The State Distributes . . . What?
Every once in a while, for all my scribbling in comboxes, I write something I think is well, kind of good. Today was one of those days. I wrote something I thought fitting for the anniversary of Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum. And since I want to put all the time I spent writing it to good use, here is my reply to a man who thought that the “social justice” and “common good” talk of Catholics is a crock, and that it’s all just a cover up for “socialist” ideas about the re-distribution of wealth. He thinks all social justice and the welfare state is a great evil. He says he really doesn’t care what papal social encyclicals say on this subject, and that they’re not infallible, though the Gospel is, he is for freedom and individuality, etc. (Evidently, in spite of this, he is a Catholic). My reply:
I was very glad to hear that you practice what you preach in the way of individual charity in helping that man [find a home]. It’s a great example and a true following of the Gospel.
But let me ask you something. Suppose you learned of a sweatshop or a factory where the employer required his employees to work fifteen hours a day, without air-conditioning or heating, without opportunities for meals, and their children as young as 9 or 10 years old, had to work with them under the same conditions, all for pay so small that it still left the whole family starving. And suppose there weren’t any laws to prevent the employer from doing that.
And what could you, being a Christian, do all by your lonesome to prevent this injustice and help this family? The answer is: not a lot, however charitable you might be, at least not without a shotgun, which not be at all advisable. In this case it’s clearly a matter for the law and the state. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry any longer about such things taking place because our laws about fair wages, child labor and proper working conditions prevent them.
One of the primary reasons that we do have these laws is because the Catholic Church took a leading role beginning in the late nineteenth century to call the world’s attention to the problems of working people who were faced with employment conditions similar to the above, and who were being solicited, to the great danger of their freedom and in their faith by the Communist and socialists and their labor organizations.
One hundred and eighteen years ago yesterday (May 15, 1891), Pope Leo XIII issued the first in the long line of modern papal social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum, in which he called for the neeed for true Christian’s workingman’s associations, and at the same time he asked that the State itself do something in this regard by distributing . . . .what? Not wealth (that was the Communist line), not charity (because that’s the individual’s duty), but justice. He even called it “distributive justice” because it meant giving everyone an equal shot and equal rights, including the right to be free from such oppression. The Pope thought that there were a few things, perhaps just a few, that the State could do well, and that was one of them. The social thought of the Church was one of the things that helped ensure that today we have laws regulating fair wages, and good working conditions.
So the Church’s social justice teaching is not socialism. Properly understood, it’s a preventative against socialism. And so it continues today, up through the writings of John Paul II (and Benedict XVI is about to issue his own social encyclical). Each of them spells out not only what the state, but individuals, small groups and associations, and the state itself should do to promote social justice. The primary duty of individuals and associations and the Church in all of this is charity, broadly speaking, but for the state it’s justice, because that’s the state’s job; it’s why states were founded, to ensure and protect every individual’s rights.
You have a strange idea that the social ideas of the Church are identical to those of the left wing of the Democratic party today, or to socialism, or the welfare state. The truth is, they’re not. There are people who misread these encyclicals on the left (and a good many on the left who claim to have read them and haven’t). There are a good many people on the right who shun them like the plague, and never read them, and insist that they are good Catholics while rejecting papal teaching without ever having read it.
In regard to one of your other statements, the social encyclicals of the Popes are not all strictly speaking infallible, but are part of the Church’s magisterium, or teaching authority. They are certainly worthy of respect, and at the very least, an unprejudiced reading.
I don’t know whether you ever have read them or not, but it sounds as if you haven’t. So in honor of the anniversary of Rerum Novarum, here’s a link:
There. Now you won’t even have to get out of your chair to read what the Church really thinks of these matters.
