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| ST. AMBROSE |
"You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich."
~oOo~
Suddenly Pope Francis has become the darling of the liberal press for having condemned the moral, social, economic and environmental bankruptcy of liberalism.
Media mavens crow with delight and act as if now, finally, there is a pope who has come around to our way of thinking. They quote those morsels of his "Apostolic Exhortation" in which they delight and ignore those which they consider to be churchy-preachy stuff. It is a pathetic spectacle devoid of any conceptual comprehension.
Typical of the idiocy were statements that "Pope Francis, in his simple black shoes and house, is ... uniquely qualified to make the Vatican an outpost [sic] of Occupy Wall Street " (BBC) and that "he has expanded his mandate [sic] to economics with a groundbreaking screed [sic] denouncing "the new idolatry of money." (Guardian) Rather dubiously, the Guardian rattled on to say that Pope Francis was "the first globally prominent figure" to figure out that grotesque "income inequality" is the single most critical economic issue facing society and that it cannot be solved by trickle-down theories.
The best that can be said of the enfatuation is that This too shall pass. In substance, Francis has said nothing the Church hasn't said before.
In 1890, Pope Leo XIII issued a comprehensive encyclical on socio-economic justice in which he condemned the "enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses." (Rerum Novarum) "Justice," he continued, "demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the government, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they created."
In 1931, after noting that Leo XIII had "boldly attacked and overturned the idols of Liberalism," Pius XI issued his own encyclical stating, "Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel." (Quadresimo Anno.) "Socialism," he noted, "inclines toward and in a certain measure approaches the truths which Christian tradition has always held sacred."
In 1967, in Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI, returned to the issue of economic disparity, in which he applied his predecessors teachings and themes to the institutional and inter-national level
Lastly, in 2009, Pope Benedict, issued Caritas in Veritate, a comprehensive distillation of the Church's socio-economic doctrine. "[T]the social doctrine of the Church," he wrote, "has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice ... [I]f the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well. Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfil its proper economic function."
Benedict's encyclical received at best passing mention in the western media. If there are "firsts" here it is rather in the fact that the media has finally bothered to pay attention.
This is not to say that Pope Francis has not said anything of note. It is to say, rather, that he has only reiterated what the Church has always said, although he has done so in blunt language suited for the times.
The Church's doctrine on wealth and its creation has consistently sought the greater good of the community with emphasis on the needs of the poor. It decried the pursuit of wealth well before that pursuit got exalted into an economic theory.
"God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you, and from him you take what is enough for you. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess superfluities, you possess what belongs to others. . . . You give bread to a hungry person; but it would be better were no one hungry, and you could give it to no one. You clothe the naked person; would that all were clothed and this necessity did not exist. (St. Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 147, 12; Tractate 1 John 8,8.)
In so saying, Saint Augustine (354-430), as Jesus, hearkened back to the Jewish prophetic tradition of concern for the weak and dispossessed. This tradition was unique, inasmuch as economic injustice did not appear as a theme in Helleno-Roman literature. The doctrinal and practical divergence which arose with the Jews was that Jews reserved these admonitions for themselves whereas Christians extended the message to the peoples of the earth.
The Christian message is something like the dual cones of an hour glass, going from great to small and from small back to great: As God loves you so love one another; as you want for yourself, so do unto all others.
Absolutely nothing has changed in this doctrinal and practical teaching, although the Church has adjusted its expression in differing circumstances and even though the Church, both in its institutional and individual aspects, has often failed wretchedly in its application.
The pope's exhortation, entitled The Joy of the Gospel, is the latest iteration of the Christian mission in the world. What the liberal media has ignored is that the pope's exhortation is about doctrine and practice, faith and works, as inseverable aspects of the same coin which must be rendered unto God.
What we would like to do, as summarily as possible, is to contextualize the pope's economic points within the Church's larger social and moral teaching. No one really needs the pope to point out that an unregulated market does not work. The only people who adhere to the unmitigated nonsense of a "free market" are utter morons or shameless predators who richly deserve to be broken slowly on the wheel.
Nor need we look to theologians for a mechanical solution to the breakdown in the economic engine. The Church has always stated that technical solutions are the proper province of technicians. What the Church does offer is a modus vivendi -- a social habit -- which prevents any socio-economic mechanism from being misused or misdirected. Both Francis and Benedict have called a "time out" not just on economic liberalism but on the entire construct of liberal rationalism which underlies the Reformation, the so-called "Enlightenment" and capitalism.
The inextricable connection between economic, social and political liberalism is nothing new. But as the poisonous seed bears increasingly rotten fruit it becomes more urgent to focus on the root cause of the present social, economic and environmental dysfunction which is devouring everything.
In the Church's view, this dysfunction is the result of a dichotomy between public and private morality which seized the Western World in the past 500 years and which began with Martin Luther's adamant assertion that "justification" for one's existence arose through faith alone without any necessity of good works. At the same time, rationalists, such as Francis Bacon, denied the utility of faith, reposing hope in the progress of empirical reason. These two revolutionary premises gave rise to a dichotomy between subjective and objective realities, between form and function, between embellishment and workability.
Luther effected a radical departure in our mode of being. In classical Greece, the word liturgy referred to public works of various sorts -- from military outfitting to funding religious festivals -- undertaken by the wealthy for the community. These "people-works" were a species of ad-hoc taxation based on the idea that the rich had a duty to the city state which had nurtured them.
In the Early Church, this liturgy was democratised. An offertory of goods for the poor was part of the original koinonia or "communion," meaning joint participation and sharing. "Generosity gives proof of our gratitude ... This public service does more than supply the needs of the saints; it yields a rich harvest of thanksgiving in the name of the Lord." (2 Cor. 9:12-13.) In the Sixth Century, Saint Benedict extended the concept of "communion" so as to encompass a way of life which united work, charity and prayer in a seamless whole. His rule was distilled in the motto ora et labora.
Protestantism effected a schism between "ora" and "labora" which was ideologically necessary for the free market. This is not to say that Protestants did not undertake charities. But by relegating works unessential to faith, they rendered faith irrelevant to works. The free market could do its thing while free churches did their own separate and apart thing.
The Invisible Hand is simply the economic correlative of Calvinism's predestinarian god. For the market as for individuals, for profit as for grace, God does and will guide everything for a greater good we cannot possible comprehend.
By the same token, "works" -- that is, the entire compass of material and pragmatic considerations -- became the sole province of the rational sciences be they physics, biology, sociology, pyschology or business. As Luther had changed our mode of being, Bacon altered our mode of thinking. Empirical proof was its own justification. "Does it work?" became the sufficient criterion. The rest was "optional poetry" -- if you went in for that sort of stuff.
This dual revolution was summarily distilled by the Twentieth Century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Although the full implications of the protestant and rationalist revolutions did not emerge until the Enlightenment, both rested on the foundation of Liberalism -- freedom of conscience, of thought, of experiment, of trade.
Today, we accept this premise without pause or blush and regard liberalism as natural and self-evident. But while freedom of thought and action might be good, freedom from accountability -- ir-responsibility -- is not. It is the very nature of liberalism that it cannot provide a singular and constant referrent; rather, its nature is continual and fluid change.
Justice Brandeis' famous remark about testing truth in the "market place of ideas" represented the ultimate fetishisation of liberalism. It simply assumed that an invisible hand (in the form of an irresponsible consensus) would guide the emergence of "whatever is truest and best."
In tandem, the notion that Man is the measure of all things found its ultimate reductionism in the individualism of man as the measure of everything -- what Alexis de Tocqueville scored as the single most salient characteristic of Anglo-American society.
Those in the press who are heartily applauding Pope Francis' "exhortation" accept these liberal premises tacitly and by default. But the Church has always rejected such a fundamentally fractional and irresponsible attitude. The Church's position was and remains that faith and works are correlatives neither of which can exist without the other or independently of community.
The core assertion of liberalism was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Libertas (1888). It was condemned again by Pope Benedict, in Spe Salvi, within a broader critique of rationalism,
Although Leo XIII had framed his criticism of liberalism within the Thomistic dichotomy between natural and divine law, Benedict XVI, attacked the Enlightenment on its own terms taking explicit swipes at Francis Bacon and Immanuel Kant. (Op cit, supra.)
Benedict went on to criticise Marxism -- not because of Engels' trenchant description of the "dreadful living conditions" of the working class and not because of the "great analytical skill" with which Marx critiqued capitalism and or prescribed "the means for radical change" -- but because of his tacit acceptance of Baconian and Kantian rationalist premise.
From Leo to Benedict the Church has contextualised economic issues within a larger theological framework and has criticised an exclusive reliance on "reason" and "freedom" as productive of its own "pathologies." It is within this trajectory that Pope Francis should be understood when he states,
In so saying, Francis concisely summarised a cluster of related issues and reiterated the Church's rejection of theological and economic individualism.
The Church rejects the notion that faith is merely an "interior attitude" or subjective "disposition." (Spe Salvi § 7.) "Salvation," Pope Benedict said, "has always been considered a 'social' reality." (Spe Salvi § 14) In other words, faith is communitarian and the "habit" or "substance" of faith can only arise within community.
"Such a community," Pope Francis says, "has an endless desire to show mercy, the fruit of its own experience of the power of the Father’s infinite mercy." As God for us so each of us for one another.
Thus, the core of Pope Francis' "exhortation" was not merely a critique of free-market capitalism, but a critique of the those tenets of Enlightenment Liberalism which are grounded in the individual pursuit of happiness (and profit) as "God gives him the light to see right."
"Society," Francis said, "needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it." The "inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer peoples" needs to be replaced by a spirit of solidarity and this "presumes the creation of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few."
In so saying, Francis echoed his predecessor's assertion that "authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or 'after' it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman."
In rejecting the dichotomy between faith and works as an anti-social error, Benedict and Francis also implicitly reject our atomised concept of society. For them, as for St. Benedict, life is not complete at any point unless penetrated with prayer the first intonation of which is to displace self in favour of others. The Church does not deny individuality, but asserts that it has true meaning only as nourished by and subservient to the whole.
What Francis has said is not just that our economy is sick but that our entire concept of societas -- of community -- is sick. We are oriented inward on ourselves, our improvement, our self-maximization and our consumption, where we should be oriented outward toward service as servi servorum dei
At the same time Francis was not simply internalising a social issue as if economic injustice were were capable of being rectified soley by personal attitudinal adjustments.
The "progressive" but basically liberal-minded descendants of the 16th century rationalist reformers deny the essentiality of faith while focusing solely on social justice, as enlightened solely by the empiricism of their personal experience and taste. They want to enlist those material aspects of the Pope's exhortation while ignoring his greater spiritual orientation. Such a bifurcated approach will lead nowhere because the present situation is the inexorable result of the bifurcation to begin with.
Whether the Church has a workable liturgeia to offer in place of the free market is another matter.
Protestantism effected a schism between "ora" and "labora" which was ideologically necessary for the free market. This is not to say that Protestants did not undertake charities. But by relegating works unessential to faith, they rendered faith irrelevant to works. The free market could do its thing while free churches did their own separate and apart thing.
The Invisible Hand is simply the economic correlative of Calvinism's predestinarian god. For the market as for individuals, for profit as for grace, God does and will guide everything for a greater good we cannot possible comprehend.
By the same token, "works" -- that is, the entire compass of material and pragmatic considerations -- became the sole province of the rational sciences be they physics, biology, sociology, pyschology or business. As Luther had changed our mode of being, Bacon altered our mode of thinking. Empirical proof was its own justification. "Does it work?" became the sufficient criterion. The rest was "optional poetry" -- if you went in for that sort of stuff.
"[W]whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed (as happens... where 'faith' and 'knowledge' are constructed as opposites), then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of 'knowledge', and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics. The result is ... a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated .... (Love Alone, pp. 114-15).
Today, we accept this premise without pause or blush and regard liberalism as natural and self-evident. But while freedom of thought and action might be good, freedom from accountability -- ir-responsibility -- is not. It is the very nature of liberalism that it cannot provide a singular and constant referrent; rather, its nature is continual and fluid change.
Justice Brandeis' famous remark about testing truth in the "market place of ideas" represented the ultimate fetishisation of liberalism. It simply assumed that an invisible hand (in the form of an irresponsible consensus) would guide the emergence of "whatever is truest and best."
In tandem, the notion that Man is the measure of all things found its ultimate reductionism in the individualism of man as the measure of everything -- what Alexis de Tocqueville scored as the single most salient characteristic of Anglo-American society.
Those in the press who are heartily applauding Pope Francis' "exhortation" accept these liberal premises tacitly and by default. But the Church has always rejected such a fundamentally fractional and irresponsible attitude. The Church's position was and remains that faith and works are correlatives neither of which can exist without the other or independently of community.
The core assertion of liberalism was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Libertas (1888). It was condemned again by Pope Benedict, in Spe Salvi, within a broader critique of rationalism,
"How could the idea have developed that Jesus's message is narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of the “salvation of the soul” as a flight from responsibility for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others? In order to find an answer to this we must take a look at the foundations of the modern age ... [and its] new correlation between science and praxis.... It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level—that of purely private and other-worldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. ... As the ideology of progress developed further, joy at visible advances in human potential remained a continuing confirmation of faith in progress as such. ... [T]wo categories become increasingly central to the idea of progress: reason and freedom. [pursuant to which] which man becomes more and more fully himself. In both concepts—freedom and reason—there is a political aspect. .... Reason and freedom seem to guarantee by themselves, by virtue of their intrinsic goodness, a new and perfect human community. (Spe Salvi, §§ 16-18.)
Although Leo XIII had framed his criticism of liberalism within the Thomistic dichotomy between natural and divine law, Benedict XVI, attacked the Enlightenment on its own terms taking explicit swipes at Francis Bacon and Immanuel Kant. (Op cit, supra.)
Benedict went on to criticise Marxism -- not because of Engels' trenchant description of the "dreadful living conditions" of the working class and not because of the "great analytical skill" with which Marx critiqued capitalism and or prescribed "the means for radical change" -- but because of his tacit acceptance of Baconian and Kantian rationalist premise.
"The nineteenth century... continued to consider reason and freedom as the guiding stars to be followed along the path of hope. .... Progress... no longer comes simply from science but from ... a scientifically conceived politics that recognizes the structure of history and society and thus points out the road towards revolution, towards all-encompassing change ... [Marx] simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realised ... His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment." (Spe Salvi, §§ 20-21.)
From Leo to Benedict the Church has contextualised economic issues within a larger theological framework and has criticised an exclusive reliance on "reason" and "freedom" as productive of its own "pathologies." It is within this trajectory that Pope Francis should be understood when he states,
"God, in Christ, redeems not only the individual person, but also the social relations existing between men. ... It follows that Christian conversion demands reviewing especially those areas and aspects of life “related to the social order and the pursuit of the common good”.
In so saying, Francis concisely summarised a cluster of related issues and reiterated the Church's rejection of theological and economic individualism.
The Church rejects the notion that faith is merely an "interior attitude" or subjective "disposition." (Spe Salvi § 7.) "Salvation," Pope Benedict said, "has always been considered a 'social' reality." (Spe Salvi § 14) In other words, faith is communitarian and the "habit" or "substance" of faith can only arise within community.
"Such a community," Pope Francis says, "has an endless desire to show mercy, the fruit of its own experience of the power of the Father’s infinite mercy." As God for us so each of us for one another.
Thus, the core of Pope Francis' "exhortation" was not merely a critique of free-market capitalism, but a critique of the those tenets of Enlightenment Liberalism which are grounded in the individual pursuit of happiness (and profit) as "God gives him the light to see right."
"Society," Francis said, "needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it." The "inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer peoples" needs to be replaced by a spirit of solidarity and this "presumes the creation of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few."
In so saying, Francis echoed his predecessor's assertion that "authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or 'after' it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman."
In rejecting the dichotomy between faith and works as an anti-social error, Benedict and Francis also implicitly reject our atomised concept of society. For them, as for St. Benedict, life is not complete at any point unless penetrated with prayer the first intonation of which is to displace self in favour of others. The Church does not deny individuality, but asserts that it has true meaning only as nourished by and subservient to the whole.
What Francis has said is not just that our economy is sick but that our entire concept of societas -- of community -- is sick. We are oriented inward on ourselves, our improvement, our self-maximization and our consumption, where we should be oriented outward toward service as servi servorum dei
At the same time Francis was not simply internalising a social issue as if economic injustice were were capable of being rectified soley by personal attitudinal adjustments.
“A society becomes alienated [from itself] when its forms of social organisation, production and consumption make it more difficult to offer the gift of self and to establish solidarity between people. .... The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, ... As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality...."In other words, part of our attitudinal adjustment, part of our "prayer", must be to lay hands on the structural problem and craft a different socio-economic mechanism.
The "progressive" but basically liberal-minded descendants of the 16th century rationalist reformers deny the essentiality of faith while focusing solely on social justice, as enlightened solely by the empiricism of their personal experience and taste. They want to enlist those material aspects of the Pope's exhortation while ignoring his greater spiritual orientation. Such a bifurcated approach will lead nowhere because the present situation is the inexorable result of the bifurcation to begin with.
Whether the Church has a workable liturgeia to offer in place of the free market is another matter.
~oOo~
"I know both those guys [Dimon and Blankfein]; they are very savvy businessmen. I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”
©Woodchip Gazette, 2013
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