Are
encyclicals getting too long? And is
anybody reading (or understanding) them?
Judging from all the acrimony over, say Amoris Laetitia (not technically an encyclical, but we’re making a
point here), the answer is “no.” The
longer and wordier encyclicals get, the less impact they seem to have. The message(s) tend(s) to get lost in all the
explanations and qualifications.
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| "Experts" become Top Dog by barking louder than anyone else. |
To
make things worse, you’ve got a lot of “experts” with their own agendas and
assumptions, often held unconsciously, who comb through anything a pope says or
writes, searching for something that can be twisted to their advantage. Oops.
Sorry. We meant to say, “that can
be used to save the Catholic Church from itself . . . and put the savior(s) in
the position of being Top Dog.
A
lot of people, especially “the experts,” seem to think basic principles can be
changed, which they cannot. But why do
they believe they can?
Because
far too many people today never learned to think, and insist on confusing
principle and application. For example,
many “experts” think Rerum Novarum is
the encyclical on wages.
Really? The encyclical mentions wages sixteen times,
four of them in connection with owning capital, putting wage income and capital
income on the same level, i.e., one
is as legitimate as the other. The other
dozen mentions of wages are always in the context of the non-owning worker, and
the problems associated with being a non-owner.
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| "Neither Yogi Berra nor I ever said half the things we said." |
Private
property and capital ownership are mentioned thirty-five times in Rerum Novarum by actual count (depending
on the translation, of course), and countless times by implication, always in a
positive way as a good thing. The
obvious implication — unless you’re a socialist — is that capital income and
labor income are morally equivalent, and being a worker-owner is better than
being a non-owning worker.
Now,
a key passage in Rerum Novarum is §
46. This states,
If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to
support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a
sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down
expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of
income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great
labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private
ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor
ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people
to become owners.
And what does
this passage say? That sufficient wages
are the only thing that matters?
No. It says that sufficient wages are important
because they enable a frugal worker to save and buy capital.
The principle is empowering people to
purchase capital to make them independent and ensure them an adequate income .
. . as preceding sections of the encyclical make crystal clear. The application
is how to do this, viz., pay people
more money so they can buy capital.
Understanding
the difference between principle, and application of principle, we can accept
any legitimate means by which people can become owners of capital. Unfortunately, socialists and capitalists can
see only one: past savings. The idea
that ordinary people should be able to purchase capital on credit and pay for
it over time as the capital becomes productive seems completely alien to both
groups.
But
that is a subject for another day. What
we’re concerned with here is the ease with which “the experts” latch onto
something like the means of becoming an owner, obsess about it, and completely
ignore the main point: becoming an owner.
.
. . or the condemnation of socialism and other “new things.”
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| Pope John XXII |
Mirari Vos,
which appears to be the first modern papal condemnation of socialism (John XXII
condemned the abolition of private property in the fourteenth century when the
“Spiritual Franciscans” were wildly distorting the message of Saint Francis of
Assisi), made a simple point: don’t shift the basis of the natural law from the
Intellect to the Will and make such “new things” as socialism and moral
relativism the basis of your faith or philosophy, much less the social order,
even to “defend” the Church.
Singulari Nos
made an even simpler point: stop promoting the “new things” of socialism and
moral relativism as authentic Catholic doctrine.
Unfortunately,
people love to take shortcuts:
· A
minister who downplays the seriousness of remarriage after divorce and says,
“Oh, gee whiz, take communion anyway, wink, wink,” is taking a shortcut to
avoid the difficulty of bringing people to a sense of sin so they can get
straightened out.
· A
capitalist who insists that only by concentrating capital ownership in the
hands of a private sector élite can
the economy move forward and liberty be preserved is taking a shortcut to avoid
the difficulty of figuring out ways to empower ordinary people over their own
lives with capital ownership.
· A
socialist who insists that only by concentrating capital ownership in the State
can people have sufficient income and be protected from the risk of not being
protected is taking a shortcut to avoid the difficulty of figuring out that the
purpose of life is not to create a “Kingdom of God on Earth” but to become more
fully human . . . which one can’t do as a dependent of the State.
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| "The bishop said when the pope said 'slaves' he didn't mean them!" |
The
pattern of the encyclicals becomes clear.
All of these shortcuts and more are first addressed in simple
terms. So far so good. Then “the experts” and anyone with an agenda
start to figure out ways to twist or distort the encyclical to justify staying
right where they are and doing just as they please. Can you say “In Supremo,” the 1836 encyclical
issued by Gregory XVI condemning slavery and the slave trade . . . that bishops
in the southern United States hastened to reassure their flocks did not apply
to them?
Consequently,
popes after Gregory XVI kept adding more and more verbiage to try and plug the
holes because people kept trying to get around the rules (“Yeah, pope, but what
if . . . ?”). These in turn have been
twisted all out of recognition as people became increasingly determined to
force the Catholic Church to endorse enthusiastically whatever they were
pushing.
For
example, shortly after Rerum Novarum
appeared, a prominent Neo-Catholic — one of the “in words” for socialist back
then — published an article in Harper’s
New Monthly Magazine. This “expert”
carefully explained how the encyclical that condemned socialism in the harshest
possible terms and mandated a private property-based legal and economic system
was really in agreement with
socialism!
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| Vicomte Eugène Melchoir de Vogüé |
Not
failing to raise the specters of Saint Francis of Assisi (the presumed exemplar
for all “democratic religion” — another euphemism for socialism), Thomas à
Kempis (author of the medieval bestseller The
Imitation of Christ), and Saint Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life) to give implied endorsements, the
author described how through the nineteenth century the Church had gradually
freed itself from outdated doctrines and declared,
Finally
Rome spoke, and the last encyclical of Leo XIII. showed clearly towards which
side its sympathies would henceforward incline.
This very remarkable evolution is contributing to bring together in one
common aspiration the believers and the freethinkers [atheists], whose only
resolve is the good of the people.
(Vicomte Eugène Melchoir de Vogüé, “The Neo-Christian Movement in
France,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine,
Vol. 84, No. 500, January 1892, 239.)
In
other words (at least according to socialist French vicomtes), we are supposed
to believe that Rerum Novarum
embodies the first principle of socialism, modernism, and the New Age: that all
things, including (or especially) the natural law, are to be subordinated to
“the good of the people.”
On
the contrary! The “Catholic” first
principle is that all things must be subordinate to the natural law, for (at
least the Catholic Church believes) the natural law is God. And, since the human
person is — according to Catholic belief — made in God’s image and likeness,
this automatically builds respect for human dignity and sovereignty into the
system.
Putting
“the good of the people” above everything means putting it above God as
well. According to Fulton Sheen, this is
the main problem in the modern world, as he said in his first book, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy
(1925), with Introduction by G.K. Chesterton.
So
how do you fix this kind of thing?
By
getting back to basics, viz. a
correct understanding of justice in all its parts, and a proper understanding
of the role of charity. That’s why we
think that the best thing Pope Francis could do as soon as possible is issue an
encyclical on the three principles of economic justice, 1) Participation, 2)
Distribution, and 3) Social Justice.
And
he might want to see if there is anything that can be done about getting people
to think. After all, Jesus came to take
away our sins, not our brains. . . .
#30#
