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By Bread Alone: The Corruption of Christian Materialism
What is Christian materialism, you may ask? It’s a Catholic thing, of course. I know, I know – always the danged papists! – insisting on embracing the power of Both/And at a time when most people automatically assume Either/Or. You’re either a spiritualist or a materialist; either a religionist living in a secular world or a secularist tolerating those religious nuts. You can’t be both!
Phooey. As a Catholic Christian, I’m probably more tolerant of religious nuts than your average secularist… Ahem.
Christian materialism is a term developed by Saint Josemaría Escrivá to explain the Catholic view that matter matters. That is, the material world is God-created, and therefore good, if corruptible (both/and again). Catholicism is an incarnational religion – we believe the Sacraments were instituted by Christ to impart grace in a way that engages our senses. For example, in Baptism, through water, words (in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…), white garments, anointing with fragrant holy oil, lighting of a candle… the sacrament affects what it signifies, conferring on the baptized the gift of the Holy Spirit and initiating him into the Body of Christ. When we receive Eucharist, we receive Jesus’ Real Presence – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – although we sense this Presence as bread and wine; in Confession, we hear the words of absolution, and so on. It’s all good. Very good.
We believe God made the world for us to enjoy and is still active in it. And that Beauty – because of the integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (splendor) of matter – is perhaps the most effective way we are drawn to the Goodness and Truth of the Faith (Bishop Barron on evangelization through Beauty). Think Chartres Cathedral, the rose window of Notre Dame de Paris, Gregorian chant, liturgical vestments, the smells, the bells… It’s all a potent means of experiencing the transcendence and love of God.
How does all this go sideways and what does it have to do with the power of words? How do you corrupt Christian materialism? You can leave that to Catholics, too, specifically, “liberal” social justice activist Catholics — the ones who take pride in the 40-hour work week (why not 35, or, better, 30!) as the major accomplishment of the Catholic Worker Movement, and who sell “fair” trade coffee after Sunday Mass. You do it by succumbing to the temptation to save the world by worldly means – by losing your faith in the primacy of God, and by placing your good intentions ahead of the will of God. After The Fall, God told Adam, “By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to dust…” Somehow, He failed to mention anything about a 40-hour work week…
Pope Benedict has a few words that Catholic SJWs might benefit from contemplating:
“We live in this world where God is not so manifest as tangible things are, but can be sought and found only when the heart sets out on the “exodus” from “Egypt.” It is in this world that we are obliged to resist the delusions of false philosophies [central planning, socialism, “fair” trade that artificially raises prices above market values…] and to recognize that we do not live by bread alone, but first and foremost by obedience to God’s word. Only when this obedience is put into practice does the attitude develop that is also capable of providing bread for all.” […]
“The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening; by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp [Marxist “scientific socialism”]. To think like that is to make oneself God. And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too.”
— Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration
PBXVI gets to the heart of the problem with social justice activism. How do SJWs know the “fair” price of coffee and chocolate produced in another hemisphere and sold in a world market? Why are they comfortable deciding that the “rich” don’t pay their “fair” share (despite the top 10% paying the vast bulk of revenues into the Treasury)? What makes them think it’s moral to conscript healthcare professionals to provide “free” healthcare and drugs for everyone? It’s arrogance. It’s pride. It’s the distrust and dis-incarnation of God – as if He isn’t active in the world, and it’s all up to us. As if we must remediate all suffering ourselves and do it right now through force of government! Because suffering isn’t part of God’s plan? Tell it to the generation of Hebrews who died off in the desert and the many whose lives were brutish, nasty, and short since then.
In service to this pride, SJWs notoriously distort the meaning of words. “Fair trade” requires growers to pay fees to accrediting agencies out of their meager earnings (fees are typically over a thousand dollars a year). Then they are permitted to sell nearly identical products literally grown yards away from the non-fair trade grower’s fields at artificially inflated prices. Is this causing the fair trade farmer to prosper, or is it just another feel-good exercise in futility for the SJWs? What about his non-“fair”-trade neighbor?
“Social justice” as currently employed isn’t converting hearts and minds to love of God and neighbor, thereby giving each his due (the definition of justice). It is using force of government to take not just from the corrupt, but from the honest man, the “excess” (guess who decides what’s excess?) of his earnings to redistribute to those who have earned less (or haven’t earned at all) in the name of man-made “equality.” It isn’t just that the redistributionist idea is un-American, which it is – it’s the antithesis of charity, and therefore a violation of Christianity itself.
Jesus faces three temptations in the desert after his baptism in the Jordan. Satan starts with the temptation to pleasure – to satisfy his hunger at the end of his desert fasting – “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But, two of the three temptations have at their root the requirement that Jesus prove himself if we are to believe in his divinity. We submit him to the test.
This is how Catholic SJWs are often indistinguishable from lefty secular “humanists” (another unintended ironic word use). God must prove his righteousness by helping them to feed the poor, by abolishing suffering. They don’t question whether what they’re doing on behalf of the suffering is part of God’s plan, or is actually even helpful. They proceed, trusting that the “Holy Spirit will get behind” their efforts (an actual SJW quote).
As Benedict puts it:
Jesus must “address the question as to what truly matters in life. At the heart of the temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion – that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms.
Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil – no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What’s real is right there in front of us – power and bread.
Reading PBXVI’s book brought to mind our recent Ricochet conversation about Job. When Job starts to question God’s plan, God responds, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the world?” I don’t believe God is promoting fatalism in the face of suffering, but rather encouraging modesty regarding our own power, and trust in His ability to bring good out of all things. Suffering has sanctifying power, but only through the Sanctifier. SJWs may be well-intentioned, but they get this precisely backward. They trust in the power of their good intentions to overcome suffering, and they encourage the sufferer to become dependent on them (and government) to rectify all injustice. There is no greater recipe for despair.
The SJW must either change his outlook or ultimately become cynical and bitter. And whether he intends it or not, the power he concentrates at the top is irresistible to the ruthless among us. It’s the Infinity Gauntlet in the hands of Thanos. Resources are limited; people must die (or, at least, not be born). The logic is relentless, and I’ve even heard it expounded by a Catholic SJW during a meeting in the basement of my parish church.
The corruption of words is probably the most dangerous seduction of our time. It is always finally put to the usurpation of God’s power. Yes, words are powerful. The misuse of words leads many into temptation – which explains why even the devil quotes Scripture.
Endnote: Another Catholic on the Power of Words via Prager University: Control the Words, Control the Culture
Published in Group Writing
That’s not a hamburger, it’s a whole mastodon. A lot to chew on there.
This conversation is an entry in our Group Writing Series under May’s theme of The Power of Words. If you have been reminded of something regarding the power of words where you might like to join the series, we still have May 21st and 23rd available. Why not sign up today?
Western, Very, very well done, even for a Mastodon. A real keeper.
“• Catholicism is an incarnational religion – we believe the Sacraments were instituted by Christ to impart grace in a way that engages our senses.”
“• We believe God made the world for us to enjoy and is still active in it. And that Beauty – because of the integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (splendor) of matter – is perhaps the most effective way we are drawn to the Goodness and Truth of the Faith (Bishop Barron on evangelization through Beauty)”
Wonderful and enlightening ideas.
I miss the scholarship of Pope Benedict, and the love from Pope John Paul II.
There is much to learn from them.
If the Christian left faces the temptation of materialism, then I would say that the Christian right always faces the temptation towards an a-materialistic gnosticism – the old heresy that this world doesn’t matter in the end (and may, in fact, even be evil), and that does lead to a certain fatalism towards the sufferings of others, or of the misuses of our material world. After all, if everyone is going to be raptured away (and soon!), then it’s all God’ will. It is, basically, an aversion to incarnation, and it sometimes even tends towards iconoclasm.
I’m not too crazy about the term “Pope Emeritus.” It’s confusing.
I don’t know, I’m kind of a fan of the 40-hour work week, partly because I work in the tech industry where working nights, weekends, and being on-call are increasingly the norm. Americans also take far fewer vacation days than Europeans.
I don’t think it’s healthy for people, or for a culture as a whole. Especially when there are so many 2-income families these days, how can parents possibly spend enough quality time with their children if both parents are working 50, 60, or more hours a week? For that matter how are people supposed to find time for a healthy social life outside the office to meet someone special and start a family in the first place if they spend all their waking hours working?
When the Federal Government takes 22% marginal tax. the State takes about 5% (even in non income tax states, the property tax increase is about this), your local property tax is ~$2,000 per $100K valuation, you pay 5-7% or more sales tax, car licenses, forced to get auto and health insurance, pay corporate taxes that are passed on to you, etc. Most people pay at least 40% in tax.
Now suppose you save some money – at most savings pays 1.5% whereas inflation is much higher. And if you invest in 401K’s or untaxed accounts, you’re subject to Required Minimum Distributions, where your 22% marginal rate effectively becomes 28% (it used to be 33%!), with State 5% = 33% effective rate, plus all the other taxes as discussed above.
And for what? So that the cop (who chickened out) at the Parkland High School shooting in Florida can retire at $104K per year, the government can waste money on welfare, etc.
Yes, but if SJWs had advocated for a 36- or 30-hour work week, we’d have even more time with our families! You take my point.
This way of thinking — we’ll get the government to impose what we think is right for everyone — ultimately leads to much worse impositions. And it has the effect of leading people to look to government for their “salvation.”
My CA income tax effective rate last year was 8.5%.
My local rate is 9.75%.
Excellent article. Would you mind posting it at Ricochet Catholics? We could use the good content!
Fixed.
Wow, I love this post. As a catechist, there’s a lot here to absorb and
stealuse in my next class.I agree with this sentiment regarding charity. However, on the tweak level, there’s a fair amount of conflict between Catholic principles and what one considers as “American values.” I’m fine if I’m accused of engaging in a solid Catholic practice that is “un-American.” A classic example is the (now quaint?) ethic of one never accepting charity. This, too, is antithetical to charity. Charity is a two-way street.
Absolutely true. This contagion has branched, to where humans with boy parts think they’re girls, vice versa, and 57 flavors in-between. Or the classic CNN appropriation of this virus; “Apples and bananas.”
In his “Don’t Think of the Elephant” book, cognitive linguist George Lackoff sees mainstream language as explicitly manipulated by regnant forces to keep itself in power. Uh-huh, really. His life’s work is to manipulate language, or, as he calls it, “reframing” so that the language leads to a desirable result from his perspective. In a not-to-far-way land, this was called the big lie. The work of the devil may be a more clarifying phrase.
I agree. Catholic Christian first. American second. I guess that makes me unsuited to the presidency or the Supreme Court…
Cue the vile Thomas Nast cartoons from the 19th century.
B16 is a master with words – his homilies are treasures and need to be returned to often for their wisdom. In his homily in 2005 at the mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff he said this:
The SJW’s you speak of are stuck in that dictatorship of relativism.
Thanks for posting that Michael Knowles video – I heard him speak of it on his podcast but hadn’t watched it until seeing it in your post – very good. As was your post. Thanks.
You might find this article on a new synthesis of all heresies by Peter Kwasniewski interesting – it addresses some of the same points you do. This caught my eye:
It’s one thing when SJW’s and liberals abuse words; it’s another when our Holy Father and his cardinal sycophants do it (but one might say they are one and the same).