4 Comments In Britain, a new zeitgeist is capturing business people, academics and political players from both the Left and Right, says the BBC’s Matthew Taylor:
Catholic Social Teaching is a doctrine well-suited to today’s quest for more ethical businesses, a less overbearing state and a more vibrant and cohesive civil society.
Now, as in 1891, many fear we will not be able to adapt to profound change without dangerous social upheaval. It may not provide easy or even practical answers right now, though it does, at least, seem to be grappling with the right questions.
And for those of us tired of the ritual adversarialism and technocratic wrangling on show in Westminster, there is something rather inspiring about the response of a shrewd operator like Jon Cruddas.
When I ask him whether the ethical foundations of Catholic Social Teaching imply a different way of thinking about politics, he says: “Yes, I do and I see them in different parties. It’s going to be uncomfortable, difficult, but it means that we have to focus in on almost transcending the formal architecture of politics in the national good.”
Jordan Ballor and Hunter Baker recently argued that Catholic Social teaching could be a worthy model for engagement here in America too:
For people of faith, and even for people of no particular faith whatsoever, CST represents a praiseworthy model for responsible civil engagement in a diverse and plural culture.
[. . .]
We write as Protestants (a Baptist political scholar and a Reformed moral theologian, respectively) in praise of Catholic Social Teaching. There are several areas of CST which are directly applicable to issues at stake in this election.
Nice to note that the Logic of Gift is making sense
to more and more adherents of the Christian faith, but one quibble, the
focus on perceived ‘poverty’ of means (and any preferential option
therewith) is secondary to the cardinal virtue of
order in relationship.
Solidarity and subsidiarity are
obligatory even should they come into play where the relative material
circumstances are not ‘bigger-n-richer vs smaller-n-poorer’ but the
opposite, ‘bigger-n-poorer vs smaller-n-richer.’ This tyranny of
relativism of the statist – the dictat that abrogates individual
liberties to a redutionist ‘greater good’ – is NOT the same thing at all
as the ‘common’ good of CST. This redacted snippet may illustrate my
point better by way of a recent real world example:
“Subsidiarity
teaches that [acting agents] ought order their
affairs so as to render much more direct, individual, and accountable
assistance to the [served] without creating a system
of initiative-wrecking entitlement and dependency.”
and suggest
that exactlly this hubris of ‘might makes right’ (also known as ‘bigger
outranks better’ ) is what may have afflicted the GOP/Romney campaign in
its Project ORCA get-out-the-vote game-play where the big but powerless
national institution robbed the small but potentially powerful local
institutions of their vital potency:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/08/Orca-How-the-Romney-Campaign-Suppressed-Its-Own-Vote
(and
reaffirmed the worst fears of every ‘real world’ manager that Mitt was –
and never had been – an entrepreneur but was merely a cerebral
financier with no real-world experience? If this eye-witness is to be
believed
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/334783.php
there’s one
heck of a lot of re-alignment of worldview required in the bubble of
the ‘Conservative Entertainment Complex’ and the feeding trough of elite
opinion leaders who have deluded themselves that complexity can be
reduced to simple aggregates, that the way to save us from central
planning .. is more central planning… ugh!
The collapse of the
US monetary system may well follow along a similar path unless those of
us with our skin in the game refuse to allow those with no skin in the
game (the ex-nihilo private money creators and their enablers at
Treasury) to hold sway over us – that is an abject failure in
subsidiarity of the first order!
Subsidiarity in a nutshell:
“Remember, whatever the government* can do for you, it can do to you.” Fr. McCloskey
more at http://www.truthandcharityforum.org/the-recent-unpleasantness/
____
* or any acting person/agency whose potential leverage is superior to your own (think banks, hospitals, telecommunications service providers)
More on the current US social experiment in reverse subsidiarity aka quantitative easing: “a depreciating currency is a euphemism for rising domestic prices, i.e. what most people mean by “inflation.” Thus the problem of spiking interest rates is simply “solved” by giving Americans spiking prices.” http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/no-dr-krugman-a-treasury-crash-would-be-bad-for-the-economy/