Catholic university professors last week engaged in a tired broadside against Speaker of the House John Boehner as he was set to deliver the commencement speech at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
This week, something much more constructive: The public presentation of an ongoing dialogue between Paul Ryan, a Catholic from Wisconsin, who is the House Budget committee chairman, and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the president of the Catholic bishop’s conference, about Catholic social teaching and its application to the current budget debate.
In his letter of April 29, Ryan wrote:
The House Budget’s overarching concern is to control and end the mortal threat of exploding debt. By scaling back Washington’s excesses, the budget will reduce deficits by $4.4 trillion over the next decade compared to the President’s budget proposal. The House Budget is intended to restore the confidence of job creators in order to encourage expansion, growth, and hiring today. The budget better targets assistance to those in need, repairs the social safety net, and fulfills the mission of health and retirement security for all Americans. The budget reforms welfare for those who need it — the poor, sick, and vulnerable; it ends welfare for those who don’t — entrenched corporations, the wealthiest Americans. It’s a plan of action aimed at strengthening economic security for seniors, workers, families, and the poor.
Congressman Ryan concluded:
although the Budget is Congress’ comprehensive spending and revenue plan, my colleagues and I, in developing this Budget, never forgot that the Budget is not just about numbers but about the character and common good of the American people. This Budget is rooted in the dignity of the human person. It honors responsibility to family and self, work, self-restraint, community, and self-government both individually and collectively. The vast network of centralized bureaucracies under a government that grows without limits has reached the point where an increasing majority of citizens are now receiving
Our Budget marks out a new path that restores and respects human dignity by addressing these concerns, encouraging our people to take control of their well-being, to make wise choices about the future of their families, in work, education, investment, savings and all areas of social life. Sustaining national moral character and human dignity have been our paramount goal in developing this Budget.
Nothing but hardship and pain can result from putting off the issue of the coming debt crisis, as many who unreasonably oppose this Budget seem willing to do. Those who represent the people, including myself, have a moral obligation, implicit in the Church’s social teaching, to address difficult basic problems before they explode into social crisis.
This is what we have done, to the best of our ability, in our Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution.
I hope these facts, considered in the light of the social Magisterium, contribute to the ongoing healthy dialogue about the nation’s budget and the economic foundations that make possible the exceptional generosity of Americans of every faith.
New York Archbishop Dolan responded, in part:
I deeply appreciate your letter’s assurances of your continued attention to the guidance of Catholic social justice in the current delicate budget considerations in Congress. As you allude to in your letter, the budget is not just about numbers. It reflects the very values of our nation. As many religious leaders have commented, budgets are moral statements.
As is so clear from your correspondence, the light of our faith — anchored in the Bible, the tradition of the Church, and the Natural Law — can help illumine and guide solid American constitutional wisdom. Thus I commend your letter’s attention to the important values of fiscal responsibility; sensitivity to the foundational role of the family; the primacy of the dignity of the human person and the protection of all human life; a concrete solicitude for the poor and the vulnerable, especially those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty; and putting into practice the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, here at home and internationally within the context of a commitment to the common good shared by government and other mediating institutions alike.
The archbishop also wrote:
The principles of subsidiarity and solidarity are interrelated to one another. The late Pope reminded us that, “ . . . the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good. (Centesimus Annus, 48).” Thus you rightly pointed out Pope John Paul’s comments on the limits of what he termed the “Social Assistance State.”
Your letter is correct in observing that the Church makes an essential contribution to society when she raises up moral principles to help guide and inform decisions about public policy in a compelling way. We bishops are very conscious that we are pastors, never politicians. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, it is the lay faithful who have the specific charism of political leadership and decision (Lumen Gentium, 31; Apostolicam Actuositatem 13). The high call to public service which you have nobly answered entitles you and all our elected officials to our respect and constant prayer. Thanks to you and your colleagues for accepting that call.
The two have also communicated by phone on the issue, Ryan’s office tells me.
This is a healthy, serious breakthrough of an exchange about moral responsibilities in legislating. Neither party is the keeper of Catholic social thought. And whatever one believes theologically, it offers important and challenging guidance that should be grappled with.
And so it is.
This exchange also challenges prevailing conventional wisdom and rhetoric in the media, academia, and elsewhere — sentiments that resonated with some people of good will about the incident last week regarding the speaker.
John Boehner, by the way, adds his gratitude for the exchange, in a statement:
I welcome Archbishop Dolan’s letter and am encouraged by the dialogue taking place between House Republicans and the Catholic Bishops regarding our budget, the Path to Prosperity. Our nation’s current fiscal path is a threat to human dignity in America, offering empty promises to the most vulnerable among us and condemning our children to a future limited by debt. We have a moral obligation as a nation to change course and adopt policies that reflect the truth about our nation’s fiscal condition and our obligation to future generations, and to offer hope for a better future. Our duty to serve others compels us to strive for nothing less. As Chairman Ryan notes in his letter to the Archbishop, Americans are blessed to have the teachings of the Church available to us as guidance as we confront our challenges together as a nation.
I would like to add a conceptual and historical point to this discussion.
It is not a matter of indifference how measures of social relief or support are provided, and how they are funded for the long term. Provision by the state out of current taxation is not an ideal and was not the practice in the long term past.
The traditional means was instead endowment of private institutions. Whether initially funded by private persons or by grants from states or kings, private institutions owning private property provided these functions. Income from private property was considered entirely legitimate, and was seen as the natural way of funding a long term, ongoing class of expenditure.
Income from endowments are not taken from other people in the present. In the 19th century, socialist doctrine ("the exploitation theory of value") tried to allege that all income from capital had that character, but it was that doctrine was itself in error. Current taxation is taken from other people in the present, and frequently without their personal consent (though sometimes with their political representation, at least).
In the period of the reformation, many of the great endowments for social support were confiscated, especially in the protestant countries. It was never Catholic social doctrine to support the transfer of these activities to the state, nor to disestablish the private corporate entities providing those services, which were often church bodies.
Instead of campaigning for the state to continue responsibilities it took on in that process, it seems to me preferable to restore the tradition of endowed private bodies for social relief.
As a matter of economics, the replacement of fully funded entities supported by the income from property, with pay as you go current taxation, creates a disincentive to the formation of capital and in the long run slows the accumulation of capital. And nearly all of our public fiscal difficulties are due to the unfunded nature of our present social welfare systesm, which create temporal imbalances between provision and need, while preventing the accumulation of real capital needed to fund future costs in real terms, without reducing the standard of living of future taxpayers and workers.
The older way of a foundation that supported the poor out of the income of its endowed property, was superior in every respect. We should be looking to revive it, not replace it with an inferior system of pay as you go state provided relief funded by redistribution.
One man's opinion...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo often the recipients of "government charity" are not the needy but the politicians and (unionized) bureaucrats who run the programs.
Don't want to be the skunk at the party, but no one should be allowed to conflate government spending with helping the poor. Yeah, sometimes they coincide. But often enough not.
And what good is even the former if the state careens into such bankruptcy and corruption that everyone is made poorer? A rising tide, on the other hand...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe idea that there is any tension whatsoever between traditional Roman Catholic social theory and Paul Ryan's Ayn-Rand-style economic policies is dangerous and utterly without merit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNeither party is the keeper of Catholic social thought?!?!?!?
Who is, then? Certainly the Catholic Church is the keeper of Catholic social thought. Who, then, is the spokesman in America for that social thought?
I mean, this ain't ex cathedra, but it's pretty darn "up there," if you know what I mean.
Why is there an issue here? Mark Adomanis nails it, doesn't he?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat you have here is mush.
Mush is what you get when Ayn Rand-style conservative political dogma meets Jesus Christ.
We all know the verses:
If someone hits you on the cheek, turn and make the other cheek available to be hit as well.
If someone asks for your coat, give him your cloak too.
Blessed are the poor.
It is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to make its way through the eye of a needle.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.
There is an inviolable right to property.
Oops. I made the last one up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am a long term, seriously lapsed, yet always respectful Catholic. My parents took giving their children a solid Cathoilic education seriously... but they changed their views and their lifestyles once they felt offended about it being way too much about "the" money. My mother died a Lutheran.
I changed my views for much different reasons - it just started to look like it was full of phonies.
Enough about me.
It is refreshing to see that the doctrine of Subsidiarity is finally being discussed - and among the Catholic Hierarchy nonetheless.
This is the second time in a week that the concept has been raised in serious discussion on these pages.
I can't remember ever hearing it defined clearly to me in 16 years of masses, and classes, and rosaries and sacraments... and sermons.
I just remember a lot of big Catholic fish were always being let off the hook for their transgressions against others with less political power ... transgressions far more damaging to innocent others than any of my blunders.
... and this was long before the pedophile scandals. By then, the corruption in the institution had had enough time to have raised a new and even less saintly generation of clerics.
They were taught a lot more about "Solidarity" than they were about it's necessary and superior twin "Susidiarity".
If someone chooses to be a Utopian, it is best for everyone that his power in the eyes of "this" Church stops at the limits of the end of his given word and his ability to shake a hand.
American Catholics have been well versed on the Solidarity Doctrine (Enough already.. we all get that we are all stuck together in this temporal world), yet we have been notoriously uninformed about the balancing doctrine of "Solidarity",
which places the moral value of good works done in the most immediate setting as superior to those done in any collective impersonal, and invariably political, context.
Maybe the Catholic Clergy is waking up to the realization that politically, it actually has as much, if not more, in common with the ethical ideals of avowed athiest Ayn Rand, than it does with the collective ideals of the Church going Nancy Pelosi.
Caring for the "other" is a fundamental precept of Christianity, as it is in most major religions. Unfortunately, too many of the big religions have unreasonable and irrational barriers to entry into the club of being "charity" worthy... and that's proving to be, as always, a big problem for everyone.
Subsidiarity is, if it means what it appears to mean, a clear doctrinal inoculant to the temptations of the collective.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find the proposed association of Ayn Rand to Paul Ryan in some comments here to be completely absurd and without merit! It attempts to discredit by creating a false association to a known/perceived evil. This is the same approach as those who cry "Nazi" or "Commi" because they want to discredit the message without arguing the points.
Paul Ryan’s budget proposal is COMPLETELY in line with Catholic teaching and is no closer to Ayn Rand objectivism than it is to Communist/Socialist collectivism. Ayn Rand proposed that the individual was all important and should seek their own satisfaction. She was attempting to counter the message of communism (which she escaped from) where she saw the counter argument of collectivism practiced (there is no individual – only the “collective we”.) Both arguments are blatantly false as a sound social policy can only be found in the middle ground!
Paul Ryan has proposed a reasonable solution that protects Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It reduced government bureaucracy and unwarranted spending. Those who attack his budget are misguided, dishonest, or ignorant of the facts. Proper government is morally obligated to provide for the needs of future generations as well as the current one. Obamanomics would have us take on a "spend today for tomorrow we die" approach. It destroys our future for the benefit of a few today. It doesn't matter who those few are, it is immoral to spend your future in creating a welfare nation!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusecorrection:
"American Catholics have been well versed on the Solidarity Doctrine (Enough already.. we ALL get that we are ALL stuck in this temporal world together), yet we have been notoriously uninformed about the balancing doctrine of "Solidarity","
... if anyone reads this, I trust they will know I clearly meant to write "Subsidiarity".
I think it's an idea that, properly framed, and endlessly repeated, can bind the religious, political conservatives, and beyond libertine libertarians together without needing to say that they sold out at the table of power.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRE: Tim H
There is connection at a solidly axiomatic level between Ayn Rand's expressed,if not always acted upon, beliefs, and the Catholic Church's long deliberated upon doctine of "Subsidiarity".
To my understanding, Ayn Rand firmly believed in the moral imperative that in any mutually agreed to business or personal negotiation, that one person never exploit another by having the ability and intention to make the other party worse off.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat each gains from their strength and the power of their intellect could never then be said to be ill gotten.
After everything we have learned about the Church's conspiracy to abuse children, why would anyone care what they say about anything? They have no moral authority at all. In fact, they are criminals.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs a Catholic, I am really disappointed with the utter mush that has become Catholic social philosophy.
MikeB:
Do you even understand what "Render unto Caesar" means? Because it certainly did NOT mean "get Caesar to forcibly extract money from others to pay for the poor, instead of giving to charity yourself".
The Gospel tells us to make individual choices, not to play with other peoples' money. I'm pretty certain that if you asked Jesus, he would say it is better to give the shirt off your back rather than to call on some other guy to give the shirt off his back.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is another place where the term "Subsidiarity" has come up recently in my life.
I come from a very medically oriented family - my descendants, not my forebears. One of daughters was a nurse practitioner, another is a nurse in training. One of my sons is a Medical Physicist, the other an analytical Chemist.
I am currently engaged to a wonderful woman who works in fairly low level, but nonetheless very important job, at the Catholic Health System in Western New York.
Her job is important, as is clearly prescribed in the mission and ethos of that hospital. It is a message of Subsidiarity... what you do HERE and NOW matters, both to the patients, and to yourselves.
Much of the good that is done on "5 North" is because the nurses, aides and secretaries are there when the doctors are gone and their people are in immediate need. The needs of their "people" still include those of the patients.
The place works. I would be satisfied to be a patient or visit a loved one there.
hmmmmm... These pages often report on what's going on in British health care these days. I wonder what will happen once Obamacare really kicks in? I'm not optimistic.
Subsidiarity has served my life, and those of the people closest to me, very well. We all live in the present.
Obamacare is about some mythical future, based on some impossible grand scheme, that will suck up a lot of time, energy and money, and ultimately miss the mark because those who work in it, will only be working for the collective, and those served by it will become less human and of less and less immediate concern.
It will be a sad day when that happens. That's why I write this drivel.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks Ms Lopez.
For the pseudo theologian who pontificates ad nuseam about morality here at NRO...it is better for you to not write and be thought of as a fool in such matters then to do so and remove all doubt.
Nobody criticized Christendom more thoroughly than Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche...your willingness to cherry pick biblical quotes demonstrates you stupidity and ignorance in such matters and is proof that Nietzsche was right about the all-too-human herd...but keep it up as you're such fun!!!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is one of the highest level dialogues I have read in some while. Ryan gets the intuitive link between economic freedom and morality better than practically any other politician. His plan is nowhere close to an Ayn Rand style hyper-individualism. It preserves the safety net for those who actually need it, and takes debt seriously as a moral issue, which it is. Seriously, can we draft this guy for President?
And Archbishop Dolan's response is pitch perfect. The Church shouldn't have a position on Ryan's plan one way or the other. Dolan hits the right notes by not exceeding his competence as a member of the cloth while being open to Ryan's arguments and engaging with them in an adult manner. I think we are beginning to see the Church leadership move beyond an instinctive preference for big government, which could be a game changer in American political and religious life.
A piece of bright news for a change.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI give up... my final comment was deemed unacceptable by whatever cool natural language filter NRO is patronizing these days.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe Mister H's comment to be far more objectionable than anything I had to say.
Thanks to all here for a stimulating and enjoyable evening.
I am fortunate to have Paul Ryan as my Congressman and to have had Archbishop Dolan as our Catholic Faith Leader in SW WI...before he was appointed to the NY Archdiocese.
Both are gifted, exceptional men of great character, vision, and ability to connect and communicate.
One day Paul Ryan may be President of the United States. One day, Archbishop Dolan may be Pope.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1. Ryan and Rand: Connected in a way that makes Obama and Bill Ayers look like strangers.
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2. "Don't lecture me!" Is a pretty sad way to respond to someone who paraphrases New Testament teachings of Jesus Christ.
3. There is an irreconcilable tension between conservative political philosophy ("me first") and Christian political philosophy ("others first"). There's just no getting around it. How we deal with that tension is the whole ballgame. I am not going to pretend that Jesus rejoices when I blow $63k on a BMW. Nor am I going to pretend it's patently obvious that Jesus calls me to give away everything I have, lock myself into a closet, and pray until I starve to death. Discerning His will and doing it's the name of the game here. Don't pretend you know the answer. I don't. I do, however, have a vague sense that, where I don't have the answer, it's better to err on the "others first" side than the "me first" side.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohnqpublius, widespread, systemic child molestation is objectionable. Of course, I don't expect the people who condone that behavior to care about the poor, or about the welfare of children or the elderly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMikeB:"There is an irreconcilable tension between conservative political philosophy ("me first") and Christian political philosophy ("others first")."
"Me first" is as far from conservative philosophy as is possible. Conservatives believe that society is better served when social welfare is handled by de Tocequeville's "voluntary associations" (including the churches) rather than the state. As a Baptist I'm trying to catch up with the terminology in this discussion, but I gather the solidarity/subsidiarity constrast is the difference between paying taxes to have some paid drone dole out food stamps to your neighbor and actually taking a hot meal over yourself. It's easy to see which a conservative would prefer and which is the more moral, Christian way to dispense charity. That an amoral state has usurped and crowded out traditional Christian charity is one more reason to resent the state. They're not only taking our money, they're taxing us spiritually.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs a rather uninspired Catholic, the Catholic church is nothing more than a hive of socialism (most certainly here in New York where I am). This latest outburst was actually enough for me to even stop giving to Catholic charities as well. Time for some nice Protestant denomination to get my charitable giving.
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