Author: Joe Anderson

  • Reading Pope Francis

    Reading Pope Francis

    Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to an Associated Press article about Pope Francis’ recent message for Lent.  The link is here and the article is on a relative basis not bad for something written about Pope Francis.  However, I then read Pope Francis’ own words and was reminded again of the inadvisability of reading about Pope Francis when it is so easy to read Pope Francis!

    The problem with reading about Pope Francis in the press lies in the reality that everything written there is presented through an ideological political left-right prism. This prism through which we tend to view almost every event and circumstance in America (and the West) can only warp the words of our Holy Father who calls each of us to re-examine the way we live our lives both as individuals and as members of society.

    As an example, the AP article states that “Francis has riled some conservative Americans for his denunciation of capitalism and trickle-down economic theory…”

     

    Before “conservative Americans” allow themselves to get too riled and before everyone else spends too much time basking in the warm fuzziness of the general absolution granted by the Associated Press, let us keep in mind that our Holy Father challenges ALL of us to use whatever economic clout we have to combat poverty and to promote justice.  So let none of us give himself a pass but rather let each of us engage in an economic examination of conscience:

    Do I spend each dollar thoughtfully, with the full realization that one dollar spent well is very possibly more effective than my vote in a national election?

     

    ·         To the greatest extent possible do I spend my dollars at businesses that seek to operate on a human scale with justice and moderation:

     

    o   Businesses run by folks who work hard, expect their employees to work hard and seek to treat all their constituents (managers, owners or shareholders, suppliers, employees, customers) with a balanced fairness.

     

    o   Businesses whose practices demonstrate their recognition of the equal dignity of all participants in the economy (and of those at the margins of or largely excluded from the economy).

     

    o   Businesses whose focus is to serve society by providing quality goods and services.

     

    o   Businesses that avoid the temptation to amass economic power.

     

    o   Business who let their work be their work and do not seek to use their economic power to bring about various social changes, particularly those detrimental to society (i.e. donations and other influence peddling aimed at destruction of life, destruction of marriage, destruction of freedom).

     

    o   Businesses willing to take an economic hit in order to better care for their employees.

     

    o   Businesses willing to take an economic hit in order to employ more employees (perhaps at the cost of “efficiency”).

     

    o   Businesses that seek to understand and minimize any detrimental impact their work may have on the environment.

     

    ·         Do I realize that until I am willing to “vote” with my dollars in support of this kind of business then no political vote will relieve me of this responsibility and no political top-down solution will effect positive change?

     

    o   Do I embrace BOTH this economic freedom and this economic responsibility that God has given me?

     

    o   Do I reject the temptation to embrace my freedom while delegating my responsibility to others or (worse) to some corporate or government authority.

     

    ·         Am I willing when necessary to give my dollars away freely to those whose needs are immediate and real?

     

    o   Do I understand that no government program can free me of my responsibility to love and care for my brother?

     

    ·         Am I willing to consume less because “voting” with my dollars will almost certainly mean that my well-spent dollars will not go as far as my dollars do when I simply seek to maximize my buying power?

     

    ·         Do I seek economic power in order that I might do good with it or, rather, do I seek to do good by not accumulating economic power, by embracing poverty?  The second is the way of Christ who “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

     

    o   Do I express my frustration toward the cult of the big and powerful by seeking to become big and powerful?

     

    ·         Is financial security a driving force in my economic life?

     

    o   Do I seek to save/plan for MY future needs and MY family’s future (illness, job loss, retirement, children’s education) to the exclusion of generously and sacrificially helping the poor with their imminent needs?

     

                   

     

    While I am grateful the press has taken such a fancy to Pope Francis, I regret their continued attempts to relieve the great majority of us of our individual responsibility to embrace the challenges our good Pope continues to provide to us.  The Pope’s words are meaningless if we view them as being directed to some corporate body rather than being directed to us as individuals (and as individual participants in those same corporate bodies).

  • Supernatural Freedom

    First Things MagazineI wrote the following comments in response to a great article by Fr. Anthony Anderson in a recent edition of First Things Magazine.  The Magazine was kind enough to publish my comments in the “Letters” section of its August/September Issue…

    Antonio Anderson’s “Bullets and Beatitudes” published in the May issue of First Things strikes me as essentially a study of freedom. In contrasting the lives and choices of Antonia and Antonio, Fr. Anderson addresses some fundamental questions of freedom that dominate the South-of-the-Border world where he lives and works but north of the border we would do well to understand and address these same questions.

    I find it useful to draw a distinction between two orders of freedom: supernatural freedom and temporal freedom. The first sort allows us to make choices directed toward the good the true and the beautiful even though the other sort of freedom may be partially or completely lacking. Clearly, many conditions relating to economics and justice (temporal affairs) place significant limitations on the freedom of the inhabitants of the Fr. Anderson’s world. Notwithstanding severe restrictions to this temporal freedom, however, individuals still retain their supernatural (moral) freedom. This sort of freedom can never be taken away by men or by economic or political structures. It is our Creator’s free gift and is not withdrawn or removed while we yet live. This freedom allows us, when faced with restrictions to our temporal freedom to live heroically as Antonia did; living joy in the face of poverty and suffering. This freedom acts upon hope; that certain capacity (based on trust in our Creator’s good designs for us) that brings divine perspective to every event, act, word, thought of our lives.

    Of course, another reaction when faced with limitations to temporal freedom is that chosen by Antonio. Antonio chooses to respond to a very real attack on his temporal freedom by embracing and perpetuating the abuse of freedom. He reacts to the limitations placed on his economic freedom by abusing the freedom of others; in the process also abusing his own moral freedom. Ultimately, his lack of hope leads him to this action. He fails to value the enduring good promised by the Creator, choosing rather to seek that good that abides only in this temporal reality. He fails to hope and, ironically, his very temporal response carries with it the very really possibility that he will cut short his time. Hence, Fr. Anderson’s conclusion is perfect. The only solution for the problem of the mafia in his world is the conversion of the mafia; the gift of Hope, the canvas for supernatural freedom.

    We should employ this same framework in our efforts to address the erosion of freedom in our own world. I suggest a third way to address attacks upon the freedom of the individual; fight back in a selfless manly way, employing all the reason and courage at our disposal – keeping in mind that this fight for temporal freedom must be accompanied by conversion and growth in Hope so that we not give undo importance to our own will and that we not grow desperate (and selfish) when our Creator permits successful attacks on our temporal freedoms.

  • We have Already Accepted Anything that Anybody of Intelligence ever Disliked in Socialism

    We have Already Accepted Anything that Anybody of Intelligence ever Disliked in Socialism

    I am no socialist believer. On the contrary, I reject socialism both for its aims and for the means it proposes in attempting to achieve those aims; for its attack on the dignity of man and its disregard of the gift of freedom. That said, we are too accustomed in our rejection of one ideology to accept without examination a differing ideology. In our enthusiastic rejection of Socialism we must avoid the trap of embracing without reflection Capitalism. Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to apply the moral maxim “avoid evil, do good” to our economic philosophies, “avoid Socialism, live Capitalism.” Capitalism is not “good”. It differs in many respects from Socialism and many aspects of a Capitalist system can be good if carried out morally but it does not on the whole oppose the evils of Socialism.

    In The Outline of Sanity , G. K. Chesterton quipped, “We have already accepted anything that anybody of intelligence ever disliked in Socialism”. On its surface, this may appear a bold and indefensible position. Rather, however, we should accept it as a challenge to more self-reflection. How have we done with this Capitalist system; has it provided the authentic good for mankind that we should have sought? In order to provide some insight into what we might have expected from Socialism and what we actually have I a reproduce here in its entirety an essay by a contemporary and close friend of Chesterton, Fr. Vincent McNabb:

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    For the purpose of clear thinking on social matters, I venture to set down some thoughts on Socialism

    Very gravely I add they are not meant to be a defense of Socialism. They are merely social facts, the knowledge of which has been arrived at by a process of observation. I set them down as the astronomer tabulates and records his observed astronomical facts, not knowing what use may be made of them but feeling that it is his duty to record them whether they are used or not.

    A late writer in an influential Catholic review maintained that absolution could not be given to a Catholic Socialist who came to confession because the policy of the Socialist party was secularisation. The argument, couched in the accustomed forms of the schools, was very persuasive. But on second thoughts it could be seen that the premises, which served to insure the conclusion desired of the writer, would also serve to justify not a few conclusions which the writer would disown.

    Socialism is accused of wishing to a number of undesirable things. Indeed, the common method of disproving Socialism is to show by striking and detailed word painting that if Socialism became dominant in the Commonwealth, the state of things thereby introduced would be intolerable and even unjust.

    (1) One of the first charges made against Socialism is that it would socialise everything and everybody and that it would therefore make slaves of us all, or at least of all except the State officials under whom we should all be regimented, case-papered, paid, fed, tendered and buried. This argument if carefully drawn by a man of feeling can be particularly effective. It is perhaps the locus communis which for years has left me not unmoved whenever I hear it.

    But, on second thoughts, it appears that this inhuman programme which Socialism is expected to bring forth is already in great part realised and not by the Socialists.

    Mr Belloc and others who are confessedly not Socialists agree that Socialism is committed to this dismal homogeneity and slavery. But they add that it is a thing in great part and essentially realised by existing political parties. One has only to read The Servile State to be haunted by the idea that not only existing Socialism but the existing Conservative and Liberal, and Democratic and Republican parties, are committed to a programme of socialised services which rest essentially on a basis of compulsory work, i.e. slavery.

    Moreover, in such a thorough-going Monarchy as Germany, the number of social functions that have now become socialised are almost as many as most Socialists would claim for their Socialist State. Indeed, the formula of the most absolute monarchy “L’Etat, c’est moi” needs a change not of form but of content, to be the programme of every advanced party in modern political education.

    All this is dramatically confirmed by the diagnosis made by Leo XIII of the actual state of social affairs. ‘A small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.'(Rerum Novarum.)

    It is quite evident that this existing state of things is substantially what Socialism is condemned for proposing to bring in! Moreover, it is equally evident that the state of things condemned by the Pope is not due to Socialism; but if attributable to any party, then to Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans or Democrats.

    (2) A second plea for decrying Socialism is that it would secularise education.

    Here as elsewhere in this paper no attempt is made to accept or deny these pleas although it is well known that a large portion of the Education Act of 19021 was inspired by a leading Socialist.

    But anyone dread Socialism because it will secularise education? Has not education, even in these countries, been largely and dominantly secularised? In the United States public education is completely secularised. There it was a bourgeois revolution and not Socialism that brought in secularisation. In England the secular programme is officially Liberal.

    If, then, a Socialist is to be refused absolution because his party would bring in secularism, how can absolution be granted in England to a Liberal whose part have an equally secular programme; and in the United States, to both Democrats and Republicans, who agree in accepting and defending the present secularism? At any rate, secularism is not something future to be dreaded but something present to be uprooted.

    (3) A further argument against Socialism is that it would degrade women by taking women out into the spheres of public work

    But statistics are at hand to prove that women workers are to be found in almost every sphere of labour; moreover, they have often been employed because being non-unionised they could be forced or persuaded to accept a lower rate of wages than men. This is most strongly confirmed by all kinds of investigators. Recently the Municipal Vice Commission of Chicago found that a great deal of the prostitution in their rich city was due to the abnormally low wages paid to girls in a number of employments. The present state of women is such a matter of shame that many of the arguments against the suffrage movement are pointless.

    But what has Socialism had to do with the degradation of women? And if Socialists are not to be absolved for a crime they have not committed, why may absolution be granted to those by whom the crime has been either committed or approved?

    (4) A further and most forcible argument against Socialism is that it would destroy the home. This argument is of great service in strengthening minds that see in the home the only hope of a nation’s future. Any political party that threatens the home, no matter what its claim to social service, must be looked on as anti-social.

    But, it may well be asked, has the home not already been threatened? Indeed, have the threats not been but too well realised and are not great masses of the workfolk wholly homeless. A room or two overcrowded with inmates can not be called a home. A house in such conditions and in such surroundings that the infant mortality is twice and thrice as much as in well-to-do neighbourhoods cannot be called a home. Yet the recent blue-book on the housing of Great Britain and Ireland has an eloquence of statistics proving that the homes of our country are not merely threatened but vigorously attacked and undermined.

    Moreover, to repeat the argument of the previous section, woman’s work has largely taken wives from their own homes and made them wives, not mothers. This is to destroy the home.

    Now this again is not a future evil to be dreaded, it is such a rooted present evil that any whole-hearted efforts to uproot it are likely to offer the features of a revolution.

    Yet again, not Socialism but some other political or industrial policy has set up almost unnoticed this enemy of the home.

    (5) Lastly, and this is perhaps the most urgent of all the pleas against Socialism, it is said that Socialism would destroy the inborn and inalienable right of property.

    But if the right of property means, not that some men shall own all property but that all men shall own some property, one asks ‘Where is the right of property existing in the world today?’ Is the inalienable right of property kept in a state of things where vast numbers of work-folk have not a square yard of land and are never even more than a month from destitution? Is this inalienable right a fact in a state of things where by the testimony of a Pope ‘a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself,’ and where there are ‘two widely differing castes … one which holds power because it holds wealth and which has in its grasp the whole of labour and trade, on the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, broken down and suffering’ so that ‘some remedy must be found, and found quickly, for the misery (i.e. want) and wretchedness pressing so heavily and so unjustly on the vast majority of the working classes’. (Rerum Novarum).

    It is evident that this state of injustice whereby the vast majority of the working classes are in a position of misery is not exactly a state based on the right of property

    For injustice is the forcible taking or holding of property. And it is evident that this state, based on the violent interference with the right of property, is not in any measure due to the political party called Socialism. It must therefore be due, either in its rise or maintenance, to the other political parties which Catholics freely enter without dread of being refused absolution.

    As was said at the outset, this line of thought is not meant nor perhaps even fitted to be a defense of Socialism. It is merely an observed and recorded fact for the guidance of Social thinkers. If a Social thinker refuses absolution to a member of the Socialist party because the Socialist party would bring in a state of things, why does he not refuse absolution to the other political parties; for the state of things is already in existence and has been brought about or, at least, is being upheld by them?

    It is evident therefore that there is some flaw in the course of reasoning which would withhold absolution on a probability and give it on a fact. Either the premises are not observed facts or the reasoning is amiss.

    For the moment our task is to point out that somewhere there is a flaw in the chain of reasoning, with the hope that social thinkers will revise either their facts or their deductions.

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    One lesson from this discussion; we must not accept an ideology of Capitalism as a counterpart to the ideology of Socialism. Capitalism should be for us nothing more than a set of tools to be used under the guidance of a well-informed and just economic philosophy. I have written and will continue to write here at A Sensible Life of those principles that must inform sensible economic living. Let us begin with gratuitousness.

    For more information on Fr. Vincent McNabb please visit the McNabb Society web-site.

  • Manly Fasting and Feasting for Lent

    Manly Fasting and Feasting for Lent

    There is nothing wrong with the traditional Lenten list of things to “give up”. It is better, though, to add to this list also some positive actions directed toward our prayer life and solidarity with the poor. Further still, understanding that our living of Lent should be directed toward our conversion and preparation for the redemption we celebrate at the end of this season, we should consider taking Lent into every moment of our day – with fasting AND feasting:

    Fast from self-indulgence, Feast on self-gift.

    Fast from desire, Feast on contentment.

    Fast from sadness, Feast on trust.

    Fast from criticism, Feast on praise.

    Fast from media, Feast on time with God, wife, children.

    Fast from seeking recognition, Feast on recognizing others.

    Fast from comfort, Feast on the Cross.

    Fast from my “needs”, Feast on addressing real needs of others.

    Fast from noise, Feast on stillness.

    Fast from talking, Feast on listening.

    Fast from consuming, Feast on thrift.

    Fast from righteous indignation, Feast on mercy.

    Fast from judgments, Feast on compassion.

    Fast from annoyance, Feast on humor.

    Fast from the senses, Feast on sensibility.

    The idea for this litany, as well as at least one of the points, comes from the writings of Pseudo-Macarius, a 4th Century Egyptian Monk. More information about this early Christian holy man is readily available here.