Sadly many Catholic clergy haven fallen for the lies of socialism and similar nonsense, I had a nun once tell me that what America needed was a “mild form” of socialism. Well the good sister got her wish with Obama and the country is now nearly bankrupt.
This is in contrast to socialism, he explained, which is an ideology in which private property and private interests are totally placed in the service of government policies. What the Pope proposes in ‘Caritas in Veritate,’ said Cardinal Turkson, is ‘achieving the common good without sacrificing personal, private interests, aspirations and desires.’You can do as we've done -- email this to your local priest/bishop and be a right holy pain in the *** until they get it in their heads. The Pope is doing his bit from the top down, we need to work from the top up and tell the bishops who aren't orthodox (small o) "clean up your act or git. And remember bad shepherds get judged much worse than bad sheep"Cardinal Turkson said the Council was also surprised that the Pope’s concept of the ‘gift,’ was perceived in some circles as encouraging government welfare handouts. In ‘Caritas in Veritate,’ Pope Benedict described the concept of “gift” as a way to understand God’s love for men and women in his gift of life and his gift of Jesus.
Whether he intended to or not, Cardinal Turkson has now echoed what many conservative Catholics in America have been calling for repeatedly — subsidiarity in economic policy. More importantly, the Cardinal observes the heart of the matter in noting that a ‘handout’ and a ‘gift’ are not at all the same, with the latter being more in keeping with the Gospel message.
One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.
The only form of socialism that conforms to the biblical worldview is the form that is commonly practiced on a small scale within families, within churches, and other organizations. It is always going to be a voluntary sharing of resources.
The Bible teaches that the church and the family should care for the poor rather than the state.
8th Commandment: You shall not steal. This is a guarantee of private property.
10th Commandment: You shall not covet. Again, a guarantee of private property.
Acts 5: Barnabas sellls a piece of property and brought the money to the Apostles.
Ananias and Saphira decided to do the same - except they sold a property - kept some of the money back - and lied about how much they had been paid.
Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own power?’ "
There you go! An apostolic confirmation of the right of private property. Not only the means of production, but also the results of that production were in Ananias’ and Saphira’s power, not in the power or hands of the state or the church.
Proudhon , the French socialist said, "Property is theft."
But the commandment forbidding theft teaches the right of private property and is in complete contradiction to socialist concepts.
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Excerpts From Pacem In Terris: Peace on Earth
Encyclical of Pope John XXIII, On Establishing Universal Peace In Truth, Justice, Charity, And Liberty, April 11, 1963
"Man's personal dignity requires besides that he enjoy freedom and be able to make up his own mind when he acts.
In his association with his fellows, therefore, there is every reason why his recognition of rights, observance of duties, and many-sided collaboration with other men, should be primarily a matter of his own personal decision.
Each man should act on his own initiative, conviction, and sense of responsibility, not under the constant pressure of external coercion or enticement.
There is nothing human about a society that is welded together by force.
Far from encouraging, as it should, the attainment of man's progress and perfection, it is merely an obstacle to his freedom."
"Hence, a regime which governs solely or mainly by means of threats and intimidation or promises of reward, provides men with no effective incentive to work for the common good.
And even if it did, it would certainly be offensive to the dignity of free and rational human beings."
"Consequently, laws and decrees passed in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience, since 'it is right to obey God rather than men.'"
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"Only capitalism operates on the basis of respect for free, independent, responsible persons. All other systems in varying degrees treat men as less than this. Socialist systems above all treat men as pawns to be moved about by the authorities, or as children to be given what the rulers decide is good for them, or as serfs or slaves. The rulers begin by boasting about their compassion, which in any case is fraudulent, but after a time they drop this pretense which they find unnecessary for the maintenance of power. In all things they act on the presumption that they know best.
"Therefore they and their systems are morally stunted. Only the free system, the much assailed capitalism, is morally mature." ~ Arthur Shenfield
Excerpted from: In Defense of Capitalism - by Dr. Ronald H. Nash Posted on Monday, February 28, 2005 12:12:18 PM by Matchett-PI
Capitalism is not economic anarchy. When properly defined, it recognizes several necessary conditions for the kinds of voluntary relationships it supports.
One of these is the existence of inherent human rights, such as the right to make decisions, the right to be free, the right to hold property, and the right to exchange peacefully what one owns for something else.
Capitalism also presupposes a system of morality. Under capitalism, there are definite limits, moral and otherwise, to the ways in which people can exchange.
Capitalism should be viewed as a system of voluntary relationships within a framework of laws that protect people’s rights against force, fraud, theft, and violations of contracts. “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not lie” are part of the underlying moral constraints of the system. After all, economic exchanges can hardly be voluntary if one participant is coerced, deceived, defrauded, or robbed.
Deviations from the market ideal usually occur because of defects in human nature. Human beings naturally crave security and guaranteed success, values not found readily in a free market. Genuine competition always carries with it the possibility of failure and loss. Consequently, the human desire for security leads people to avoid competition whenever possible, encourages them to operate outside the market, and induces them to subvert the market process through behavior that is often questionable and dishonest.
This quest for guaranteed success often leads people to seek special favors from powerful members of government through such means as regulations and restrictions on free exchange.
One of the more effective ways of mitigating the effects of human sin in society is dispersing and decentralizing power. The combination of a free market economy and limited constitutional government is the most effective means yet devised to impede the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a small number of people.
The Religious Left should be aware that their opposition to amassing wealth and power is far more likely to bear fruit with a conservative understanding of economics and government than with the big-government approach of political liberalism.
Every person’s ultimate protection against coercion requires control over some private spheres of life where he or she can be free.
Private ownership of property is an important buffer against the exorbitant consolidation of power by government.
Liberal critics also contend that capitalism encourages the development of monopolies. The real source of monopolies, however, is not the free market but governmental intervention with the market.
The only monopolies that have ever attained lasting immunity from competition did so by governmental fiat, regulation, or support of some other kind.
Governments create monopolies by granting one organization the exclusive privilege of doing business or by establishing de facto monopolies through regulatory agencies whose alleged purpose is the enforcement of competition but whose real effect is the limitation of competition.
Economic interventionism and socialism are the real sources of monopolies.
This is illustrated, for example, in the success of the American robber barons of the nineteenth century. Without government aid such as subsidies, the robber barons would never have succeeded.
Liberals blame capitalism for every evil in contemporary society, including its greed, materialism, selfishness, the prevalence of fraudulent behavior, the debasement of society’s tastes, the pollution of the environment, the alienation and despair within society, and vast disparities of wealth. Even racism and sexism are treated as effects of capitalism.
Many of the objections to a market system result from a simple but fallacious two-step operation.
First, some undesirable feature is noted in a society that is allegedly capitalistic; then it is simply asserted that capitalism is the cause of this problem.
Logic texts call this the Fallacy of False Cause.
Mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Moreover, this belief ignores the fact that these same features exist in interventionist and socialist societies.
The Issue of Greed
Liberal critics of capitalism often attack it for encouraging greed. The truth, however, is that the mechanism of the market actually neutralizes greed as it forces people to find ways of serving the needs of those with whom they wish to exchange.
As long as our rights are protected (a basic precondition of market exchanges), the greed of others cannot harm us.
As long as greedy people are prohibited from introducing force, fraud, and theft into the exchange process and as long as these persons cannot secure special privileges from the state under interventionist or socialist arrangements, their greed must be channeled into the discovery of products or services for which people are willing to trade.
Every person in a market economy has to be other-directed. The market is one area of life where concern for the other person is required.
The market, therefore, does not pander to greed. Rather, it is a mechanism that allows natural human desires to be satisfied in nonviolent ways.
Does Capitalism Exploit People?
Capitalism is also attacked on the ground that it leads to situations in which some people (the “exploiters”) win at the expense of other people (the “losers”).
A fancier way to put this is to say that market exchanges are examples of what is called a zero-sum game, namely, an exchange where only one participant can win. If one person (or group) wins, then the other must lose. Baseball and basketball are two examples of zero-sum games. If A wins, then B must lose.
The error here consists in thinking that market exchanges are a zero-sum game. On the contrary, market exchanges illustrate what is called a positive-sum game, that is, one in which both players may win.
We must reject the myth that economic exchanges necessarily benefit only one party at the expense of the other. In voluntary economic exchanges, both parties may leave the exchange in better economic shape than would otherwise have been the case.
To repeat the message of the peaceful means of exchange, “If you do something good for me, then I will do something good for you.” If both parties did not believe they gained through the trade, if each did not see the exchange as beneficial, they would not continue to take part in it.
Most religious critics of capitalism focus their attacks on what they take to be its moral shortcomings.
In truth, the moral objections to capitalism turn out to be a sorry collection of claims that reflect, more than anything else, serious confusions about the real nature of a market system.
When capitalism is put to the moral test, it beats its competition easily. Among all of our economic options, Arthur Shenfield writes: "Only capitalism operates on the basis of respect for free, independent, responsible persons. All other systems in varying degrees treat men as less than this. Socialist systems above all treat men as pawns to be moved about by the authorities, or as children to be given what the rulers decide is good for them, or as serfs or slaves. The rulers begin by boasting about their compassion, which in any case is fraudulent, but after a time they drop this pretense which they find unnecessary for the maintenance of power. In all things they act on the presumption that they know best. Therefore they and their systems are morally stunted. Only the free system, the much assailed capitalism, is morally mature."
The alternative to free exchange is coercion and violence. Capitalism is a mechanism that allows natural human desires to be satisfied in a nonviolent way. Little can be done to prevent people from wanting to be rich, Shenfield says. That’s the way things often are in a fallen world. But what capitalism does is channel that desire into peaceful means that benefit many besides those who wish to improve their own situation in life.
“The alternative to serving other men’s wants,” Shenfield concludes, “is seizing power of them, as it always has been. Hence it is not surprising that wherever the enemies of capitalism have prevailed, the result has been not only the debasement of consumption standards for the masses but also their reduction to serfdom by the new privileged class of Socialist rulers.”
Once people realize that few things in life are free, that most things carry a price tag, and that therefore we have to work for most of the things we want, we are in a position to learn a vital truth about life. Capitalism helps teach this truth. But under socialism, Arthur Shefield warns, “Everything still has a cost, but everyone is tempted, even urged to behave as if there is no cost or as if the cost will be borne by somebody else. This is one of the most corrosive effects of collectivism upon the moral character of people.”
And so, we see, capitalism is not merely the more effective economic system; it is also morally superior. When capitalism, the system of free economic exchange, is described fairly, it comes closer to matching the demands of the biblical ethic than does either socialism or interventionism.
These are the real reasons why Ron Sider and his friends in the Religious Left should have abandoned the statist economic policies they promoted in the past.
These are also the reasons why they should now end their advocacy of economic interventionism, which only encourages the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of the few.
Christians who are sincere about wanting to help the poor should support the market system described in this chapter."
Excerpted from a chapter of Dr. Nash’s book, "Why the Left is Not Right - The Religious Left -Who they Are and What They Believe" by Ronald H. Nash, PhD