I have a great respect for the Roman Catholic tradition in political and social thought, and believe that some of the most interesting and “provocative” contemporary commentators depend very heavily on that tradition. I saw this morning the letter written by some prominent Catholic academics to Speaker John Boehner, discussed in one context by Rick Garnett and another by Fr. Robert Sirico.
The central contention of the letter is this:
Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.
We’ve all heard about the preferential option for the poor, but, as Fr. Sirico points out, it’s hard to draw a direct line from that principle to one, and only one set of policies.
To jump so seamlessly from the Magisterium’s insistence on the fundamental and non-negotiable moral obligation to the poor to the specifics of contingent, prudential, and political legislation is wholly unjustified in Catholic social teaching. One suspects that the moral theologians who signed this letter know that. It would be good for them to say so.
Surely they know what the American Bishops stated in their own 1986 Pastoral Letter, “Economic Justice for All” : “There are also many specific points on which men and women of good will may disagree. We look for a fruitful exchange among differing viewpoints.”
Reasonable people of goodwill can disagree, sometimes fruitfully. The letter seems not to acknowledge that, and, indeed, hardly seems interested in engaging Speaker Boehner at all. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my thirty-plus years as a student and teacher, it’s that accusations of the sort contained in the letter are conversation-stoppers, not conversation-starters.
My advice to my colleagues who signed the letter: if you want to engage the Speaker, try to explain to him why the policies he favors are worse for the poor than those you favor. Will they not lead to greater economic growth and hence more resources in which we can all share? Will they discourage generous responses to those in need among individuals, congregations, and parishes? Will they fail in their attempt to avoid burdening our children and grandchildren with even more debt? Will they fail to keep other government programs sustainable?
I realize that it’s easier just to assume the moral high ground than to descend to the nuts and bolts of policy. But, in my experience, taking the moral high ground in a conversation like this rarely produces anything other than irritation among those who are made to suffer the lecture.
UPDATE: For a different view of the meaning of the preferential option, see this brief piece by George Weigel.
May 12th, 2011 | 3:01 pm
I think there are policy matters over which the Speaker can be directly faulted. It could also be argued that his agenda does not jive with that of mainstream Americans. Who does he represent, anyway?
Humorous, actually, that one day he’s talking smack on Big Oil, and the next week, he’s completely retreated from his trial balloon.
Getting back to the theologians’ letter, it’s good to see that the progressive side has no interest in disinviting and the whole silly schtick trudged out for the president a few years ago. This is no Deal Hudson road.
Will the Speaker, as a good Catholic, spend time to discuss matters with his brothers and sisters in theology. Is he a man open to the notion of metanoia, as lensed through his own faith, or is he a tool of corporations and the neo-elite? That he would backtrack so quickly on an idea that probably deserves a conversation–ending subsidies to Big Oil–doesn’t speak well for his openness. And that’s not really a laughing matter for him as either a politician or a Catholic.
May 12th, 2011 | 3:48 pm
There’s nothing moral about using freebie handouts to get the poor “hooked”.
What we are doing for the poor is not in their best interests. What they need is to be helped in getting a job and becoming stable, prosperous, contributing citizens, not using their vulnerabilities as an excuse to grant them enough money to live out the rest of their lives (and with perks like big screen tvs to boot!) in exchange for their eternal vote.
I have lived in a family that was broke and received cash assistance. I resent the way wealthy affluent people use “public charity” to make themselves feel good about themselves. It strips the recipient of dignity and purpose. Before a poor person in the USA is allowed to touch relief money, they must degrade themselves to the point where I have personally known people who chose homelessness over selling their car (because, if you’ve got a car, you’re not poor enough – so being poor means a direct choice between being able to get a job in the future vs. accepting that your future does not include working for a living).
I knew one family where the mother worked “under the table” (illegally) and her two “boys”, aged 18 and 21, did not work at all, because bringing income into the household would ruin their cozy “subsidized housing” sweetheart deal.
Funding the poor publicly is not a favor to the poor. We extract from them more than we give them.
Meanwhile, social services that are actually focused on results (instead of gaining votes through handouts) have found that to give something for nothing is to devalue their services. To limit handouts only to what is genuinely essential – and to require community or volunteer service in return, thus forcing the poor person to earn what they take – is not just wise economically: it’s also better for the mental health of the recipient.
May 12th, 2011 | 4:15 pm
May 12th, 2011 | 4:27 pm
I’m gonna cast my lot with Fr Sirico on this one. And on most ones where he contributes. He is a wise proponent of a much more realistic and prudent understanding of Catholic social teaching than the many who equate it with the liberal political agenda, and advocate for a counterfeit charity:
where property is forcibly extracted from the unwilling, skimmed by the corrupt, and the remants given to the ungrateful.
No one’s soul is saved.
May 12th, 2011 | 4:27 pm
Leaving aside the broad question about general support for the poor, it seems licit to take the Speaker to task for cuts to the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. Cutting support for pregnant women and their infants makes abortion a more compelling choice for the poor. Seems like a strange policy for a pro-life legislator.
May 12th, 2011 | 4:44 pm
“What we are doing for the poor is not in their best interests. What they need is to be helped in getting a job and becoming stable, prosperous, contributing citizens, not using their vulnerabilities as an excuse to grant them enough money to live out the rest of their lives (and with perks like big screen tvs to boot!) in exchange for their eternal vote.”
That may be true. But many of us also object to the supply side for corporations. You could easily substitute “politicians, Rep and Dem” for the poor and it wouldn’t be farther from the truth. Plus, the price tag for corporate welfare that is significantly higher for society. $750B is one year’s US median salary for almost twenty million people.
And I agree with you on the job front: it is time for American businesses, large and small, to start coughing up serious jobs–not just McD’s–by the millions. If you don’t have jobs to offer, you can’t expect people to get motivated to get off public assistance.
Mr Boehner and his cronies also need to keep their hands off what working Americans have already earned: retirement. Not to mention getting behind the criminal investigation of corporate theft, conspiracy, bribery.
May 12th, 2011 | 5:08 pm
And I agree with you on the job front: it is time for American businesses, large and small, to start coughing up serious jobs–not just McD’s–by the millions. If you don’t have jobs to offer, you can’t expect people to get motivated to get off public assistance.
Maybe if we weren’t paying people to sit on their bum feeling sorry for themselves, they’d be starting up their own businesses.
May 12th, 2011 | 5:11 pm
In a democracy, all politicians fall into one of two groups, or factions; the friends of corruption or the friends of sedition: those who profit from corruption, directly and those who profit from the disaffection that corruption naturally excites
May 12th, 2011 | 5:50 pm
Todd seems to think that jobs exist “somehow” and the corporations and the “neo-elite” (whoever they are) are sitting on them in order to…. Well, in order to restrict their own corporate productive output. Does he really have no idea how jobs are created? He certainly has no idea how jobs are destroyed or he wouldn’t advocate for job-killing programs.
May 12th, 2011 | 7:30 pm
Joe DeVet:
You wrote:
…a counterfeit charity: where property is forcibly extracted from the unwilling, skimmed by the corrupt, and the remants given to the ungrateful.
I read once that good writers copy, great writers steal. Depending on your view of me as a writer, I will either be copying or stealing the above quoted phrase for future use. :-)
May 12th, 2011 | 8:31 pm
My hope is that “Ye Olde Statistician” and others who understand economics will bring clarity to discussions of this type.
May 12th, 2011 | 10:39 pm
“Does he really have no idea how jobs are created?”
On a local level, yes I do. But clearly American businesses and corporations have no idea. Almost three years since the meltdown and ten million jobs have just disappeared.
Even if Blake’s freeloaders wanted to get a job, they just aren’t there. Why aren’t conservatives asking why?
May 13th, 2011 | 1:03 am
[...] . .Joseph Knippenberg of First Things summarizes well here. . [...]
May 13th, 2011 | 1:57 am
Brothers and Sisters in Theology?
It is preposterous in this day and age to lay claim that a band of professors at a Catholic college are “brothers and sisters in theology” to obedient Catholics. Mainly, professsors at Catholic colleges today are merely representative of the diversity of American factions – and nothing more.
These 75 individuals, whatever their beliefs actually are, present the utterly false proposition that to oppose government programs ostensibly designed “for the poor” is contrary to Christian Charity. Charity is best done by Catholics directly, and through authentically Catholic mediating institutions. Certainly not by and with the same bureaucratic leviathan allied with Planned Parenthood, and intent on violating the consciences of Catholic nurses and physicians, extorting political donations from companies as qualification to compete for contracts, and siezing monopoly control of the college loan system to control education according to politics.
Funny, isn’t it, that in a higher matter where there are no ambiguities, we never saw the letter from these 75 expressing their determination to defend the unborn to their other “Catholic brothers and sisters” such as Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend.
May 13th, 2011 | 11:08 am
Can we move beyond polemics to a reasoned discussion about how Catholic moral teaching can be integrated into a contemporary political philosophy?
If the academics lashing out at John Boehner’s policies as being “at variance” with the Church’s moral teaching want a policy debate about how to address the needs of the poor, let’s have it. It will require the debaters to back away from equating particular government programs with principles of faith, and from assuming that there can be no genuine agreement about desired ends while there remain differences about the best means.
We could begin with a discussion about how the Church’s teachings on the value of the human person should influence economic and social welfare policies. But let’s not stop there. Those same teachings, rooted in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, also shape Catholic moral teaching about abortion, in-vitro fertilization, and capital punishment.
Likewise, there is a common theological thread that has led the Church to moral teachings on health care as a basic human right, marriage as a sacrament uniting man and woman, the sin of racism, our responsibilities to protect the environment, welcome immigrants, and regard the violence of war as a last resort to be used only when every effort has been made to avoid it.
Taken together, the whole package of Catholic moral teaching finds no welcome in either of the major political parties in America today. Nor does it appear to be fully embraced by academics at Catholic colleges and universities.
The anti-Boehner letter writers have started something. So far, the discussion hasn’t moved much beyond further staking out of entrenched positions on either side of the liberal-conservative political debate. But it could.
As Fr. Sirico has suggested, we would do well to reflect on these words from the American Bishops’ 1986 Pastoral Letter, “Economic Justice for All”: “There are also many specific points on which men and women of good will may disagree. We look for a fruitful exchange among differing viewpoints.”
May 13th, 2011 | 11:41 am
Leah- if welfare handouts of the sort you describe reduced the abortion rate in a given place, then my state, CT, would have an extremely low abortion rate. Instead, we have one of the highest in the country, in spite of having a comprehensive state health care system. Abortion is reduced by social and legal constraints, not welfare.
May 13th, 2011 | 11:50 am
Bart: Indeed. The opinions of these professors would be more compelling if they would do what they say they want Boehner to do and apply Catholic social teaching EVERYWHERE.
Lynn @ Unequally Yoked: The letter complains that the new plan would, after people finish WIC, cut their food stamps by a certain percentage. One might argue what percentage is correct but WIC is for a specific population (“Women, Infants and Children”). Once they are five, children are not considered “young children.” At some point, feeding their children has to become the job of the parents. Where I live, the urban public schools began feeding all elementary school children breakfast, and the majority also receive free lunch. A charity group provides many of these children with backpacks of food over weekends and over the summer. It cannot be the job of government to feel people forever, and as the person above said, many government programs rob people of their dignity in return for providing them a low standard of living. This is not good for anyone.
May 13th, 2011 | 12:28 pm
I’m sure the so-called intellectuals signing this letter have taken logic, but if I read their argument, there is absolutely no point — no matter what the amount of spending — where it is justifiable to cut from the poor.
They write:
“From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. ”
PREFERENCE? At what point does “preference” become “dominance”?
The idea that there are some benefits (e.g. $4billion in standard tax deductions for oil companies) for the “rich” versus spending on medicaid ($336 billion) — belies any logic about “preferences”.
That’s nearly a 100:1 preference for the poor. At what level would cuts be acceptable? When the “preference” is 1,000 to 1?
May 13th, 2011 | 12:30 pm
Sadly, the anti-Boehner letter is polemics. As such, the letter signifies political identity, not Church identity. The concoction of the letter is not an imitation of Christ. Quite clearly – it was in fact a sin – a sin by the signatotries against John Boehner – the sin of detraction.
The general rejection of Ex Corde Ecclesia extracts a cost from every Catholic, and extracts a very high cost from Catholic professors at Catholic colleges. Those who refuse to submit to Christian authority and then cover their preferences in the mantle of Catholicism defraud the Catholic Church, but more to the point, they have defrauded themselves. They have no Catholic standing, and thus have no capacity to be “light or salt” to political discourse.
May 13th, 2011 | 1:57 pm
The letter from the self-anointed theologians is amusing in its righteousness. Simply a continuing last gasp from those aligned with the Monica Helwig call for the “Magisterium of Theologians”–it’s not going to happen. Their day is past.
Thank you Fr. Sirico for your clarity and serious scholarship.
May 13th, 2011 | 6:48 pm
Regarding legislation and other well-intended plans;
1. In the end, it is results that count. Intentions speak to virtue or sin in personal matters, but for a long-standing government program to be considered “good”, the sum total of its attributable effects must be positive.
2. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Second and third order effects (to include predictable reactions) are the responsibility of planners/executors.
3. Not everyone is moral; including those accustomed to wielding power. You cannot give government the power only to do good and once you have given it power to act, it never calls retreat.
4. The enemy, and The Enemy, always gets a vote.
Regarding Matthew 25;
No amount of tax, forcibly collected from me by any taxing entity, will be credited to me as Jesus calls me to account for my actions or inactions vis a vis the least of His brothers. I would recommend to all, that the same goes for you as well.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact