Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
A topic for Sunday. And I'll go right ahead and admit that this won't interest everyone--and maybe not anyone, except, that is, Ricochet member Pseudodionysius. Anyway, here goes:
As an American Catholic, one--this one, anyway--gets terribly, terribly tired of all the babble among the bishops and clerics that equates, wrongly, the social teachings of the Church with ever-expanding government. The most egregious example took place back during the Eighties, when the American bishops issued a pastoral letter attacking Reaganomics at almost exactly the moment when the Gipper's economic policies were prompting what would become the longest peacetime expansion in American history--an expansion (not that folks here at Ricochet don't already know this) that did more to improve the lot of the poor and disadvantaged than any government program, ever. But the drivel continues, even now.
Which is why I found a recent letter in the New Oxford Review so heartening. A few excerpts:
Regarding the discussion of the moral imperatives involved in Catholic economic and social teaching, I’ve read every papal encyclical from the past hundred years several times and have never found an endorsement of socialism. There have been many incisive condemnations of economic exploitation, but never the promotion of an all-controlling state....
Many Catholics get questions of economic morality wrong and have been using their misunderstandings to endorse economic egalitarianism. Disparity of wealth is not a sin, nor is it a sin to be rich. Envy, however, is a sin, as much a sin as the rich ignoring obligations to generosity....
Atheists and other religion-haters have always looked to socialism to ameliorate social problems. Government is the religion for those with no religion. Catholics have no excuse for siding with them.....Many libertarians living in market economies endorse abortion, but its cultural acceptance is not predetermined or inevitable, as it is in states committed to practices of absolute social engineering....
Great wealth may corrupt a rich man’s mind and soul, but the unearned and undeserved power given to bureaucrats, legislators, and judiciaries — who never have to face consequences for being wrong — make them even more vulnerable. There is no excuse for ignoring the day-and-night difference of social benefits between free markets, which have made deserts bloom and lifted hundreds of millions from poverty, and socialist states that treat life itself as a utilitarian commodity of convenience to the state....
Fr. George Ryan, C.S.P.
Port Richmond, New York
I don't know Fr. Ryan--Port Richmond is on Staten Island, which I last visited about 40 years ago, when, showing his boy around New York City, my father took me on the Staten Island ferry for the simple fun of it--but at mass today I intend to offer a prayer of thanks for his existence, his lucidity, and--it can't be easy to stand up to the sloppy moralism of so many bishops and priests--his guts.
Hat tip to my friend Stephen Schmalhofer.
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May '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
Keith Rickert Jr
He wrote "have always looked", which I take as a generalization of a historical trend, not a statement about individual atheists.
What dooms Father Ryan's proposition is the fact that its universally categorical. It is not true that "Atheists and other religion-haters have always looked to socialism to ameliorate social problems" because if it was true, then I would be unable to find a counter example. Alas, atheists who have rejected socialism are a dime a dozen; has Father Ryan never heard of an Objectivist or an atheist libertarian? This belief, that atheists are communists or socialists, is a common but nevertheless fallacious conversion of the (probably) true proposition that most communists and socialists have been and are atheists. If Father Ryan had added a "some" quantifier to the beginning of his claim, then it would have been a true one. Otherwise, his allegation, as it stands, implies an "all" quantifier and, therefore, its no good.
Edited on Mar 6, 2011 at 10:37pmMay '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
Scott Reusser: Katievs, Pseudo, or anyone:
This agnostic Christian-appreciating-and-semi-believing sinner is church searching. At first blush and with a couple exceptions, Catholicism feels right for our family's conservative values and our need for more structure and routine. Also, it feels optimistic, lacking an emphasis on End Times, etc., which I'd rather not drum into the kids. Finally, I admire the Rock-of-Gibralter leadership of the last two popes. (This economics kerfuffle is, on balance, a minor issue.)
What one or two books would you all recommend as a "sales pitch," so to speak? I've just started WFB's but am looking for others.
Hope you're still out there.
· Mar 6 at 5:25pm
Check out
Sep '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
Keith Rickert Jr
Check out · Mar 6 at 10:13pm
Well, yes, but I think Feser's book is pretty strong brew to give a potential convert for their first foray into the waters, but who knows, right? His books Aquinas and Philosophy of Mind are far less polemical.
Sep '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
It is not true that "Atheists and other religion-haters have always looked to socialism to ameliorate social problems" because if it was true, then I would be unable to find a counter example.
Any non socialists I have run into who don't believe in God I've found to be agnostics rather than true atheists. That's likely the sense in which Fr Ryan is using the term.
May '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
Speaking of Chesterton and Aquinas, The Dumb Ox ain't bad either.
Jan '11
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
You put your finger on another distinction worth noting.
While the American bishops did one thing, I think you'd agree that one particular bishop ... the bishop of Rome, John Paul II ... did more than his share in the Cold War.
Jun '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
Scott Reusser: Katievs, Pseudo, or anyone:
This agnostic Christian-appreciating-and-semi-believing sinner is church searching. At first blush and with a couple exceptions, Catholicism feels right for our family's conservative values and our need for more structure and routine. Also, it feels optimistic, lacking an emphasis on End Times, etc., which I'd rather not drum into the kids. Finally, I admire the Rock-of-Gibralter leadership of the last two popes. (This economics kerfuffle is, on balance, a minor issue.)
What one or two books would you all recommend as a "sales pitch," so to speak? I've just started WFB's but am looking for others.
Hope you're still out there.
· Mar 6 at 5:25pm
Peter Kreeft is a great writer, and also a great speaker, you can download dozens of his speeches for free from his web site. I like to listen to them during my commute.
Jul '10
Re: Why Catholics Don't Have to Be Democrats
One of the things that really pushed me to become a conservative was the simultaneous reading of Darkness at Noon and the taking of a "Social Justice" class at a Catholic high school. I was chilled and repulsed by the collectivism run rampant in both these experiences, and unfortunately it really did harm to my perceptions of the Catholic faith I grew up in. I've come to terms more with that in recent times as I'm heartened at how the Catholic Church nobly shielded the Jews during the Holocaust and was anti-Soviet during the Cold War. I'm agnostic now, but I see the Church as one of the last hopes of Europe against a revanchist Islam.