George Weigel on Catholic Social Doctrine

After my blog post on Mattingly and Catholic Social Doctrine, a friend sent a link to an article by George Weigel that was distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. It is an extremely good article. Below are some quotes from the article, though I urge you to follow the link above and read the article for yourself.

The 2012 election seems likely to be defined by a major national debate on the welfare state, government spending, and social responsibility. If libertarian minimalism of the sort espoused by Ron Paul sits poorly with the rich and complex tradition of Catholic social doctrine, so does reactionary liberalism of the sort espoused by the anti-Boehner pedagogues. So perhaps a review of the basics is in order, to put the forthcoming argument on a more secure footing.

(1) The Church’s concern for the poor does not imply a “preferential option” for Big Government. The social doctrine teaches that the problem of poverty is best addressed by empowerment: enabling poor people to enter the circle of productivity and exchange in society. The responsibility for that empowerment falls on everyone: individuals, through charitable giving and service work; voluntary organizations, including the Church; businesses and trade unions. Government at all levels can play a role in this process of empowerment, but it is a serious distortion of the social doctrine to suggest that government has exclusive responsibility here. On the contrary: In the 1991 social encyclical Centesimus Annus, Blessed John Paul II condemned the “Social Assistance State” because it saps welfare recipients of their dignity and their creativity while making them wards of the government.

(2) Fiscal prudence is a matter of justice extended toward future generations, and is therefore an inter-generational moral imperative (as is provision for the retired elderly). To leave mountains of unserviceable debt to future generations is shameful. The reactionary defense of governmental pension and social welfare programs with no evident concern for their fiscal implications violates the moral structure of Catholic social doctrine: the portside analogue to a cool indifference toward the fate of the poor.

(3) There are legitimate disagreements about the implications of the Church’s social doctrine for American social welfare policy. To suggest that the social doctrine provides obvious, clear-cut answers to questions about the future of Medicare or Medicaid is to misrepresent that teaching. To charge someone with “dissent” from Church teaching because that someone disagrees with one’s own prudential judgments about the application of the social doctrine to complex policy issues is a serious misuse of the notion of “dissent” and borders on calumny (a false statement that “harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2477). It ill behooves anyone to make such a charge; it particularly ill behooves academics who publicly dissent from settled Catholic teaching on marital chastity, sexual morality, and qualifications for Holy Orders from chairs at Catholic universities.

(4) The moral imperative to legally protect innocent human life from conception until natural death is a settled matter in Catholic doctrine. So is the nature of marriage as the stable union of a man and a woman. Catholic legislators who support the abortion license are manifestly in dissent and have damaged their communion with the Church. So have legislators who support “gay marriage.” Academics eager to demonstrate their fidelity to Catholic social doctrine might point this out — and support the bishops who do.

I was impressed by the article. It is a “cool” article rather than a flaming rant. It makes reasonable points about Catholic Social Doctrine. And, there are only one or two points where I felt that the author was either stretching a point or not fully quoting an appropriate document. Nevertheless, this type of reasonable document goes a long way toward furthering a discussion that needs to take place in this country. I have said before that I am am fully pro-life, so in the spirit of the article above, let me make a couple of points to both sides of the debate.

1. Both sides actually do acknowledge, somewhat, the points of the other side. So, for instance, pro-choice folk will talk about how they are in favor of lowering the number of abortions in the USA. Pro-life folk speak strongly of the need to care for the widow and the orphan. However, it can often seem as though neither side is fully serious about what it means to acknowledge the points of the other side. Let me make some broad generalizations, though there are exceptions.

a. Pro-choice folk have never found a law to reduce abortion that meets with their approval. Somehow, every law has a flaw in it that prevents a pro-choice person from supporting it. In fact, it often seems as though they only support private programs–such as Planned Parenthood. And, generally those programs support an idea of “safe” sex that is far from the moral teachings of either Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Meanwhile, they passionately support even very flawed government programs that deal with the widow and the orphan, with little if any critique of their content.

b. Conversely, it can seem as though that pro-life folk have never found a social government program that meets with their approval. Somehow, every program has a flaw in it that prevents a pro-life person from supporting it. In fact, it often seems as though they only support private programs. And, the existing programs are insufficient to deal with the social needs in this country. By themselves, they cannot, in fact, fulfill our Christian social mandates. Meanwhile, they passionately support laws that, at best, are a couple of degrees removed from actual abortion (or euthanasia), on the grounds that any connection with abortion (or euthanasia), however slight and removed, taints whatever it is that they are opposing. Thus there are some pro-life folk that support laws to limit palliative care in hospices on the grounds that it could possibly hasten death, for instance the Illinois Right to Life Committee.

2. Both sides have the tendency to imagine that God will most certainly condemn the other side for their lacks, and will forgive any mistakes that they have made in their zeal. I would be careful of making that assumption.

a. Pro-choice folk will quote all the verses in the Old and New Testaments that have to do with the poor, along with the many many saying of the Church Fathers. And, they are, of course, correct. There is little doubt about God’s concern for the downtrodden, nor is anyone denying that. But, they conveniently skip God’s clearly stated opposition to the shed blood of innocents, from Abel in the Book of Genesis to the souls under the altar in the Book of Revelation. And they skip the clear statements about God’s retribution upon those who shed innocent blood (unless they repent, of course). The Early Church punishment for a woman who deliberately ended a pregnancy was far stronger than anything we impose nowadays. There was a ban from participation in the Church (other than to be with the penitents) that was several years long.

b. Pro-life folk will quote the verses about innocent blood, as well as the clear apostolic teaching concerning those who willfully end a pregnancy. But, they do not seem to take as seriously as they ought to that Our Lord, in the judgment of the sheep and the goats, was willing to send people to hell (outer darkness) for their failure to deal seriously with the widow and the orphan. Nor do they quote those Church Fathers who, after Constantine, insisted that the State also had a formal institutional part in the issue of widows and orphans.

You can see why the Franciscan professor from Steubenville quoted the day before yesterday commented that the Catholic Social Doctrine includes both abortion and the widow and the orphan. You can see why the Orthodox journalist, Terry Mattingly, made sure to include that quote in his article. Let me make a couple of final comments about Mr. Weigel’s article.

In point one he says that, “The responsibility for that empowerment falls on everyone . . .” I find myself thinking of the statement that everyone’s responsibility is no one’s responsibility. There finally needs to be a responsibility somewhere even if it is not exclusive, even if it were to be merely coordinative. I am glad that Centesimus Annus was quoted on Pope John Paul II’s condemnation of the Social Assistance State, but realize that he also equally strongly, and in the same encyclical, condemned uncontrolled capitalism and insisted that human begins do have certain social rights. Both extremes are condemnable for both extremes make a human being something less than a creature in the image and likeness of God.

I fully agree with point two. But, while he speaks of fiscal prudence as a moral imperative (one not mentioned in the Catholic Catechism, I should point out though it can certainly be derived from there), he makes no call to sacrificial voluntary giving. Certainly one of the long term Christian answers has been that of calling people to give sacrificially. Many Church Fathers insisted that the Lenten period of fasting had, as a secondary purpose, to save money sacrificially in order to serve the poor. Nor, having elected the very representatives who have saddled us with the mountains of debt, is there any mention that as we are the ones who have voted them in, we will probably need to be responsible enough to “pony up” by way of Caesar’s taxes in order to begin to solve the debt problem. This does not mean that programs should continue as they have been. Mr. Weigel is fully correct that there are those who put up an unconsidered defense of any and every social program. But, it does mean that fiscal prudence is not a sufficient battle cry to gut all aid to the widow and orphan save voluntary aid. Let us remember that Our Lord said that the Pharisees who declared part of what they might have given to their parents to be Quorban were guilty violating God’s commands. The cry for lower taxes may be our generation’s Quorban toward our children.

In point three, I agree with him. But, remember to apply it the other way. People who work in hospice and engage in palliative treatment are managing a complex set of symptoms that do not yield to simplistic analysis. That is a completely different issue than abortion and should not be treated with the same rhetoric. Let us all be cautious about the rhetoric we throw around, and I include myself in that.

Finally, after reading the article, I find that I wish I could meet Mr. Weigel, as he appears to be a highly educated reasonable man. His article challenged my thinking and I hope that it will challenge yours. We need more Weigels in this country, on both sides. Mayhap with a few more Weigles on both sides, there would be room for us benighted moderates who are always being accused of really being on the other side of whomever is accusing us.