Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is

by Michael Novak

  The Catholic left (in the United States, at least) has expressed substantive agreement with Centesimus Annus even while showing considerable annoyance that the neoconservatives like it more than they. The left sees the poor and the vulnerable as passive, awaiting the ministrations of the state. The right and the center see the poor as capable, creative, and active. The left clings to its appeals to action by the state; it has become conservative in rhetoric, looking backward. The center and the right long for a new beginning, and sound positively radical in their demand for civil society, rather than the state, as their main hope for the future. Those in the center and on the right tend to emphasize all the encyclical’s appeals to civil society; those on the left (but not so much as before) tend to emphasize the state. This debate among left, center, and right—besides being unavoidably built into the tripartite system—is altogether healthy.

  Paul Adams reminds me that since, though not necessarily because of, Centesimus Annus, there has been much emphasis in some fields of social work on “empowerment.” This term points to the practice of demanding assistance from government when strictly necessary, yes, but also recognizing that it is better to enable people to tap into their own wisdom, creativity, and initiative. See, for example, the reaction against deficit and needs-focused approaches to community development that only do things for the poor. More often praised among practitioners nowadays is Asset-Based Community Development. From hard experience, social workers have come to recommend strategies that build up civil society and increase local initiative. They stress the danger of the “doing-for” approaches of state or private charities. Too often “help” from outside sets communities back by inducing dependency and passivity. How best to help the poor, in practice? The answer is obviously complex!

  Having always resented such moral imperialism as Paul Tillich’s “Every serious Christian must be a socialist,” and the British left’s “Christianity is the religion of which socialism is the practice,” I would by no means support the sentiment, “Every serious Christian must be a democratic capitalist,” or “Christianity is the religion of which democratic capitalism is the practice.” As Centesimus Annus insists, the Catholic Church “has no models to present,” and, indeed, has powerful reasons to criticize many abuses and wrongs in democratic capitalist societies.47 The pope rightly insists that no worldly system can ever claim to be the Kingdom of God. What good would a Church be if it didn’t constantly criticize the City of Man in the light of the City of God, sub specie aeternitatis? Indeed, as Thomas Pangle reports in his study of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, such an appeal to the viewpoint of immortality and eternal life is the indispensable contribution of religion to the democratic experiment.48

  The dread menace of communism, which in the Soviet Union alone took and blighted millions of lives, has been defeated. The ideology of socialism (at least as an economic idea) has been discredited, except among those whose investment in it has been too heavy to surrender quickly. In the long run of history, socialist economics will appear to have been a distraction. Our descendants may well wonder how so many of us, at least for so long a part of our lives, could have been taken in by it. Why didn’t we heed Leo XIII’s predictions about its futility and its immense damage to humanity? The death of socialism gives us an opportunity to think in fresh ways and to begin again with a new burst of social creativity. To have established that perspective, and to have set before us the immense challenge to create something much better than anything now available, is the true achievement of Centesimus Annus.

  [CHAPTER 12]

  Benedict XVI and Caritas in Veritate

  IT SEEMS TO PAUL ADAMS AND ME THAT CATHOLIC SOCIAL thought is ill served by the sort of proof-texting people do to show that it is whatever they want it to be. The major theme of Catholic social thought is the nexus of the human person, her initiative and creativity, as linked (from Leo XIII on) to the central and vital role of associations and, more broadly, all of civil society.

  John Paul II wisely warns that Catholic social thought is a work in progress. To borrow Newman’s metaphor, it is like a squad making its way up a mountain on a trail that sometimes switchbacks left and then right, back and forth, on its climb upward. This very yin and yang creates factions. For example, some stress liberty, initiative, risk, creativity, and an experimental/empirical conviction. Others, distrusting free persons always to do the right thing, tend to stress the need for government oversight and action. They fear the abuses of personal liberty. These latter tend to see Anglo-American “liberalism” and “individualism” as great evils. They trust only a more European and Latin solidarity that relies heavily on the state.

  Centesimus Annus is the most developed expression of Catholic social thought so far, in one view, but others see Caritas in Veritate (2009) or even Populorum Progressio (1967) as restoring a more familiar perspective. I think it is best to recognize that Catholic social thought is not now—and maybe never should be—a fully coherent and consistent body of teaching, framed like a book of logic in “eternal” principles. True enough, in Catholic circles more than in secular or Protestant circles, enormous care is taken to agree (or at least be consistent) with papal predecessors. Moreover, different factions among Catholics tend to pick the starting place that best fits with the argument they want to make. It is perhaps inevitable that those on the left like to emphasize Populorum Progressio, whereas those less state-inclined tend to find Centesimus Annus much more empirically minded and, on the whole, wiser.

  To some extent, Benedict XVI continued in the line of development begun by John Paul II, rooted in a new synthesis of Thomistic thought and contemporary phenomenological analysis. Phenomenology introduces a more carefully articulated vision of human subjectivity and interiority to Thomism, which enabled Wojtyła to add many profound insights into the human subject. Cardinal Ratzinger, manifestly, was always more Augustinian in his approach to theology than most theologians of the past century, who have tended more to follow Saint Thomas than Saint Augustine. One should not forget that the young Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift was a study of Saint Bonaventure, the Franciscan student of Augustine, more a theologian of the heart and the human subject than Saint Thomas, who was a theologian preeminently (but not solely) of the mind, as is suggested in his sobriquet the Angelic Doctor.

  In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI stressed that the Church should be understood neither as holding a particular ideology about political economy nor as imposing specific practical solutions on individual countries or regions. He did not intend to pronounce upon the disagreements about political economy among Catholics or others. On the contrary, his aim was to put questions of political economy in a larger theological and philosophical context, dealing with such questions as the role of caritas in theology, and in philosophy such questions as sound concepts of the common good, the human person, and human community.

  Moreover, in his concrete discussions about current affairs, almost every time Benedict seemed to give a point to the left, rooted usually in Populorum Progressio, he took it back or qualified it by drawing on lessons learned between 1967 and 1991, as recorded in Centesimus Annus. His practice followed his intention. He lets both horses run and does not himself choose to side with either one.

  In some ways, this openness seems baffling to many readers, making this particular piece of Benedict XVI’s writing come across as uncharacteristically waffly and opaque. It often seems to go in two directions at once. Some sentences are almost impossible to parse in practical terms: What on earth does that mean in practice?

  This refusal to indulge in ideology has a great strength that compensates for the above-mentioned weakness. Its strength is that it raises the mind to other dimensions of the truth, and avoids squabbles that belong more to the City of Man than to the City of God.

  For instance, this higher perspective enables Benedict to link the gospel of life to the social gospel. That makes immense practical sense. For instance, in the U
nited States more than 50 million children have been aborted since 1973. If those girls and boys had been allowed to live, millions of them would now be in the workforce, helping with their social security taxes to close the deficits in our programs for the elderly. Policies regarding the beginning of life profoundly affect the welfare state as the average age of the population rises. Besides, the elderly require the heaviest medical expenditures in any population. Not only do they require more medical care for more ailments, but the new technologies and pharmaceuticals steadily coming to market are ever more expensive—and aging tends to last for many more years now than it used to. Thus high abortion rates deeply set back the medical prospects of the elderly.

  Even more swiftly than the United States, Europe, with its failure to keep population up to a level of even bare replacement, is condemning its welfare state to an accelerating implosion due to costs.

  HERE IS ONE of my favorite practical passages in Caritas in Veritate, which reports some of the most important gains for Catholic social thought over the past 120 years. Sadly, though, its language unrolls as though it was written by a committee, and falls on the ear more like bureaucratic jargon than like Benedict’s usually profound and warm style:

  By considering reciprocity as the heart of what it is to be a human being, subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state. It is able to take account both of the manifold articulation of plans—and therefore of the plurality of subjects—as well as the coordination of those plans. Hence the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development. In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice.1

  Within this section, and several other places in the encyclical, a pattern begins to emerge whereby Benedict XVI makes a point important to the political/economic center-left, and then qualifies it in terms important to the political/economic center-right.

  For example, regarding his concern to help the poor, the pope first advises that “more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, thus respecting the obligations that the international community has undertaken in this regard.” This recommendation will arouse students of the great British expert on foreign assistance, Lord Peter Bauer, who thoroughly documented the record of damage caused by foreign assistance. As if recognizing that objection, Benedict immediately puts his suggestion back within the limits of subsidiarity and personal accountability: “One way of doing so is by reviewing their internal social assistance and welfare policies, applying the principle of subsidiarity and creating better integrated welfare systems, with the active participation of private individuals and civil society.”2 Still, these are all steps that nations counting on foreign assistance are highly unlikely to take. Counting on foreign assistance is easier than self-reform.

  As for global government, we see Benedict XVI again call for a world political authority:

  To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago.

  But he is quick to define this authority in terms of restraint and of adherence to the core principles of Catholic social thought:

  Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth.3

  For myself, I love best Benedict’s starting point in caritas. When I was a young man, I wanted to write a book about the centrality of God’s unique form of love, called caritas (rather than the more common, down-to-earth amor) in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. I loved his little treatise on charity (the poor English translation of caritas) and often taught seminars on it.

  I have been trying to steer Catholic social teaching in this direction—beginning with my own thinking—for a long time. So watching Benedict XVI write about caritas so beautifully has brought me immense satisfaction.

  In all candor, however, if we hold each sentence of Caritas in Veritate up to analysis in the light of empirical truth about events in the field of political economy since 1967, we will find that it is not nearly so full in its veritas as in its caritas.

  For instance, the benefits the poor gained through the spread of economic enterprise and markets (“capitalism” is for many too unpleasant a word to use) should be more resoundingly acknowledged. In 1970, for instance, the mortality age of men and women in Bangladesh was 44.6 years old, but by 2005 it had risen to 63. Think what joy and vigor such increased longevity means to individual families.

  Similarly, the infant mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) in Bangladesh in 1970 was 152, or 15.2 percent. By 2005 this average had been brought down to just 57.2, or a little less than 6 percent. Again, what pain this lifts from ordinary mothers and fathers, and what joy it brings. There is surely more to do to raise health standards for Bangladesh. But such progress in just thirty years is unprecedented in world history.

  Anyone with experience knows that humans do not live by economics alone. The most successful people in business today are the first to tell you that business alone, despite its nobility and satisfactions, is not sufficient. They need time to smell the roses—they need leisure, quiet, contemplation, thought, and prayer. And they also want, mightily, to contribute to the well-being of others, especially the poor. They welcome well-informed practical guidance from their spiritual leaders, and have been getting far too little of it down the years. Caritas in Veritate gives reason to believe that Benedict XVI has known all this, and meant to rectify it.

  [CHAPTER 13]

  Pope Francis on Unreformed Capitalism

  READING THE ACTUAL TEXT OF THE 2014 APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION Evangelii Gaudium by Pope Francis, after reading the wildly misleading analyses of it by The Guardian and Reuters, I was at first dismayed by how seemingly partisan and empirically unfounded were five or six of its sentences.

  Later, rereading the exhortation in full in its English translation, and attempting to see it through the eyes of the current professor-bishop-pope who grew up in Argentina, I began to have more sympathy for the phrases used by Pope Francis. For one thing, when it comes to the Third World and to South America in particular, the second poorest continent on earth, the pope knows whereof he speaks. For another, he is only picking up a noteworthy theme highlighted in John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus. After distinguishing among good forms of capitalism and bad ones, John Paul II writes very severely about a bad form of capitalism still weighing down the poor in many countries of the world. He points to countries kept outside “the sphere of economic and human development”1 in which the more fortunate forge ahead. The lack of trade and communication, and the obstacles to the transfer of knowledge and skills, bring about the marginalization of many millions outside the mainstream of development. I quote here at length John Paul II’s poignant description of this reality:

  The fact is that many people, perhaps the majority today, do not have the means which would enable them to take their place in an effective and humanly dignified way within a productive system in which work is truly central. They have no possibil
ity of acquiring the basic knowledge which would enable them to express their creativity and develop their potential. They have no way of entering the network of knowledge and intercommunication which would enable them to see their qualities appreciated and utilized. Thus, if not actually exploited, they are to a great extent marginalized; economic development takes place over their heads, so to speak, when it does not actually reduce the already narrow scope of their old subsistence economies. They are unable to compete against the goods which are produced in ways which are new and which properly respond to needs, needs which they had previously been accustomed to meeting through traditional forms of organization. Allured by the dazzle of an opulence which is beyond their reach, and at the same time driven by necessity, these people crowd the cities of the Third World where they are often without cultural roots, and where they are exposed to situations of violent uncertainty, without the possibility of becoming integrated. Their dignity is not acknowledged in any real way, and sometimes there are even attempts to eliminate them from history through coercive forms of demographic control which are contrary to human dignity.

  Many other people, while not completely marginalized, live in situations in which the struggle for a bare minimum is uppermost. These are situations in which the rules of the earliest period of capitalism still flourish in conditions of “ruthlessness” in no way inferior to the darkest moments of the first phase of industrialization. In other cases the land is still the central element in the economic process, but those who cultivate it are excluded from ownership and are reduced to a state of quasi-servitude. In these cases, it is still possible today, as in the days of Rerum novarum, to speak of inhuman exploitation. In spite of the great changes which have taken place in the more advanced societies, the human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people are far from disappearing. In fact, for the poor, to the lack of material goods has been added a lack of knowledge and training which prevents them from escaping their state of humiliating subjection.2