Correctly Political: “Corner”ing the Market in Catholic teaching
Pope Leo XIII. From the Portrait by Lenbach
~by jfxgillis
I. Now and Then and Now
Pope Benedict XVI issued an encyclical this week expressing Church doctrine with respect to the global political economy. I knew it would be described in the mainstream media as “left wing” (I knew it would be described in the mainstream media as “left wing” because I knew it would be left wing).
I therefore expected right-wing opinion outlets to either accept that description and criticize the document on those grounds, or, if those outlets were deluded or dishonest (as most of them are), to reject that description altogether and cry about media bias (like they do every time an event occurs that provokes in them cognitive dissonance) or to somehow try to argue that Benedict’s teaching was only superficially left-wing–that a close and deep reading by certain acolytes of a syncretic sect combining Libertarianism with Catholicism would reveal the gnosis that the New Testament (or the Old Testament, for that matter) and Atlas Shrugged are ideologically and textually compatible in each and every respect save the irrelevant detail of the existence of God.
In search of this latter category of right-wing opinion, my first stop was naturally National Review’s group blog The Corner. And boy did I strike gold. The commentary there ran the gamut from deluded through incoherent all the way to staggeringly dishonest. Most amusing. But to understand the depth of depravity of those readings requires, as one would expect, familiarity with Church documents. To save you all from the reading the 450 pages of Papal writing from the three most significant encyclicals on political economy in the last century or so, I’ll excerpt a few bits from each of them.
The first, Of New Things, was written by Pope Leo XIII and issued in 1891. It is in some cases anachronistic (in one portion he talks about the workplace evil of the ”mixing of the sexes”); although he spends much of the first part of the encyclical defending the notion of private property from the socialist credo that “property is theft,” the entire second half amounts to nothing less than a full-throated defense of the trades union movement and the need for the State to compel Capital to accept collective bargaining on the part of Labor. Here he analyzes his contemporary political economy:
Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.
In 1991, on the Hundredth Anniversary of Leo’s encyclical, Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical called “On the Hundredth Anniversary.” Writing in the still shimmering burst of the collapse of Soviet Socialism, again, like Leo, he spent a great deal of time summarizing those events and re-articulation his and the Church’s rejection of Marxist-Leninism. But then, like Leo, he bespoke his contemporary political economy: [Read more →]
July 13, 2009 30 Comments
One way forward for the West Bank
by max socol
In the bowels of ED Kain’s most recent Israel prophecy, there’s a (pleasantly civil) debate swirling around the security implications of a West Bank withdrawal. As I mentioned there, it reminded me of speaking to Akiva Eldar, the Ha’aretz reporter and author whose anti-settlement politicking has made him a national star, of a sort.
I very much like Eldar and enjoyed his talk. He delivers a persuasive and excellent presentation on just how destructive settlements are — so good, in fact, that I dug out my old docket pad, where I scribbled the notes I took (just below, appropriately, notes from my interview with the party leader of National Union, the radical right-wing settlers’ party that wants to force Palestinians out of the West Bank.) Here they are, for those who are interested: [Read more →]
May 1, 2009 16 Comments
