The politics of theology

Can Catholic Social Teaching Unite a Divided America?

The Politics of the Theology of Catholic Social Teaching

Wall Street Journal

February 5, 2021

[Text excerpts follow, with comments/analysis in italics.]

Progressive Catholics see much of Mr. Biden’s agenda, in areas such as migration, race relations, economic inequality and the environment, as the church’s social teaching in action. “President Biden has a natural disposition to compassion, but Catholic social teaching in those areas, particularly with the poor and those who are victimized in various ways, provides a framework for that compassion,” Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, one of the leading liberals in the U.S. church, said in an interview.

• Fails to recognize role of capitalism and policies of the right in lifting billions out of absolute poverty.

• Unable to reconcile property rights with universal destination or, for that matter, with unlimited immigration.

“In a society with very few strong moral paradigms left, Catholic social thought is a well-organized tradition that has something for both left and right,” said Adrian Vermeule, a conservative professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. “Catholicism, despite or because of our polarized age, is becoming something like an organizing common language for a great deal of American public life.”

Moral authority of the church undermined and, especially at its highest levels, seriously questioned by pedophilia, coverup, financial scandals, bankruptcies. The Catholic Church looks to many more like the stereotypic caricature of the Trump organization.

Michael Joseph Bransfield (born September 8, 1943) is a disgraced former American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia from 2005 to 2018.

After Bransfield retired as diocesan bishop in 2018, a church investigation led by Archbishop William E. Lori and five lay experts examined "multiple allegations of sexual harassment of adults and financial improprieties" leveled against Bransfield.[1] The report found that the accusations of sexual harassment were credible[2] and detailed extravagant spending by Bransfield.[3] In July 2019, Pope Francis banned Bransfield from residing in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and ordered that he was not to “preside or to participate anywhere in any public celebration of the Liturgy,"[4] thus barring him from engaging in public ministry within the Catholic Church.[5] Church leaders—some of whom had previously received gifts from Bransfield—were criticized for failing to respond to initial complains concerning Bransfield and for later weakening restitution requirements.

Theodore Edgar McCarrick (born July 7, 1930) is an American former cardinal and bishop of the Catholic Church. Ordained in 1958, he became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977, then became bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he was the Archbishop of Newark. He was created a cardinal in February 2001 and served as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. Following credible allegations of repeated sexual misconduct towards children and seminarians, he was removed from public ministry in June 2018, became the first cardinal to resign from the College of Cardinals because of claims of sexual abuse in July 2018,[1] and was laicized in February 2019.[2] Several honors he had been awarded, such as honorary degrees, were rescinded.

The nature and scope of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and deacons in the United States 1950-2002 also became an effort by some progressives to defend charges of rampant homosexuality in the church by claiming that homosexual priests were less likely to abuse minors than were other priests, which uses the less guilty defense in a most disingenuous manner.

There may be significant overlap between Catholic Social Teaching and Joe Biden’s platform, policies and practices, but there is also a willingness by the Catholic Church leaders to forget or even to endorse their longstanding moral positions on gay marriage, infidelity, divorce (Jill Biden divorced her first husband, reportedly after having an extramarital relationship with Joe while she was married and they were married by a Catholic priest yet not in a church), drug abuse and the family, as these matters of subsidiarity demonstrate the problem with a government providing people with the resources and incentives to make poor and often immoral choices.

Two of the central concepts of Catholic social teaching are solidarity and subsidiarity. Both have been influential beyond Catholic circles, including in European Union law, which considers them key principles. Pope John Paul II defined solidarity as “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.” The second concept, subsidiarity, is generally understood as the principle that social and political activities should be organized insofar as possible at the local level.

• Any absolute, objective measure of the ‘common good’ is impossible without attention to Pareto Efficiency and Say’s Law of Markets. Concepts like ‘universal’ as in ‘universal destination,’ or ‘common’ as in ‘common good’ or ‘neighbor’ as in ‘love your neighbor,’ tend to lose any practical meaning once applied. Who or what is the ‘common good’ for the US president? Is it for his supporters, and allowing vengeance on his opponents? Is it for our Canadian neighbors?

• What Is Say's Law of Markets? Say's Law of Markets comes from chapter XV, "Of the Demand or Market for Products" of French economist Jean-Baptiste Say's 1803 book, Treatise on Political Economy. It is a classical economic theory that says that the income generated by past production and sale of goods is the source of spending that creates demand to purchase current production. Modern economists have developed varying views and alternative versions of Say's Law.

• What Is Pareto Efficiency? Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is an economic state where resources cannot be reallocated to make one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off. Pareto efficiency implies that resources are allocated in the most economically efficient manner, but does not imply equality or fairness. An economy is said to be in a Pareto optimum state when no economic changes can make one individual better off without making at least one other individual worse off.

While giving very modest acknowledgement to capitalism, Catholic Church leaders never seem to acknowledge the people lifted out of poverty due primarily to policy, as no one has ever escaped poverty with a handout, be it from the government, a private donor, or a church parishioner. Worse, Church leaders seem unaware of the reality of trade-offs in economics, namely the forsaking for the shared misery of socialism for the unevenly shared prosperity of capitalism. Income and wealth inequality are ‘the price you pay’ for overall prosperity, per the Pareto efficiency principle. Even St Thomas Aquinas recognized envy of another’s good fortune as a sin, not a moral problem to be addressed.