Be Careful What You Ask For
A busy week here in Rome. In one week, I’ve been privileged to venerate: the bones of St. Agnes, relics of the Passion (the True Cross, the scourging post, nails and Crown of Thorns), the Sacred Steps from the palace of Pontius Pilate, and the remains of St. Paul the Apostle. All this, while writing freelance policy papers on immigration, meeting with students, editing a college guide, and keeping up with you, my dear readers.
Oh yes, I got to see, encased in a gold and glass reliquary, the finger of doubting Thomas—legend tells, the very finger he thrust into the wounds of Our Lord. It was brown and rather the worse for wear, and bore an inscription in Latin which I couldn’t make out. But I bet it said something like “Be careful what you ask for....”
I took the survival of this relic as a warning against undue skepticism. Ask the wrong question and who knows—two thousand years from now, your tongue might be encased in glass for American pilgrims to squint at. And today I’m visiting the Holy Office at the Vatican, where I’m taking along inscribed copies of each of my Bad Catholic’s books—for a monsignor who will (I’m promised) hand them to the pope. So if a decree of excommunication comes out in the next couple months, you will know why.
Hence, just a brief note before a short weekend of long walks through Trastevere: I’ve just read a really marvelous book, which I can’t recommend too highly: Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies—And Why They Disappeared, by the family historian Allan C. Carlson.
The book is a quick and informative read, and a poignant one; it carries on Carlson’s running theme (also covered in his previous The American Way) of the attempt in the 20th century to raise the standard of the family as the basic unit of society—rather than the individual, the race, the Party or social class. In one chapter, Carlson does what I’ve never seen done before: He lays out the actual, positive program which was championed by “distributist” thinkers Chesterton and Belloc, which was intended to rescue the market economy—during a decade when either fascism, socialism, or Communism seemed inevitable to most—by “distributing” the means of production more widely throughout society. The goal was to reduce the number of men forced to labor for wages as employees, and build up the percentage of yeoman farmers, small business owners, craftsmen and entrepreneurs. Grounded in the perceptive writings of Leo XIII and Pius IX, this program was never quite as Quixotic as it has been made out to be by unsympathetic historians. Carlson shows how many of the more benevolent actions of the State in the U.S. and Europe—for instance, loans and policies designed to increase the number of homeowners rather than renters—were inspired by Distributism. Which is something I never knew....
Carlson also goes through a number of other worthy, if truncated political movements intended to dethrone the sovereign individual and restrain the struggle of social classes, including the high-minded “peasant” parties that flourished briefly in interwar Europe, which strove to empower the vast majority of their citizens who were independent farmers. The failure of these parties—they just weren’t ruthless enough—left the field open successively to fascism, and after the war, Communism.
In Scandinavia and America, initiatives to preserve the family took different forms—primarily political and labor movements that promoted the “family wage”—intended to guarantee working men a wage sufficient that their wives could bear and rear families. With the rise of feminism and bureaucratic mandates of “equal pay,” such programs were doomed, with results we can see today: empty cradles, across two continents.
Most poignant of all, however, is Carlson’s account of the rise and fall of Christian Democracy in Western Europe. Created by heroes who’d resisted Nazism—even in 1940, when Communists were still cooperating with the Gestapo at Stalin’s orders, and betraying partisans—these idealistic movements had their moment of glory. In the post-war period, they helped fend off the resurgent Communist parties in France and Italy, and led the “economic miracle” in West Germany, rebuilding a shattered continent on Christian principles updated by the study of economics and infused with a genuine spirit of ecumenism and liberty.
But all that went to Hell in 1968—which would require a book unto itself. But I have my own theory about why Western Europe has slid so completely into secularism: Among other factors, the very government programs which Christians supported in the name of “security” and “social justice” helped remove one of the most important props of religious practice: A healthy fear of want. In the absence of a really generous welfare state, the economic insecurity which most of us experience at various points in our lives encourages any number of virtues: thrift, prudence, planning, and even prayer. I know that I never prayed so much or so often in my life as when I (and all my colleagues) were expelled from a magazine in an editorial coup… the day after I’d rented a pricey Manhattan apartment. As I watched my savings dwindle, and mailed off resumes, and paced the floor among my still unopened boxes, I felt my pride and sense of self-sufficiency drain away—and followed my feet to the nearest church, nearly every day. There’s nothing quite so primal, my friends, than kneeling down at an abandoned Slovak parish to pray for money. Not for career guidance, or inspiration, or even forgiveness—for money to buy the next package of Ramen noodles. It focuses the mind, and reminds you of your absolute dependence on a Higher Power, I can tell you.
I remember thinking at the time: “If I could just go down to a government office, haggle with a bureaucrat, collect a stipend to which I felt somehow entitled, would I be praying now? Or sulking at the scantiness of my (all-provident) government’s check? The heading over to join some leftist street demonstration....” Indeed, I really think that the presence of a nanny state reduces the psychological need for a Father God. Which is why you can pretty much trace the decline of the birth rate and church attendance to the rise of what Belloc called the “Servile State.” Enacting the programs of Christian Democracy helped produce today’s Pagan Bureaucracy. Be careful what you ask for.
Comments
There is no “3rd Way”, there are only TWO ways: 1) free markets (colloquially refered to as “capitalism”; or 2) unfree markets (of which “communism” is the most popular moniker).
What we experience is “way” number two, “unfree markets”. We’ve been experiencing this for practically the whole of human history (I’m sure there have been a few, isolated, unintended instances of free markets; French fur trappers in 18th century Kentucky might be a good example).
Distributivism is all fine and good. I would prefer it over the communism (yes, we live under a communist regime, unfortunately) we currently experience.
However, TRUE free markets, the kind that would encourage the best out of humanity (which isn’t saying much, but it’s better than the worst that communism encourages) can only be achieved when every human being has an equal right to the natural resources of Earth. And NO right to anyone else’s labour or capital.
To take an example from modern, suburban America:
Wal*Mart wants to build a store in some town. In today’s economy, Wal*Mart buys the property from a private owner. That location was chosen because it is on a major highway. The land owner that sold the property to Wal*Mart has benefited from that highway, but didn’t pay for it’s construction, society did, in the way of taxes. Then who should get the money from the land sales? Free market justice tells us “society” deserves the money. Now, I don’t encourage that the money go into city government directly; but if that is what happens, it is up to the citizens to pressure city officials to spend the money wisely (pitchforks and torches have always worked well). What I would prefer is that money then be distributed, using some formula agreed upon by all, to every citizen of the town.
The advantages? It gives everyone equal access to land in order to farm, run a business, own a home, etc. It also discourages land speculation, thus bringing down that purchase price of land. Above all, it funds a city government fairly, but putting money in the coffers without taxation - when someone wants to purchase property, that money goes to the town, not the private land owner, who simply “owns” the land due to a government granted monopoly.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
There is no “3rd Way”, there are only TWO ways: 1) free markets (colloquially refered to as “capitalism”; or 2) unfree markets (of which “communism” is the most popular moniker).
This isn’t true. Check out yesterday’s Financial Times:
The fall of a financial model
“Recent changes in the world economy and financial markets mark the end of the present standard model of financial capitalism, built up over the last decade or so. In this model, financial stability is mainly based on the self-regulation of the financial sector, which alone assesses the risks produced by its financial innovations. . . .
The first concerns the significant, yet silent, return of governments to the economic playing field. Three of the five richest nations by total gross domestic product have become de facto neo-mercantilist, setting their sights on trade surpluses. China is keeping its currency artificially low in order to increase its trade surplus and lower its costs of production vis-a-vis competitor countries. Japan is pursuing government-oriented policies to bolster its position in high-technology markets. Finally, and to a lesser degree, Germany has been carrying out reforms to restore industrial competitiveness.”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Catholic social teaching is not some quaint byway of intellectual history. It is the force behind what is now the seventh largest business enterprise in Spain, the founder of which is under investigation in Rome for suspected sainthood:
http://www.mcc.es/ing/cooperativismo/expemcc/biografia.html
The Company of Works, affiliated with Communion and Liberation, is well known in Italy as a witness to the spirituality of work in the world.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
<<But all that went to Hell in 1968—which would require a book unto itself. But I have my own theory about why Western Europe has slid so completely into secularism: Among other factors, the very government programs which Christians supported in the name of “security” and “social justice” helped remove one of the most important props of religious practice: A healthy fear of want. >>
Interesting point.
The other interesting cause at work at that precise time was Vatican II, which eliminated the healthy fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom.
http://www.strobertbellarmine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=678
It isn’t fashionable to identify spiritual causes of spiritual maladies, but this one seems so obvious that it would take a true obscurantist to avoid.
In Our Lord and Our Lady,
John Lane.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
John,
Great article, once again. I found it very funny and quite relevant. I am a young college student who also works full-time to pay rent and bills, and there are so many times where it would seem so easy to take welfare-style checks, but instead i just spend conservatively, and indeed say my fare share of prayers. This highlights the moral and cultural argument against welfare, when most conservatives repeat the drone of its economic counterproductiveness.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Indeed, poverty is the way for spiritual enlightment,
as Saint Francis of Assissi showed.
But if you want to make a conservative critique of
welfare, you better not have it advanced by those
who are very visibly not embracing porverty for themselves
and seem secure that their own possessions will not
hinder their own spirituality.
In short, if you want others to embrace poverty, you
must preach by example. As Saint Francis did.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The other interesting cause at work at that precise time was Vatican II, which eliminated the healthy fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom.
Thanks to the Ecclesiastical Kerry (Mons. Lefevbre who voted for all the documents DURING the Council before he began to oppose them AFTER the Council) also eliminated was the healthy fear of schism.
Schism is the dead sacrament of the rad-trads.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I’m not embracing or recommending poverty--heaven forfend! Neither does the Church recommend it, except for the tiny segment of mankind called to the evangelical counsels (religious vows). But I AM saying that the embrace of a nanny state which removes even the POSSIBILITY of want is debilitating to family, community, personal virtue, and even a sense of dependency on God. That’s quite a different thing from wishing actual poverty on others in the hope of improving their spiritual situation.
Indeed, Catholic social teaching, by promoting the widespread ownership of the means of production, hopes to DIMINISH the likelihood of genuine material deprivation, and encourage self-sufficiency, prudence, responsibility, and all those other virtues which are so often and so wantonly labeled “Protestant.”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
<<Thanks to the Ecclesiastical Kerry (Mons. Lefevbre who voted for all the documents DURING the Council before he began to oppose them AFTER the Council) also eliminated was the healthy fear of schism. >>
I see that you have no response to the actual argument put.
As for this ad hominem, Lefebvre didn’t vote for all the documents - that is a factual error created by a young researcher in the early 1980s who didn’t know what he was looking at when he viewed the lists of signatures from V2 in the British Museum. He has since retracted his error, but unfortunately it took on a life of its own.
In any case, if you read “I Accuse the Council” you will find Lefebvre said things like this on the floor of the Council: “This pastoral Constitution is not pastoral, nor does it emanate from the Catholic Church. It does not feed Christian men with the Apostolic truth of the Gospels and, moreover, the Church has never spoken in this manner. We cannot listen to this voice, because it is not the voice of the Bride of Christ. This voice is not that of the Spirit of Christ. The voice of Christ, our Shepherd, we know. This voice we do not know. The clothing is that of the sheep. The voice is not the voice of the shepherd, but perhaps that of the wolf.”
So much for your disgusting parallel between Kerry and Lefebvre.
As for schism, the question is, from what? Joseph Ratzinger in Chile in 1998, “All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people.”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.