Posted on 10/22/2010 3:28:22 PM PDT by NYer
Since their not-so-quiet arrival on the U.S. political scene, the tea party has garnered a great deal of attention and found growing support among disgruntled Americans, many of whom are Catholics.
A study commissioned earlier this year by the National Review Institute found that 28 percent of tea party supporters identified themselves as Catholic. Yet while the movement may include aspects that are attractive to practicing Catholics, there are also serious questions about whether the at times radical views and controversial practices seen from tea party protesters fit with the teachings of the Church.
Although the tea party movement lacks a centralized leadership, with its divergent branches representing an array of different interests and viewpoints, the group’s common focus is on limited government and reduced taxation, creating a political ideology that combines elements of libertarianism and populism.
While populist movements have a long track record in the United States, Catholic historian David O’Brien told Our Sunday Visitor that they have generally been associated with Midwestern or Southern Protestants and, in some cases, have been fueled in part by anti-Catholic sentiment. But the tea party movement has grown out of a shared frustration over the nation’s current economic situation — something Catholics are not immune to — giving it a strong appeal.
“People are either out of work and don’t think they are ever going to get a job again, or they are very fearful of losing what are not very good jobs to begin with,” said O’Brien, the University Professor of Faith and Culture at the University of Dayton. “There’s this huge anxiety, and that cuts across religions, races, even classes.”
But among Catholics, he said, the support for the tea party movement has been unique.
“I don’t recall a broad-based Catholic populist upsurge of anything of this variety,” O’Brien said.
Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America, said that Catholic voters have been known for their propensity to switch party allegiance, but their strong show of support for the tea party comes as a surprise.
“What strikes me is that even though Catholics are attracted to this movement, there really is a pretty sharp tension between some of the basic teachings of the Church in regards to politics, the role of government and what we owe to the poor, and what these tea party advocates are promoting,” Schneck told Our Sunday Visitor.
Church teaching, he explained, has an inseparable link between rights and responsibilities for both the citizen and the government, with both having an eye toward promoting the common good. The tea parties, however, have argued for rights based on liberty, not responsibility.
“From that perspective it’s all about getting the government out of our lives and about citizens being free from the demands and needs of the country as a whole,” Schneck said. “Much as we might like otherwise, the Catholic argument is that government and citizen are equally expected to be our brother’s keeper.”
While the U.S. bishops have supported the idea of universal health care, tea party activists have commonly called for the repeal of Congress’ health care legislation. And positions argued by tea party activists on issues such as immigration, Social Security and the government’s regulation of racial discrimination by businesses don’t fit within the principles of Catholic social teaching, Schneck said.
“That kind of thinking is at odds with Catholic thinking about solidarity, about the common good and about the role that the political order should be playing in regards to the dignity of the human person,” he said. “So there’s actually quite a distance between what the tea party is advocating and the Church’s general understanding of how politics and governance should work.”
Not everyone agrees, however, that there is a divergence between the views of the Church and tea party ideals.
According to Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, the radical extremists in the tea party represent only a small percentage on the fringes of the movement. At its heart, Father Sirico said, the tea party and its view of government are very close to the Church’s social teaching on the principle of subsidiarity, which favors doing things on a simplified level rather than leaving them to a more complex, centralized organization.
“I think the majority of the people who are involved in the tea party movement prefer things to be done at the most local level possible,” Father Sirico told OSV. “They are not against government in principle, they are against the excessiveness of government that we see, and that’s expressed in the principle of subsidiarity.”
Many of the stances tea party activists have taken on political issues also would resonate with Catholic voters, Father Sirico said. For example, many practicing Catholics would likely agree with the tea party’s concern about the overreaching involvement of government in schools and health care, he said, and though the movement has hesitated to identify itself as pro-life, the majority of tea party activists appear to be in agreement with the Church’s stance on abortion.
But while he doesn’t feel that there is a conflict for Catholics to join the tea party, Father Sirico said, he does think tea party advocates could benefit from a greater understanding of Catholic teaching.
“The thing Catholics could teach the tea party is that not every social obligation needs to be viewed with suspicion,” he said. “We recognize that human nature is social as well as individual, and we balance these things out. To say I have an obligation to the poor is [to say] society has an obligation to the poor.”
“It is not to say that the government should be the first resort for those problems,” he said. “But I think some of the tea party are a little too quick to just dismiss social justice out of hand.”
Scott Alessi writes from New Jersey.
A poll conducted earlier this year by McLaughlin and Associates for the National Review Institute posed a number of questions to Catholics about their views on current political issues and party affiliation. Questions regarding the tea party indicated that among Catholics who regularly attend Mass, there is a fair amount of support for the movement, but that support won’t necessarily translate to votes for tea party-backed candidates at the polls. A sampling of the study’s findings:
59% say the tea party is driven by legitimate concern over the U.S. economy’s future, 21% say it is driven by anger
58% sympathize with the tea party protests, 25% do not
8% would vote for a congressional candidate fielded by the tea party, while 28% say they would vote Republican, 28% Democrat and 36% undecided
Catholic writer Michael Novak has written extensively on this subject for many years. His "On Two Wings" is an excellent resource on America's founding ideas, as was his "Democratic Capitalism."
So?...When did following the Constitution become “radical”?
No bias here, folks! Move along! ( sarc)
You wrote:
“I must have been asleep at Mass for about 40 years. When did the Catholic Church begin teaching that governments are supposed to be our brother’s keeper?”
I think you’ve been asleep much longer than 40 years. Pope Leo XIII wrote: “And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.” RERUM NOVARUM, 1891.
Leo XIII also wrote:
“[I]n the case of the worker, there are many things which the power of the State should protect; and, first of all, the goods of his soul. For however good and desirable mortal life be, yet it is not the ultimate goal for which we are born, but a road only and a means for perfecting, through knowledge of truth and love of good, the life of the soul….”
Personally I would say it began in the first century AD. If you’re looking for documentation you can find sources that definitely talk about it in the Middle Ages.
You wrote:
“Selective excerpting. Read Rerum Novarum again and try not to distort the teaching of the Church when you come back.”
Wow. You must really be desparate. The quote was only selective in that it mentions the government which is only mention in Rerum Novarum about a half dozen times. I distorted NOTHING. Here’s the whole passage.
37. Rights must be religiously respected wherever they exist, and it is the duty of the public authority to prevent and to punish injury, and to protect every one in the possession of his own. Still, when there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.
Now, you tell me what I am distorting about that passage. When you fail, and you will because all I did was quote the passage, we’ll know just how desparate you must have been.
To wit: Many legitimate Catholic social justice documents refer to the duties of the individual and of society and people assume it means "the State."
It does not. "Society" means the entire ensemble of people organized in many ways on many different levels: marriages, families, parishes, churches, businesses, labor organizations, professional organizations, non-profits, for-profits, philanthropies, fraternal and civil associations, partnerships, city and county governments, corporations, etc.
This whole ensemble comprises many levels which should tend toward the common good (that's "solidarity"); tasks and responsibilities should remain with the lowest and most local level at which they can be done (that's "subsidiarity").
It's always both solidarity and subsidarity, not one or the other.
But somehow, you rarely even see the word "subsidiarity" in a USCCB document. Which is why --- as regards its public policy involvement, anyway--- the USCCB should be disbanded.
In my humble opinion.
Too many Social Justice types think you are supposed to provide for the poor by giving them free stuff and not asking anything from them.
Catholics who live in reality know that you can help the poor by giving them jobs. They know that it takes money to make money and if the businessperson is making money then he can provide more jobs.
Government intervention in every aspect of business, attempts to set up criminal enterprises in the guise of "carbon trading", pushing anti-christian teaching in the schools at the same time they are dumbing it down, building a two trillion dollar slush fund bypassing congressional oversight, letting outside radical groups funded by radical billionaires write the laws, refusing to secure the borders, stealing car companies from their stockholders, seizing control of the medical industry... none of that has anything to do with Christianity. We can see as well as anyone can that the government is awash in marxists. Including a few who masquerade as Christians, fooling nobody.
Church teaching, he explained, has an inseparable link between rights and responsibilities for both the citizen and the government, with both having an eye toward promoting the common good. The tea parties, however, have argued for rights based on liberty, not responsibility.
Tea partyers have a very solid understanding of the responsibilities of individuals, and families, and churches, and communities, and want to make sure those responsibilities aren't usurped by unelected bureaucrats. And marxists.
What the man says is based on the assumption of a model of government that is top-down. It completely misses the point of a government that is bottom-up.
You are responsible to do what you can to deal with what is in front of you. Failing that, you combine with friends, family, neighbors, the church, business partners, investors, to do what you can’t do by yourself. You turn to the community for what can’t be handled privately, and the state for what your town can’t do. Only what you and your church and your town can’t do gets kicked up to the federal government.
People who see government top-down are stuck in another paradigm. There are plenty of them out there, but there is no reason for us to follow their example. Americans do more for the poor than any other country on earth, because traditionally we don’t wait for the government to do what we can do.
My thoughts exactly!! It is really scary that these thoughts are espoused by people in the name of Catholicism.
What is the Catholic teaching on the Tea Party?
Here it is:
The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain “self-evident” truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by “nature’s God.” Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called “ordered liberty”: an experiment in which men and women would enjoy equality of rights and opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and in service to the common good. Reading the founding documents of the United States, one has to be impressed by the concept of freedom they enshrine: a freedom designed to enable people to fulfill their duties and responsibilities toward the family and toward the common good of the community. Their authors clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability, and no happiness without respect and support for the natural units or groupings through which people exist, develop, and seek the higher purposes of life in concert with others.
The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways. Millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic. Their commitment to build a free society with liberty and justice for all must be constantly renewed if the United States is to fulfill the destiny to which the Founders pledged their “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor.”
John Paul II
Thanks for the reference. I would love to use it with my "Catholic" family. Can you please direct me to exactly where John Paul II said this? Thanks!
Reading this passage as an indictment of the Church against western society is your error. Taken in its context (the whole encyclical) makes this very clear.
You could just as easily post excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Bible to the same effect and purpose. However, when taken as a whole, the Church's doctrine is opposed to the very foundations of socialism. Only the ignorant or overtly biased would see otherwise in the teachings of the Church.
Let's not overlook these either:
14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. "The child belongs to the father," and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that "the child belongs to the father" it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents."(4) The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.
15. And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found.
The link is to the Vatican website.
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE JOHN PAUL II
TO H.E. Mrs. CORINNE (LINDY) CLAIBORNE BOGGS
NEW AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO THE HOLY SEE
16 December 1997
7. This becomes still more clearly evident if man's nature be considered a little more deeply. For man, fathoming by his faculty of reason matters without number, linking the future with the present, and being master of his own acts, guides his ways under the eternal law and the power of God, whose providence governs all things. Wherefore, it is in his power to exercise his choice not only as to matters that regard his present welfare, but also about those which he deems may be for his advantage in time yet to come. Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth he has to lay by provision for the future. Man's needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body.
8. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry, and by the laws of individual races. Moreover, the earth, even though apportioned among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, inasmuch as there is not one who does not sustain life from what the land produces. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; hence, it may truly be said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or from some toil, some calling, which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself, or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth.
9. Here, again, we have further proof that private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature. Truly, that which is required for the preservation of life, and for life's well-being, is produced in great abundance from the soil, but not until man has brought it into cultivation and expended upon it his solicitude and skill. Now, when man thus turns the activity of his mind and the strength of his body toward procuring the fruits of nature, by such act he makes his own that portion of nature's field which he cultivates -- that portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress of his personality; and it cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as his very own, and have a right to hold it without any one being justified in violating that right.
10. So strong and convincing are these arguments that it seems amazing that some should now be setting up anew certain obsolete opinions in opposition to what is here laid down. They assert that it is right for private persons to have the use of the soil and its various fruits, but that it is unjust for any one to possess outright either the land on which he has built or the estate which he has brought under cultivation. But those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and cultivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition; it was wild before, now it is fruitful; was barren, but now brings forth in abundance. That which has thus altered and improved the land becomes so truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable from it. Is it just that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by any one else? As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labor should belong to those who have bestowed their labor.
See, Leo is talking, in paragraph 37, about the government's role in helping people maintaining their rights. Leo asserts that the rich have the resources to protect their rights but that the poor do not. But what rights?
I personally can't see where those rights defined above (with references) are at all in opposition to conservatism.
It is only through the most tortured reading of Rerum Novarum where one asserts that Leo XIII makes a claim for Nanny-Statism.
Thank you for saying it better than I. I didn’t have much time for researching and posting specifics.
You wrote:
“You are distorting its meaning.”
I am NOT doing that one bit.
“Rerum Novarum is a very harsh rebuke of socialism and communism. It also has warnings about unbridled capitalism. However, it is no conflict with American values as we also don’t believe in unbridled capitalism. That is why we have labor laws, anti-trust laws and the rest.”
Nothing I posted from RN goes against RN - of course! You accused me of distorting it with a selective excerpt. Prove your accusation. Can you?
“Reading this passage as an indictment of the Church against western society is your error.”
What? What on earth are you talking about? Who made an “indictment of the Church against western society”? Not me. Now you are apparently just making things up out of thin air. Show where I EVER said this was “indictment of the Church against western society”. Can you?
“Taken in its context (the whole encyclical) makes this very clear.”
Taken in its context it shows the government has responsibilities to the poor. But here’s what you said: “When did the Catholic Church begin teaching that governments are supposed to be our brother’s keeper?”
“You could just as easily post excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Bible to the same effect and purpose. However, when taken as a whole, the Church’s doctrine is opposed to the very foundations of socialism.”
Who - between the two of us - is claiming the Church is supporting socialism? Not me. Again, you’re creating straw men. I guess you do that when you lose an argument that quickly. I wouldn’t know.
“Only the ignorant or overtly biased would see otherwise in the teachings of the Church.”
And that means - even by your standards - that I am not “ignorant or overtly biased” since I do not believe that and made no such claims.
The Church teaches the government has duties to the poor. Deal with it.
You wrote:
“It is only through the most tortured reading of Rerum Novarum where one asserts that Leo XIII makes a claim for Nanny-Statism.”
Thank goodness I never did that!
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