Is Pope Francis a Marxist — or Just a Good Catholic?

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

This post is reworked from one I wrote during last year’s presidential election campaign entitled, Is Redistribution Marxism? No, Just Good Catholic Doctrine!.  In light of Rush Limbaugh and Fox Business News host Stuart Varney’s strong suggestions that Pope Francis is espousing “Marxism” let’s once again set the record straight. – FLC

Rush Limbaugh and Stuart Varney seem to be confused and perplexed by Pope Francis’s recently encyclical, Evangelii Gadium (Joy of the Gospel). Perhaps the term “threatened” is a more accurate description. They have accused the pope of advocating Marxism in place of capitalism.

This is, of course stale, left-over McCarthyism — the same old game of slandering any sort of reform economics – even those solidly based upon capitalism — as either “Socialism” or “Marxism.” But what Limbaugh and Varney probably have no idea that His Holiness is advocating nothing more than “Good Catholic doctrine.”

Advocating Marxism?

Nowhere in the encyclical does Francis denounce capitalism. Nowhere does he call for the abolition of either private property or the private ownership of the means of production – two cornerstones of Marxism. Certainly, he is concerned about our priorities as a society: “How can it not be a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion.”  Francis is also concerned about the acceptance of social Darwinism:  “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.”   And like such mainstream economists as Robert Skidelsky, he observed that wealth is a means to an end and not an end in and of itself:  “Money must serve, not rule!”

But Francis made one statement that made Limbaugh and Varney think they saw a Red:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.

“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope,” Limbaugh bellowed. “…the Pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here, and this is pure political.”

Varney added that “capitalism, in my opinion, is a liberator,” and he drew the analogy that Pope John Paul II knew that free markets were necessary because he grew up under communism. Varney claims that “markets work well for everyone.”

(It seems that Limbaugh and Varney are not familiar with either Mark 10:21-22 or  Luke 16:19-25.)

However, had they actually read the document, it is clear that Pope Francis was not calling for the abolition of capitalism, he was criticizing a particular style of capitalism:  laissez-faire.  In fairness, both commentators acknowledge that they are not Catholic, and they certainly demonstated ignorance about the teachings of the faith. That is, perhaps, the understatement of the day.

The Real Target: Distributive Justice

Limbaugh and Varney are really taking aim at is New Deal-inspired liberal economics – which is not about Marxism or destroying capitalism. Instead, it is about saving capitalism from those bad apples that would abuse it, seeing it only as a means to create non-meritorious wealth by dint of deceit and unscrupulousness.

Part and parcel of New Deal economics is Distributive Justice. Its roots are found in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Maimonides and adopted into Catholicism by Thomas Aquinas. And it is Aquinas who defines distributive justice as follows:

…in distributive justice something is given to a private individual, in so far as what belongs to the whole is due to the part, and in a quantity that is proportionate to the importance of the position of that part in respect of the whole. Consequently in distributive justice a person receives all the more of the common goods, according as he holds a more prominent position in the community. This prominence in an aristocratic community is gauged according to virtue, in an oligarchy according to wealth, in a democracy according to liberty, and in various ways according to various forms of community. Hence in distributive justice the mean is observed, not according to equality between thing and thing, but according to proportion between things and persons: in such a way that even as one person surpasses another, so that which is given to one person surpasses that which is allotted to another.(1)

Aquinas addresses something either Limbaugh or Varney conspicuously do not: a duty to distribute with provision to the poorest of society

That is why with the issuance of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum (Of New Things; subtitled, “The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”) Distributive Justice was adopted as the heart and soul of Catholic Economics.

What Is Distributive Justice?

The liberal economist Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945) outlined six canons for the distributive justice of wages. The first three, needs; arithmetic equality; and efforts and sacrifices are ethical in nature; while the next two, scarcity and comparative productivity, are economic in nature. Any one by itself, consummate to the product produced, would not pay a worker a just wage. And while laborers of superior talents deserve greater reward for their efforts and creativity, the first canon of needs is prominent and must always be the first to be satisfied. All five when properly balanced against each other results in the equitable distribution of wages as described by the sixth cannon, human welfare.

It is the all-too-common mischaracterization of the canon of arithmetic equality that gives rise to the accusation that liberals are “levelers,” “egalitarians” and of course, “Marxists” or “socialists.” Conservatives and neoconservatives often score points by taking this one canon of distributive justice argument out of context by interchangeably using the term “redistribution of wealth.” Our opponents erroneously claim that liberalism is about taking hard-earned income out of wealthier taxpayers’ pockets and redistributing it to the poor solely for the sake of soaking the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, the canons of distributive economic justice only apply when the employer enterprise can first provide his family with their basic needs. Secondly, it kicks in solely to justly distribute profits proportionately based upon meritorious contribution. Cleary, that is not Marxism but a fairer form of capitalism.

Modern distributive justice was first enunciated by Catholic progressives during the early 1890s and more clearly articulated in The Bishops’ Program of 1919. Led by economist-priest Monsignor John A. Ryan many in the Church were beginning to embrace the reformist ideas of the protestant Social Gospel movement then being pursued by progressive ministers such as Walter Rauschenbusch.

The Role of Progressive Taxation.

Progressive taxation has nothing to do with “the confiscation of wealth.” Such an interpretation is – once again – based upon a serious misunderstanding, focusing on only one of the six interdependent cannons of distributive justice: arithmetic equality. Instead progressive taxation seeks to maintain the wealth of those who succeed by playing by the rules. This means helping the middle class maintain a standard of living for which many of its members struggle every day to maintain.

It is not merely the percentage of taxes paid that defines justice, but the payment in proportion to wealth created by each individual after which the basic necessities of life have been first satisfied. The working poor and the lower echelons of the middle classes should not be forced to pay a flat tax rate equivalent to wealthier members of our society; the overwhelming majority of the former’s income goes to basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. They have little or no superfluous income. Thus, their tax burden should be the lightest.

Middle-class workers have a bit more superfluous income, but in light of their decreasing power in this area, care should be given to their tax burden. Yes, they should pay proportionately more than the poor, but always with the caveat that they fund many of our government programs.

If the middle-class or even lower echelon wealthy have some superfluous wealth by the dint of operating a small business that, too must be taken into account. The owner of a small trucking company or a produce distributor is more prone to suffer financial hardship than the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Furthermore, small business owners generally reinvest a greater proportion of their personally created wealth into their endeavors than does the hired executive. Because they are in the middle of the economic spectrum and reap the fewest benefits from the government, they naturally have a greater resentment of the abuse of tax revenue. They are the ones who, more and more, are struggling to maintain their measure of hard-earned wealth that they have created for themselves.

The stock conservative argument that our present tax system is one based upon “the envy of wealth” or “is a redistributer of wealth” is a fraud. Instead it is a value for value transaction-especially for the very wealthy. If the rich want to argue that a 90% or 70% top tax bracket is onerous, they may have a point. But having Bill Gates pay a federal tax rate of about 41% does not put a crimp in his lifestyle; he will not be denied self-development. In fact, in the early 1960s when the highest tax bracket was 90%, the conservative writer Willmoore Kendall proclaimed that if the top bracket were to be lowered to 40%, it would allow anyone to become “smacking rich.”

It is the wealthy who have the most to gain but who lately have been contributing the least. Yes, the rich are entitled to their rewards, but their wealth is their reward, not massive tax rebates. And if they want to protect their wealth, it does not come without a cost: A just and progressive taxation system.

Protecting wealth means paying for military and homeland defense, as well as for “first providers” such as police, fire fighters and EMS workers. Protecting wealth means having enough funds to ensure that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission can go after those who would engage in fraud and stock manipulation in an effort to unjustly separate the wealthy from their money. Protecting wealth means sufficiently funding the F.D.I.C. to protect citizens against bank failure.

The greater proportion of their tax burden does not come from income going primarily for basic necessities, but from overabundant, superfluous income. How can we bemoan their inability to buy a third or fourth vacation home when many hard-working Americans do not even have basic health care, let alone have the ability to purchase private property?

There is nothing wrong with being a millionaire. We should not discourage wealth creation, but encourage it. However, where we differ from the right is that wealth must gathered and maintained more fairly. Does this mean an egalitarian redistribution of wealth? No — but, it does mean adhering to the principle that our tax contributions fairly correlate with the benefits we receive the government.

On the False Charge of Marxism.

Distributive Justice capitalism is not Marxism — although that is what many of its critics on the Right falsely allege. Instead it is a third way that strives to ignore the arbitrary power that often results from the unchecked power that accompanies both Marxism and yes, laissez-faire capitalism.

Unlike Marxism, the model presented here still centers on the twin goals of private property ownership and profit motive. And unlike under Marxist regimes our government does not become the ultimate owner of property nor of the means of production. Instead, it acts as the umpire to assure that laws and mechanisms exist to allow workers to better bargain for a fairer share of private profits, safer working conditions and the ability to acquire private property.

Marxism desires to do away with both profit and private property. Distributive Justice concentrates on the democratization of capitalism through the fairer distribution of profits to all those who produced a given product or provided a specific service.

Capitalism at its best unleashes creative forces that have provided a vast improvement in standards of livings in many, many societies. But while capitalism is the most efficient vehicle across the board, it has also been uneven and sometimes unfair in its results. The trick is to make capitalism more democratic and thus more just.

For far too long this viable economic philosophy has been in the hands of buccaneer types who see market-based economics as an excuse to satisfy greed and do so under the guise of “economic freedom.” Clearly, there is no freedom for the collateral victims of economic practices that have no consideration for the common good. As we have seen in the 1920s and in the post-Reagan years, unfettered capitalists left to their own devices will only care about one thing and one thing only: maximizing profit. Government’s proper role is to not to eliminate their capitalistic instinct, but to prevent that instinct from causing unnecessary collateral harm.

The distributive justice model differs from the laissez-faire model is in its understanding that a just form of capitalism requires a sturdy government guarding against exhibitions of arbitrary economic power. Its mechanisms include the governmental oversight of financial institutions, progressive taxation and policies that favor the distribution of profit primarily based upon an individual’s contribution in creating such profit.

“Good Catholic Doctrine.”

This is far from the first time a Catholic has been called a Marxist or a Socialist for wanting to use the power of government to ensure that capitalism be fairer and less predatory. It is a battle that was being fought a hundred years ago often in the form of providing workers with safe working conditions.

Shortly after the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, two prominent Catholic politicians took up the cause of Distributive Justice. They were then-New York State Senator Robert Wagner and then-Assembly Speaker Al Smith — two giants whose imprimatur would be on FDR’s New Deal. As Dave Von Drehle recounts in his book, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America:

The work of 1912 produced a series of new laws in the 1913 legislature that was unmatched to that time in American history. The Tammany Twins [Wagner and Smith] pushed through twenty-five bills, entirely recasting the labor laws of the nation’s largest state. There were more fire safety laws – by that point, two years after the Triangle fire, nearly every deficiency in the Asch Building [the site of the Triangle fire] had been addressed. Automatic sprinklers were required in high-rise buildings. Fire drills were mandatory in large shops. Doors had to be unlocked and had to swing outward. Other new laws enhanced protections for women and children and restricted manufacturing by poor families in their tenement apartments. To enforce the laws, the Factory Commission pushed through a complete reorganization of the State Department of Labor.

Business leaders didn’t quite know what had hit them. But gradually they started making their complaints known. Real estate interests, in particular, were upset by the number of safety modifications they were required to make. One member of the Factory Commission, Robert Dowling was a New York real estate man, and he often found himself dissenting from the sweeping recommendations pushed by the volunteer staff. (Eventually he resigned from the commission, blaming Francis Perkins, in particular, for going too far.) He saw it as his job to remind Wagner and Smith of the costs involved in their unprecedented reforms. During one executive session, he referred to the statistics on the number of people killed in factory fires. Notwithstanding the catastrophe at the Triangle, he ventured, “It is an infinitesimal proportion of the population.”

Mary Dreier was shocked. “But Mr. Dowling,” she cried, “they were men and women! They were human souls. It was a hundred percent for them.”

Smith jumped in on Dreier’s side. “That’s good Catholic doctrine, Robert! He declared.

Not Marxism or even socialism; as Al Smith said, just “good Catholic doctrine.”

—————-

(1) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, “Question 61: The Parts of Justice, Article 2.”

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Is Redistribution Marxism? No, Just “Good Catholic Doctrine!”

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

After sustaining a series of self-inflicted political wounds – particularly, the GOP nominee’s dismissal of 47% of the population — the Romney Campaign is scrambling for something analogous from Obama. The best that they could dig up, courtesy of Matt Drudge, is a statement from 1998 in which then State Senator Obama said he  believes in a limited form of redistribution. Romney supporters now are running around the country equating Obama’s belief in liberal, New Deal-derived economics as either “Socialism” or “Marxism.”

An absurd assertion indeed! Marxism, particularly the Soviet model, is a form of anti-liberalism. But perhaps what would be more surprising to GOP’s would be Dynamic Duo is that the more accurate description would be “Good Catholic doctrine.”

New Deal-inspired liberal economics is not about Marxism or destroying capitalism. Instead, it is about saving capitalism from those bad apples that would abuse it, seeing it only as a means to create non-meritorious wealth by dint of deceit and unscrupulousness.

Part and parcel of New Deal economics is Distributive Justice. Its roots are found in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Maimonides and adopted into Catholicism by Thomas Aquinas. And it is Aquinas who defines distributive justice as follows:

…in distributive justice something is given to a private individual, in so far as what belongs to the whole is due to the part, and in a quantity that is proportionate to the importance of the position of that part in respect of the whole. Consequently in distributive justice a person receives all the more of the common goods, according as he holds a more prominent position in the community. This prominence in an aristocratic community is gauged according to virtue, in an oligarchy according to wealth, in a democracy according to liberty, and in various ways according to various forms of community. Hence in distributive justice the mean is observed, not according to equality between thing and thing, but according to proportion between things and persons: in such a way that even as one person surpasses another, so that which is given to one person surpasses that which is allotted to another.(1)

Aquinas addresses something either Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan or Ayn Rand conspicuously do not: a duty to distribute with provision to the poorest of society

That is why with the issuance of Pope Leo VIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum (Of New Things; subtitled, “The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”) Distributive Justice was adopted as the heart and soul of Catholic Economics.

What Is Distributive Justice?

The liberal economist Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945) outlined six canons for the distributive justice of wages. The first three, needs; arithmetic equality; and efforts and sacrifices are ethical in nature; while the next two, scarcity and comparative productivity, are economic in nature. Any one by itself, consummate to the product produced, would not pay a worker a just wage. And while laborers of superior talents deserve greater reward for their efforts and creativity, the first canon of needs is prominent and must always be the first to be satisfied. All five when properly balanced against each other results in the equitable distribution of wages as described by the sixth cannon, human welfare.

It is the all-too-common mischaracterization of the canon of arithmetic equality that gives rise to the accusation that liberals are “levelers,” “egalitarians” and of course, “Marxists” or “socialists.” Conservatives and neoconservatives often score points by taking this one canon of distributive justice argument out of context by interchangeably using the term “redistribution of wealth.” Our opponents erroneously claim that liberalism is about taking hard-earned income out of wealthier taxpayers’ pockets and redistributing it to the poor solely for the sake of soaking the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, the canons of distributive economic justice only apply when the employer enterprise can first provide his family with their basic needs. Secondly, it kicks in solely to justly distribute profits proportionately based upon meritorious contribution. Cleary, that is not Marxism but a fairer form of capitalism.

Modern distributive justice was first enunciated by Catholic progressives during the early 1890s and more clearly articulated in The Bishops’ Program of 1919. Led by economist-priest Monsignor John A. Ryan many in the Church were beginning to embrace the reformist ideas of the protestant Social Gospel movement then being pursued by progressive ministers such as Walter Rauschenbusch.

The Role of Progressive Taxation.

Progressive taxation has nothing to do with “the confiscation of wealth.” Such an interpretation is – once again – based upon a serious misunderstanding, focusing on only one of the six interdependent cannons of distributive justice: arithmetic equality. Instead progressive taxation seeks to maintain the wealth of those who succeed by playing by the rules. This means helping the middle class maintain a standard of living for which many of its members struggle every day to maintain.

It is not merely the percentage of taxes paid that defines justice, but the payment in proportion to wealth created by each individual after which the basic necessities of life have been first satisfied. The working poor and the lower echelons of the middle classes should not be forced to pay a flat tax rate equivalent to wealthier members of our society; the overwhelming majority of the former’s income goes to basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. They have little or no superfluous income. Thus, their tax burden should be the lightest.

Middle-class workers have a bit more superfluous income, but in light of their decreasing power in this area, care should be given to their tax burden. Yes, they should pay proportionately more than the poor, but always with the caveat that they fund many of our government programs.

If the middle-class or even lower echelon wealthy have some superfluous wealth by the dint of operating a small business that, too must be taken into account. The owner of a small trucking company or a produce distributor is more prone to suffer financial hardship than the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Furthermore, small business owners generally reinvest a greater proportion of their personally created wealth into their endeavors than does the hired executive. Because they are in the middle of the economic spectrum and reap the fewest benefits from the government, they naturally have a greater resentment of the abuse of tax revenue. They are the ones who, more and more, are struggling to maintain their measure of hard-earned wealth that they have created for themselves.

The stock conservative argument that our present tax system is one based upon “the envy of wealth” or “is a redistributer of wealth” is a fraud. Instead it is a value for value transaction-especially for the very wealthy. If the rich want to argue that a 90% or 70% top tax bracket is onerous, they may have a point. But having Bill Gates pay a federal tax rate of about 41% will not put a crimp in his lifestyle; he will not be denied self-development. In fact, in the early 1960s when the highest tax bracket was 90%, the conservative writer Willmoore Kendall proclaimed that if the top bracket were to be lowered to 40%, it would allow anyone to become “smacking rich.”

It is the wealthy who have the most to gain but who lately have been contributing the least. Yes, the rich are entitled to their rewards, but their wealth is their reward, not massive tax rebates. And if they want to protect their wealth, it does not come without a cost: A just and progressive taxation system.

Protecting wealth means paying for military and homeland defense, as well as for “first providers” such as police, fire fighters and EMS workers. Protecting wealth means having enough funds to ensure that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission can go after those who would engage in fraud and stock manipulation in an effort to unjustly separate the wealthy from their money. Protecting wealth means sufficiently funding the F.D.I.C. to protect citizens against bank failure.

The greater proportion of their tax burden does not come from income going primarily for basic necessities, but from overabundant, superfluous income. How can we bemoan their inability to buy a third or fourth vacation home when many hard-working Americans do not even have basic health care, let alone have the ability to purchase private property?

There is nothing wrong with being a millionaire. We should not discourage wealth creation, but encourage it. However, where we differ from the right is that wealth must gathered and maintained more fairly. Does this mean an egalitarian redistribution of wealth? No — but, it does mean adhering to the principle that our tax contributions fairly correlate with the benefits we receive the government.

On the False Charge of Marxism.

Distributive Justice capitalism is not Marxism – although that is what many of its critics on the Right falsely allege. Instead it is a third way that strives to ignore the arbitrary power that often results from the unchecked power that accompanies both Marxism and yes, laissez-faire capitalism.

Unlike Marxism, the model presented here still centers on the twin goals of private property ownership and profit motive. And unlike under Marxist regimes our government does not become the ultimate owner of property nor of the means of production. Instead, it acts as the umpire to assure that laws and mechanisms exist to allow workers to better bargain for a fairer share of private profits, safer working conditions and the ability to acquire private property.

Marxism desires to do away with both profit and private property. Distributive Justice concentrates on the democratization of capitalism through the fairer distribution of profits to all those who produced a given product or provided a specific service.

Capitalism at its best unleashes creative forces that have provided a vast improvement in standards of livings in many, many societies. But while capitalism is the most efficient vehicle across the board, it has also been uneven and sometimes unfair in its results. The trick is to make capitalism more democratic and thus more just.

For far too long this viable economic philosophy has been in the hands of buccaneer types who see market-based economics as an excuse to satisfy greed and do so under the guise of “economic freedom.” Clearly, there is no freedom for the collateral victims of economic practices that have no consideration for the common good. As we have seen in the 1920s and in the post-Reagan years, unfettered capitalists left to their own devices will only care about one thing and one thing only: maximizing profit. Government’s proper role is to not to eliminate their capitalistic instinct, but to prevent that instinct from causing unnecessary collateral harm.

The distributive justice model differs from the laissez-faire model is in its understanding that a just form of capitalism requires a sturdy government guarding against exhibitions of arbitrary economic power. Its mechanisms include the governmental oversight oversight of financial institutions, progressive taxation and policies that favor the distribution of profit primarily based upon an individual’s contribution in creating such profit.

“Good Catholic Doctrine.”

This is far from the first time Liberals have been called Marxists or Socialists for wanting to use the power of government to ensure that capitalism be fairer and less predatory. It is a battle that was being fought a hundred years ago often in the form of providing workers with safe working conditions.

Shortly after the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, two prominent Catholic politicians took up the cause of Distributive Justice. They were then-New York State Senator Robert Wagner and then-Assembly Speaker Al Smith – two giants whose imprimatur would be on FDR’s New Deal.  As Dave Von Drehle recounts in pages 215-216 of his book, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America:

The work of 1912 produced a series of new laws in the 1913 legislature that was unmatched to that time in American history. The Tammany Twins [Wagner and Smith] pushed through twenty-five bills, entirely recasting the labor laws of the nation’s largest state. There were more fire safety laws – by that point, two years after the Triangle fire, nearly every deficiency in the Asch Building [the site of the Triangle fire] had been addressed. Automatic sprinklers were required in high-rise buildings. Fire drills were mandatory in large shops. Doors had to be unlocked and had to swing outward. Other new laws enhanced protections for women and children and restricted manufacturing by poor families in their tenement apartments. To enforce the laws, the Factory Commission pushed through a complete reorganization of the State Department of Labor.

Business leaders didn’t quite know what had hit them. But gradually they started making their complaints known.. Real estate interests, in particular, were upset by the number of safety modifications they were required to make. One member of the Factory Commission, Robert Dowling was a New York real estate man, and he often found himself dissenting from the sweeping recommendations pushed by the volunteer staff. (Eventually he resigned from the commission, blaming Francis Perkins, in particular, for going too far.)  He saw it as his job to remind Wagner and Smith of the costs involved in their unprecedented reforms. During one executive session, he referred to the statistics on the number of people killed in factory fires. Notwithstanding the catastrophe at the Triangle, he ventured, “It is an infinitesimal proportion of the population.”

Mary Dreier was shocked. “Bur Mr. Dowling,” she cried, “they were men and women! They were human souls. It was a hundred percent for them.”

Smith jumped in on Dreier’s side. “That’s good Catholic doctrine, Robert! He declared.

Not Marxism or even socialism; as Al Smith said, just “good Catholic doctrine.”

—————-
(1)   Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, “Question 61: The Parts of Justice, Article 2.”

Paul Ryan’s Aquinian Epiphany

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

This past week we learned that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has had an Aquinian epiphany of sorts. The former Ayn Rand acolyte has essentially thrown the controversial author and her philosophy of Objectivism under the bus because of  “her atheism.”

But Ryan seems to have changed little except the  labels he uses to disguise his economic philosophy of miserliness.

With the possible exceptions of Ron and Rand Paul, no other elected official has more openly embraced the philosophy of Ayn Rand than Paul Ryan. There is the well-known YouTube video wherein he gushes over the “morality” of Rand’s laissez-faire capitalism.  Ryan’s fandom for Rand was so hot that he would even give copies of her dreary tome, Atlas Shrugged as Christmas gifts.

But as voters have become increasingly aware of Rand’s toxic philosophy — one in which selfishness is elevated to a virtue; where state assistance to the disabled is equated with enslaving taxpayers; and self-sacrifice is derided – Ryan has had second thoughts. Indeed, in apparent anticipation of his recent Georgetown University appearance, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee has attempted to repackage his economic philosophy as if it were a product of Catholic Social Justice teaching.

A Revisionist Personal History

The repackaging of Ryan began with several puff-pieces suggesting that when asked about his history of Rand adoration he will now reply, “Ayn who?”

On April 10, 2012 The Brody File column at CBN.Com News posted an interview with the congressman. He used the opportunity to announce that his economic views were informed by the Catholic Doctrine of Subsidiarity — which he defined in a highly stilted fashion (more on that below).

Two days later, a National Review Online column by Brian Buldoc extolled Ryan as “a practicing Catholic” and not a Randian. Oddly, the same article describes the congressman’s remarks at a 2005 dinner hosted by the Atlas Society, an organization dedicated to developing Rand’s philosophy.

This was followed by an April 23, 2012 Washington Post op-ed (“A Bishop’s Unjustified Attack on Paul Ryan”) by Marc A. Thiessen. The former Tea Partier-turned-pundit criticized Bishop Stephen Blaire, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, who recently pointed out that Ryan’s budget “fails to meet [Catholic] moral criteria” and does not require “shared sacrifice.”  Thiessen continued with the meme of Ryan-as-theologian by casting him as “a good Catholic layman.”

A fourth piece, entitled “Ryan Shrugged,” also courtesy of the National Review Online soon followed.  In it, Ryan dismisses his alleged obsession with Rand as “an urban legend.” The author of the article claims that “his [Ryan’s] faith and moral values shape his politics as much as his belief in freedom and capitalism does.”  Ryan is quoted as saying:

“I reject her [Rand’s] philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

   

These articles essentially set the stage for the Congressman’s April 26, 2012 speaking engagement at Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, and a bastion of progressive economic thought. But prior to his appearance, Ryan received a letter signed by ninety faculty members that bluntly stated, “In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The Record

But does Paul Ryan really reject Rand?

Ryan seems to reject Rand’s neo-atheism and not much else. There is no record of Ryan openly refuting Rand’s eschewing altruism, self-sacrifice for others or her endless praise of laissez-faire.

While what was called the economic liberalism of the 19th Century has been long scorned by the Vatican, that brand is very different than the economic liberalism of the New Deal.  Indeed, the latter was heavily influenced by Rerum novarum and its progeny and is not to be confused with libertarian-drenched Benthamism.  The only two issues where Ryan can claim consistent adherence to Church dogma is in his opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

There is, however, an extensive public record of Ryan’s effusive praise of Randian capitalism. There is the above-linked video and the afore-mentioned Atlas Society dinner appearance where he stated:  “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”

Not Jesus Christ, not Thomas Aquinas, not Monsignor John A. Ryan, but Ayn Rand. If Ryan’s devotion to Ayn Rand is indeed “an urban legend,” then it is a legend of his own making.

Subsidiarty

This leads us to the obvious question:  Do his economic views square with Catholic social teaching?

If anything, Ryan’s take on Subsidiarty is more like an Acton Institute talking point statement than a serious theological explanation. His premises are easily dismissed.

Here is what I mean.

Ryan offered a rather narrow and misleading definition of the doctrine in his interview with CBN.Com News

To me, the principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism, meaning government closest to the people governs best, having a civil society of the principal of solidarity where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that’s how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.

In contrast consider the correction put forth by the Georgetown faculty:

Subsidiarity is not a free pass to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices. This often misused Catholic principle cuts both ways. It calls for solutions to be enacted as close to the level of local communities as possible. But it also demands that higher levels of government provide help — “subsidium”– when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger. According to Pope Benedict XVI: “Subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa.”

Nevertheless, Ryan’s Georgetown address centered heavily on a favorite GOP meme:  debt.  There was no talk of distributive justice nor  of a a society with full employment. Ryan made no mention of Pope John XXIII’s teaching that “In a system of taxation based on justice and equity, it is fundamental that the burdens be proportioned to the capacity of the people contributing.”  There was also nothing in his speech that even hinted at the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. And yet, there was still much that echoed the spirit of Ayn Rand.

Rand’s influence is still present in Ryan’s Medicare plan, which is basically a voucher program, with fewer options for the most vulnerable. Little or no investment is made in the American people. And for all his talk of crushing debt, the deficit would not be paid off for many years. It is all a charade to lower taxes for the very wealthy; those for whom a tax cut will not increase their propensity to consume and thereby stimulate the economy. This is the psychology and program of a Randian miser.

 “Though a miserly man may not be generous,” Aquinas wrote, “he could undertake to perform works of generosity and begin to acquire the proper virtue.”  Ryan’s actions reveal a man who still chooses not to undertake such required works.  

Paul Ryan’s epiphany seems to be one of smoke and mirrors. He is not Paul but still Saul. And his proposed budget plan, The Path to Prosperity still leads to Galt Gulch, not Damascus.

The Evolution of Catholic Teaching on Sex and Marriage.

In “The Sexual Person“, the Catholic lay theologians Todd Salzmann and Michael Lawler give a useful historical review of the substantial shifts in the orthodox doctrine on sex and marriage – while also illustrating how much of that teaching is stuck in the fourth century thought of Augustine, and that of Aquinas from the thirteenth century. (Is there any other field of human thought that is so rooted in those two distant periods?) This is an important book that I will be discussing regularly in small bites. For now, I simply want to point to the briefest summary of the main argument, in preparation for a specific extract referring to Pope Paul VI and Humane Vitae.

Two things strike me in this account. As I have frequently noted before, it is completely untrue that the Catholic Church has a “constant and unchanging tradition” on sexual ethics.  Rather, the tradition has been constantly evolving. Just consider the complete transformation of the view on sexual pleasure – from one that it is to be avoided at all costs, even while begetting children or in nocturnal involuntary emissions, to one where it can contribute to the sacramental value of marriage. What has evolved in the past, will surely continue to evolve. That evolution will surely be aided by the capacity of theologians and popes to retrieve, when required, obscure and forgotten pieces from history – and proclaim them of fundamental importance. In two thousand years of theological writing, there will surely be a plethora of documents now obscure, which contradict some current thinking. Some of these will no doubt be retrieved by scholars – and being rehabilitated, will influence further adjustments in the changing tradition of the Church.

 

St Augustine - 6th cent fresco, Lateran

So, Let’s Talk About – Condoms and AIDS Prevention

Is it really true that Pope Benedict’s approval of condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS is backed by very traditional teaching of Augustine and Aquinas? James Heffernan, writing at Huffington Post, seems to think so. First, he refers to Aquinas on the validity of self-defence, and  asks, does this imply that condoms are justifiable in AIDS prevention, as self-defence against infection?

In the 13th-century Summa Theologica, perhaps the greatest of all treatises on Roman Catholic doctrine, Saint Thomas Aquinas says that one may lawfully kill an assailant in self-defense. In such cases, says Aquinas, one’s action has a double effect: killing another and saving one’s own life. “Therefore, this act” he says, “since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in being as far as possible” (ST II-II, Qu. 64, Art 7).

If Aquinas says it is “NOT unlawful” to kill in self-defense, could he possibly say it IS unlawful to use a condom in self-defense, as a means of protecting oneself against fatal infection, or one’s partner from such infection?

St Thomas Aquinas (Fra Angelico)