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Fallibility — Peter Robinson
As a friend, who is, like me, a convert to Catholicism, put it in an email: What is a Catholic to do when the Supreme Pontiff makes statements that are, on the very face of them, preposterous?
(If you disagree with the premise–that is, if you can see some way of constructing the statement such that it isn’t, actually, preposterous–please do say so. I’d be hugely relieved.)
Published in General
I’ll have to read that in full when I have time. But I wonder if it distinguishes between what should be and what law enforces.
There’s no question that we should always be charitable toward our fellow man by means of our possessions, our skills, our attentions, and otherwise. The pivotal question is to what extent individuals and corporations are free to fail in this regard, even at great expense to others. It’s one thing to condemn a man for being stingy and self-centered. It’s quite another to seize his possessions when he fails to share.
The possession of land is somewhat different. From what I understand, European laws are more tolerant of strangers passing through a person’s land or even camping there. This is a bit similar to “public” lands in America (or should be, rather) in that land not in use may be enjoyed by all in ways other than building upon it.
Ultimately, property laws should be consistent with laws regarding the failure of bystanders to assist persons in need of critical medical care. Immoral and illegal should not be identical standards.
Because comments like Francis’s are premised on the idea that becoming wealthy is only possible by exploiting or harming others, usually the poor. This is factually incorrect.
Yet another example of Francis’s confusion on these matters: poverty is the factory default for humanity. It’s through work and prudence — individual, familial, and civilizational — that we climb out of it.
Son of Spengler: #39 “But this tweet goes well beyond a “mistake”. It reveals a belief in an anti-property rights collectivism that is at best fatuous, and at worst evil. I would have hoped the leader of a major world religion could tell the difference between right and wrong.”
The tweet read: Inequality is the root of social evil.
Noting that the Church stood up for property rights, and that Francis’ tweet says nothing about property rights, I would suggest that you have read into his statement something that is not there. Such thinking is fatuous at best.
Mendel, my situation mirrors yours exactly. Last year my last Brother-in-Law succumbed and now I am also, alone. Next week I face another dinner with my Wife and her Priest, a truly wonderful man, to discuss my immortal soul. If I thought about conversion this Pope has brought me back to reality, primarily for the reasons that you outlined.
This tweet does not come in isolation. Taken with Francis’s other statements, it reinforces a pattern of collectivist thinking.
But even on its own, the tweet is objectionable. If inequality causes social evil, then it is evil for someone to possess more than anyone else. As a society, should we look away from this evil, or try to remedy it? Should we stand by as people (evilly) hoard their wealth? If our laws allow this evil to persist (by protecting property), doesn’t that make the laws evil too? Unless a person is entitled to do evil things and benefit from evil, calling inequality evil means that their property rights are limited to owning only as much as the next person.
This assessment becomes even stronger when you move from an economist’s metrics to the ones Francis uses. Recall Francis’ regular definition, examples he has given in multiple speeches, in Evangelii Gaudium, and on Twitter, of an economy of exclusion and inequality as one that includes financial news but not the obituaries of homeless people, and as one in which people do not throw away food.
Say what you like about the Derg, but no one can deny that instances of Ethiopians throwing away food were minimized under the government, and active steps were taken to prevent the accurate reporting of the financial news. It is possible that no society on earth has ever has a strong a balance in favor of reporting the lives and deaths of poor people against the movement of markets as Ethiopia enjoyed.
Where do you get this premise from? Who said that Francis assumes that becoming wealthy only happens by exploiting someone else?
BTW – if there is an undeniable quote where he says that, I’ll listen. But that isn’t Catholic teaching, and if Francis said it, he’s wrong. I’m assuming he’s simply repeating standard Catholic teaching.
That’s what I mean. This was a tweet, devoid of nuance. So, precisely because it’s devoid of nuance, you can’t treat it in the absolute. When Francis says “inequality,” you can’t present that as if Francis means an absolutely level amount of money, and then proceed from that unrealistic assumption.
The tweet itself isn’t an economic critique of capitalism. Critics are immediately jumping to the conclusion that he’s making a drive-by comment on the Piketty economic treatise. It’s become obvious that the term “inequality” has been programmed to trigger a reference to economic theory, and having been triggered, the critics all start from there.
But don’t take my word for it … look at the tweet!
Before we even get to the economics of it, the statement is a standard definition of injustice. Injustice is treating people differently. Unfairly. You favor one group or individual, and deny it to others. We can’t begin to discuss the justice of economies unless we start from the same understanding of justice.
Two problems with the tweet. The first is that as in any statement or conversation before the argument or debate begins terms have to be defined. The question becomes what do you mean by social injustice? For example are you referring to the caste system in India, the treatment of Christians in Syria?,…etc. The second problem is that the reader of the tweet responds to a statement by supplying their own definition and by doing so engages in an argument of their own making. Social injustice has now become economic injustice, conclusion the Pope is a Marxist.
My personal preference would be that the Pope does not use twitter but alas for me the Church has been in existence for 2000 years without asking for my advice.
As far as the criticisms of Pope Francis being a Marxist are concerned the Argentines themselves are divided. Some claim he supported the right others the left.
There is a statement attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas; Very few men are swayed by a logical argument, far fewer men can construct one.
Sorry, but words mean things. And if you’re a religious teacher, people pay attention to your words. He’s under no obligation to tweet, and under no obligation to use those particular words. Should we take his words seriously, or not?
In response to Aaron #61:
The right to private property is the underpinning of a free society. It cannot be ‘pruned’ to make compromise with the state without encroaching on that freedom and causing harm.
Consider Zimbabwe, (formerly prosperous Rhodesia) where property rights are no more; farms and land have been “taken from the haves and given to the have-nots” and the result has been: inflation, famine, chaos, crime and terror.
The government controls the land and the major means of production; the standard of living has sunk and the people for whom this ‘social justice’ campaign was supposedly waged are certainly not better off.
The tweet used the phrase “social evil”. The use of the word “social” sets up a contrast to “social justice”. Taking the tweet as face value, Francis is not talking about standard injustice, but rather “social” injustice, which is an economic phenomenon — the widow, the orphan, et al. who is not a victim of any particular injustice, but whose circumstances (through no fault of their own) put him or her in poverty.
Because the statement was not made in a vacuum and the current discussion of “inequality” in the Western World ™ revolves around “economic inequality.” It is there fore an inference to best conclusion that economic inequality is the inequality of which he is speaking. He would have to clarify it as meaning inequality power dynamics in some other sense if that’s what he meant.
I think that there’s a reasonable degree of consensus on this. Francis is not a Marxist, although he’s friends with Marxists, looks up to Marxists, and takes insights from Marxists. In Argentine politics, he was not a strong partisan, siding with the Marxist authoritarian leftists on some issues and with the fascist/ Peronist authoritarian leftists on other issues.
The problem comes when Americans with no understanding of Marx conflate the ideas of leftism and Marxism, and the left right spectrum in America with the left right spectrum elsewhere. From any civilized perspective, there was no “right” in Argentina. Both parties were “workers parties”, and revolutionary parties, in the same way as both Republicans and Democrats are, by global standards, capitalist, gun loving, military supporting, overtly religious Christian parties, or the “left” and the “right” in Soviet politics were both Communist.
There are disagreements about where, precisely, in the middle of Argentine politics Francis lay, but those disagreements are over relatively trivial details.
Step 1: I doubt Pope Francis writes his English twitter messages. He doesn’t compose in English. That doesn’t mean I agree with the message, but trying to harmonize multiple vernacular translations is a recipe for a headache.
Step 2: Read the Latin twitter feed: Iniquitas radix malorum
Step 3: Read Peter Kwiasniewski’s brilliant article
Pope St John XXIII has your back:
As Joseph Stanko noted in comment 45, this is a quote from Evangelii Gaudium. He has clarified what he meant by inequality. Start at paragraph 52 and you will find him talking about rich and poor, but also about social inequality, such that the deaths of poor people receive little attention in the media. It also goes into his food issues and such. At paragraph 76 he switches topic to some Christian stuff, but then he returns to his views on inequality from 186, with the final paragraph about Christian demands regarding the “distribution of wealth” coming in 218. Do read it all.
Yes, they do. But they don’t mean whatever the listener wants to make them mean.
The standard definition of injustice is not treating people equally. If you give a job to the English guy but refuse to consider the Irish guy, you’re not treating them equally. That’s what the word means. (h/t Mark Wilson)
The tweet – as the words said – was that inequality is the root of social evil. If instead the words were : “Injustice is what causes social evil,” no one would have batted an eye. And yet, used in this way, injustice and inequality are interchangeable.
This is just the first step in a larger argument. But please – wait until he says the next assertion before condemning the argument as a whole. We’ve only gotten to the first premise. This premise (inequality = injustice) is, if anything, banal.
If pattern holds, Francis’ next assertion is that under capitalism (not in theory, of course, but in current practice) … the poor not only have less of an opportunity … they effectively have no opportunity, unlike their wealthy fellow citizens. That’s when we’ll have more to battle over.
That’s even worse!!!! That translates as “Inequality is the root of all evil”. At least the English Tweet tried to hedge it’s bets with the addition of “social”.
Also, once again, doesn’t that directly contradict cupiditas radix malorum?
After all, how can two different things be the root of all evil simultaneously?
I do not have a direct quote and am taking it as an assumption. It’s utterly consistent with everything economic I’ve ever heard Francis, which always seems to confirm my impression that he’s a sort of soft, European/Latin American socialist on economic matters. The portions of Evangelii Gaudium — some of which Joseph quoted above — were key in forming that impression.
Whether or not his statements are official church teaching is of less interest to me than the fact that a popular public figure with enormous moral authority is spouting economic nonsense on a regular basis that (I believe) will cause more people to languish in poverty.
This is precisely why I have pity on my Roman friends. I just don’t know how you guys do it.
Iniquitas does not equal inequality which even a cursory review of the Latin Vulgate of the Bible and its reliable English translations would show. That was the reason that I highlighted the Latin phrase, then dovetailed into Dr. Kwasniewski’s article.
And for those who ask: No, I don’t pay any attention to the Papal twitter feeds.
Well, you can anticipate my objection here. You have applied your assumption, then used it as evidence to “confirm” that assumption. You’re assuming what you’re trying to prove, and that’s a logical fallacy. It has become an assumption that feeds itself.
A much more productive use of Peter’s time would be spent on:
Why Did Vatican II Ignore Communism?
a) The translations I get online for iniquitas vary, but include: unequal, unjust, unfair, violence, partiality.
b) The translation used by the Vatican’s own English Tweet was “inequality”.
After all, how can two different things be the root of all evil simultaneously?
Or three …
This is the bigger point and mirrors my concern. The damage this guy does to Catholic teaching only concerns me when it impacts the wider world, as it certainly will. Leftists are gleeful about this you can be sure.