Integral Catholic Social Teachings

Obama's Hell-Ride to War on Iran

2009-09-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Daniel McAdams
LRC Blog
September 26, 2009

Faced with the uncomfortable and politically unacceptable reality that there exists no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, confirmed by his own intelligence community, President Obama has taken a page from the book of his predecessors FDR, LBJ, GWB, and so on: he simply made something really scary-sounding up to justify his push toward war.

It is 2002 all over again, but worse.
This time it is the artificially manufactured hype around an Iranian uranium enrichment facility that is under construction. Keep in mind that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran, under Article IV of said treaty, has every right to enrich uranium to its heart’s content. The treaty clearly states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”

Iran has, dutifully and ahead of required schedule, notified the International Atomic Energy Agency, tasked with monitoring adherence to the NPT, of its intent to bring this enrichment facility online in approximately 18 months. But where there is no smoking gun, lighter fluid must be ignited: to undercut the Five Plus One talks with Iran scheduled to begin on October first, the Obama administration has invented indignation over discovery of this plant while at the same time holding to the story that the US Intelligence Community has known about this facility, which Obama says is “inconsistent with a peaceful (nuclear) program,” since 2006. As one administration official stated regarding the upcoming talks in light of his “discovery”: “Everybody’s been asking, ‘Where’s our leverage?’ Well, now we just got that leverage.” And right in the nick of time!

But hang on a minute: the US Intelligence Community has known since 2006 that Iran is building a facility to manufacture nuclear weapons but still in 2007 allowed a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran to conclude with “high confidence” that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program? Considering the discrepancy, one could be forgiven for concluding that either deception or incompetence is the order of the day in our enormously expensive Intelligence Community.

It is 2002 all over again, but worse: this time a good chunk of the antiwar movement will have been sidelined over its fatally wrong-headed decision to sign on with the pied pipers of the war party over the Iranian elections in June. By “going Green” (going pro-opposition instead of remaining neutral) much of the antiwar movement has been effectively silenced, its side-taking giving voice to one of the war party’s most critical claims: “any government that will cheat as horrifically as it did on these elections will certainly cheat on its IAEA reporting obligations.” No further proof needed. It is a refrain we have heard time and time again since June: “you mean you are going to believe them about their nuclear program? A regime that would cheat like that in its elections?” Antiwar movement: largely silenced. Credible proof of outcome-changing fraud: none. Coming cost in death and destruction: priceless.

The Jobless and Recoveryless Recovery

2009-09-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

Reality Receding
By James Howard Kunstler
on September 14, 2009 6:33 AM

Now that everybody in the USA, from the janitors in their man-caves to the president addressing congress, has declared the "recession" over, is exactly the moment when what's left of the so-called economy is most likely to implode. If there were still shoeshine boys on Wall Street, they'd be starting their own hedge funds now, and CNBC's Larry Kudlow would be toasting them in the Grill Room of The Four Seasons. What we've seen in the vaunted rally for the last six months is the triumph of wishing over facts, combined with the most arrant market manipulation by floundering banks backstopped by a panicked government -- all pounding sand down a rat-hole of hopeless non-performing debt, while pretending that the machinery of capital finance still grinds on.
Despite what a few elderly Mr. Naturals may say about abolishing "capitalism," we're not going to have an advanced economy without a coherent banking system, and by advanced economy I mean one in which the lights stay on. By coherent I mean a system that is able to deploy accumulated wealth for productive purposes, in the service of continuing civilization. (And, yes, I know that the followers of Daniel Quinn are not so sure that civilization is worth the trouble, but unless you support the killing-off of about six billion humans right away, things on Earth are not favorably disposed just now for a return to hunting-and-gathering.)
I would hasten to cut through the fog of despair to reassert -- for the thousandth time -- that a true American perestroika is possible, if the public could overcome the plague of cognitive dissonance sweeping the land and form a consensus for action that comports with reality's agenda. But that is looking less and less likely. Instead, what we see is a rush into delusion, seasoned with grievance and gall. Spectacles like last weekend's march on Washington don't happen for no reason, of course. From where I sit, the uproar can be attributed to comprehensively bad American leadership, a crisis in authority and legitimacy that has left a functional vacuum in every executive office throughout the land -- from the White House to the state houses, to the lairs of the CEOs, to the towers of the deans and department chairs, to the glitzy sets of the nightly news deliverers, to the makeshift quarters of the NGO chiefs. In former times, clueless and impotent leaders stuck their heads in the sand. Nowadays, with pandemic narcissism abroad in the land, the heads are more usually inserted into the aperture that leads into the large bowel....
But I indulge in diverting objurgation when I should perhaps explain this American perestroika more clearly. The Russian word roughly translates to "restructuring." They flubbed it in 1989 because their system was too ossified and too far gone -- though history and circumstance eventually did it for them. A similar outcome is possible here, too, in which things just have to completely fall apart before emergent reorganization occurs. But you can be sure that if we allow this to happen, an awful lot of things will get smashed along the way, including lives, careers, families, property, and cherished institutions.
This monster we call the economy is not just an endless series of charts and graphs -- it's how we live, and that has to change, whether we like it or not. Now, it is obviously a huge problem that a majority of Americans don't like the idea. If they were true patriots, instead of overfed cowards and sado-masochists, they'd be inspired by the prospect. But something terrible has happened to our national character since the triumphal glow of World War Two wore off. I just hope that the Palinites and the myrmidons of Glen Beck don't destroy what's left of this country in a WWF-style "revolution." In the best societies, such idiots are marginalized by a kinder and sturdier consensus about justice. In America today, the center is not holding because there is no center.
American perestroika really boils down to this: we have to rescale the activities of daily life to a level consistent with the mandates of the future, especially the ones having to do with available energy and capital. We have to dismantle things that have no future and rebuild things that will allow daily life to function. We have to say goodbye to big box shopping and rebuild Main Street. More people will be needed to work in farming and fewer in tourism, public relations, gambling, and party planning. We have to make some basic useful products in this country again. We have to systematically decommission suburbia and reactivate our small towns and small cities. We have to prepare for the contraction of our large cities. We have to let the sun set on Happy Motoring and rebuild our trains, transit systems, harbors, and inland waterways. We have to reorganize schooling at a much more modest level. We have to close down most of the overseas military bases we're operating and conclude our wars in Asia. Mostly, we have to recover a national sense of common purpose and common decency. There is obviously a lot of work to do in the list above, which could translate into paychecks and careers -- but not if we direct all our resources into propping up the failing structures of yesterday.
The most dangerous illusion, of course, is a belief that we can return to a hyped up turbo debt "consumer" economy -- and perhaps the most disappointing thing about Barack Obama, is his incessant cheerleading for a "recovery" to what is already lost and unrecoverable. The man who ran for office on "change" doesn't really have the stomach for it. But, of course, events are in the driver's seat now, not personalities, even charming ones. I'd venture to say that if Mr. Obama thinks he's seen a crisis, and gotten through it, then he ain't seen nothin' yet. We are for sure not returning to the kind of credit orgy that made the last twenty years such a nauseating spectacle -- of which, by the way, the misfeasances and wretched excesses of Wall Street were just one manifestation.
Some theorists out there say that economy follows mood, not vice-versa, and that the anger and sourness on display around the USA, in events like the weekend Washington march, is a clear sign that tectonic shifts in the structures of everyday life are sure to follow. There are too many truly good and intelligent people in this country, to leave our fate to the Palins and the Glen Becks. But the good people had better man up and start telling the truth with some conviction that the truth matters

The Marycrest Community Remembered --- and its Post-Vatican II Death

2009-09-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

A Vision on a Hill
Recalling Marycrest, an inspiring experiment in Christian community
By Jack Holland

There is still only one road through Marycrest, the Catholic community that for more than 50 years has lain buried in the woods of Rockland County about 25 miles north of New York City.

The woods have thinned somewhat since 1950, when the first Marycrest members dug the foundations for the first house. But the leafy canopy is thick enough on a summer’s evening to remind a visitor of what it must have been like five decades ago when they came, from the Bronx mostly, city slickers with a vision of a Christian life they thought they could realize here in the tranquility of the tree-covered countryside that was Rockland before it was a suburb.

Of the 12 original members of the community who shared that vision, only three are still alive -– Alan Hudson, Jack Dermody and Phil O’Brien; two of them, Dermody and O’Brien, still live in Marycrest, in the homes they constructed with their own hands 50 years earlier. But now parcels of what remains of the community’s original 56 acres have been sold off, and new $600,000 houses have sprung up, some with sumptuous swimming pools, all redolent of the prosperity of suburban America. An exclusive golf club of 227 acres owned by a Japanese consortium now impinges on the community’s borders just a few yards down the road. Plans are afoot to construct 10 $5 million homes nearby. These things belong to the kind of world that Marycrest set out to defy.

“Our principle aim was an experiment to create a Christian community,” recalled Jack Dermody, who has just celebrated his 80th birthday. “We wanted to find out what a Christian community would be like.” Dermody is spry and lean, with a riveting gaze when he talks that still conveys the kind of passion that helped inspire the Marycrest experiment. “It was essentially about having charity toward each other,” he continued, “caring for each other’s children.” Children were a major factor in the Marycrest enterprise: the average family there had 10 of them. They, being devout Catholics, allowed no form of artificial contraception.

The attraction of owning your own home, even if you had to build it yourself, was an important incentive for all the original community members.

“We had five daughters in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx,” remembered 82-year-old Alan Hudson, whose family was the first to move into Marycrest, in late 1950. When completed, their new home would have five bedrooms. “We built it for $6,000,” he said proudly. The bedrooms were soon occupied as the Hudson family expanded to 10.

Among the original aims of the Marycrest pioneers was to create a community where fathers would be able to spend more time with their families.

“We felt the big hole in modern life was the family’s deprivation of the father,” Dermody said. “We wanted fathers to be present, rather than absentee fathers. We wanted to overcome that so that he could be a contributor to the family. Too often fathers were just a threat used by the mother to keep the kids in line.”

The idea of the community had come about in the late 1940s, mainly through informal meetings held by a group of men in each other’s homes. They were partly inspired by a radical Catholic magazine, Integrity, and its charismatic editor, Ed Willock. They were influenced by some of the ideas circulating in the Catholic Worker movement and the Christian Family Movement. Dermody, Hudson and another of the founding members, John Hogan, all belonged to the CFM.

“There was a lot of idealism around after World War II,” said Phil O’Brien, who is 85. He was deeply influenced by the cooperative movement, and saw the Marycrest experiment in those terms rather than as a primarily religious community.

The men who gathered to discuss and debate these ideas were for the most part of Irish-America background. Few had a university education. O’Brien had been a cop and then a fireman before he went back to college to take a degree in mathematics. Jack Dermody worked as a technical illustrator, Alan Hudson as an agent for a railway company. But they read widely about the history of the church, and thought hard about issues raised by Catholic morality, and how they did or did not square with the challenge of life in 20th century America. All agree that Ed Willock was the guiding genius of the experiment. As editor of Integrity, which at its peak sold 25,000 copies a month, he critiqued modern institutions through the eyes of a follower of St. Thomas Aquinas.

“Ed was a natural leader; he had intelligence, courage and integrity,” said Dermody, who worked for a while as the magazine’s circulation manager. “You couldn’t fool him, buy him or scare him.”

Willock was a Southie from Boston. After being injured in a football accident, he was laid up for five years and spent it educating himself. He was a voracious reader, as well as an artist. He was deeply influenced by Peter Maurin a radical Catholic thinker, and Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement.

“He was a profound thinker on social matters,” agreed Alan Hudson.

56 acres on a hill

Willock was convinced that a truly Christian community could be established –- within driving distance of New York City. Two of their group, Charles Neill and Charles McGroddy, who were both lawyers, learned that a piece of land was going cheap in Rockland County. Hudson, Dermody, John Hogan and the two lawyers decided to go take a look at it. More than 50 years later, Hudson still remembers that day.

“It was Feb. 12, 1949 –- a Saturday,” he said. “It was a mild, spring-like day. We took the train to Tappan, where we met Neill and McGroddy, who took us to the site.”

What they saw was 56 acres of woodland on the crest of a hill, a place still frequented by deer hunters. The asking price was $7,500. One might have thought that the prospect of turning this wild spot into a living community would have intimidated a group of guys from the Bronx who had little or no experience of building or living in the country.

“We were so full of hope for an escape from our plight,” Hudson said. “We were just overjoyed when we saw the place. We didn’t think about the difficulties.”

A trust agreement was drawn up and the Marycrest Association formed, named because of the hilltop location of the site. Its 12 founding members were Charles Neill, Charles McGroddy, Bill O’Mahoney, Ed Willock, Bill Cob, Dick Bourett, Phil O’Brien, John McCue, Jack Olive, John Hogan, Alan Hudson and Jack Dermody. They were a mixed group, ranging from Cobb, who was a Jewish convert to Catholicism, to O’Mahoney, an on-the-run IRA man who had lost an eye in a gun battle with the Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence. Over a period of between six and nine months they drew up a constitution, the trust agreement and bylaws. The initiation fee for each member was $600. This entitled him to a one-acre homestead and a share in the remaining acres, which were eventually put under the control of a group of trustees.

Work began cutting down trees, clearing the land, and sinking wells. The first building that the Christian pioneers from New York erected on the new site was a shed that had been a 100-foot-long U.S. Army latrine. They had bought it and reassembled it for use as a work shed. Work began on the first house, for the Hudson family, in early 1950. On Nov. 3 that year, the family moved in.

Their translocation from the Bronx to the Rockland woods was celebrated in the newspaper of Our Lady of Mercy parish in the Bronx, from where they were moving, as something close to a miracle.

“It is almost unbelievable,” declared the paper in the issue of Nov. 13, 1950, “that the Hudson’s house as it now stands was done for the most part by amateurs.” The only indication that the work had indeed been done by amateurs was the fact that the house was built back-to-front. But the parish paper did not mention that.

The paper went on to applaud the Marycrest effort. It wrote: “Behind the whole community idea is the desire of the members to raise large families and to bring them up to be saints. City life, the members feel, works against large families and it works against their growing in a deep love of God.”

Said Dermody: “We built seven homes without a single penny of bank money. It all came from friends and relatives –- or personal resources.” They built about one house a year after the first.

Children everywhere

The Hudson’s and their five daughters, all under the age of 7, spent their first winter in the woods like solitary pioneers. But Alan’s wife, Dorothy, did not notice that aspect of it.

“I was so thrilled to own a home, being poor” she said. “It was wonderful to move into the countryside. The kids were out all day. You never had to worry about them.”

As the other families gradually moved in, Marycrest was soon teeming with children. By the late 1950s, there were 107 children in the community.

“I loved living there,” recalled Regina Hudson, one of Alan and Dorothy Hudson’s seven daughters and three sons. “It was like having a hundred cousins. There was always someone around to play with.”

Mary Ann Olive was 2 when her parents brought her to Marycrest.

“It was a wonderful place to be raised, playing in the woods,” she said. She remembers the names the children gave to of their favorite spots –- the First Brook, the Angel’s Forest and the Devil’s Forest. “Today you have to have play dates –- you have to arrange to meet other kids. Here, you just opened the door and there they were.”

Virginia Olive, Mary Ann’s mother, had 11 children. Their aim, like that of the other families in the community, was to be as self-sufficient as possible, she recalls. Her husband Jack, one of the founding members, who died four years ago, used manure from the chickens he kept to make butane gas. Virginia baked the family’s bread. They grew many of their own vegetables. Jack Olive produced and printed The Marycrest News And Views that appeared once a month. He also found time to build astronomical telescopes.

“He was a real pioneer,” Mary Ann said of her father.

Virginia Olive recalls the life of the community being centered on Catholic rituals and feast days.

“We used to kneel down and say the Rosary every night,” she said. “Sunday Rosary was said on the Hudson lawn in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which stood in a bird bath.” Then there was the Blessing of the Fields in May and the Feast of St. Nicholas, when Ed Willock disguised himself as St. Nicholas and Jack Dermody would dress up as Black Peter to terrify those children who had been bad and reward those who had been good.

A community unravels

That first generation of Marycrest children are now in their 40s and 50s. Recently, on a muggy Saturday afternoon, about 150 of them gathered with their own children, their friends and relatives under a white tent to celebrate Jack Dermody’s 80th birthday. Four generations were there. It was a time for reflection as well as celebration. What happened to the vision of the Christian community?

There were problems right from the start, according to Dermody.

“You had 12 different men with 12 different opinions on everything,” he said. Some resigned from the association before the building even began.

“Some went off the deep end in religious matters,” said Phil O’Brien. “They saw it as a kind of Franciscan community. I thought it should be broader -– more of a cooperative. I brought Jewish people up here.”

Marycrest suffered a serious blow when Ed Willock was felled by a stroke not long after moving into his home. There was no one to replace him. Disputes continued on doctrinal matters. At least as far as men were concerned, they were doctrinal, but for the women, some were decidedly practical. Alan Hudson’s daughter Mary, the second eldest, remembers the men debating as to whether washing machines should be allowed into the community.

“There were some real inclinations to go back to a more primitive means of production,” Dermody said. “But there were also discussions in the 1960s about machines liberating women.” They successfully kept TV at bay until 1954. “Bourgeois” remained a bad word for many years. One of Ed Willock’s more famous sayings was:

“Mr. Business went to Mass: he never missed a Sunday.

“Mr. Business went to Hell for what he did on Monday.”

Practical matters, however, dominated the discussions. Some members were unhappy with others for not pulling their weight. In 1962, Alan Hudson resigned and left the community, angry over a refusal, he said, to apply the rules fairly to everyone. As the cost of land in Rockland County soared, some members wanted to sell off the remaining undeveloped acres. An ailing Willock commented shortly before he died in 1960: “We are now in the hands of the bookkeepers.”

Land was gradually sold off to non-members who simply wanted a pleasant place to live. After a long dispute about who owned the right to sell off the remaining acres, the trustees or the individual members, Marycrest was wound up in 1974 as an association. It became a corporation.

Underlying this, however, there is a deeper failure, one that visionary communities of whatever ideology usually have to confront. Not only did the community unravel, of the children it produced, almost none are practicing Catholics. What had happened to a community whose ambition was to raise saints?

“It is the greatest failure in my life,” admitted Dermody, the day after he had turned 80, “the most brutal irony.”

Alan Hudson nodded his head in grim agreement. “Along came the sexual revolution -– that wiped them away,” he said. “That was a major factor. We lost an entire generation.”

Yet anyone who attended the Dermody party the day before, and saw the children, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren enjoying themselves just as they did in the days gone by, might not see any failure at all, but a loving community still in existence, though the old Marycrest is gone.

America's Widening Income Gap -- Not Then, Now!

2009-09-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

The Widening Gap In America’s Two Tiered Society

Emily Spence
Thomas Paine’s Corner
September 7, 2009

Americans, particularly ones from the middle class, need to realize that there are no core entitlements imparted by their government representatives, nor any other sources. They have none and should adjust their expectations accordingly.

If the U.S. populace somehow imagines that its members are viewed any differently than any other populations across the world that are used to produce maximal profits for the top economic class, there’s a rude awakening in store ahead. Further, most legislators simply do not care whether middle and lower class interests are or aren’t well served as long as they, themselves, can somehow make out well in the times ahead.

Besides, why should any Americans feel that they deserve to be treated more favorably by the transnational moneyed elites and their government backers than their counterparts across the rest of the world? As A. H. Bill reminds: “The richest 225 people in the world today control more wealth than the poorest 2.5 billion people. And… the three richest people in the world control more wealth than the poorest 48 nations.”

Occasionally someone making a staggering amount of money in a crooked sort of way might raise a few officials’ eyebrows or induce a mild reprimand. In addition, he might, occasionally, be singled out as the token fall guy so as to be made into a warning example as was Bernie Madoff. Most of the time, though, no action is usually undertaken to correct the situation when directors of major companies carry out activities that are, obviously, right on or over the edge of fraudulent practices.

As Barack Obama, perhaps hypocritically, chastened, “Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productive and sound business practices. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales.”

Yet, he, himself, showed no hesitation during his election campaign over collecting $40,925 from the bailout fund recipient and nearly bankrupt investment house Bear Stearns, $161,850 from the bailout fund recipient and mortgage underwriter Morgan Stanley, as well as benefits from countless other institutions that have received government favors at taxpayers’ expense. As such, it’s hard in actuality to deliver more than just a mild verbal rebuke about these organizations’ modus operandi if one picks up a personal windfall from not meddling. Thus, the financial corruption continues at all levels of government.

A case in point is the self-serving oil trader Andrew Hall. His relationship with Citigroup’s (C.N) Phibro energy-trading unit brought him approximately $100 million in 2008 despite that his parent company registered a net deficit of $18.7 billion for the same year and received $45 billion in TARP funds.

However, it’s been pointed out that he could moderately adjust his current level of gain and continue to maintain the same procurement pattern if he manages to stay out of the limelight. If he follows this plan in the near future, his earnings and bonuses won’t likely duplicate the $250 million personal compensation that he’d received in the past five years. Yet, he could still make out quite well all the same!

In any event, one has to question such lavish rewards considering that Citigroup suffered a 95% loss of its share value since 2007 in relation to which Phibro “occasionally accounts for a disproportionate chunk of Citigroup income.” At the same time, the U.S. government will shortly be the owner of 34% of this company. Put more bluntly, is Andrew Hall’s personal prosperity and propensity to add to his private art collection the best use of taxpayers’ funds?

As long as he’s a lavish beneficiary, would he care if they weren’t? As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith once suggested: “The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.” Naturally, Andrew Hall aims to keep such a cozy arrangement intact.

Besides, his personal take is relatively inconsequential. It’s a mere pittance contrasted to the almost two and a quarter billion dollars grand total — roughly $2,217,800,000 — that the top ten U.S. business moguls collectively grossed as their own recompense in 2008. [1]

At the same time, it cannot not be expected, in a market based economy, that political influence is not also a purchased commodity. Clearly, opinions are bought and sold just as easily as are any other products and services with payment being campaign funds, such as Obama’s, from big industry; offers of high paying future jobs and other lavish advantages dangled as bait.

On account of this kind of shady deal, tax subsidies connected to executive pay amounted to $20 billion in 2008 according to United for a Fair Economy (UFE) and Institute for Policy Studies. (Imagine if this money, instead, were allocated towards improvements in public education, provision of a universal heath-care plan or any number of other programs that could uplift the American public as a whole.)

During the same period, average CEO pay, at $10.54 million, was 344 times higher than typical worker pay. This disparity, also, is generally indicative of a trend that increasingly funnels wealth upward rather than having it more equitably distributed across class lines.

Another sign of this ascendant drift can be found in the change between the first Forbes 400 report (1982) and its 2008 version. In 1982, an entrepreneur only needed slightly more than $100 million dollars to get on the list. By 2008, he wouldn’t be in the top 400 unless he’d garnered at least $1.3 billion. In other words, so much more wealth shot upward in the last twenty years that $100 million now is almost viewed as chump change in comparison to the new top gains.

In addition, Congressional reports have indicated that widespread tax avoidance tricks, like use of overseas banks that do not report amounts to the IRS, have cost taxpayers more than $2 billion annually. Certainly, these lost moneys could well be used to help people less fortunate. For example, the hidden $2 billion could be used to create job training programs for any of the one in nine Americans currently forced to rely on food stamps as an alternative to starvation.

To be eligible for such aid, a family of four, for example, has to have no more than $2,389 as its gross monthly income or 130% of the official poverty level and no more than $1,838 net monthly income or 100% of the poverty level. (There are few deductions and exceptions to the requirements allowed, along with limits for owned property value imposed, that further determine whether one meets qualifications.)

In other words, a typical household of four cannot receive this help if the gross income for the foursome exceeds $28,668 annually and, for an individual, the gross not to be surpassed is $14,088. Additionally, recipients cannot have a great deal of assets with a clearly defined, too high level of worth.

As such, they have to be nearly broke across the board. Meanwhile, it’s clearly disgraceful that more than 27,651,388 Americans are so extremely poor they require food assistance to try to make ends meet.

Even that help, though, is often not enough to prevent further poverty and many folks are unable to avoid outright destitution across the so-called wealthy U.S.A. So next, they lose their homes… and they lose them in droves.

The huge portion of Americans who do so are staggering: While the number of U.S. foreclosure filings climbed by more than 81% in 2008, the total is still sharply rising in 2009. In relation, 300,000 homes foreclosed per month from March to May in 2009 and 1.8 million homes represented the anticipated total for the first half of the year. With such a backdrop, one out of every 398 homes received a filing in April and a whopping 6.4 million homes are anticipated to be in foreclosure by mid-2011. Simultaneously, a record number of individuals, also, applied for bankruptcy.

•A d v e r t i s e m e n t
•In a similar vein, the jobless rate, despite some minor dips downward, is still seemingly on the rise. Therefore, the current number of out of work adults could well exceed 20% if all of the hopeless ones, who are no longer collecting unemployment benefits and who gave up looking for opportunities, are added into the mix.

Moreover, they will not be able to jumpstart the economy so long as they cannot find work, and especially work at a living wage. After all, how can anyone make lots of purchases or take out bank loans if he has no reasonable income? So it follows that even more retail and wholesale stores, along with banks, will go belly up.

At the same time, the supply side of the market, itself, has created labor troubles. This is because goods have been overproduced. Consequently, there is overstock piled high in warehouses and shipping containers across the world ready to resume its path to the market once the spending reinitializes. However, spending cannot resume as long as the money has largely flowed to the top economic tier and away from average former and low wage workers, who can not expect to have decent paying jobs to create more goods until the current product glut diminishes.

In other words, consumers can’t buy much when money’s tight and work won’t be provided when there’s an oversupply of merchandise largely produced in second world sweatshops whose workers are paid so little that they hardly can put food on their own tables let alone make many more extravagant purchases — ones like toothpaste, soap and shampoo. Besides, they, too, face employment opportunities diminishing because worldwide sales are down for many of the products that, previously, their companies too copiously produced.

Concurrently, the bailouts, oriented towards fixing the credit side of the equation, are not addressing these sorts of supply side problems. Therefore, they will not keep the financial collapse from worsening.

Alternately put, TARP and other payoffs to the self-serving, unconscionable banksters and Wall Street high rollers largely responsible for the downturn will not produce an abundance of jobs. So the reasonable salaries, ultimately needed to buy the wares to cause industrial output to resume, won’t materialize any time soon.

It’s rather simple to understand, really. So why don’t Ben Bernanke and his colleagues seem to notice that massive job loss, itself, needs to be addressed posthaste? Why hasn’t a public works program been initiated? Why don’t they grasp that the act of offshoring all kinds of American jobs to maximize profits at the top tier does not ensure that products will be avidly snapped up by a greatly unemployed and underemployed public?

Since they, apparently, don’t understand, the downturn, with a few small upward twists, will remain in its plunging slide, which in turn will create further layoffs. All the while, the über-wealthy and their corporate supporters, such as most members of Congress, will continue to pamper themselves with capital largely derived from struggling taxpayers and massive loans that raise the federal deficit.

More to the point, how could the slump not last when the affluent elites gamble away huge fortunes comprising of their own and others’ money while manufacturing bubbles and Ponzi schemes in the process? How could anything change when they keep amassing more and more assets for themselves while indifferent to their impact on society as a whole?

Such practices as theirs, obviously, cannot sustain the American middle and under classes and it cannot buoy up the utmost bottom rung either. On account, scores of individuals of all ages continue to wind up in tent cities or ensconced on public park benches. (Supposedly, families with children represent the fastest growing subset of the homeless population in the U.S.A. at present and the average age of a homeless person is nine years old.)

When the upper-crust keeps getting richer by taking an ever greater portion of the overall wealth and government schemes assure that the process continues, nearly everyone else becomes increasingly cash poor. When every now and then big investors suffer hefty losses, the government steps in to shore them up again and again. However, this practice, clearly, does not help the populace in general. The evidence that it does not can be seen everywhere across the American landscape and the entire world.

It follows, then, that, “in the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2004, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.3% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.3%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.2%…”, according to G. William Domhoff, a sociology professor at University of California at Santa Cruz. [2]

Another way to measure the shift in wealth is by noting some of the corporate trends, themselves. As Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh, at the Institute for Policy Studies, point out:

Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).

The Top 200 corporations’ sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity. Between 1983 and 1999, their combined sales grew from the equivalent of 25.0 percent to 27.5 percent of World GDP.

The Top 200 corporations’ combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10.

The Top 200s’ combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in ‘’severe” poverty.

While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world’s workforce. [3]

Especially exemplifying this type of corporate immensity is the Wal Mart company. For example, the Walton heirs have a collective worth of around $65 billion and over 1.7 billion shares, or 43%, of Wal Mart stock in addition to earning $29 billion off the stock price rise alone from November 2007 to June 2008.

Meanwhile, the Waltons pay their jean laborers in Nicaragua approximately $1.50/ day. Simultaneously, their average U.S. workers are given wages of about $12,000/ annum causing a full one half of Wal Mart’s 720,000 employees to qualify for food stamps.

At the same time, the clearly exploitive Wal Mart business model is considered an unqualified success — one that should be more often duplicated across the board. After all, it shows the capitalistic free market with its best possible outcome — profits beyond imagination and the American Dream come true (for the few who manage to take unfair advantage of the actual wealth producers)!

Perhaps, though, the best way to look at the new arrangement between citizens, State and the rising corporate structures is through this superlative summation by Benito Mussolini:

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. [4]

Even if Benito Mussolini’s position has an alarmingly familiar ring to it, no one still should expect U.S. legislators to create laws any time soon that would enact tax code changes in order to remove subsidies that encourage overpayment to executives and that cost taxpayers $20 billion a year. Indeed, nobody should expect any major changes at all that would level the financial playing field, remove a sense of economic injustice or bring back jobs and reasonable wages to the American people.

As Joel H. Rassman, Toll Bros. CFO in 2006, explained about CEO Robert I. Toll’s $20 million compensation while shareholders were suffering a 22% loss: “I have yet to meet the person who has enough money.”

Like Toll, a majority of Congressional representatives, of whom many are multi-millionaires, apparently imagine that they never have quite enough for themselves and justify their dodgy choices accordingly. They, also, know who butters their bread and it surely is not the increasingly impoverished average U.S. citizens, who continue to be the indirect victims of corporate rapacity and pathetic corporate oversight by executives and Congressmen alike.

In relation, one wonders when a significant number of Americans will, finally, recognize that they’ve been had. Put another way by Andrew Greeley: “It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do.”

This explanation in mind, we need not worry as much about the terrorists from abroad as the terrorists from above and the duped voters who repeatedly fall for political candidates pandering to this broadly malignant upper class. The latter bunch and their sycophantic legislative admirers, more than any foreign guerrillas, are leading the world’s wealthiest nation into ever deeper ruin.

REFERENCES:

[1] Top CEO collected $702 mln in 2008: US survey – Yahoo! News
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090813/ts_alt_afp/usbusinessexecutivepaypolitics_20090813190411).

[2] Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power (http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html).

[3] CorpWatch : Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power (www.corpwatch.org/article. php?id=377).

[4] Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome, ‘Ardita’ Publishers. pp. 133-135.

2009-09-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

Legendary Spanish Civil War Photograph Faked

2009-08-26T06:34:00.001-07:00

‘Anti-Fascist’ Legend Falls in Spain
By K R Bolton
Academy of Social & Political Research, Athens

As has been commented upon repeatedly by sundry historians and authors, the Spanish Civil War served as a prelude for World War II, giving the Big Powers and competing ideologies the opportunity to test out their weaponry and tactics. Spain also served as a testing ground for propaganda, and the Franco side has expectedly come off second best, as the Popular Front are still portrayed as noble champions of liberty, regardless of the Masonic-Bolshevist assaults that were perpetrated with the same sadism that had already been manifested in Russia and Hungary.

Like World War I, with the British-US propaganda depictions of Germans bayoneting Belgian babies, and World War II with the Soviet-Allied propaganda which is still being presented to the world as though the war against the Axis remains in full swing, there are several salient propaganda devices deriving from the Spanish tragedy which have endured, one of which has recently been dealt a fatal blow (the other being the legend of the Basque town Guernica, supposedly bombed by German aircraft, but more the victim of Leftist dynamiting, the fires from which the Leftist mayor did not allow the fire brigade from Bilbao to extinguish. See for e.g. the first hand account of British journalist and author, F Yeats Brown, European Jungle, Eyre and Spottiswood, 1939; chapter on Spain available as a reprint from this writer).

The legend that has recently fallen is that of the very famous supposed photograph of the death agonies of a noble knight for democracy (aka a servant of Bolshevism and Masonry), entitled “Falling Militiaman” by Robert Capa.

An Associated Press report describes the photograph as follows:

“Robert Capa’s photograph of a falling Spanish Civil war militiaman became one of the most famous and enduring images of conflict of the 20th century.
“Now, Spanish researchers who have studied events surrounding the picture believe it was staged.” (Civil war photo ‘a fake’, AP Report, Dominion Post, Wellington, New Zealand, July 25, 2009, B3).

The picture was first published in 1936 in the French magazine Vu and then in Life magazine in the USA. The caption said that the photograph depicted the moment a Republican rifleman was killed.

Interestingly, the AP report states that the location was given as Cerro Muriano on the Cordoba front, where Franco’s forces were fiercely engaging “soldieries loyal to the elected Republican government.” Note that even in this passing reference in the AP report, the legend endures regarding the implied legitimacy of the “elected Republican government” (sic) fighting the illegitimate rebels under Franco. Regardless, the legend continues of Republic heroism against evil fascists, with little or no consideration of the causes of the civil war, of the violence perpetrated by the socialists and communists against Rightist and monarchist parliamentarians, of the cowardly shooting of Falangist leader Jose de Rivera while in government custody, of the policy of summary executions used by the anarchists, the burning of churches and the shooting of priests, in a re-enactment of the Russian Bolsheviks two decades previously. (Lately there have been ‘revisionist historians’ attempting to lower the estimates for the number of priests and monks killed by the ‘loyalists’. See for e.g. Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939-, Penguin, 2001).).

The AP report continues that the location was probably not Cerro Muriano and that the militiaman was probably not shot. After studying the photograph and new images as part of an exhibition at Barcelona’s art gallery museum, four researchers state the photographs were taken 5 kilometres away in an area where there was no fighting at that time.

‘“It quickly became obvious to us that among the new photographs – 34 attributed to Capa, six to his companion Gerda Taro – there were four that revealed the exact place where Capa had taken the shots,” film maker Raul Riebenbauer said.’ (AP report, ibid.).

Historian Francisco Moreno studied the geographical features of the photograph, including the shape of the hills, the location of two farmhouses and several roads, and identified the location as a hillside east of Espejo township.

The AP report states that “Falling Militiaman” catapulted the career of Capa as the world’s foremost war photographer. Now after over 70 years he can join the sullied ranks of one of the world’s foremost propagandist frauds in the service of the Left.

(K R Bolton is a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research, author of Thinkers of the Right, England, 2003, etc.; and a columnist for The [Kapiti] Watchman, New Zealand).

Pius XI's Words of Wisdom on Hollywood

2009-08-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

In his encyclical, Vigilanti Cura, Pope Pius XI wrote that he was “deeply anguished to note with each passing day the lamentable progress of the motion picture art and industry in the portrayal of sin and vice.”

That encyclical regarding film immorality was issued on June 29, 1936. The Pope lamented that “the road seemed almost closed to those who sought honest diversion in the motion picture.” The situation has hardly improved in the ensuing 70-plus years.
The best we can hope for today is that Catholics everywhere will be judicious in the choice of movies they attend – and especially those they allow their children to see – in hopes that, as Pius XI said, movies become a “valuable auxiliary of instruction and education rather than of destruction and ruin of the soul.”
In the Pope’s judgment, the art, science, and technology of movie making were all true gifts of God. Yet he admonished that these talents be used “to promote the extension of the Kingdom of God upon earth.”
Perhaps that should be our guide as well in determining which movies we, and our children, choose to watch.

Income Inequality Worst Since 1917

2009-08-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

No Wonder the Poker Game is Ending: The Wealthiest Have Taken All of the Chips

Washington’s Blog
Saturday, August 15, 2009

A new report by University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez concludes that income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression.

The report shows that:

Income inequality is worse than it has been since at least 1917
“The top 1 percent incomes captured half of the overall economic growth over the period 1993-2007″
“In the economic expansion of 2002-2007, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth.”
As others have pointed out, the average wage of Americans, adjusting for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1970s. The minimum wage, adjusting for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1950s. See this. On the other hand, billionaires have never had it better.

As I wrote in September:

The economy is like a poker game . . . it is human nature to want to get all of the chips, but – if one person does get all of the chips – the game ends.

In other words, the game of capitalism only continues as long as everyone has some money to play with. If the government and corporations take everyone’s money, the game ends.

The fed and Treasury are not giving more chips to those who need them: the American consumer. Instead, they are giving chips to the 800-pound gorillas at the poker table, such as Wall Street investment banks. Indeed, a good chunk of the money used by surviving mammoth players to buy the failing behemoths actually comes from the Fed…

This is not a question of big government versus small government, or republican versus democrat. It is not even a question of Keynes versus Friedman (two influential, competing economic thinkers).

It is a question of focusing any government funding which is made to the majority of poker players – instead of the titans of finance – so that the game can continue. If the hundreds of billions or trillions spent on bailouts had instead been given to ease the burden of consumers, we would have already recovered from the financial crisis.

As Marc Weisbrot writes in the Guardian:

John Schmitt and Nathan Lane showed that the United States is not the nation of small businesses that it is regularly dressed up to be for electoral campaign speeches and editorials. If we look at what percentage of our overall labour force is self-employed, or what percentage of manufacturing workers or high-tech workers are employed in small businesses – well, the US ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries.

As economist Paul Krugman noted after reading the study: “One more American myth bites the dust.”

In other words, the idea that America has more small businesses than other countries is false. More small businesses would be good, as it would mean that more of the “little guys” would have poker chips to play the free market game with.

Similarly, breaking up the big banks would lead to more competition and allow smaller banks to fill the lending needs of individuals and small businesses

Local Currency Most Popular Since Great Depression

2009-08-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

Communities around the country are printing “scrip” at the highest rate since the Great Depression says Agora Financial

Behold the “Plenty” an alternitive currency printed and exchanged exclusively in Pittsboro, N.C., population 2,500. A couple dozen Pittsboro stores accept it as a dollar alternative, like the local feed store and a produce co-op.

The idea is nothing new… we’ve chronicled scrips like the Ithaca HOUR and Western Mass’ BerkShare for some time. Both have millions worth in ciculation.

But according to the LA Times, scrips haven’t been this popular since the Great Depression. They’ve gained significant traction in New York, North Carolina, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona and Massachusets, with many more commonities beginning to experiment.

And we’re noticing a decidedly less hippie, more snarky feel: "The Plenty is not going to get siphoned off to Wall Street,” says B.J. Lawson, president of The Plenty co-op board, “or Washington, or make a stop in Bentonville on its way to China.” In Mesa, Ariz., locals are using Mesa Bucks to essentialy stick it to the man… bring a sales receipt from inside city limits to the local arts center and they’ll give you a percentage of your sales tax back in Mesa Bucks.

So much for “E Pluribus Unim”

Announcement from "In the Spirit of Chartres Committee"

2009-08-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

The “In the Spirit of Chartres ” Committee, year three of...

Catholic Restoration Conference V
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Indiana University

Teacher, Choir Director, Church Organist

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Modernism
and
Catholic Sacred Music

www.isoc.ws

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Bernanke Redistributes Income Upwards: The Impoverishment of Middle America

2009-08-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

Unemployment is rising, wages are falling and credit is contracting. In other words, the system is working exactly as designed. All the money is flowing upwards to the gangsters at the top. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Don Monkerud article that sums it all up:

“During eight years of the Bush Administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top one percent claimed 22 percent of the national income, while the top ten percent took half of the total income, the largest share since 1928

Over 40 percent of GNP comes from Fortune 500 companies. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research, the 500 largest conglomerates in the U.S. “control over two-thirds of the business resources, employ two-thirds of the industrial workers, account for 60 percent of the sales, and collect over 70 percent of the profits.”

… In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S.” “Wealth Inequality destroys US Ideals”

[Here we see an economy moving in the opposite direction from the one the Distributists would understand to be desireable. Belloc always defined capitalism as "a small handful of men owning most of the productive wealth."]

The New Freedom of Obama Nation --- Pharmacists Will Now Be Forced to Dispense Abortifacients

2009-07-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

Pharmacists lose pill ruling

By Carol Williams, LA Times

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the "morning after" contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
In a case that could herald judicial policy across the Western states, a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Washington failed in a bid to block 2007 changes to pharmacy regulations requiring all Washington pharmacists to stock and dispense the contraceptive. Family-owned Ralph's Thriftway and two women employed at other pharmacies sued Washington state officials to assert that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills that can prevent implantation of the recently fertilized egg. They claimed that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion....On July 8, 2009, a 3 judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, saying the district court was wrong in issuing it based on an erroneous finding that the rules violate the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution....[According to the court], the right to freely exercise one's religion "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability," [N.B., what pray tell is not a "valid and neutral law of general applicability --- in other words one can never cite the natural or divine law as a justification for not obeying a human civil law --- question: is this not the very essence of totalitarianism] the 9th Circuit panel wrote. [Let us all in the United States admit that we have now entered into a totalitarian democracy. Europe did it a long time ago, let us admit that we have so entered now --- this ruling, with many more like it to come, proves that the United States has so entered this state.]

Benedict XVI calls for World Government to Fix Economy

2009-07-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

Benedict's Globalist "Solution" is One World Government with Totalitarian Powers. Where is the Principle of Subsidiarity? See Comments Below. Why do we have the Pope agreeing with Al Gore and Barack Obama?

Pope calls for a "global authority" on economy
By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict called on Tuesday for a "world political authority" to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat.

The pope made his call for a re-think of the way the world economy was run in a new encyclical which touched on a number of social issues but whose main connecting thread was how the current crisis has affected both rich and poor nations.

Parts of the encyclical, titled "Charity in Truth," seemed bound to upset free marketers because of its underlying rejection of unbridled capitalism and unregulated market forces, which he said had led to "thoroughly destructive" abuse of the system and "grave deviations and failures."

An encyclical is the highest form of papal writing and gives the clearest indication to the world's 1.1 billion Catholics -- and to non-Catholics -- of what the pope and the Vatican think about specific social and moral issues.

The pope said every economic decision had a moral consequence and called for "forms of redistribution" of wealth overseen by governments to help those most affected by crises.

Benedict said "there is an urgent need of a true world political authority" whose task would be "to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result."

Such an authority would have to be "regulated by law" and "would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights."

"Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums," he said.

"Green Shoots": True Unemployment Rate Near 21%

2009-07-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

True unemployment rate already at 20%
Posted Jul 06 2009, 01:16 PM by Anthony Mirhaydari

Really, how hard is it to find a job? Was June's horrid numbers, in which 467,000 people lost their jobs compared to 345,000 in May, a one-time fluke? Or does it mean that all those Wall Street economists who believe the economic recovery is starting are dead wrong?

Not to scare you, but the situation is actually worse than it seems. Over the years, the government has changed the way it counts the unemployed. An example of this is the criticized Birth-Death Model which was added in 2000. The model is designed to account for the birth and death of businesses and the resultant lag in survey data. Unfortunately, the model doesn't work that well during economic contractions (like we have now) and consistently overstates the number of jobs being created each month.

John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics specializes in removing these questionable tweaks to the government's statistical data to better align current numbers with the methodology used to gather historical data. After reviewing the data, Williams believes that "the June jobs loss likely exceeded 700,000." David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff notes that the fall in the number of hours worked in June (to a record low of 33 per week) is equivalent to a loss of more than 800,000 jobs.

There are similar issues with the way the unemployment rate is measured. The headline rate only jumped from 9.4% to 9.5% because of a drop in the number of people in the workforce. The more inclusive "U-6" measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged workers, jumped from 16.4% to 16.5%. But even this doesn't adequately capture the situation on the ground: Back in the Clinton Administration, the definition of discouraged worker was changed to only include those that had given up looking for work because there were no jobs to be had within the last year.

By adding these folks back in, William's SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%. Any way you cut the numbers, the situation is very bad. According to David Rosenberg, one-in-three among the unemployed have been looking for a job for more than six months and still can't find one.

This brings us to another issue: expiring unemployment benefits. Continuing unemployment claims fell 53,000 to 6.7 million last week, but Deutsche Bank's chief U.S. economist Joseph LaVorgna wonders how much of this decline is due people exhausting their standard 26-week benefit. He says: "We are concerned about what will happen when a significant share of out-of-work individuals' benefits completely expire, because this could lead consumer spending to re-weaken, hence jeopardizing a fragile recovery."

Unless the economy starts getting traction here in the third quarter, we could face a situation where people find that they have no job and no unemployment benefits. For these people, 2009 will feel an awful lot like 1932. As a result, spending cuts will be deep and dramatic.

Bishop Williamson writes of "Restructuring in State, Economy, and Church"

2009-07-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 2009
Eleison Comments CIII: 81/121 Re-Structuring

Tomorrow, or the day after, there is hardly a box outside of which it will not be necessary to think. In Church and world, the mentalities and structures of so-called “Western civilization” are collapsing around our ears. Still the mass of Western souls are preferring to slumber on in their audio-visual dream, but reality is closing in all the time – they may awake not before they are shackled into the New World Order.

The USA has for nearly a century acted as the shield and sword-bearer of “Western civilization” . Now its financial, economic and political power structures are melting down in a welter of greed, corruption, selfishness and dissolution slung between Wall Street, New York, and Washington, DC. However -- let it never be said too often – “We the people” have only ourselves to blame. We have wanted the cause: godless materialism. Now we must live with the effects: the final breakdown of fractional reserve “banking”, of paper “money”, of democratic “politics”.

City structures are crumpling. In Flint, Michigan, original home of General Motors presently employing 8,000 local people where once it employed 79,000 and now bankrupt, local politicians are pioneering an idea to save their dwindling city: raze entire districts and return the land to nature. This idea so appeals to the Federal Government that another 50 cities have been earmarked as potential candidates for salvation by the bulldozer, including Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

State structures are failing. In California, Controller John Chiang said a few days ago that if State lawmakers cannot quickly solve California’s 24 billion dollar deficit, then next week he will have to pay State debts with paper promises to pay. “Unfortunately” , said he, “the State’s inability to balance the check-book will now mean short-changing taxpayers, local governments and small businesses”. It is easy to imagine how these will react, but it is not easy to imagine how the budget deficit will be solved.

As for our national structures, if we will not acquiesce to their being merged into the international New World Order, then surely a Third World War will be engineered to persuade us, starting with an 81/121 (a 9/11 squared) ! Yet all these collapses pale in comparison with Vatican II, because it was the Catholic Church that was upholding “Western civilization” . If the Catholic collapse is not soon reversed by the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, then one must wonder if the healthiest elements in the Church will not need re-structuring as an underground resistance movement. Kyrie eleison.

Bishop Richard Williamson, London, England

Afghan Surge Illegal, says Professor of International Law

2009-07-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

OBAMA HAS NO LEGAL AUTHORITY TO ESCALATE AFGHAN WAR

AND IS CREATING “HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE” IN PAKISTAN

By Sherwood Ross

July 3, 2009(Special)---President Obama has no legal authority either from the United Nations or the U.S. Congress under the War Powers Resolution(WPR) to escalate the war in Afghanistan, a distinguished professor of international law says.

“President Obama’s surge of 21,000 troops now engaged in combat in Afghanistan comes on top of the 60,000 we already had there,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law at Champaign.

“The Obama Administration simply ignored Section 4(a)(3) of the WPR when it announced the escalation,” Boyle noted. “U.S. armed forces are in Afghanistan originally pursuant to WPR. Its requirement that the President get Congressional consent on substantial enlargement (of forces) was put there to deal with the kind of gradual escalation we saw in Viet Nam that eventually led to 550,000 troops being there,” Boyle said.

“Clearly,” Boyle added, “President (George W.) Bush never had authority from Security Council in the first place to invade Afghanistan, and the WPR requires that any enlargement of U.S. troops in a foreign nation be authorized by Congress.” Boyle made his comments in a telephone interview with columnist Sherwood Ross of Miami, Fla.

President Obama “has now escalated the conflict into Pakistan and has set off a humanitarian catastrophe for 2-million of its people similar to what President Nixon set off in Cambodia,” Boyle said. “What Obama is doing is destabilizing Pakistan and setting off a civil war there. It’s a very dangerous, illegal, unconstitutional policy,” Boyle said.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the first place because the Taliban government refused to allow UNOCAL oil to build the TAPI pipeline across its territory, Boyle said. He noted the route U.S. troops are taking in Afghanistan is that of the proposed pipeline. “I think this (escalation) is about getting the oil and gas out of Central Asia by avoiding Russia and without dealing with Iran,” Boyle added.

The easiest way to do that, he said, is to construct pipelines south through Afghanistan, into Pakistan and then out to the Arabian Sea. The oil and natural gas resources of Central Asia, Boyle noted, are reported to be the second largest in the world after the Persian Gulf.

In his new book, “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions,”(Clarity) Boyle wrote, “What is going on now in Afghanistan is not self-defense. Let’s be honest. We all know it. At best this is reprisal, retaliation, vengeance, catharsis. Call it what you want, but it is not self-defense. And retaliation is never self-defense.”

American Green Cash Behind "Green" Revolution

2009-06-25T14:22:00.001-07:00

June 19, 2009
Who Put the ‘green’ in the Green Revolution?
Posted by Daniel McAdams on June 19, 2009 05:35 AM

The United States, of course.

As in the previous “color revolutions” that seem to tirelessly capture the romantic imagination of US journalists, elites, and the propagandized population, the warm embrace of the US empire is firmly guiding the “spontaneous” Iranian uprising against last week’s election results. While I do not and should not– nor should any other American — care in the slightest who rules a country some seven thousand miles away, when the fingerprints of the US empire show up on these dramatic events overseas it is very much my business.

Several commentators have already dredged from the memory hole press reporting at the time on a presidential “finding” on Iran, which is the formal method for the president to initiate covert actions against another country. Back in 2007 — plenty of lead time for this election — the president met with the Congressional Star Chamber, the “gang of 8″ House and Senate leaders, and was granted the authorization to use some $400 million for among other things, as the Washington Post reported, “activities ranging from spying on Iran’s nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country’s ruling clerics….”

Arch neo-conservative Kenneth Timmerman spilled the beans on activities of the other arm of US meddling overseas, the obscenely mis-named National Endowment for Democracy, in a piece written one day before the election, stating curiously that “there’s the talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Interesting. I wonder where that “talk” was coming from. Timmerman did not appear to be writing from Iran.

Timmerman went on to write, with admirable candor and honesty, that:

“The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

“Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

Yes, you say, but what does a blow-hard propagandist like Timmerman know about such things? Well, he should know! His very spooky Foundation for Democracy in Iran has its own snout deep in the trough of NED’s “open covert actions” against the Iranian government.

How does the “Foundation for Democracy in Iran” seek to “promote democracy” in Iran with our tax dollars? Foundation co-founder Joshua Muravchik gives us a hint in his subtly-titled LA Times piece, “Bomb Iran.”

Frankly, what I find more disturbing than the fact that the US government continues meddling in this new magical era of Obama is how many in the United States continue to be taken in by these events color-coordinated from afar. Pundits have turned their websites green in “solidarity” with this “green revolution.” Self-described “libertarians” have thrown all critical thinking aside to embrace their inner green. As if hoping, somehow, that this time it will all be true. That the “people power” really is on the march. That it is a binary world where there are evil incumbents — the old guard — oppressing thrusting “reformers” who are Twittering away toward the bright tomorrow of a world where everyone wants to be just like us! Democracy!

At times like these, I turn to the great Matt Taibbi, who has written the best piece of all time on how the US has morphed into the USSR:

“Modern observers look back at the early Soviet days and wonder how it is that people could possibly have believed those fantastic tales they read about in the state papers–the lurid descriptions of fascist terrorists and wreckers who conspired to poison reservoirs and turn up rails and put broken glass in sausage in the most faraway, seemingly irrelevant places in Siberia and the far north. The answer probably is that they wanted to believe them. Because that was what was in their hearts. It wasn’t a lie that was being put over on them. It came from them.”

And on it goes…

Montana newly asserts Principle of Subsidiarity

2009-06-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

Western states want reins on federal power

Eliza Wiley / Helena Independent Record

Montana state Rep. Joel Boniek, shown with his mule Jesse, introduced a bill seeking to exempt from federal regulation any firearm made and used within the state borders.
An expanded federal role prompts declarations of state sovereignty. Montana goes further with a gun bill defying U.S. firearm restrictions. The goal: Keep Washington on its side of the fence.
By Mark Z. Barabak
June 16, 2009

Reporting from Bozeman, Mont. -- Frustrated by the expanded power of Washington, a growing number of state lawmakers are defying the federal government and passing legislation aimed at rolling back the reach of Congress and President Obama.

While many measures are symbolic ones declaring the sovereignty of states, some Westerners are taking more dramatic steps. One Utah lawmaker wants to limit federal law enforcement in his state. In Montana, legislators enacted a bill that flagrantly ignores federal firearm restrictions, hoping to force a constitutional showdown.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Western politics: An article in Tuesday's Section A about the state sovereignty movement referred to legislation being considered for introduction next year in Montana that would make the sheriff the top law enforcement official in each county. The state Legislature does not meet again until 2011. —

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Supporters of the bill want the Supreme Court to eliminate gun controls and, eventually, curtail Washington's ability to set policy on a wide range of issues, including education, civil rights, law enforcement and land use.

"It's about states' rights," said state Rep. Joel Boniek, an independent-turned-Republican from nearby Livingston, who introduced the bill. "Guns are just the vehicle."

The Montana Firearms Freedom Act seeks to exempt from federal regulation any firearm, gun component or ammunition made and kept within the state's borders. The legislation, signed by Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, becomes law Oct. 1, though federal officials will likely act quickly to keep the measure from taking effect.

Legal experts are skeptical Montana will prevail in court, and even some proponents express their doubts. But supporters say the fight is a necessary step to change Washington's attitude. Similar bills have been introduced in nearly a half dozen states, and lawmakers in about a dozen more have expressed interest.

"We need 15, 25, 30 states to pass these types of legislation, so that we send a clear message to the country and to the national government," said Utah Rep. Carl Wimmer, a Republican from suburban Salt Lake City.

In addition to supporting a version of Montana's gun law, Wimmer is drafting legislation that would forbid local authorities to help enforce federal statutes inside Utah -- another bill that, if passed, would surely trigger a court fight.

"The national government has gained more and more power . . . to a point where we're simply subjects of the ruling masters in Washington, D.C.," said Wimmer, who has established an organization, the Patrick Henry Caucus, to rally like-minded lawmakers from other states. "That is not the way this country and this government were set up."

It is no accident the greatest defiance has surfaced in the West, a region with a history of antipathy toward outsiders and, especially, Washington.

"You're going to get more of it as people look at the growth of the federal government and the big bailout of financial interests," said Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada political scientist and expert on the Sagebrush Rebellion, the populist movement that swept the West a generation ago and helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

The sacred text for Wimmer, Boniek and their allies is the Constitution's 10th Amendment, which limits the powers of Washington. Although the language is straightforward -- all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states -- the meaning has been debated (and elastically interpreted) throughout history.

Conservatives and libertarians have long cited the 10th Amendment to press their case against the expansion of federal power, usually to little avail. Their latest effort is the state sovereignty movement. (Some also refer to the "states' rights" movement, though for many those words evoke the segregated South and efforts to fight racial equality.)

In just the last few months, legislatures in five states -- Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota -- have passed resolutions asserting their sovereignty and asking the federal government to "cease and desist" from meddling in their business. Similar measures are pending in about two dozen other states, including seven out West.

"There's a lot of people in the federal government saying: 'Do this. You must do that. We're the boss,' " said Republican state Rep. Brad Klippert, co-sponsor of sovereignty legislation pending in Olympia, Wash. "That's not true."

Several Republican governors, including Sarah Palin in Alaska, Mark Sanford in South Carolina and Rick Perry in Texas, have gone beyond symbolism, turning down a portion of federal stimulus funds -- and rejecting the strings attached -- as a way of expressing their independence from Washington. That has sometimes meant going to court and fighting fellow lawmakers eager to accept the money.

The latest movement appears aimed at Obama, who, in just a few months, has increased the size and scope of the federal government more dramatically than any president in decades.

Advocates deny that, citing a litany of grievances that include the No Child Left Behind education bill, which imposed strict federal testing requirements, and the Real ID law, which dictates costly national standards for driver's licenses. Both were signed by President George W. Bush.

Still, Obama and his expansive agenda have unquestionably given momentum to the state sovereignty effort, which has been embraced by Republican politicians like Perry and heavily promoted by sympathetic commentators on conservative TV and talk radio.

For his part, Boniek at one point equated Obama with Hitler, Mao and Stalin, saying each loved his country in his fashion but proved disastrous as a leader. "He's ruining the country I love," Boniek said of Obama, his soft tone belying the harsh comparison. "He doesn't know what freedom is."

It is difficult to say how the Supreme Court might rule on Montana's gun law, which challenges the government's authority under the commerce clause of the Constitution, the legal basis for much federal regulation.

In the mid-1990s, the court struck down a federal law that sought to restrict guns near schools, using the rationale behind Montana's law: that the federal authority over interstate commerce did not extend to a product that was made and used within one state.

More recently, however, the justices rejected a direct challenge to the commerce clause, ruling in 2005 that the federal government had the authority to effectively override California's medical marijuana law, even though the cannabis was being grown and used within the state's borders.

"As an abstract legal matter, it's perfectly plausible," Eugene Volokh, a UCLA expert on constitutional law, said of Montana's case. "But it's very unlikely to succeed in today's legal climate."

Backers of the legislation concede as much. "No federal employee in a black robe is going to roll back the power of the federal government," said Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Assn., who wrote the bill. "But we want to make a statement, get the legal arguments on the record and get people active."

Boniek, who makes his living operating a crane and leading big-game hunts, is already planning for next year's session. (Montana, like some other Western states, has a part-time legislature.)

He plans to introduce a bill that would make the sheriff the top law enforcement official in each county, requiring federal officers to seek permission to exercise authority in Montana.

For now, Boniek is waiting to see how the fight over his gun bill goes. "The whole thing is like a chess game," he said. "We've made our move. The next move is up to the federal government."

Monarchy. The Political Solution?

2009-06-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

In Defense of Monarchy
By: Brian M. McCall
For The Remnant

Apparently my recent article concerning the plight of His Royal Highness, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, has provoked some unintended consequences. Some areas of the blogsphere have questioned any favorable comments about a monarch as “un-American.” Although I had not intended the article to be a prompting for a debate on Catholic political theory, the observed reactions have prompted me to do just that.

To begin we have to define some terms. Often this discussion is short circuited by people using the term “monarchy” to mean different things. As I use the term it merely means a form of government where some or all of the governing authority is vested in a single person (monarch) who rules the kingdom for the remainder of their natural life or abdication (i.e. are not subject to constant elections). Often the term is conflated with a hereditary right of succession or the principle of inheritance known as primogenitor. These aspects of transmission of authority may be coupled with a monarchy in particular periods of history but are not essential to the definition. The Holy Father is a monarch but his position is not inherited but obtained by election through the College of Cardinals. The Holy Roman Emperor was elected by a collection of German Princes (although for many centuries it became customary for the electors to make their choice from one particular family, the Hapsburgs. Abbots and Abbesses are monarchs elected by their communities. Some monarchies have been hereditary (for example the kings of France and England, etc.). What is important to note is that some people’s purported objection to monarchy is actually an objection to hereditary succession, which is really a separate and distinct issue.

Now that we have established that a monarchy need not involve inheritance, we can turn directly to Catholic political philosophy. Catholic thought in this area does not judge a particular governing system merely on the form of government employed. Rather, the touchstone of Catholic political philosophy is the “common good.” The essential test of any system is whether or not the governing authorities govern the civil society in accordance with the common good or only a private good. The concept of the “common good” is a rich philosophical topic which could occupy an entire article. For our purposes, I merely wish to note that both elements of the term are essential to its definition. First, the government must in its legislative, executive and judicial acts really be pursuing something that constitutes a “good.” St. Thomas defines the “good” as “that which all thing desire.” A “good” is a perfection of something’s nature, an end that it seeks. Thus, knowledge of God, knowledge of Truth, procreation and rearing of children, preservation of life and beauty are all examples of “good.”

Secondly the good must be common to the members of the community as opposed to merely oriented towards the personal good of the ruler. A ruler who pursues the increase of knowledge among the people of his kingdom pursues the common good. A ruler who pursues public policies which increase merely his own personal wealth pursues a personal good. The common good can thus be seen as being in opposition to both a mere personal good and an evil.

With this framework we can see how Catholic philosophers such as St. Thomas categorized different forms of government not only by the method of governing but also by the type of end pursued by the ruler. Thus, when a community is ruled by one person that pursues the common good of the community it is called a monarchy. When the one ruler pursues his own personal good or an evil it is called a tyranny. A community ruled by a small group of virtuous men pursuing the common good is called an aristocracy. A community ruled by a small group of powerful men pursuing their own personal good (personal wealth or power) or ends constituting evil (such as unjust conquests) rather than the common good is called an oligarchy. A community ruled by many of the members of the community who govern the community in the interest of the common good is called a polity whereas a government run by the many which pursues evil ends (such as debauchery or depravity or economic injustice) is called democracy. Obviously as with many categorizations, actual communities can exhibit aspects of several of the above descriptions. Just as with personality types, a person may have a dominant character but still have some elements of the other characters (in their good or bad aspects).

To help make the discussion more concrete I will give some examples of communities that have exhibited primarily one of these forms. A monarchy would be France under the reign of St. Louis as he pursued the common good and primarily ruled France by his own authority. A tyranny would be Henry VIII for he pursued not only private goods (mostly of sensuality) but also pursued evil, heresy and schism. Although the English parliament existed, it played little role other than rubber stamping the will of Henry (likely out of fear of the scaffold). An aristocracy could be seen in some periods of ancient Israel when it was ruled by a council of elders. Staying with Israel, at the time of Our Lord it was essentially an oligarchy (in Judah at least where Herod had no power) ruled by the powerful Sanhedrin which worked against the common good of salvation brought by the Messiah, our Lord, as well as pursuing their own personal good of maintaining wealth and power. An example close to a polity would be some periods of the Roman Republic where the city was governed by representatives of the patricians in the Senate and the plebians through plebicites and tribunes and when their policies pursued the common good of the Roman city. An example of a perversion of polity, democracy, would be contemporary America. We are ruled by vast numbers of people (look at the size of the federal government alone. Our government promotes common vice not virtue (I think I need not rattle off the list of these) and a staggeringly large proportion of those in power govern for their own personal good – wealth and power (again I think it unnecessary to name names).

Now since any of the three forms of organization (one, few and many) possess the potentiality to be (and throughout different points in history, have in actuality been) oriented to either the common good or its perversion, none of the three can be declared per se the only or best form. In this sense, the Church has never said that a community is obligated to establish a monarchy or aristocracy or a polity in the same sense that she has required every community to acknowledge Christ the King. Catholic perfection of a civil community is possible, in theory, under any of them. However, the Church throughout history has certainly shown a tendency to favor monarchy. This can be seen both in the realm of ideas and in the realm of praxis. First, thinkers like Aquinas argue that although virtue is possible in any of the three forms, if a choice is possible, monarchy is preferable. Several reasons can be given. First, it has the potential to be more effective in promoting the common good because a monarchy by its nature is more capable of unified and coherent action. With one ruler the will of the ruling authority possesses a greater degree of unity (although not perfect as the human will suffers from the effects of original sin, one of which is inconstancy). A monarch who governs oriented to the common good has greater potential to do so more effectively than a group of people requiring co-ordination. Yet, as St. Thomas points out this very effectiveness can lead to the perversion of monarchy, tyranny. A tyranny is more effective in pursuing an antithesis of the common good. Thus, monarchy is capable of being the best but also one of the most dangerous forms of government.

Beyond effectiveness in pursuing the common good, monarchy as a government of unity tends to accord more to the supernatural order established by God. One God rules the visible and invisible worlds and thus a monarchy more perfectly reflects this order. Now, one might object that this one God contains three Divine Persons which is more akin to aristocracy; yet if we consider the matter, the Trinity is more like a human monarchy. The Trinity, despite being comprised of really distinct persons, possess a complete unity of attributes, perfections, desire, will and purpose. Such unity on the human level is not possible and more similar to a single person.

On the level of praxis, a vast plentitude of prayers of the Church (before the Bugnini Reckovation of the Liturgy) echo images and vocabulary of monarchy. Again in the interests of time I will not prove this assertion with detailed examples. Anyone following a Traditional Mass Missal for any period of time should see this as obvious. I will just note that before the Americanist leaning Archbishop Carrol penned his novel prayer for the generic term “government” in the early 19th century, it was for centuries customary after a High Mass to chant a “Prayer for the King [or Queen], the Domine Salvam Fac.

Such considerations have led many Catholic thinkers (including in one place St. Thomas) to consider that although monarchy represents in theory the best choice that it may be prudent to temper this form with elements of the other as a safeguard against a potential tyranny. With some role in governing for the virtuous few and the common citizens, the ability of a future tyrant may be restrained. This precaution comes with a price. A true monarch may be less effective in realizing the common good than he otherwise would have been.

Now, some contemporary thinkers have latched on to this idea of a tempered form of government (or what St. Thomas calls in one place a mixed form) as justification for (or even explanation of) the American constitutional system. Such a comparison is inaccurate on many levels. Most importantly the idea of a monarchy in a government is much more than a central executive figure such as a president. One of the benefits of a monarch is that his governing power is more obviously seen as proceeding from God. He is not beholden to an electoral cycle or constant change of office. As I argued in my recent article on the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, one of the main roles a monarch can play in a mixed form of government is to be a conscience standing outside the realm of electoral politics who can act as a guardian of the divine and natural law when the few or the many may attempt to pervert the common good into a violations of it. The presidency of the United States (and yes even the Imperial Presidency of modern history) is not and has never been a monarchy thus understood. America may at some point in its history been close to an aristocracy or a polity (although personally I think it has mostly been an oligarchy or a democracy) but it has never been a monarchy in any way. That does not mean that the United States has a unique place in history among governments opposed to the common good. History is littered with many tyrannies, oligarchies and democracies. Yet, the United States constitutional system is also not the utopian and mystical perfect form of government that many Americans, including some traditional Catholics, pretend it to be.

Recognizing that the United States is not a real mixed form of government (as there is no element of monarchy present), a reaction that anything in praise of monarchy is un-American may not be an inaccurate statement. Yet, a visceral reaction against monarchy is certainly un-Catholic. First, as we have seen the Church has held all three forms (monarchy, aristocracy and polity) to be acceptable forms of government. Secondly, for almost all of its history, the Church has exhibited in thought and words a preference for monarchy, although particular circumstances have not always made it possible or even prudentially advisable. I did not set out in this article to unveil a plan for reformulating the U.S. governmental system along Catholic lines. I do believe it needs serious reforming as we have long toiled under a government not oriented to the common good. My more modest objective was to argue first that a government oriented to the common good is the most important priority in any such reconstitution and secondly to argue that monarchy should not be jettisoned from the table as unacceptable per se. What is certainly clear is that the standard of the common good (which I hope to elucidate in future articles) needs to be the prominent litmus test of any government, whether a monarchy or not. On this litmus test, the United States has for a long time not measured up to that standard. For this reason we need to implore Christus Rex, misere et salva nos!

Grand Duke Silenced for Opposition to Euthanasia

2009-06-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

Last Catholic Monarchy Euthanized
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg Silenced!

Brian McCall
REMNANT COLUMNIST, Oklahoma

(Posted 03/20/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) The last act of the French Revolution came to a close on March 12, 2009, but hardly anyone was watching. The demonic forces unleashed over two hundred years ago took on the aim of destroying all monarchial authority in Europe. The rulers of the once Christian nations of Europe, or at least their governing authority, had all been executed, except for the tine nation of Luxembourg. On March 12, without much fanfare, the parliament of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg voted to end government of their small nation by the Grand Duke.

Luxembourg was the last European nation to be governed by a real monarch. Although the tiny nation has had a parliamentary chamber, that body functioned as parliaments were originally designed to function. It was an advisory body to the Grand Duke. After new legislation was voted on by the Chamber of Deputies, Article 34 of the Constitution stated: “The Grand Duke sanctions and promulgates the laws. He makes his resolve known within three months of the vote in the Chamber.” This provision permitted the Grand Duke to perform the proper function of a monarch in a mixed form of government. He served as a check on the potential excesses of political parties legislating when they encroached on the principles of the natural law. As a hereditary ruler for life, the Grand Duke is immune from elector politics. He can thus serve as an outside supervisor of the results of the legislative process. This is exactly what he did last year in an act which precipitated the March 12 vote.

In 2008, the Chamber of Deputies voted to approve a law which authorized the intentional killing of human beings, commonly referred to by its morbid proponents as euthanasia. Such a law is contrary to the natural law. For, as St. Thomas observed in his Summa the civil law can not always punish everything that the natural law forbids but it may never sanction such evil. Now we know both by reason and divine authority that euthanasia is proscribed. It violates the first principle of the natural law - self preservation. The Church has confirmed this deduction of reason on several occasions by pronouncing euthanasia to be immoral. Even the sensus Catholicus of this overwhelming Catholic nation was clear; the populace of Luxembourg opposed the bill pushed through by the Socialist and Green parties.

Henri, the current Grand Duke, fulfilled his moral obligation as a good Catholic monarch and refused to sanction this evil legislative act. As a reward for doing the right thing, the so called “conservative” Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, called for an amendment to the Constitution stripping the Grand Duke of his authority to sanction laws passed by the Chamber of Deputies. The March 12 vote approved the removal of the word “sanctions” from Article 34. Prime Minister Juncker made clear the intention was to remove the right of the Grand Duke to approve of or reject laws. According to Juncker he must be required to promulgate all acts passed by the Chamber. The Luxembourg monarchy has thus entered the realm of Walt Disney monarchs inhabited by the remaining figure heads of Europe such as England, Spain and Belgium. They can parade around for tourists in quaint costumes and live in nice palaces, but they have no authority to protect and defend their nation by governing it.

The old sly tactics of the spirit of Liberalism were visible in the way this final act unfolded. The press and politicians called the Grand Duke’s prevention of this immoral euthanasia legislation a “constitutional crisis.” Now a constitutional crisis occurs when an official violates the norms and rules constituting the mode of government of a civil society. In this case the Grand Duke did not violate a single provision of the existing written constitution. He merely exercised his legitimate and rightful authority to withhold his sanction from a proposed civil law which is contrary to the natural law. And the reaction of Liberalism to his exercise of his legitimate right – strip him of that right!

Liberalism has always been willing to grant freedom and rights so long as the recipients only exercise that freedom in accordance with the wishes of Liberalism. Post French Revolutionary Liberalism claims to stand for the “rule of law,” a phrase that purports to mean that rules are not to be changed merely to reach a desired outcome. The established rules of the game, Liberalism claims, are sacrosanct.

In reality, the rules are changed whenever Liberalism does not get its way. Like a spoiled child, it picks up its toys, which it previously claimed to have given away, and goes home. A few years ago after several nations clearly voted to reject the proposed European Constitution, the forces of Liberalism decided that the right to vote on the proposed Constitution was no longer necessary. The Constitution was repackaged as a treaty needing only the approval of the governments of the member states, not a vote of the population at large.

Ireland stood as the only exception and allowed the Irish people to vote and they said no. Even this vote did not stop the forces of Liberalism who vowed to find another way. Likewise, when Grand Duke Henri uses his legal right to withhold his sanction from a law, the right he thought Liberalism had conceded to his ancestors, the modern Constitution is seen for the illusion it is. He has the right for only so long as he does not actually use it.

This pattern of give and take rights is as old as the French Revolution which began by proclaiming Liberty for all and then proceeded to guillotine those who did not use that Liberty in the way the Committee for Public Safety thought they should (i.e. by apostatizing from the Faith). Liberalism means the right to be Liberal (as defined and redefined by the reigning generation of Liberals).

Fortunately for Grand Duke Henri, his confrontation with the old enemy cost him only his legitimate governing authority and not his head. Some Liberals have at least learned that the messy business of liberally severing heads always seems to turn on them, literally.

Still, the Grand Duke is to be commended for his fortitude. One can only imagine the subtle voices of temptation that were poured into his ears by the Machiavellian politicos. “Just sanction the euthanasia law and avoid a ‘constitutional crisis.’ and conserve your rights.” “You can compromise by expressing your personal disapproval but still promulgate the bill as the ‘will of the legislature.’” “This is not an issue worth losing your privileges and rights over.”

But no, Grand Duke Henri’s Catholic conscience was too well formed for these deceits. He refused and was duly reprimanded. Again, in an absurdity of contradiction, the new “liberal” article 34 will prevent the Grand Duke from acting in accordance with his conscience. Its terms require him to promulgate all laws, even those that violate his well formed conscience – so much for “freedom of conscience!”

In lieu of tossing flowers to the Grand Duke as he makes his final bow on the decaying ruins of the theater of Christendom, I suggest all Remnant readers instead offer a rosary for His Highness that God, whose divine law leaves no good deed unrewarded and no evil deed unpunished, will bless him for his courage. While you are doing that, perhaps you can utter a prayer for the tiny population of Luxembourg who are now defenseless against the enactment of euthanasia laws and all the other gruesome ordinances of 21st Century Liberalism. These will all be possible now despite the will of their Grand Duke and, as in this case, even their own overwhelming sentiments. Libera nos ab potestate tyrannico liberalismi, Christus Rex.

Usury and Our Economic Implosion

2009-05-16T13:27:00.001-07:00

It's All About Usury

by John Médaille

With all the turmoil in the financial industry, you would think that there would be a national conversation of money and lending. You would think that this would be a good time to re-examine the way we create money and the way we lend it. You would think, especially, that it would be a good time to review the subject of usury, especially since the credit card market is about to collapse in the same way the mortgage market did. But no, that conversation has not taken place.

Indeed, the last great economist to address the subject was J. M. Keynes, back in the 1930's. Keynes, who was no friend of the Church, surprised himself by finding that the Church's restrictions on usury made perfect economic sense, a sense ignored by classical economists:

"Provisions against usury are amongst the most ancient economic practices of which we have record. The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of wealth, in the ancient and medieval worlds. I was brought up to believe that the attitude of the Medieval Church to the rate of interest was inherently absurd, and that the subtle discussions aimed at distinguishing the return on money-loans from the return to active investment were merely jesuitical attempts to find a practical escape from a foolish theory. But I now read these discussions as an honest intellectual effort to keep separate what the classical theory has inextricably confused together, namely, the rate of interest and the marginal efficiency of capital." [ The General Theory , 351-2]

What Keynes is saying in this somewhat technical language is that when returns to pure loans are higher than returns to actual investments, you will have a problem; if you can make more money lending to consumers at 25% than to auto makers at 10%, then the money for making things will dry up, and loans will shift to consumption and speculation. We have often noted this problem in the pages of The Distributist Review , (see The Utopia of Usurers , Usury! , Usury: Wealth Without Work , and many other articles) but we can't honestly claim that we have made a big impression on the public. However, Thomas Geoghagen in the pages of Harper's Magazine , has written an indictment of the current system entitled “Infinite Debt: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy.”

There is an interesting parallel between the lifting of the usury laws and the abolishing of the abortion laws: both were accomplished not by democratic process, but by legislative fiat; in Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp. , a 1978 Supreme Court opinion, the court found that an 1864 law prohibited the states from enforcing usury laws in their own state if it was legal in another state. For all practical purposes, this ended usury laws.

The lifting of the usury laws had dire unintended consequences, one of which was the decline of manufacturing:

"It may be hard to grasp how the dismantling of usury laws might lead to the loss of our industrial base. But it's true: it led to the loss of our best middle-class jobs. Here's a little primer on how it happened. First, thanks to the uncapping of interest rates, we shifted capital into the financial sector, with its relatively high returns. Second, as we shifted capital out of globally competitive manu-facturing, we ran bigger trade deficits. Third, as we ran bigger trade deficits, we required bigger inflows of foreign capital. We had “cheap money” flooding in from China, Saudi Arabia, and even the Fourth World. May God forgive us—we even had capital coming in from Honduras. Fourth, the banks got even more money, and they didn't even consider putting it back into manufacturing. They stuffed it into derivatives and other forms of gambling, because that's the kind of thing that got the “normal” big return; i.e., not 5 percent but 35 percent or even more."

But in addition to the economic effect, it had a profound effect on the moral character of the nation:

"The change in credit-card caps also had a bad effect on the moral character of the nation. Because interest rates were so high, the banks no longer wanted borrowers with good moral character. Look at the way lending has changed just since the time I was in law school in the early 1970s. Even then, the mantra of my teachers in contracts and commercial paper was: “The loan must be repaid!” I have a friend, a professor, who still quotes that refrain. But it's out of date. At interest rates of 25 percent, or 50 percent, or 500 percent, lenders don't really want the loan to be repaid—they want us to be irresponsible, or at least to have a certain amount of bad character."

One question, however, is why we were willing to oblige the bankers by displaying such a poor moral character. No doubt the convenience of the credit card was a factor, but there is more to it than that. One reason is that we had to. The shift in the economy from manufacturing to finance meant that workers were no longer able to bargain for wages through unions and other means. Since 1972, the median hourly wage has stagnated. We experienced a very odd pheno-menon: productivity exploded, but wages remained the same. Obviously, there was not enough purchasing power to clear the markets. Workers responded in two ways. One was to work more hours and put more family members to work, with a devastation effect on family life. The other was to borrow more. Further, the best and brightest of our students no longer went into engineering or manufacturing, but into finance. We started to lose even the knowledge of how to make things. As Thomas Geoghagen points out, not only did financial companies account for 40% of corporate profits in 2003, (up from 18% in 1988) but this may understate the problem. Many “manufacturing” firms, like GM and GE, actually made their profits from their finance divisions. GM became a company that manufactured cars in order to make loans on them.

Our current bailout plans are mainly directed at the banks, the hedge funds, the insurance companies, and other financial institutions. But this will not work. Without restoring manufacturing, farming, mining, and other basic industries, we cannot rescue the economy. But we have the order exactly reversed. The bankers get an instant bailout, no questions asked, while manufacturers, like the Big Three, have to crawl over broken glass to get what amounts to “chump change” in the context of the overall “rescue” numbers. Moreover, “contracts” with the derivative traders of AIG are regarded as sacred and unbreakable, while union contracts are broken at will.

It is the habit of the modernists to despise the past, and so it is no surprise that a restriction which existed in most cultures from the time of the Babylonians to the time of Jimmy Carter would be overturned. Yet, even modern-ism posits some empiricism, actually looking at the effects of an action. It is now long enough to look at the effects of the Supreme Courts 1978 decision. And without revisiting this decision, we cannot fix the economy.

Reprinted from The Distributist Review.

Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, May-June, 2009.

Alan Keyes Arrested at Notre Dame

2009-05-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

Catholic Family News

Alan Keyes holds his Rosary while being handcuffed

Alan Keyes Arrested at Notre Dame
Protests Obama Invitation

By John Vennari

On Friday May 8, Alan Keyes was arrested at Notre Dame protesting the university’s decision to honor President Obama with the commencement speech and an honorary law degree.

Obama is scheduled to be appear at Notre Dame on May 17.

Dr. Keyes arrived at Notre Dame with a sizable cadre of pro-lifers, many pushing strollers containing baby-dolls smeared red to indicate the blood of the unborn slain daily in abortion. Others held signs saying,“I regret my abortion”.

The protestors peacefully walked onto Notre Dame’s campus praying together the Rosary.

Upon entering the campus, Keyes was arrested for trespassing by Notre Dame University police.

Keyes held his rosary as he was handcuffed from behind. About 15 others were handcuffed and arrested with him.

One woman, who was off to the side praying the Rosary, and not formally part of the protesting group, was thrown off the campus by University police.

Dr. Keyes states his intention is to witness to the truth, and urges many others to join the protest at Notre Dame “until the South Bend jail is filled to overflowing...”

I spoke with Mr. Keyes shortly before he entered the campus.

He expressed to me his belief that we are now in a great winnowing where the wheat will be separated from the chaff. “Evil is on the offensive,” he said, “and when that moment comes, we are called upon to make a choice.”

He gave the example of Obama’s aggressive plan to remove conscience-protection from health-care workers who oppose abortion, so that those who object to abortion on moral grounds will either have to participate in these procedures or leave the profession.

“If he is able to fulfill that intention”, said Keyes, “then every single person in the medical community will have to make a choice to stand with Christ or against Him.”

“At the end of the day”, said Keyes, “I think Obama is just part of the truth that the law of God and the truth of Jesus Christ is as a sword. It divides.”

He noted many modern Christians, Church leaders and academies are “living a lie”, in that “they pretend the Christian does not have to choose. But Christ said you are either with Him or against him. There is no middle ground.”

Local resident Michael Chabot explained his reason for taking part in the protest.

“As long as Our Lady is on the dome at Notre Dame, she is being publicly dishonored.” said Mr. Chabot. “And as long as Notre Dame tries to hide under the veneer of a Catholic identity or character, then I join these protests to do what Pope Leo XIII said we should do, tear the mask off and expose them.”

Last week, Keyes issued a statement giving his reasons for traveling to Notre Dame.

He noted that Notre Dame “will welcome to the university campus a man who represents the most abominable and extreme commitment ever known in US politics to destroying the God-given right to life of innocent human offspring.”

“With their actions and the ‘honor’ they confer upon Obama,” said Keyes, “they will actively promote the lie that it is possible to dishonor God blatantly and unashamedly, yet be somehow ‘honorable’ in the eyes of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ.”

Noting pro-life leader Randal Terry’s recent arrest at Notre Dame, Keyes said the university has “declared it an offense to peacefully demonstrate the evil of abortion. They have declared it an offense, prayerfully to bear witness to truth on a campus supposedly guided by and subordinate to that truth.”

He then declared his intention to protest.

“I will go to South Bend . I will step foot on the Notre Dame campus to lift up the standard that protects the life of the innocent children of this and every generation. I will do it all day and every day from now until the Master comes if need be, though it mean I shall be housed every day in the prison-house of lies and injustice that Obama, Jenkins and their minions now mean to construct for those who will never be still and silent in the face of their mockery of God and justice, their celebration of evil.“

Urging others to join him, he said, “If this be trespass, then forgive us our trespasses and join us in trespassing until the South Bend jail is filled to overflowing with witnesses to truth; filled beyond capacity; filled until we break the most onerous shackles of all the ones that bind the heart and mind to evil and our nation to the path of its destruction.”

The protests at Notre Dame have being going on for the past three weeks, and continue to escalate as we file this report.

To date, 71 Bishops have spoken out against Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama.

To learn more, go www.stopobamanotredame.com

SSPX Mass on Montmartre Banned Because of Christ the King

2009-04-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

On April 7, 2009, upon the initiative of the leader of the Green Party of the Paris City Council, the Socialist mayor of the 18th Section of Paris, and the Minister of Interior Affairs, the Paris City Council voted in favor of a request to the Chief Mayor of Paris to forbid the Traditional Latin Mass celebrated each year for twenty years on Montmartre Hill on Pentecost Monday as the final event of the Chartres-Paris Pilgrimage. This pilgrimage was organized by Archbishop Lefebvre, Founder of the Society of St. Pius X, in 1970. A decree from Bertrand Delance, the Chief Mayor of Paris, is expected soon. On the vote the Rightist Party abstained, and the Centre split. The arguments presented before the vote challenged the holding of the event because "this Christian sect preaches the return of Christ the King."

A Commentary on Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno

2009-04-25T07:19:00.001-07:00

WORK AND PROPERTY
An Afterword to Quadragesimo Anno
By: John Sharpe

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.
—G. K. Chesterton
The Uses of Diversity, 1921

THOSE FORTUNATE ENOUGH to be acquainted with the work of Southern Catholic novelist Walker Percy might be surprised to learn that it was not for his novels that Percy thought he would be most remembered. It was rather for his “semiotics”: his philosophical and scientific work on man’s language and use of symbols, not only in mundane communication, but also in the most profound intellectual acts of comprehension that have as their object the deepest realities of the universe. At its most radical, Percy’s work on language and symbolism deals with the essential nature of the created human intellect’s ability to penetrate – in however limited a way – to the depths of metaphysical reality. It is due to the profound significance of this question for all of reality as man confronts it that Catholics recognize the second person of the Trinity as the Word of God, by Whom all things were made.
As for the pressing question of what the Church thinks, and what we Catholics are to think, of capitalism, reference to Percy’s semiotics is surprisingly useful, if not plainly necessary. His vision of language posited the quite defensible hypothesis that any linguistic act (or “language event”) necessarily involves three parts: the speaker (or the “sign-user”), the sign used (usually a “word”), and the thing signified (or, the “object”). Without each of the three parts of this triad, not only can there be no communication (which is obvious enough), but there can arguably be no real grasp by the human intellect – which ultimately needs language – of reality itself. Thus the act of naming is an essential aspect of man’s ability to understand the reality of which he is a part; indeed, it would not be a stretch to see, as part of the dominion God commanded Adam to exercise over all earthly created things (Genesis i:28), his assigning of names to those earthly realities, and his consequent comprehension of them.
The significance of properly naming things has been emphasized by a host of thinkers, ancient, medieval, and modern. St. Thomas raises the issue in the Summa when discussing the virtue of truth: “A person who says what is true, utters certain signs which are in conformity with things.” Note that the sign used must conform to the thing referenced, which assumes that the thing has some actual and independent reality – independent properties and characteristics, and an essence of its own that dictates what the word used must express if it is to be properly chosen. It was the achievement of nominalists going back to Occam to attempt a destruction of this linkage between words and the objective realities they signify – an achievement that Weaver decries in the introduction to his monumental Ideas Have Consequences.
How much of the discussion of the Church’s attitude to “capitalism” depends upon what this “ism” means among those discussing it may be gathered from the radically different assessments made of it by many who, at bottom, actually seem to agree, notwithstanding their varying mode of expressing themselves. His Excellency signaled the problem, if tangentially, by saying, “In all discussions of ‘capitalism,’ it is crucial to define what one means by the word.” Contrary to these, however, who beneath apparent disagreement do in fact agree, are others who disagree not only about the words used to signify the reality, but also about the reality itself. It is therefore that third element of Percy’s triad – the reality that the sign used must signify – that we must discover vis-à-vis “capitalism,” in order to have in our possession both a yardstick with which to measure orthodoxy, and a scalpel with which to excise heterodoxy, so as to rectify our ideas about modern economic life. A rectification of thought that is an essential prerequisite, then, to doing what we ought.

In his characteristic way, Chesterton hit on both the problem of definition in general, and the definition of capitalism itself. The great English wit is worth quoting in full, for the light he sheds on the meaning of the vexing term and for the lightheartedness he brings to Percy’s not unimportant observations in the field of language study.
When I say “Capitalism,” I commonly mean something that may be stated thus: “That economic condition in which there is a class of capitalists, roughly recognizable and relatively small, in whose possession so much of the capital is concentrated as to necessitate a very large majority of the citizens serving those capitalists for a wage”. This particular state of things can and does exist, and we must have some word for it, and some way of discussing it. But this is undoubtedly a very bad word, because it is used by other people to mean quite other things. Some people seem to mean merely private property. Others suppose that Capitalism must mean anything involving the use of capital. But if that use is too literal, it is also too loose and even too large. If the use of capital is Capitalism, then everything is Capitalism. Bolshevism is Capitalism and anarchist communism is Capitalism; and every revolutionary scheme, however wild, is still Capitalism. Lenin and Trotsky believe as much as Lloyd George and Thomas that the economic operations of today must leave something over for the economic operations of tomorrow. And that is all that capital means in its economic sense. In that case, the word is useless. My use of it may be arbitrary, but it is not useless. If Capitalism means private property, I am capitalist. If Capitalism means capital, everybody is capitalist. But if Capitalism means this particular condition of capital, only paid out to the mass in the form of wages, then it does mean something, even if it ought to mean something else.

The truth is that what we call Capitalism ought to be called Proletarianism. The point of it is not that some people have capital, but that most people only have wages because they do not have capital.
GKC’s definition is precisely Pius’s (“that economic regime in which were provided by different people the capital and labor jointly needed for production” (Quadragesimo Anno (QA) §101 )), as it is, incidentally, Belloc’s (“a state of society in which a minority control the means of production, leaving the mass of the citizens dispossessed” ) as well. All of which is fine, so far as it goes. That the simple division, abstractly considered, of an economic operation into the provision of capital by one party, and the provision of labor by another, is neutral and not inherently immoral is admitted and plain to all reasonable observers, not least Pius XI (§102: the system “is not vicious of its very nature.”). For this reason even a popularly conceived “anti-capitalist” like Belloc could admit that “[n]o one can say that [industrial capitalism] stands condemned specifically by Catholic definition.”
Nevertheless, how many commentators, looking at both QA and Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (RN), envision the Church to have in fact condemned “capitalism” by her pronouncements in both these encyclicals? Which means that these reliable thinkers certainly, and with good reason, believe that some thing signified by the term “capitalism” was indeed condemned, notwithstanding the “neutrality” of the system that Pius XI characterized as “not vicious of its very nature.” Msgr. Luigi Civardi, author of so many books on the Church’s social teaching and its salutary effect on the world, states plainly that RN “condemns the capitalistic system.” Bishop Emile Guerry for his part explained why “the Popes condemned liberal capitalism so severely” by saying that “the ‘social system’ itself [is condemned] where it is based on a concept of private ownership opposed to the community end assigned by God to the goods of the earth.” Amintore Fanfani, whose study of the “capitalist spirit” more than rivals the treatises of Weber and Tawney, declared that “there is an unbridgeable gulf between the Catholic and the capitalistic conception of life.” If, then, the neutral, almost “mechanical” system built on a division between labor and capital is not condemned by the Popes, what is it that they did condemn -– and, more to the point, how does what they condemn relate to the thing, the third element of Percy’s triad, that most people mean when they say “capitalism”?

The careful reader will be ready to reply that all of the answers to the first part of our question are spelled out in precision and detail by Pius XI in QA, who, in exercising his ordinary magisterium, simply reiterated and more or less codified the common opinion both of his predecessors and of Catholic philosophical tradition. Condemned by the Pope is the social and moral philosophy that prevailed since the advent of industrialism, and which reigns still today (it is “an economic science alien to the true moral law” (QA §135; see also §§42, 43, 131)). Also condemned are the broader ideologies supporting rationalist economics: liberalism (§§14, 24, 26), individualism (§§46, 70, 89, 110), and materialism (§§120–1, 134). Condemned as well, at least implicitly, is the triumph of machine- and technology-worship, to the exclusion of the focus man should have on the “one thing necessary” and the other values that support such a focus (“dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, where men are corrupted and degraded”(§138)). Condemned, in the strongest terms, is limitless, free competition (§§89, 108–110), as is the resultant gross disequilibrium in the distribution of ownership (§§57, 60–63) and the massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few (§106). Condemned is the anarchist conception of the state which refuses to sanction any enforcement of the moral law (§135). Resulting from these condemned principles and practices, furthermore, is a condemned economic life that is “hard, cruel, and relentless,” producing crying evils, and leading to economic imperialism and a “noxious and detestable internationalism...in financial affairs” (§§3–4, 102–110, 134–135, 137).
Anyone who maintains that “capitalism” of itself escaped condemnation in QA would have to prove that the “thing” signified by the term as it is used today does not imply free competition, Enlightenment or classically liberal economic doctrine, the near worship of technology, the modern doctrine of individualism, the practical tyranny of international finance, and the concentration of productive property in relatively few hands. The “capitalism,” then, that was not condemned in QA was a theoretical “capitalism” of which eye has not seen nor ear heard (1 Cor. ii:9). One small point illustrates: in an article on Belloc’s economics from not too long ago, the writer, in offering his definition of “capitalism,” asserted that among its corollary “rights” to that of private property ownership are “the right to free competition in the marketplace” and the right of pursue profit with “no legal limit as to the amount of money that one can earn.” Notwithstanding the fact that by no means is it necessary that a right of private ownership imply these corollary rights as they are formulated (indeed, all modestly keen observers will note that these latter soon destroy the former right for all but the most powerful, i.e., the most wealthy), these so-called rights are categorically denied by the Pope at §§64, 89, 108, and 111. So much, then, for this kind of capitalism, with its alleged corollary rights, surviving condemnation by the Church! The point, of course, is that what the modern world understands “capitalism” to be – notwithstanding the theoretical, on-paper existence of an abstract, almost laboratory-esque notion that merely designates the collaboration in wealth creation of the provider of labor and the purveyor of productive property – necessarily implies ideological and practical realities that were indeed condemned in no uncertain terms by Pius XI, just as they were condemned under the label of “capitalism” by Fanfani, Civardi, and a host of Social Catholics and moral philosophers whose names in a list would literally fill the page. A “capitalism” that was not encompassed or included by the Pope’s condemnatory words in QA is a theoretical capitalism that has never existed and will never exist. What did then exist, and does now, more than ever, in terms of modern capitalism, was indeed “bad practice,” but the practice was condemned (“it violates right order”) in principle!
****
It will help us better appreciate what Pope Pius XI was driving at by concentrating upon what he advocated, in addition to and in light of what he condemned in his encyclical. For while he refrains from setting forth in detail a point-by-point program for social and economic restoration (indeed this is the task of the laity who collaborate to develop and implement a “truly Christian social science” and conduct specific activities “in accordance with Christian social doctrine” ), he clearly articulates the attributes of a sane and healthy social economy that serve as stars by which to navigate in our quest to understand – and then to implement – the principles of a socio-economic order worthy of Catholic men and families.
QA is frequently understood to be a restatement of the most well known and hardly controversial Catholic moral principles in the field of economic thought (such as the right of workingmen to a just or family wage; the right of both labor and capital to a proper share – but not to all – of profits; the need to steer social philosophy away from the twin errors of individualism and collectivism; plus the utter opposition of Catholicism to Socialist doctrine). It is that, of course, as His Excellency highlights in the introduction. But across the encyclical’s paragraphs, a careful reader will observe a vindication, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, of two key, indispensable principles of political economy that have been and remain dear to the hearts of Social Catholics of all generations, even if they are not declared in concise statements (e.g., “No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist”) that can be made almost platitudinous through repetition and without broader context. These two principles are: (1) the need, in a healthy and rightly ordered society, for a wide distribution of productive property, and (2) the importance of organizing economic activity in free “vocational groups” uniting the employers and employees of the various industries and professions.
The latter is perhaps less susceptible of rejection, insofar as it is so clearly stated. “The aim of social legislation must therefore be the re-establishment of vocational groups” (§84). It could not be more clear. Encompassed in an individual Guild or Corporation (yes, that’s what the Pontiff meant – for, following Leo XIII and St. Pius X, whose social teaching he declared in Ubi Arcano (UA) §60 to be in “full force” at the outset of his pontificate, he specifically laments the Guilds’ destruction at the hands of liberal individualism (§80)) will be both “employers and employees of one and the same group joining forces to produce goods or give service” (§85, emphasis mine), uniting not according to their status as supplier or procurer of labor (along familiar trades-union lines), but according to the functions they exercise in society (§84). Putting, as it were, the “crown” atop the corporative social order that he outlines in the paragraphs dealing with vocational groups, the Pope calls for the development of a true juridical order, with “social charity” as its “soul” and a State ready “to protect and defend it effectively” (§89). The sincerity of the Pope on this point was made only more obvious by his frank advocacy of Corporatism in Divini Redemptoris (§54), six years later.

As for the first of our two principles, it is capitulated in the declaration of Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (the “Magna Charta,” according to Pius XI, “on which all Christian activities in social matters are ultimately based” (§38)): “The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners” (RN, §46). That Pius XI throughout QA reiterated his predecessor’s call for development of what Fr. McNabb termed the “ownership system,” in opposition to the then- and still-prevailing “wage system,” is clear on a number of counts. Let us look at these to ensure that there is no mistaking the point.
By way of entering argument, we must establish that in §§44–66 the Pope is dealing with productive property, and not just with “wealth” or “goods” in general. And it is essential to do so, in case there be any doubts, and we leave our review of QA with the impression that the Pope wants gadgets, and not gardens, more widely distributed, to leave the gardens to remain concentrated in just a few hands. It might be tempting for some to claim that it is only the inadequate distribution of wealth for consumption that that the Pope laments and wants to see rectified. Except that such an interpretation would be wrong (as we shall see). And it would fail to strike the disease, by dealing only with a symptom – a symptom which is, in fact, debatable, as the spectacle of people in poverty toting cell phones, sporting $250 sneakers, and riding in fancified, tricked-out automobiles illustrates. Capitalist wealth-creators might be efficaciously forced to share a few of their profits, but none of this will address the essence of the problem as it has existed for centuries: the problem that, as G.K.C. put it, “most people only have wages because they do not have capital.”

That Pius XI is referring, throughout QA, to productive property is clearly proven in three ways.
First, if one looks at the logical progression of the portion of QA dealing with property (§§44–66), the discussion of the right of ownership (§§44–53) appears as a preamble for the treatment of the distribution of both ownership and the products and income that are the fruit of the property owned. Now the type of property that, combined with labor, creates products and income is by definition, productive property. Furthermore, the discussion that takes place at §§56–66 regards the distribution of wealth and income derived from the very property whose ownership by private individuals was just defended in those preceding paragraphs. So in even just general terms, there is no doubt, based upon the structure and the “narrative” progression of this particular section of the encyclical, that the property that is the subject of discussion here is of the productive kind.
The commentary on the encyclical by Nell-Breuning, its drafter, confirms the point, by noting clearly that the discussion in these paragraphs deals with, among other things, whether ownership as such is a title to income from the property owned (which it is); the kind of property at issue, therefore, is productive.
Finally, §§53, 54, and 56 make explicit reference to property upon which labor is expended, whether that property is one’s own or that of one’s neighbor. One man might hire another to work his land or his machine to produce new wealth, but not to work his food, drink, and his furniture, which all serve merely to satisfy a need or a want. Furthermore, at §53 there is the possibility of “some new form or new value” being produced by the labor of a man who works “as his own master,” directly implying that his labor is applied to some land or capital, because it is only in this way that new wealth can be created by labor. The kind of property thus referred to is necessarily productive property. Indeed, no other interpretation of these passages is remotely possible, since the whole discussion ultimately addresses how to reconcile the competing claims of capital and labor to not just wealth in general but also to the products resulting from the combination of labor with that wealth. So the property in dispute is precisely that kind that can create new wealth when labor is applied to it: namely, productive property.
Reference to the dispute between labor and capital leads to the second point. For, beginning at §44, Pius XI specifically defends a doctrine of private ownership against the claims of the Socialists. We take as our reference Socialism by the Jesuit Victor Cathrein, who states, authoritatively, that Socialism advocated “the transformation of all capital, or means of production, into the common property of society, or of the state, and the administration of the produce and the distribution of the proceeds by the state” (p. 17). The socialists saw in private ownership of productive property the necessary exploitation (by the private owners of capital) of laborers, whom they claimed were exclusively entitled to the proceeds resulting from the labor expended on the machines they worked. That Pius takes this as the “official” stance of Socialism, against which he is arguing throughout this section of QA, is overtly stated at §§44, 58, and 60, and at least implied at §§46, 48, and 49. In vindicating private ownership against the Socialists, the Pope is vindicating the private ownership of productive property, which was the only ownership contested in the first place (the Socialists saw exploitation in the private ownership of factories, not of forks). Pius’s explicit reference (§44) to the teaching of his predecessor makes the point even more clear, for Leo’s suggested solution of the social question takes private ownership as a “given” (“this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable” (RN §46)), against the Socialists’ proposals. Thus, both Popes, along with the tradition of the Church, in combating the trend of Socialism, resist a trend that would further the admitted evils of capitalism; namely, it would make all men merely wage-earners and “sharers” in income, earning a wage (and perhaps some dividends) for laboring on “community” property that they do not own (and that in fact no one in particular owns). Indeed, it is for the workingman, the artisan, the family head, the yeoman, and the peasant that the right of ownership is defended (“...the abolition of private ownership would prove to be not beneficial, but grievously harmful to the working classes” (§44)), and not so much for the “big capitalists” who, anyway, end up being taken to task for “long [being] able to appropriate to [themselves] excessive advantages” (§57). Hence we find numerous Social Catholic commentators who see Socialism as a fulfillment of capitalism and its errors, rather than, at bottom, an adversary to it, as well as a number of them who see the “other” way (for those who prefer not to say “third”), in opposition to both kindred “isms,” as the only philosophical and practical alternative to what are simply variations on the same wage-system theme, ordained to a single, materialist end.

Third and last: the distinction clearly implied Pius in later paragraphs between comfort and propertylessness proves the point: for he is arguing both that the lot of workers has been somehow improved and that they do not own property. He refers to workers as “propertyless” at §§60 and 63 while admitting that their condition “has indeed been improved and rendered more equitable”; that they “can no longer be said to be universally in misery and want” (§62). He also admits the “formal difference between pauperism and proletarianism” (§63). One can possess an income from an employer that suffices to meet day-to-day expenses, for the purchase, in relative sufficiency and even abundance, of food, clothes, home furnishings, etc, without possessing a secure means of income that is immune from the “hand-to-mouth uncertainty which is the lot of the proletarian” (§64), an uncertainty that – the Pope will later argue – can only be remedied by ownership. If the Pontiff admits, however, that a propertyless worker can nevertheless live in equitable conditions, above pauperism, but still be a “non-owner,” what these workers do not own is productive property (land, tools or machines, raw materials, or liquid capital to be invested in such things), which provides a living, and not property for consumption, which only satisfies immediate wants or needs.
Having established that the ownership in question in QA §§44–66 is the ownership of productive property, we now look at the Pontiff’s treatment of the distribution of ownership (which follows its mere vindication as a right in itself), to show that he was indeed aiming for a better, more widespread distribution. We take the argument in five parts.

First, the Pope decries the present distribution of property between the two classes, those possessing capital, and those possessing mere labor. Insofar as we have established above that, in general, the property that Pius is referring to throughout this part of the encyclical must be of the productive kind, his condemnation of the present state of property distribution must deal essentially with that kind of property.
Following his warning that “not every kind of distribution of wealth and property amongst men is such that it can at all, and still less can adequately, attain the end intended by God” (§60), he goes on to denounce as a “grave evil” (§61) “the vast differences between the few who hold excessive wealth and the many who live in destitution” (§61). More stridently, he then declares that “the immense number of propertyless wage-earners on the one hand, and the superabundant riches of the fortunate few on the other, is an unanswerable argument that the earthly goods so abundantly produced in this age of industrialism are far from rightly distributed” (§63). By denouncing the present distribution of “earthly goods,” the Pope prepares the way for the solution he will propose in the paragraphs that follow, as we see below.

With our second point we highlight the almost chronological approach the Pope takes in proposing a solution to the social question. His approach refutes any contention that might be made (in response, especially, to the first point above) that his remarks about the equitable distribution of wealth are restricted to the fruit of, or income produced by, productive property – i.e., that he is maintaining, in §§56, 60, and 61, that merely “profits” and “income” must be equitably shared. (Of course insofar as QA is partially a refutation of Socialism, it was necessary to reassert the right, long admitted by the Church, of the owners of capital to at least a portion of the income and profit generated by its employment; hence the discussion of the right disposition of capital’s proceeds.) The Pope indeed defends the right of capital to a share of income and proceeds, but in proposing that the non-owning workers become owners, his reference to the income and proceeds resulting from the combined effort of capital and labor is from that standpoint incidental, because he conceives of the proper distribution of income as a means to an end. The means of granting labor a larger share of income from productive activity are, in the mind of the Pope, ordained to achieving the end of making the non-owning workers into owners. This is clear from §§64 and 66 where the Pope demands an “ample sufficiency” of profits and fruits of production be provided to the wage-earner so that he may “acquire a certain moderate ownership.”
A close examination of the actual texts we have just cited, where the Pope demands the rectification of inequity in the distribution of income (irrespective of whether this rectification is a means or an end in itself – for arguably it is both), reveals that he also requires an adjustment to the inequity in the distribution of property in general.

For in §61, the Pontiff demands, yes, that each class “receive its due share” of profits, but he also maintains that in general – without reference only or specifically to income or the products of industry – “the distribution of created goods must be brought into conformity with the demands of the common good and social justice” (emphasis mine). The reference to social justice and the common good especially situates the Pope’s remarks within the framework of a discussion of that kind of property that provides people with a living, for it is the distribution of this productive property -and how that distribution is handled in terms of a broad social institution – rather than just the availability of food and clothing to individuals or individual families – that is most bound up with the overall structure of society and the social order, and therefore properly discussed in terms of social justice and the common good. Two paragraphs later, the Pope contrasts, as we have seen, “the immense number of propertyless wage-earners on the one hand, and the superabundant riches of the fortunate few on the other” (§63), again without limiting his remarks only to income or products generated by the use of capital. Finally, in §64 the Pope expresses concern that without “efficacious remedies,” the “dispossessed laboring masses” in the newly capitalistic countries, along with the “immense army of hired rural laborers,” will remain “PERPETUALLY SUNK in the proletarian condition” (emphasis mine).

Note the explicit reference to the propertylessness and “proletarian” status of wage-earners, propertylessnes that must refer to their non-ownership of productive property, and not their lack of the basic means of sustenance (i.e., property for consumption), which the Pope concedes elsewhere had been in certain areas mitigated and partially remedied since Leo XIII’s day. For it is the “condition” of not owning productive property that causes, as we have seen at §64, the “uncertainty” that is necessarily – the Pope almost offers a definition here – “the lot of the proletarian.” One has the sense here and elsewhere that the Pope means “proletarian” as an almost binary indicator of “status” (i.e., one is an owner or one is not), rather than simply as a descriptor of degree (i.e., that one doesn’t have enough material possessions, even if one has some). In fact this is the only way to read the Pope’s language, for no one could maintain that even the poorest of the “non-owning” masses did not possess some rags of clothing and some modest number of personal items. The point is, though, that this kind of ownership does not yield a living, while owning capital or land does so, when labor is applied to it. Confirming this interpretation is that fact that the Pope specifically calls, six years later, for efficacious methods to be applied to rectify the mal-distribution of property; he demands precisely that the methods adopted in furtherance of such an aim “will really affect those who actually possess more than their share of capital resources, and who continue to accumulate them to the grievous detriment of others” (DR §75, emphasis mine).

Third, running through QA, and appearing subtly in at least five different places, is the frequently neglected and unappreciated image of what without exaggeration we might call a frame of reference for the Pope’s broader discussion of ownership and property distribution. This is the man whose economic life of work and property are not disintegrated and divided, but rather united. Nell-Breuning posits, as an example, “the peasant who cultivates his own soil with his and his family’s labor” (p. 129). This ideal becomes, for the Pope, a foil for the masses who occupy the position of wage-earner: those who, in order to receive an income “derived from property” (as all income is, ultimately), “must approach an owner, offer his labor, and receive a remuneration for it.”

The Pope briefly puts before us an image of the small proprietor in several places. One place is a reference to the title he may claim to the fruits of his labor (§53, emphasis mine): “The only form of labor, however, which gives the working man a title to its fruits, is that which a man exercises as his own master, and by which some new form or new value is produced.” The other is a reference point against which the non-owning laborers are compared (§56, emphasis mine): “…unless a man apply his labor to his own property, an alliance must be formed between his toil and his neighbor’s property….”

Now the need for a man who owns only labor to approach someone else who owns productive property, in order to seek employment and obtain income, arises precisely because the man does not own his own productive property. But, as we have already seen, the Pope specifically calls for ownership of property to be distributed among the class of laborers who presently do not own, even while he insists that “man is born to labor as the bird to fly” (§64). So he is aiming, at least in broad terms and to the extent feasible, at a re-union of work and property, of labor and ownership. Unless we are to believe – and this is both ludicrous, and distinctly refuted by §64 – that the Pope intends for the masses to come into ownership of proprietary and financial assets, such that they need not labor but can rather obtain income exclusively from property, the ideal envisioned, even though in the distance and a long ways off, must be the man who can apply labor “to his own property” (§56), as his own “master” (§53), so as to depend more upon himself and less upon the “uncertainty” (§64) of a wage built upon only the “alliance” (§56) between his toil and another’s property.

The small proprietor appears again at §72, where the Pope discusses the limits the capitalistic economy must observe in employing women and children. He rightly finds it “intolerable, and to be opposed with all Our strength,” that mothers of families be “forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the domestic walls to the neglect of their own proper cares and duties.” Now “gainful occupation” evokes employment for a wage, a necessity, as we have seen, principally for non-owning men and families. But Pius is far from condemning altogether the contribution of women and children to the home economy, just as he is far from condemning labor (even while he decries the proletarian status of the laborers). It is rather the homestead and the shop that are subtly offered as the ideal where “the rest of the family [can] contribute according to their power towards the common maintenance, as in the rural home or in the families of many artisans and small shopkeepers.” Here labor is joined to the family’s property, not to someone else’s. And again at §103 we find a reference, not to an individual, but to a whole social system that differs from that “in which were provided by different people the capital and labor jointly needed for production” (§101). As an example of this “[other] economic system” the Pope offers the peasant-owners, namely “the agricultural classes, who form the larger portion of the human family, and who find in their occupation the means of obtaining honestly and justly what is needful for their maintenance” (§103). And finally, when wrapping up a concluding section of the encyclical calling for a renewal of Christian principles and Christian charity, the Pontiff places before us a Model Who, though He spent His life “in labors” (§128), was not employed by the “Schwartz Lumber Conglomerate,” but Who had full share of ownership in “Joseph & Son, Proprietors”: namely, “Him Who, being in the form of God, chose to become a Carpenter among men, and to be known as the Son of a Carpenter” (§140).
As for the fourth of our arguments in defense of Pius XI’s call for a wider distribution of ownership of productive property, let us simply call attention to his clear language demanding that workers become owners. The “necessary object of Our efforts” is “the uplifting of the proletariat” (§62), an “uplifting” that, we have seen above, necessarily involves changing their status from non-owning workers to owners. “Efficacious remedies [must] be applied” (§62) to ensure that rural laborers do not remain “perpetually” in the “proletarian condition.” To accomplish this, the Pope calls for an “ample sufficiency” of the fruits of production to be supplied to the workingmen, so that, as we noted earlier, “they may increase their possessions” and become “freed from that hand-to-mouth uncertainty which is the lot of the proletarian” (§64). Finally, and convincingly, at §66 Pius demands that “the propertyless wage-earner be placed in such circumstances that by skill and thrift he can acquire a certain moderate ownership.”

Nell-Breuning’s gloss here is instructive, confirming this interpretation. He states the hard truth that to realize the Pope’s plan it may be necessary to make large estates available to “small and independent families.” His comment is striking and forthright, especially so because it makes clear that the Pope’s vision in calling for “ownership” is one that involves making men and families into independent proprietors, working their own productive property:

But is it the Pope’s intention to have his energetic measures cover the expropriation of large estates in order thus to create the means for the support of small and independent families? The answer is that this passage is silent in this respect. Therefore we should not attempt to interpolate a meaning it does not contain. We can merely ask ourselves whether we can speak of “efficacious” measures at all, if we renounce expropriation in principle, even as a last resort. We will also have to remember that, in discussing property, the Pope assigned extraordinary authority to the state whenever a genuine need of common welfare is involved. We also have to consider the fact that the Pope declares justified the so-called socialization of “certain forms of property” in certain circumstances (114). Considering all this, we can see no objections to the demand for expropriation of estates in order to make the rehabilitation of the agricultural wage-earners possible, provided of course, that such action is taken only after strict and very careful considerations.

Nell-Breuning’s other important observation here regards the footnote, at §72, to Pius XI’s Casti Connubii. Our commentator (and he was in a position to know) maintains that this reference was meant to call attention to the Pope’s doctrine on marriage, specifically regarding the wages needed by the head of a family for its support. “The Pope is anxious not to be understood,” Nell-Breuning writes,
in the sense that, as a result of a law of nature, the family of the worker must live on the wages of the head of the house. It is by no means a natural condition, or one demanded by nature, that the family shall have no other means of support than the wage income of its father and head. Neither is it the will of nature or its Creator that the other members of the family permit themselves to be supported by the working head of the family without contributing their share for the common support. Here, too, our ideas are easily influenced by the picture of the wage-earners of metropolitan industry where indeed – except for the steadily decreasing activities of the housewife – the family members have no reasonable opportunity to contribute to the family support. Here we have actually the condition where the wife works in an office or factory, while the children from early youth are engaged in some trade; or the wife is limited to a little coking and sewing in a wretched tenement, while the children loaf in the house or on the street unless taken care of at a playground. Under such conditions which are, however, not natural, but most unnatural, the family has no other source of income than its father’s wages.
If this all-too-familiar scene is not what Pius wishes to advocate in calling for wages high enough to support the family and its head, then we must return to the “rural home or…the families of many artisans and small shopkeepers,” specifically offered by the Pope as the example of a situation where the family does have a means of support beyond “the wage income of its father and head.” But the key here is the need for ownership of the property the family needs to generate an alternative “means” of support, and to enable its members to participate in the creation of wealth necessary for a life of modest material sufficiency and dignity.
Fifth, and finally: QA’s explicit references, in the area of distribution of property ownership, to the demands made by the predecessor of Pius XI and author of Rerum Novarum confirm beyond all doubt that family ownership of productive property is precisely is being advocated. Five times, over as many paragraphs, Pius XI refers specifically to what Leo XIII proposed as a way of both endorsing his own recommendations and vindicating and renewing Leo’s proposals. It is Leo XIII, says Pius, who urged “the uplifting of the proletariat” as the “necessary object of Our efforts” (§62). Leo’s injunctions “have lost none of their force or wisdom for our own age.” Pius XI’s calls, which we have just examined, that workingmen obtain an “ample sufficiency” so that they may rise out of their non-owning status; that they be “freed from….hand-to-mouth uncertainty which is the lot of the proletarian”; that they may be enabled to “support life’s changing fortunes” and pass on “some little provision for those whom they leave behind them” (§64); all of these are ideas that were “not merely suggested, but stated in frank and open terms” by Leo XIII. Finally, the Pope writes that the need for the “propertyless wage-earner…[to] acquire a certain moderate ownership” was “already declared by Us, following the footsteps of Our Predecessor” (§66).

And what were those footsteps that Pius intended to follow in?
One: The father of every family is enjoined in RN to “provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten” and to enable them “who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, [to have] all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life.” Fair enough. But how? “[I]n no other way,” says Leo XIII, “can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance” (RN §13, emphasis mine). Note the explicit parallel between this and Pius’s concern for what a workingman needs to pass on to his family.
Two: In Leo XIII’s own words:
If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners (RN §46, emphasis mine).
Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For, the result of civil change and revolution has been to divide cities into two classes separated by a wide chasm. On the one side there is the party which holds power because it holds wealth; which has in its grasp the whole of labor and trade; which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is not without influence even in the administration of the commonwealth. On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sick and sore in spirit and ever ready for disturbance. If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another (RN §47, emphasis mine).
The fact that Pius XI makes an explicit allusion at §62 to RN §47 (see his use of the phrase “a share in the land”) makes irrefutable the contention that the Pope intended to adopt, vindicate, and re-promulgate these “injunctions” of his predecessor, both “salutary and imperative.”
Just as the explicit evocation of Leo removes all trace of doubt as to what Pius XI was calling for, should any have remained, the evocation of both Leo and Pius by Pope Pius XII in his memorial commemoration of Rerum Novarum offers a hindsight confirmation of our interpretation of Pius’s message in QA, far more authoritative than any gloss based merely on a close reading of the encyclical’s text and a few commentaries, no matter how reliable. In Pius XII’s June 1, 1941, Pentecost radio discourse, he provides “directive moral principles on three fundamental values of social and economic life...animated by the spirit of Leo XIII and unfolding his views.” Two related points made throughout his elaboration of these “directive moral principles” are to our purpose here in confirming the social message of his predecessor. The first is relevant to our consideration of the advantage of small proprietorship that is subtly implied by Pius’s call for the liberation of the non-owning worker from the “uncertainty” of dependence upon a wage, along with his endorsement of the contribution made to family upkeep, “as in the rural home or in the families of many artisans and small shopkeepers” (§72), by family members working on their property rather than someone else’s. On this head Pius XII repeatedly emphasizes that the purpose for the family’s private possession of productive property is to “secure for the father of a family the healthy liberty he needs in order to fulfill the duties assigned him by the Creator regarding the physical, spiritual, and religious welfare of the family.” Note the convergence between Pius XII’s call for the “healthy liberty” of the family and the demand of his immediate predecessor for liberation of non-owners from wage-earning “uncertainty.” And there is a similar dovetailing between the mutual approach of Pius XII and Leo XIII, who both view the need for the private possession of productive property as rooted primarily in the duty of a father to properly provide for all aspects of his family’s welfare. Pius XII notes this duty elsewhere in his discourse, confirming beyond doubt his clear conception of this reality, and his insistence upon it.
The second point, relating to what Pius XII calls “the insistent call of the two Pontiffs of the social Encyclicals,” deals with the family’s plot of land – the smallholding – as that which nearest approximates to the ideal form of productive property possessed by the family, necessary for safeguarding its liberty to pursue and fulfill its economic, social, moral, and spiritual duties: “Of all the goods that can be the object of private property, none is more conformable to nature, according to the teaching of Rerum Novarum, than the land, the holding on which the family lives, and from the products of which it draws all of part of its subsistence.” The successor of Pius XI goes to far as to state, “in the spirit of Rerum Novarum,” that “as a rule, only that stability which is rooted in one’s own holding makes of the family the vital and most perfect and fecund cell of society....” Leo XIII’s demand that individuals be enabled to look forward to obtaining “a share in the land,” and Pius XI’s allusion to it, give substance to the continuity of aim that animates Catholic teaching on this point and inspired Pius XII’s confirmation of it, enabling us, in hindsight, to establish with precision the content of Quadragesimo Anno in this regard.
****
There is much more to Pius XI’s monumental social encyclical than its take on capitalism, work, and property, as His Excellency rightly highlights. But perhaps for the needs of our time these aspects are properly emphasized. With QA as our guide, we can think with the Church about that “thing” that moderns mean when they say “capitalism,” while we worry less about the label. We will support the idea of a Guild System, so clearly promoted in this and other social encyclicals. And we will work to foster as best we can in our own little circles, in our own families, at least, if not elsewhere, a wider distribution of ownership of productive property, striving both to see and to realize the ideal re-integration of work and property, where a man’s labor – which is obligatory on most all of us – is combined with his property rather than someone else’s. Let us become, with the doctrine of the Popes to inspire us, the peasant proprietors; the independent tradesman; the employee-owners; the self-employed entrepreneurs of a resurgent Christendom.
Given the outlook of Pope Pius XI on this question, it would not be gratuitous to see in his encyclical a word of encouragement for the Distributists (whose land movement he lauded as a “most praiseworthy enterprise” in a letter from then Cardinal Pacelli), the Corporatists, the Solidarists, and so many others of Social Catholic conviction who sought to understand the role of private ownership of productive property in society, to clarify it, and to mark its duties and limitations in view of the common good of society. “Most helpful therefore and worthy of all praise,” the Pope writes, “are the efforts of those who, in a spirit of harmony and with due regard for the traditions of the Church, seek to determine the precise nature of these duties, and to define the boundaries imposed by the requirements of social life upon the right of ownership itself or upon its use” (§48).
Of course no one would have the parochial temerity to call Pius XI a “Distributist.” Nevertheless, he laments the mal-distribution of productive property; defends its private ownership so far as to wish that more people had it; sees the solution to the plight of the employed masses in wage-earner “ownership”; insists that the right of property must conform to the needs of the common good, and must therefore be subject to regulation by the public authority in its interest (§§49–50); and expects, finally, that after following his program “the production and acquisition of goods [and] the use of wealth…will within a short time be brought back again to the standards of equity and just distribution” (§139, emphasis mine). So what, then, would we call him, especially in light of his principled, if unintentional, sanction of the outline for reform offered some years later by an English historian in a little essay called Restoration of Property?
Meanwhile, let Pius rouse our spirits for the battle ahead with the closing thoughts of QA. We must avoid, he says, as “valiant soldiers of Christ” who are ready to “strain every thew and sinew” (§148), modernism of the moral, social, and juridical kind (§46), lest we fall victim to a schizophrenia that cuts off social thought and public life from day-to-day Catholic duty, prayer, and worship – a “cleavage” in the conscience later condemned by the Pope as “a scandal to the weak, and to the malicious a pretext to discredit the Church” (DR, §55). Instead, we will reach outside our ramparts and invite the cooperation of all men of good will to apply Catholic principles (§98), adapting to modern needs the unchanging and unchangeable doctrine of the Church (§19). We will develop and thrust into public view a truly Christian social science (§20), and convince well-intentioned but erroneous social reformers that their just demands are more cogently defended by the Church and promoted by Christian charity (§118). We will avoid contributing to the calumny that the Church is on the side of the rich (§§44, 127) by ignoring her social teaching or, worse, by hiding immoral economic practice under her name. And, finally, because “nowadays the conditions of social and economic life are such that vast multitudes of men can only with great difficulty pay attention to…their eternal salvation” (§132), we endeavor “unremittingly” to reform society according to the mind of the Church (§128), imitating and attaining to the marvelous unity of the divine plan, which “the Church preaches” and “right reason demands” (§139).
As for the “final say” on work and property, perhaps we may be permitted to see in the words of the Carpenter of Nazareth regarding Holy Matrimony a lesson that is instructive here as well: “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder” (St. Matt. xix:6).

Obama and IHS

2009-04-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

Rendering Unto Caesar
by Patrick J. Buchanan
April 17, 2009

At the request of the White House, Georgetown University covered up
all the symbols in Gaston Hall, before the Great Man spoke,
including IHS, the millennia-old monogram for the name of Jesus
Christ.

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, had adopted
the monogram in his seal and it became an emblem of the Jesuit order.

When it comes to rendering unto Caesar, Georgetown is not going to
be outshone by Notre Dame, which stole a march by offering the
nation's avatar of abortion a doctorate of laws degree, honoris
causa.

Actually, it is regrettable the IHS in Gaston Hall was not covered
up in shame the first week of Lent. For that week Georgetown's
feminist and homosexual clubs, such as GU Pride, put on a Gomorrah
festival about alternative lifestyles called "Sex Positive Week."

Monday, according to The Newman Club, featured a speaker for Black
Rose, which "provides a forum for many different expressions of
power in love and play. This can include dominance & submission,
bondage and discipline, fetishism, cross-dressing, to name a few."

Ash Wednesday's talk was "Torn About Porn," advertised as a
"discussion about arguably alternative forms of pornography that
are not supposed to be exploitative, but rather radical and
empowering."

Saturday's talk was by a pornographic film director and was titled
"Relationships Beyond Monogamy."

At Loyola of Chicago that week, the Student Diversity and Cultural
Affairs Office presented "Brother to Brother," a film the Newman
Society reports, about "a homosexual African-American who is
transported in time to cavort with the allegedly homosexual
Langston Hughes."

The movie is said to be part of "a semester-long 'Color of Queer
Film Series,' sponsored by the university."

At Catholic Seattle University, that first week of Lent was
"Transgender Awareness Week," featuring a "session on allegedly
transgender Bible heroes and heroines and 'Criss-Cross Day' where
students are encouraged to 'come dressed for the day in your best
gender-bending outfit."

This is surely anecdotal evidence to confirm Newsweek in the
conclusion reached in its cover story of Holy Week, "The End of
Christian America."

Indeed, not only are many once-Catholic colleges and universities
now wandering in what Pope Benedict XVI calls a "desert of
godlessness," Catholic belief and practice are not remotely what
they were before Vatican II. Where three-fourth of Catholics
attended mass weekly in the 1950s, today it is one-fourth. A third
of all Catholics raised in the Faith have fallen away.

One in ten American adults is a lapsed Catholic. Catholicism's
quarter of the population is maintained only by mass immigration
and, secondarily, by conversions.

Self-identified Christians in the United States have fallen from 86
percent of the population in 1990 to 76 percent today. Those who
say they have no religion have doubled as a share of the nation
from 8 to 16 percent. Where 69 percent of Americans said we are a
Christian country in 1990, only 62 percent say that today.

America is being systematically de-Christianized and secularized.

For the social, moral and cultural revolution of the 1960s, rooted
in non- and anti-Christian beliefs and values, has captured the
culture, and converted many of the young. Among Americans 18 to 29,
a fourth profess to be atheist, agnostic, or of no religious faith.

The figure is surely higher among the college young.

Second reason for the triumph of secularism is that it long ago
captured the Supreme Court. Since the Everson decision of 1947,
justices have expunged Christianity and all its books and symbols
from the public square and public schools.

Voluntary prayer, the Ten Commandments, Bible reading, Christmas
plays and carols, Nativity scenes, Easter vacation, before-game
prayers, benedictions at graduations -- all have been ordered
terminated by unelected judges -- against the will of the majority.

Abortion on demand, too, was imposed by judicial fiat.

Thus, as America ceases to be a Christian country, it is ceasing to
be a democratic one.

Consider. In every referendum in 16 states, where homosexual
marriage has been on the ballot, majorities ranging from 52 to 86
percent have voted to outlaw it as an absurdity and an abomination.

Yet, in Massachusetts, California and Iowa, unelected judges have
imposed it, as they will in other states, regardless of what the
people want or how the people vote. For secularism has become the
established religion of the American state and judges are the high
priests of the new order.

Yet, one wonders if they know what lies at the end of the road upon
which they have set the nation.

For five decades, Americans resisted Godless Communism. If they
come to realize they did so to save Godless Capitalism, or Godless
Socialism, what happens to loyalty and love of country?

To love one's country, said Edmund Burke, one's country ought to be
lovely. If this is not God's country anymore, whose country is it?

------

Fanfani's Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism

2009-04-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Book Review of Amintore Fanfani’s Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism
Publisher: I.H.S. Press
Reviewed by: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski

“The present capitalist system is an immense cosmos, into which the individual is born and which is presented to him, at least in so far as he is an individual, as an immutable environment in which he must live.”

This quotation from Max Weber’s highly acclaimed book The Protestant Work Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism, is fittingly cited prior to any discussion of the, newly republished, book by Amintore Fanfani entitled Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism. In the above quotation, Weber recognized the totalitarian nature of Capitalism and the social, economic, and ideological absolute, which Capitalism is. During the 1930s, when Fanfani, an internationally acclaimed Italian Catholic economist, wrote his work, Capitalism was recognized as such, therefore, provoking a good or bad absolute response on the part of those who wished to challenge this Liberal economic system. The essence of Fanfani’s thesis, in this text, is to show how true Catholicism is just such an absolutist system, which must inevitably clash with the overriding claims of Capitalism. The two, if they are being genuinely adhered to, cannot coexist as what they truly are, systems of thought and life which give a complete account of the meaning of all events encountered and beings know by the human mind. For those adhering, with their minds and their wills, to an absolutist system (whether that system be erroneous like Socialism, National Socialism, or Capitalism or if it be true like Catholicism), everything is understood in reference to the main doctrines of the system. False systems are, of course, completely self-referential (i.e., the intelligibilities which make up the system only have meaning insofar as they are related to other systemic intelligibilities, for example, “the withering away of the State,” only has meaning and significance within the context of Marxist eschatology). Thus, if we live in a world dominated by false ideological systems, as we do, we can only hope that some anomaly crops up which will not “fit” the system, thereby, requiring men to rethink the validity of their false systems. Fanfani insists that Capitalism is such a mental system that, he thought, had encountered its anomaly in the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929.
What Fanfani, a professor of economic history at the University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, was stating when he spoke of Capitalism as an absolutist system, was that every goal, every desire, every institution, every attitude is, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped and “tinted” by the primary goal of Capitalism which is maximum individual economic profit. This thesis serves as the starting point for the three main analytical and historical tasks of his book, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism. First, there is the task of unfolding the implications of this fact that Capitalism is an absolutist, we might say totalitarian, system which has influenced many, if not most, of the historical events of the last 400 years, while, at the same time, gaining hold of the mentalities of most of our contemporaries. Second, the task presents itself of trying to understand the relationship between the absolutism of capitalism and the absolutism of the Catholic Religion. Catholicism is “absolutist” in the sense that all of man’s actions and all social, political, and economic institutions must be judged by the faithful according to the moral and doctrinal teachings of the Magisterium. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, all human actions are, since they all involve circumstance and intention, either morally good or evil. Therefore, all human actions, including the economic actions of men, either individually or collectively, come within the purview of the Church’s moral teaching. From this fact, Fanfani draws the appropriate question, “Can an individual man live both as a capitalist, or a creature of Capitalism, and as a Catholic at the same time? Moreover, can Catholicism and Capitalism as systems truly be what they are and, still, coexist with one another? What is the historical relationship between these two social, moral, and intellectual systems?
As a good professor of economic science, Fanfani knows that he cannot adequately, and in the concrete, answer these questions unless he traces the historical relationship between the two absolutist systems of Catholicism and Capitalism. As a historian, Fanfani dedicates part of his book to inquiring into whether or not Capitalism began in the Catholic milieu of the Christian centuries and, if yes, whether it was Catholicism that initially promoted and facilitated the arrival of the Capitalist Spirit. With these historical questions answered, Fanfani then goes on to respond to the German sociologist Max Weber’s claim that the Protestant “work ethic” is at the origin of Capitalism as a dominant social, political, and economic reality. If Catholicism is not at the origin of capitalism, could Protestantism be?

A) The Spirit of Capitalism
Lest there be any question as to the nature of the “beast,” Fanfani defines very carefully what he means when he speaks of “Capitalism.” According to Fanfani, Capitalism is, “a system in which capital is predominant, a system characterized by free labor, a system in which competition is unbridled, credit expands, banks prosper, big industry assumes gigantic dimensions, and the world market becomes one.” If this is what Fanfani means when he says “Capitalism,” could it not be the case that we could understand it to be merely an economic system, one among many, with its sole end being the supply of necessary goods and services to those in need of such? Could not Catholicism then, which is a religious and moral system, live in perfect accord with the mechanism of Capitalism? In answer to this, Fanfani advances a view that is accepted, interestingly enough, by most contemporary apologists for the Capitalist System. For Fanfani, the essence of Capitalism is the “Capitalistic Spirit.” The “Capitalist Spirit,” according to Fanfani, is a mode of life determined by a spiritual orientation. Here, Fanfani perfectly agrees with Max Weber’s assertion that, “Inquiry into the forces that encouraged the expansion of modern capitalism is not, at any rate, an inquiry into the source of the monetary reserves to be utilized as capital, but, above all, an inquiry into the development of the capitalistic spirit. Where this spirit reveals itself and seeks realization, it procures monetary capital as means for its action.”

B) The Capitalistic Man
Since the “capitalistic spirit,” the élan that animates what I will refer to as the “capitalistic man,” is an economic “spirit,” it must, primarily, concern itself with the concept of wealth. Indeed, the economic spirit of an age is determined by the current idea of wealth and its ends. The peculiarity about capitalistic man is that, in a certain manner, he has no concept of ends but only of means. The “end” for which capitalistic man strives, an ever more complete satisfaction of every conceivable need, is hypothetical and not real. It is simply the concept of human material satisfaction stripped of all limits. Since this “end” is merely hypothetical (i.e., no man has ever experienced a state of complete material and worldly satisfaction), true ends do not orient the life and the mentality of the capitalist. He is, and he wants everyone else to be, an infinite material desire that is never sated. Wealth is not, than, even the end of capitalistic man. It is simply the means to the acquisition of further means to the acquisition of further means. One of the most distinguishing intellectual and moral characteristics of capitalistic man is his reduction of everything to the status of a useful good (bonum utile), and his blindness concerning the reality of things which can be classified as “intrinsic goods” (bona honesta). An intrinsic good is something desirable for its own sake and not merely desirable for its ability to help us attain something else.
This “limitless” horizon of capitalistic man differs profoundly from the understanding of traditional Christian man or, we might add, from that of the ancient pagans, whether cultured or uncultured. For the pre-capitalist man, this “limitless” material desire is seen as irrational, since he connaturally recognizes that he has a strictly limited number of needs to be satisfied in the measure demanded by his station in life. As opposed to capitalistic man, traditional man sees wealth in its social and natural context. Since he understands his own needs within the context of social structure and natural desire, his desire for material gain, and the actions, which he takes to achieve such gain, will be strictly circumscribed by social customs, political regulations, and religious principles.

C) Liberal Economics: The Wrecking Ball of Christendom
Since the “unlimited,” as a psychological category, characterizes the capitalistic man, all institutions and cultural norms that place a restriction on, hence, render impossible, the limitless acquisition of wealth must be eliminated. According to Fanfani, historically speaking, it was Catholic culture and institutions animated and fostered by the moral teachings and the ecclesiastical legislation of the Church which curtailed the desired unrestricted maneuverings of the capitalist. The most obvious restriction that Catholic culture placed upon economic activity was the social and legal obligation to respect feast days. The veneration given to the saints and to the mysteries of salvation was a good, which had no utilitarian or economic value. Capitalism is directed towards constant material production and acquisition, not to rest, contemplation, veneration, and worship. Since Capitalism, in a way, has no end, it cannot tolerate the feast, which is a foreshadowing of our enjoyment of the never-ending End. As Fanfani states, the economic liberty, which came about when the State dropped the legal obligation for all to observe the feast day rest, soon eliminates the culture which is informed and lived out in the feasts of the liturgical year.
We, also, can identify this obvious clash between the world-views of Catholicism and Capitalism, when we consider the economic organisms (better than “organizations”), which were the rock-bed of the traditional economic order of Christendom, the guilds. The idea of the guild or fraternal Catholic occupational corporation, was of particular significance to Fanfani, since, during his time, there was a conscious effort, on the part of the Church, laymen, and statesmen, to resurrect an economic order based upon the guild system, which would serve as a alternative to both Liberal Capitalism and Communism. It is interesting, and heartening, to note, that most of the nations in Western and Central Europe at the time, had either governments ideologically and institutionally committed to Guild-System Corporatism or had a large political movement dedicated to these principles. Since the guilds, as historically existing and theoretically understood, were “the guardians of a system of economic activity in which the purely economic interests of the individual were sacrificed either to the moral and religious interests of the individual, or to the economic interests of the community,” Capitalism was rendered impossible. The dominant spirit of Capitalism insists that we work in such a way that we will put our competitor out of business. To achieve this is to be “successful” in the Capitalistic System. The Corporative System of the past was ordered to ensure that a man would pursue his occupation in such a way that he did not put his “competitor” out of business. The common good of working men and families was put ahead of the unrestricted “right” to purchase any product one fancies. Economic “freedom” breeds the insecurity, which is a consequence of ruthless economic competition.

D) The Capitalist Attack on the Sovereign State
Once Capitalism has achieved relative mastery over the culture of Christendom, particularly with the suppression of the guilds and the marginalization of the Catholic Church and its various expressions in human culture, there remained for Capitalist conquest the ultimate, and ultimately necessary prize, the State. Without the State, Capitalist control of maximum material results through the utilization of minimum means could not be attained. The State, therefore, must be portrayed as having goals inimical to properly human goals. The ultimate goal of the Capitalist, in his attempted hijacking of the sovereignty of the State, is to neutralize it as an institution having goals of its own, both natural and supernatural. For the State to direct society as a whole, including the economic life of society, is to threaten force to those who do not, at least to a minimal degree, pursue the goods which the State understands to be the common good of the human society that it governs. The tasks, which Capitalism is willing to “allow” the domesticated State, are several. The most obvious, and necessary, is the one of maintaining “security.” “Security,” as understood by the State hijacked by Capitalism, is simply the safeguarding of the conditions in which the Capitalists can achieve maximum material gain from minimal expenditure. Indeed, this is the ultimate guarantee of the stability and fixity of the Capitalist System, one that threatens terror and ruin on those who would dare try to depart, in any way, from the “given” System. In a fully Capitalist society, you have the death of the State even when it seems to be at its most unforgiving and ferocious.

E) Protestantism or Catholicism? : Which is the Culprit?
When Fanfani addresses the question as to whether it was Catholicism or Protestantism, which produced the “Capitalist Spirit,” he does not look at individual Catholics or Protestants, but rather, he looks at the existing Catholic culture of the late Medieval and early Renaissance, along with the “spirit” of the Lutheran heresy. His thesis is that, although the Capitalistic Spirit began to fully emerge in the Catholic society of the 15th century, this spirit was antithetical to the teachings and spirit of the Church and it progressed in society and in the hearts of men only so far as the spirit of the Church was ignored or in retreat. Protestantism, however, with its rejection of the Church’s doctrine concerning the necessity of good works in order to merit salvation, fostered and abated the rise of Capitalism. If there was no direct correlation between how I act, whether in the innermost recesses of my soul, in society, or in business, and my achievement of or failure to achieve my ultimate supernatural end, then action will no longer be guided by any supernatural motive. Luther’s assertion concerning faith without the need for works invalidates any supernatural morality, hence, invalidating the economic ethics of the Catholic Religion. According to Fanfani, it is the establishment of the great Protestant divide between the human and the divine, most perfectly expressed in Luther’s denial of sanctifying grace, which results in the “divinization” of the mundane so necessary for the advancement of the Capitalist Spirit. If man cannot achieve a likeness to God through works of piety and charity, the most palpable goal that shall be held out to him is the goal of money and the goods that money can buy.

F) Michael Novak vs. Amintore Fanfani
There is a very telling introduction to an earlier edition of Fanfani’s book Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, published by Notre Dame Press in 1988. This introduction, written by Michael Novak, leader of American Catholic Whiggery, dismisses Fanfani’s text as “troubling,” “abstract,” “speculative,” and, even, with regard to certain points, “absurd.” Novak’s point is that Fanfani is presenting nothing but a caricature of Capitalism, his vision and understanding being hobbled by his lack of experience of the American System, which combines “free enterprise” with “free elections” and “free religion,” not to mention “pluralism.” Novak points to Jacques Maritain who, initially, wrote “abstractly” about philosophy, social and political systems, etc., until he experienced the United States and its workings. Here the, almost embarrassing, utopianism which marks Novak’s outlook, is shocking, not merely because of its blindness and naiveté, but, also, on account of its clear judgment that the civilization produced by the Puritan Anglo-Saxons is superior to the civilization of Continental Europe produced by popes, doctors of the Church, and saints. It is truly thought provoking to find Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith lined up, by a man calling himself a Catholic, against the molders of Catholic civilization, we might mention, St. Benedict, St. Gregory VII, and St. Thomas Aquinas, and the latter group coming out the worse. Novak’s contempt for the Catholic Social and Economic tradition can barely be concealed in such statements as, “This short book of 1935 is a locus classicus of anti-capitalist sentiment among Catholic intellectuals. It helps to explain why Catholic nations were long retarded [sic] in encouraging development, invention, savings, investment, entrepreneurship, and, in general, economic dynamism.” In another sideswipe at Christendom, Novak states, “Indeed, there is undeniable irony in the fact that the Catholic spirit, over many centuries, did far less to lift the tyrannies and oppressions of the pre-liberal era than did the capitalist spirit, in which Fanfani detects only moral inferiority.”
It is truly a service to the Catholic intellectual world, especially for those who seek to recover the rich and comprehensive thought of the pre-World War II Catholic intelligentsia, that I.H.S. Press has republished, without Michael Novak’s introduction, this classic text by an economist who took his Catholic Faith seriously and who recognized the obvious, there is never a moral or social teaching, which is not meant to be implemented in the common lives of the faithful. The list of things which Novak condemns and rejects and which Fanfani accepts and advocates is long. They include the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ, the social encyclicals against Liberalism of all types, the institutions fashioned over centuries to embody Catholic Morality and the Catholic view of man and human destiny, the idea that the basic bonds between men in society must be constituted by more than mere contractual relationships, and the recognition that it is unlikely that a civilization originating in principles and doctrines antithetical to the Catholic Church could produce anything resembling a “utopia.” As Chesterton would say, “A utopia for whom?”