REPLY to: Fatima as Answer
Here’s a most interesting post found at The Truth Will Make You Free, a blog by Father Robert A. Connor, Chaplain at Southmont, a center of Opus Dei in South Orange, New Jersey. The conclusion or highlight of the post I have quoted below;
The Point of it all: Will the engendering of Christ again in all those who achieve the heart of Our Lady bring about the new culture and civilization that we are awaiting for the development of this third millennium of Jesus Christ? That is, will each of us become “alter Christus” in the ordinary life of work and family life such that the absolute truth of the human person (imaging the prototype, Jesus Christ) become the ordering principle of freedom.
The content of that truth of the person:
- “the person of the worker is the principle, subject and purpose of work.
- “the priority of work over capital and the fact that material goods are meant for all.”
- “a sense of solidarity involving not only rights to be defended but also the duties to be performed.:
- “participation aimed at promoting the national and international common good and not just defending individual or corporate interests.”
- “assimilate the methods of confrontation and of frank and vigorous dialogue.”
Result:
- “the political authorities will become more capable of acting with respect for the legitimate freedoms of individuals, families and subsidiary groups.”
- “ they will thus create the conditions necessary for man to be able to achieve his authentic and integral welfare, including his spiritual goal.”
Here is my reply (too long for a com-box),
Forgive my cynicism Father, but I don’t follow the last step in the transition to the new social order. As the die-hard Marxists claim about the Soviet Union that true communism was never achieved, I would suggest that the capitalist west has been a bastardized form of free enterprise among men. The ethos of the founders of America was lost sometime after it was codified in the Declaration and the Constitution. The question of whether it was achievable is the same question that must be asked of every “system”, including those pre-existing the Enlightenment, although it is only since that the question of a “system” was even on the radar for the average man.
Rather than say that the American experiment has been tried and found wanting, I don’t think it has been truly tried. Nor could it, because it is in the nature of concupiscent man to discover any means to make a system unfair, for the benefit of a few. Monarchies of the past, to their credit, did not pretend that it was otherwise although there were wise and benevolent kings on occasion who saw the commoner as their responsibility, their charge. Egalitarian and individualist ideologies believe it is possible to establish a system that, through one mechanism or another, can maintain the equality of every individual, however equality is defined. The one common feature of them all is their failure. That failure is rooted in the nature of men.
And that is where I cannot practically follow the step from the teaching of the Church as you have described it, and which is not debatable; to the world governed by that code or ethic, however it is described or called.
In microcosm, we see the civilization of love in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2, verse 44 and following. They basically eliminated private property and followed the ethic that Karl Marx invoked; from each according to his ability to each according to his need. What held this together? The common overriding personal faith of each in the Lord Jesus Christ. (I would also suggest that it may have been in part the Apostles’ expectation of the immanent return of Jesus Christ. It was later that the possibility became apparent that Jesus might not return in their life-time and I believe that was at the root of the situation St. Paul was dealing with in his second letter to the Thessalonians where he says in chapter 3, verse 10;
“In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.”)
So where is this civilization now? We can actually find it in the monastic orders, and other Christian organizations throughout Church history. But again, what does it depend upon? The common overriding personal faith of each in the Lord Jesus Christ. And, even so, the concupiscence of one and all makes such a life difficult by times and requiring a “rule.”
We see this occurring also in the natural order (natural law) in the family. Once again, this group is bound together by a bond of love and when infused with grace is that much stronger. And even so, one of its features is the hierarchy of authority, which, when undermined, destroys the unity. We have seen this loss of unity at work among the Protestants as well for the same reason.
If this new civilization is to replace the old orders and ideologies of communism and capitalism presumably we are talking about the world beyond the family and the monastery. Are we expecting the entire world to have the common overriding faith in Jesus Christ? Great expectations indeed. Is this the goal of the gospel? Absolutely. But even Christ himself pointed out that the way is narrow and few that are that find it. Are we looking at a parallel to what is known as Dominion theology and resides mainly within a small group of Presbyterians? In that ideology there is only a presumption of a majority of believers, such that they dominate not only the culture but the political sphere.
My cynicism resides in the knowledge that mankind is free, whether or not we wish to acknowledge that in law (the point of Dignitatis Humanae) and political order, and his faith in Jesus Christ or lack thereof is his choice. Thus, unless a very large majority of society are believers, this civilization cannot be achieved without coercion, which of course, would be antithetical to its very essence. Even in a society that had a pre-existing Christian order, the influence of that order on the human heart was not necessarily convincing. As I’ve quoted many times in the past, Pope Benedict (the Cardinal Ratzinger) in Introduction to Christianity makes this statement;
“And when today as believers in our age we hear it said, a little enviously perhaps, that in the Middle Ages everyone without exception in our lands was a believer, it is a good thing to cast a glance behind the scenes, as we can today, thanks to historical research. This will tell us that even in those days there was the great mass of nominal believers and a relatively small number of people who had really entered into the inner movement of belief. It will show us that for many belief was only a ready-made mode of life, by which for them the exciting adventure really signified by the word credo was at least as much concealed as disclosed.”
A ready-made mode of life. Is that then what we wish to re-create in the new civilization of love?
- “the political authorities will become more capable of acting with respect for the legitimate freedoms of individuals, families and subsidiary groups.”
- “ they will thus create the conditions necessary for man to be able to achieve his authentic and integral welfare, including his spiritual goal.”
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They will? How so? What will motivate them? You see, we cannot escape that fundamental pre-requisite of the individual’s faith, and we know having spent time in the confessional, even that is no guarantee of consistent proper behavior one to another. How much less among those with only the veneer of faith or no faith at all?
But suppose this were achievable even among those whose spiritual path is not ours, but who have recognized the philosophical wisdom of such an order. Even if the goal is the same, is there no argument over the structure? Is not every economic and political system devised for the ultimate good of mankind? Did the communists set out with the express purpose of killing and enslaving millions, denying their rights and quenching their spirits? No, they were trying to bring mankind to a higher way of life. Does free enterprise as a system not set out to maximize man’s potential by freeing him to work to his own capacity and/or desire and live free, thereby creating a better society for all mankind?
I would suggest that the only criterion for judging a “system” or ideology is how it deals, in practical terms, with man’s concupiscence, and builds in checks and balances based on that foreknowledge. I would also suggest that the closest to achieving that end was the American system. The goal was not capitalism. The goal was freedom. In fact, per se, there was no economic system at the founding of the United States. Economics was simply what men do, when they are free to do so. Trade is what happens between men who work and produce and are allowed to keep what they create. In a nation where freedom of trade is not the norm, the trade still happens, but it often stays underground.
To speak of “creating the conditions necessary” is already to pre-suppose that man is in need of governance. If men were able to live as men in perfect charity, they would have no need of governance. But since we know and have pre-supposed that is not the case, we have to ask the question, who governs the governors?
This was supposed to be the genius of the American Constitutional Republic. It was first and foremost a system of governance with the starting point the natural law, the recognition that man’s free will pre-exists the state, coming from the higher source, the Creator. The system was not primarily an economic system. Economics was done beginning at the family level, wherein the primary assumption of free men was to ensure the security of that primary (Catholic) social construction and that through local government the subsidiary support and accountability was to be achieved in the first instance. For larger concerns, the state governments were to act autonomously, with accountability, in support of their own people, again employing that principle of subsidiarity. Finally, for only those concerns that affected all of the people of all of the states, the federal government was to tie it all together in support of the security and commerce of the states. It was to be the weakest form of government, again in the principle of subsidiarity, with clearly delineated powers beyond which it could not go. Therefore, in principle, the Catholic social doctrine was constructed in the founding documents of the United States of America, beginning with the highest good, the free man interacting with his Creator, his immediate family, his immediate neighbors and moving down from there (not up) in subsidiarity to the federal government.
How that structure was turned upside down in 200+ years is a study in concupiscence. I would even add that Capitalism, as an economic system, was only possible because of that reversal of order of subsidiarity. It, like its Communist nemesis, needs centralized power to enable its concentrations of wealth. Free enterprise among free men is not equivalent to Capitalism and the first can exist without the second.
The conditions of that initial American system were the ideal for the realizing of man’s true nature and the nobility of his work. Those conditions have already existed and have been lost. It seems to me that any Catholic who would wish to realize the circumstances wherein Catholic social doctrine can flourish, should work for the return in America to the founding.