how do you like that word?) that if the laity want something done — such as protecting religious statues — they should stop asking the bishops to do something, and start thinking about doing it themselves.  That’s something of an oversimplification of a rather more involved argument, but that’s the message most people took from it . . . and they were not pleased.

Was the State Made for Man, or Man for the State?

In the previous posting on this subject, we addressed the question whether the United States was founded as a “Christian nation,” and came up with the non-answer that it depends on what you mean by “Christian nation.”  We decided — that’s us, not you — that, yes, you could use that term if you didn’t mind saying something misleading, but it would be better to say that the United States was founded as a country that — with certain rather key exceptions — embodied respect for the dignity of the individual human person.

What Do You Mean By “Christian Nation”?

A couple of weeks ago an article appeared in The Christian Post on how America was departing from the values of the Founding Fathers of the United States.  The idea was that the principles espoused by the Founders were essentially Christian, and that therefore the United States is properly a “Christian nation.”

A Few Thoughts on Solidarity

While researching an upcoming book on economic personalism we delved a little more deeply into the subject of solidarity than we had previously.  This is natural, for solidarity and personalism are inextricably linked with the social doctrine of Pope Pius XI on which the Just Third Way is, in part, based.

Is Development Bad?

At the end of the previous posting on this subject, we noted that some people with agendas had found what they wanted in John Henry Newman’s book, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.  The problem was that what they claimed to have found was the opposite of what Newman had actually written.

Introduction to Solidarism

Solidarism is defined in sociology as a theory that the possibility of founding a social organization upon a solidarity of interests is to be found in the natural interdependence of members of a society.  Solidarity, a characteristic of groups per se, is defined as unity — as of a group or class — that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards.

After the Election

While most people are concerned with the upcoming election, we should probably spare a thought or two about what to do afterwards.  After all, whether Clinump or Trumton wins, We, the People, are going to get what is euphemistically termed the “short” end of the stick.  Or maybe the whole stick, a.k.a., “the shaft.”

Sovereignty and Subsidiarity, II: The Turning Point

Yesterday we took a look at how many people view the principle of subsidiarity.  We discovered that a great many people have a great many odd ideas about something they do not appear to understand.  At the same time, they have no hesitation in speaking authoritatively on the subject.

Sovereignty and Subsidiarity, I: The U.S. Constitution

There has been a lot of talk recently (meaning we saw one posting on FaceBook) claiming that the U.S. Constitution says nothing about “subsidiarity,” i.e., the principle that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate level consistent with their resolution.  Thus, individuals should handle individual issues, local authorities deal with local issues, national authorities deal with national issues, and so on.  As CESJ co-founder Father William Ferree explained it,

A Social Question

Or, more accurately, a question about society — what is it?  The article we had published last week in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, “Pope Francis and the Just Third Way,” has excited quite a bit of discussion on the HPR website.  Running down the list of their fifteen most recent articles and editorials, there were (as of yesterday morning) exactly thirty comments total on all of them, ranging from zero (three articles) to six (one article) and seven (one article).  For those of you not up on higher math, the average is two comments per article, exclusive of ours . . . which as of yesterday morning had twenty-one, including three republications or “trackbacks.”

Canterbury Tale, V: Murder in the Cathedral

Silly persons like to point out that every right Saint Thomas died to defend was eventually recognized as being properly the purview of the civil order, so that his death was — in their eyes — totally useless and meaningless. Some even end up agreeing with Henry VIII Tudor, who put Saint Thomas on trial for high treason post mortem, that the Archbishop was a consummate villain who was trying to assert the supremacy of the Church over the State . . . rather than the supremacy of the State over the Church, as Henry Tudor did.

Canterbury Tale, IV: Separation of Church and State, Christian Style

Last year (we couldn’t resist saying it that way) we looked at how the Romans viewed separation of Church and State.  We begin this year by looking at how things changed with the coming of Christianity.