Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 3:09pm

PopeWatch: Pact of the Catacombs-Part II

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Thou shalt not do that which is unjust, nor judge unjustly. Respect not the person of the poor, nor honour the countenance of the mighty. But judge thy neighbour according to justice.

Leviticus 19: 15

The Pact of the Catacombs, go here to read the text of the Pact, is a pact taken at the Catacombs of Rome on November 16, 1965 by about 40 Bishops participating in Vatican II.  Although a quite obscure event ignored by most histories of Vatican II, the Pact, which went on to be signed by about 500 Bishops, most of them from Latin America, laid out a blue print for transforming the Church that has in some respects been carried out, to the detriment of the Church and her mission of bringing all men to Christ.  The errors that have resulted from the approach to the world suggested by the Pact, are glaringly evident in the text of the Pact.

9) Conscious of the demands of justice and charity, and their mutual relationship, we will seek to transform assistential activites into social works based on justice and charity, which take into account all that this requires, as a humble service of the competent public organs. Cf. Mt 25,31-46; Lc 13,12-14 e 33s.

The traditional charitable actions of the Church are to be transformed into works of the State.  This of course turns the Church into simply another pressure group soliciting largesse from Caesar on behalf of her clients, the poor.  The problems with this approach are many, but the fundamental error is that it converts the command of Christ for Christians to personally help the poor into a command for Catholics to pressure government to take over this job.

10) We will do our utmost so that those responsible for our government and for our public services make, and put into practice, laws, structures and social institutions required by justice and charity, equality and the harmonic and holistic development of all men and women, and by this means bring about the advent of another social order, worthy of the sons and daughters of mankind and of God. Cf. At. 2,44s; 4,32-35; 5,4; 2Cor 8 e 9 ; 1Tim 5, 16.

A more explicit call for Caesar to set up welfare states.  Here we discern the left wing utopianism within the Church that received much impetus after Vatican II, the advocates of this view completely forgetting that utopia means nowhere and the admonition of Christ that His Kingdom is not of this world.

11) Believing the collegiality of the bishops to be of the utmost evangelical importance in facing the burden of human masses, in a state of physical, cultural and moral misery – two thirds of humanity – we commit ourselves:

– to participate, according to our means, in the urgent investments of the episcopates of poor nations;

– to demand that the plans of international organizations, but witnessing to the Gospel, as Pope Paul VI did in the UNO, adopt economic and cultural structures which no longer manufacture proletarian nations in an ever richer world, but which will permit the poor masses to overcome their misery.

Here the Church is committed to a cause of political action.  Instead of spreading the Gospel, the Church is transformed into a mere political party.

The spirit of the Pact would be played out under the theme of preferential option of the poor, a basic betrayal of the fact that Christ came to draw all men unto Himself, and that Christianity cannot draw distinctions between  classes without undermining the essential mission of the Church.  Like most concepts, it can be manipulated into an orthodox interpretation, but its true ramifications are perhaps best brought out by advocates of Liberation Theology, who envisage the Church helping the poor engage in violent uprisings and the creation of all powerful states to serve the poor.  Few concepts could be further from the message of Christ.

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Nate Winchester
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 8:12am

Funny, because today I found a study implicating that increasing welfare decreases religion.

That the Church which survived so much throughout history nowadays seems hellbent on committing suicide is tragically ironic.

Pedro Erik
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 8:20am

Excellent piece, I just think that it was on 16 Nov 1965, not 26. Check it out.
God bless.

MikeS
MikeS
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 8:29am

Once again, the Church proves that it was founded and is sustained by God when it survives despite being run with such incompetence.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 8:57am

Regarding the free distribution of someone else’s hard-earned wealth by Caesar – a common advocacy we hear from socialists – the lesson of John chapter 6 is noteworthy. Out of a few loaves and fishes Jesus had miraculously fed 5000 men plus women and childern on the far side of the Sea of Galilee. The next day the disciples sailed across the sea, but Jesus had not gone with them immediately, and a storm later occurs. Jesus arrives at the small boat during the storm by walking on water. The disciples with Jesus then arrive at the shore. The crowd of yesterday, still on the far side of the sea, had awoken and learned that Jesus had departed. So they travelled to the other side of the sea. Sacred Scripture records the following in verses 24 through 27:
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“So when the people saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Caper′na-um, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.'”
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Notice that the crowd did NOT receive a second free handout. The goal was NOT to feed empty bellies but to save souls from the fires of hell. Indeed, regarding those who refuse to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, St. Paul states the following in 2nd Thessalonians 3:6-12:
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“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, we did not eat any one’s bread without paying, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you. It was not because we have not that right, but to give you in our conduct an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living.”
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The bottom line is this: work or starve. The Gospel message isn’t about satisfying the desires of the flesh, but about saving souls from eternal damnation.
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Now that said, when a Christian finds someone in need, it is his spiritual duty out of love for Christ Himself to provide what assistance he can. This is discussed in Matthew 25:31-46 which states that at the end of time Jesus will gather all the “gentes” or “tribes” or “families” of mankind before Him, separating the sheep from the goats. The sheep who enter eternal life are those who have willingly and without coercion from Caesar fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, cared for the sick, clothed the naked, visited the imprisoned and welcomed the stranger. The goats are those who have refused to perform such wilful acts of charity. Perhaps they are the socialists who abdicate their accountability and evade their responsibility to help the poor with their own hands, demanding instead that Caesar do what they themselves are commanded by God to do. They go to hell.
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Thus we see from Sacred Scripture the inherent immorality of socialism and the very real neecessity for each of us as members of the Body of Christ to perform charitable works of mercy. Indeed, everytime we abdicate our respoonsibility and evade our accountability to perform our Christian duty, we sacrifice on the altar of political expediency our adoption as children of the Great King and our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. Instead of rendering unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, we transfer our sacred duty to Caesar, expecting that Caesar will give us every material thing that we want, and as the old saying goes, a government which can give you everything you want can take away everything you have, including your freedom.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 9:18am

We must not confuse charity and justice: as St Ambrose says, “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.” (De Nabute, c. 12, n. 53) Indeed, the universal destination of goods is the common teaching of the Fathers.

Repetition, restitution and recompense are acts of justice, not charity and their enforcement belongs to the civil magistrate, invested with the power of the sword. (Rom 13:4)

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 9:45am

MPS,
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Caesar must NOT usurp the authority to decide what is to be given back to the poor man and what is not.
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Now that said, what a man earns by his own honest labor belongs to him and no one else. For example, he applied those activities necessary to worthless earth to make it somethings worthwhile having (e.g., farming, mining, irrigating, etc.). If a man poor or otherwise did not apply action to make what was worthless worthwhile, then none of the earth belongs to him. Indeed, it is theft for government to appropriate what a man earns by his honest labor and redistribute it to the poor. But if the man of his own volition wishes to donate what he earns to the poor, then so should he be permitted, never coerced. It is hs act of mercy for the salvation of his soul.
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Furthermore, making the poor dependent on free handouts from those who earn only impoverishes those who earn and exacerbates the addiction of the poor to freely received largess. As Benjamin Franklin said:
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“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
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Thus did Jesus refuse in John chapter 6 to give the people a second free handout, and thus did St Paul tell the Church at Thessalonika: work or starve.
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BTW, for all the social justice types out there saying that the poor owns what the wage earner has earned, have you housed a drunken dope fiend without money and helped him to get sober using your own financial resources? Have you housed homeless Asian immigrants without charging for rent or food expenses, using your own financial resources? Have you gone to the breakfast kitchen at 5 am on Saturday morning to feed the derelicts? Did you take care of an AIDS victim out of your own money when he was at death’s door? Huh? Then don’t you dare say that the poor is entitled to what the wage earner earns. I hate European socialism. Take your guilt trip and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

James Bransfield
James Bransfield
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 10:01am

Christ hated the poor just as much as we, led by Don McClorney, do. Woe to all bishops (Roman or otherwise) who distort this truth.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 10:23am

Christ loves ALL men equally. NO preferrential treatment for the poor. NONE. ZERO. Zip point squat.
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Scripture says that Jesus looked at the RICH man and LOVED him – something that the Bergoglio party clearly does NOT do.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 10:31am

M P-S has my iphone 6 and I’d like it back.

wj
wj
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 10:55am

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

The universal destination of goods and the preferential option for the poor
182. The principle of the universal destination of goods requires that the poor, the marginalized and in all cases those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the fo- cus of particular concern. To this end, the preferential option for the poor should be reaf- firmed in all its force[384]. “This is an option, or a special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness. It affects the life of each Christian inasmuch as he or she seeks to imitate the life of Christ, but it applies equally to our social responsibilities and hence to our manner of living, and to the logical decisions to be made concerning the ownership and use of goods. Today, fur- thermore, given the worldwide dimension which the social question has assumed, this love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it inspires in us, cannot but em- brace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without health care and, above all, those without hope of a better future”[385].

[385] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 42: AAS 80 (1988), 572- 573; cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 32: AAS 87 (1995), 436-437; John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 51: AAS 87 (1995), 36; John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49-50: AAS 93 (2001), 302-303.

Why don’t you guys just admit that you have left the Catholic Church?

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:07am

Then, WJ, YOU exercise preferential treatment for the poor. YOU sell all YOUR belongings and give the proceeds to the poor. YOU do it.
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You have neither right nor the authority to demand that Caesar take from those who earn and give to those who don’t.
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The preferential treatment one must gve to those in need is a personal act of individual charity. Govt has NO moral authority to confiscate the wealth of one person and distribute it to another. Indeed, every time you liberal progressive social justice people advocate preferential treatment for the poor, what you really want is for someone else to do the preferential treatment. YOU don’t want to get your hands dirty doing the Lord’s work. YOU don’t want to give up YOUR personal wealth. YOUR kind is NO better than Judas Iscariot who declared, “Could not this oil have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?” Scripture goes on to explain that he said that NOT because he cared for the poor BUT because he used to steal from the money purse.

James Bransfield
James Bransfield
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:17am

wj is right. Denial of the preferential option for the poor displays not only ignorance of the whole of scripture and of the church’s teaching, it displays a personal denial of Christ himself. Do I hear a cock crowing?

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:25am

James Bransfield,
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Did you NOT see thhe quote from Leviticus at the beginning of this blog post?
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Thou shalt not do that which is unjust, nor judge unjustly. Respect not the person of the poor, nor honour the countenance of the mighty. But judge thy neighbour according to justice. 
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Have you NOT read where St Paul said there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male nor female in Christ Jesus?
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YOU execise preferential option for the poor as a work of penance. But don’t you DARE abdicate your responsibilty and evade you accountability to exercise that option onto Caesar, demanding that he taxes those who earn and build up society keep the indolent addicted to the teat of the public treasury.
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Jesus said to Judas Iscariot, “The poor you will have with you always.”

Peasant
Peasant
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:31am

James is right, in that it is a scandal that the Church has fancy vestments when the poor don’t have enou –

“Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.””

Oh wait.

Besides the practical matter, note well who it was that raised the objection and why.

Peasant
Peasant
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:34am

Furthermore, it is an error to associate the modern welfare state with the fulfillment of the proper destination of goods; cf. St. John Chrysostom (who certainly was no cheerleader for the rich, excoriating some of them regularly):

“Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm.

Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again. Worse still, the rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful; while the poor who received the gold form the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude, because no generosity would have prompted the gift. Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion, a change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve true justice is to change people’s hearts first — and then they will joyfully share their wealth.”

Clinton
Clinton
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:35am

James Bransfield, how do you reconcile your view with the excerpt from
John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus Donald McClarey quoted? As for
myself, I do not think my suspicion of the bloated powers of the welfare
state and the subsequent loss of a sense of personal responsibility among
its citizenry necessarily means I am ignorant of either Scripture or the Church’s
teaching– and I certainly do not deny Christ.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:36am

Pail W Primavera wrote, “what a man earns by his own honest labor belongs to him and no one else”

But the Mosaic Law says otherwise: “And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. xix. 9, 10). “When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow” (Deut. xxiv. 20, 21). According to the Jewish commentators, the transgressor was punished with stripes (Ḥul. 131a; Maimonides, “Yad,” Mattenot ‘Aniyim, i. 8)

Referring to the gleaning laws, Charles Rollin notes that “Nothing is more common than the existence of similar rights to the goods of another person.” He points out that “Theft was permitted in Sparta. It was severely punished among the Scythians” and adds: “The reason for this difference is obvious: the law, which alone determines the right to property and the use of goods, granted a private individual no right, among the Scythians, to the goods of another person, whereas in Sparta the contrary was the case.”

Mirabeau says the same: “Property is a social creation. The laws not only protect and maintain property; they bring it into being; they determine its scope [elles lui donnent le rang] and the extent that it occupies in the rights of the citizens.”

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:45am

So MPS, do you give your paycheck / retrement check to the poor?

wj
wj
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:46am

Re: Michael Paterson-Seymour and Pail W Primavera: The Church’s teaching clearly rejects the absolute ownership view:

Again, from the Compendium:

177. Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and un- touchable: “On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader con- text of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to pri- vate property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone”[372]. The principle of the universal destination of goods is an affir- mation both of God’s full and perennial lordship over every reality and of the require- ment that the goods of creation remain ever destined to the development of the whole person and of all humanity[373]. This principle is not opposed to the right to private property[374] but indicates the need to regulate it. Private property, in fact, regardless of the concrete forms of the regulations and juridical norms relative to it, is in its essence only an in- strument for respecting the principle of the universal destination of goods; in the final analysis, therefore, it is not an end but a means[375].
178. The Church’s social teaching moreover calls for recognition of the social function of any form of private ownership [376] that clearly refers to its necessary relation to the common good[377]. Man “should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others”[378]. The universal destination of goods entails obligations on how goods are to be used by their legitimate owners. Individual persons may not use their re- sources without considering the effects that this use will have, rather they must act in a way that benefits not only themselves and their family but also the common good. From this there arises the duty on the part of owners not to let the goods in their possession go idle and to channel them to productive activity, even entrusting them to others who are desirous and capable of putting them to use in production.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:48am

Fine, WJ. Let’s start with you first. YOU give up your house, your paycheck, your car, your material belongings to the poor. YOU do it. YOU first. Be an example. Otherwise, be silent.

wj
wj
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 11:51am

Re: JPII in CA, Saint John Paul II’s two paragraphs should not be interpreted to trump or negate everything else he, the councils, and other popes said about the preferential option for the poor. Pope Benedict XVI taught that Catholic social doctrine must be read as a whole.

Caritas in Veritate:

This doctrine has its own profound unity, which flows from Faith in a whole and complete salvation, from Hope in a fullness of justice, and from Love which makes all mankind truly brothers and sisters in Christ: it is the expression of God’s love for the world, which he so loved “that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16). (No. 3)

In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church’s social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it. It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine . . . differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. It is one thing to draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus. (No. 12)

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 12:10pm

In some cases, the best way to help the poor is by not becoming one of them.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 12:12pm

When you ask these people what they are personally doing to exercise preferential treatment for the poor, they are silent. They have no answer. Do they welcome the homeless into their homes and provide a bed at night? Do they donate their paycheck to the poor person in an alleyway at night? When they see a drunk or drug addict passed out on the curb, do they awake him and drive him to an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meeting in the middle of the night? Do they give food from their pantry to the local Hispanic family that doesn’t have enough to eat? Do they spend time after work playing with the fatherless child next door to make him feel wanted and worthy? What exactly do these accursed socialists do besides cry that govt has to tax the wage earner to provide for the poor?
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You see, it really is this: these people want to appear to be pious and devout. They want to be publicly recogized as heroes of the social justice movement. But when it comes to getting up at 2 am in the morning to pick a drunk off the beach and get him into a halfway house and pay for his month’s rent ahead of schedule because he blew his money on booze and drugs and whores, those types of self-righteous Pharisitical people are NOWHERE to be found.
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Now here it is: I don’t need your accursed govt to tax me to know that I darn well better be getting my hind end out of bed at 2 am to help that drunk. I know it’s my duty to the eternal salvation of my soul to personally give preferential treatment to those less fortunate than I. But it sure as hades is NOT the job of govt to tax away my ability to do this on the specious pretext that some nit wit’s intepretation of a Papal Encyclical says so.
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So all you social justice types out there – unless you are selling your material possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor, you would do well to shut your mouths. Charity is a personal and an individual thing. Govt shoud encourage it. But govt cannot do it. Only you and I can do it.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 12:16pm

“Denial of the preferential option for the poor…”

Of course a preferential option for the poor is distinct from a Church of the poor. That was also addressed by JP II. He was asked if the Church is the “Church of the poor.” He said no. It was the “Church of all.”

In fact Christ did come for all. The preferential option is because the poor may not have the resources to address their needs and move political systems like the rich. But it is not to endorse unjust discrimination. In fact, in the U.S. it is more likely that the poor person’s needs will be met than not. Current redistribution schemes seem more motivated by other, non-Christian ideologies.

And while private property is not absolute, neither is the right to another’s property. That is, one cannot unjustly deprive another of their property. For example, one cannot merely expropriate another’s goods absent the need to meet the genuine need of another. Nor can they deprive them of the just rewards of their labor for mere redistribution ends.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 12:53pm

Pail W Primavera wrote, “Charity is a personal and an individual thing. Govt shoud encourage it. But govt cannot do it. Only you and I can do it.”

As I recall, it was a government, and one sustaining all the weight of civil conflict within and of universal war without, that transformed ten million landless French peasants into heritable proprietors.

In 1848, De Tocqueville was able to declare, “Concerning the very principle of private property, the Revolution always respected it. It placed it in its constitutions at the top of the list. No people treated this principle with greater respect. It was engraved on the very frontispiece of its laws. The French Revolution did more. Not only did it consecrate private property, it universalized it. It saw that still a greater number of citizens participated in it. It is thanks to this, gentlemen, that today we need not fear the deadly consequences of socialist ideas which are spread throughout the land. It is because the French Revolution peopled the land of France with ten million property-owners that we can, without danger, allow these doctrines to appear before us.”

That was to help the poor in earnest; not with alms, but with justice.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 1:01pm

Somebody really needs to make M P-S give me my iphone6 back.
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But first I suppose they’re going to have to get Somebody a government job, so everything’s on the up and up.

Nate Winchester
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 1:16pm

177. Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and un- touchable:

Really? I thought there was this whole “thou shall not steal” rule from WAY back in the early days.

As for those wishing redistribution, they perhaps should refresh themselves to the saga of Dennis Moore…

wj
wj
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 1:29pm

Nate Winchester: That was a quote directly from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. This demonstrates my very point – rejection of church doctrine.

Nate Winchester
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 1:40pm

wj, and I quoted the ten commandants so :P.

Oh, and I never said I was Catholic.

Clinton
Clinton
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 2:11pm

I believe Illinois Catholic Charities could provide some folks here with an
insight into why it’s inadvisable to make the state the primary source of
charity. Recall, the state of Illinois demanded that Illinois Catholic Charities
place adoptees with same-sex parents or close down their adoption
services. ICC opted to close down. The ideologues enforced their
political correctness, but the children served by the ICC were left in the
lurch.
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Were the actions of the state of Illinois an exercise in the preferential option
for the poor? Was this a good use of the charitable dollars of faithful
taxpayers? Were the poor being served, or were the pro-gay sensibilities
of the elite? Can we expect more of the same from Caesar, say, over
half a billion taxpayer dollars each year given to Planned Parenthood?
In light of these things, are faithful taxpayers justified to be suspicious of
making Caesar the arbiter of all charity?

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 2:20pm

I still ave not heard what the socialists (otherwise known a soocial justice advocates) are personally doing as preferential treatment for the poor. I read a lot of pontification and quotation of Papal Encyclicals, European philosophical thought, etc., but as usual no blood and guts “dirty my hands” action. These people always want to take the wage earner’s just earnings and redistribute it to their favorite pet project so that they can feel oh so self-righteous and justified. John the Baptist had a phrase for these types: brood of vipers.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 4:51pm

Some more in depth approaches to the Preferential Option for the Poor. Much more nuanced than our social justice warriors think:

http://cchope.freeservers.com/Pol_Ed/Preferential%20Option%20for%20the%20Poor.htm

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/06/the-preferential-option-for-the-poor

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 5:19pm

Not a word from these liberal progressive social justice types on what they would personally do to help the poor. Not one word. Crickets are chirping and your silence speaks volumes.
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I say again: YOU do NOT get to tax those who earn their living so that YOU can have govt support YOUR pet social justice projects so that YOU can feel all pious and self-righteous. You fools are just the like the Pharisees of old. Oh the irony that the current Pope accuses those who do see this as being Pharisees. The Marxism is overwhelming.

wj
wj
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 5:36pm

Primavera:

What you or I do is irrelevant to this discussion. I merely posted parts of the church’s teaching. The discussion is about the teachings, not you or me.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, November 6, AD 2015 5:49pm

WJ, that is EXACTLY the point: what you and I do IS relevant. WE will be judged by OUR individual works. I will NOT be judged for yours, nor you for mine. And neither of us will be judged for Caesar’s works. IF we as ourselves do NOT feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, care for the sick, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned and welcome the alien as Matthew chapter 25 admonishes, THEN we are the goats on Jesus’ left side and we go to hell. This is the whole problem with you Marxist Peronist socialist collectivists: you think that Church teaching says that Caesar should do what Jesus commanded US to do. You ain’t a’gonna get away with abdicating your responsibility and evading your accountability onto Caesar. Nor will I. Get with the program, you liberal progressive. It is NOT the Gospel of social justice, the common good and peace at any price. It is the Gospel of conversion and repentance.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 12:28am

In the open thread, commenter Ginny posted an excerpt from Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est, a portion of which I would like to repost here as relevant to the present discussion:

In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m taking that to mean that the state could attempt, yet again, to socialize private property, and the poor would still be with us –just like they’ve always been, only more so if history is anything to go by.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 4:56am

Ernst Schreiber wrote, “the poor would still be with us –just like they’ve always been, only more so if history is anything to go by.”
Of course they would. As Lacordaire used to say, and Dorothy Day was fond of quoting, “our aim is not to make the poor rich and the rich richer; it is to make the rich poor and the poor holy.”

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 5:19am

Thanks for the excellent comments and insights about the Preferential Option for the Poor. Over the years, this possibly well meaning idea, has resulted , in the hands of the government, in keeping the poor corralled in the welfare state, spiritually deprived, hopeless, corrupt and crime infested.

It is high time the USCCB clearly faced the results of politicizing the Preferential Option as the manifest evil it has become. Christ said we will be judged on how each of us responded to the poor not on how we shifted the responsibility to someone else.

It should also be noted that there is nothing wrong with being poor, if fact it is ideal from a Christian point of view especially if we can be poor in spirit. The kind of poor Christ had in mind were the destitute, folks without food or shelter. In our society there are few of these. So in most ways the Preferential option for the Poor, which is a Liberation Theology (Communist) idea, applies most to the destitute of the Third World. In that world, the biggest help we can provide is to encourage the spread of Capitalism to help the poor help themselves.

Phillip
Phillip
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 5:22am

“our aim is not to make the poor rich and the rich richer; it is to make the rich poor and the poor holy.”

Except social justice policies typically only impoverish the rich while failing miserably in making the poor holy.

Ernst,

Thanks for the link. I have often referred to Catholic social justice warriors as Christian materialists. No different really than atheists except for the veneer of added divinity. Glad to know B XVI agrees.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 5:29am

Michael Dowd
Have you ever considered that Proudhon was right when he said that private philanthropy is a counter-revolutionary activity? That ameliorating the condition of the poor undermines the demand for true egalitarian justice. James Maxton, the Scottish ILP leader described it as the Danegeld the bourgeoisie pays to the proletariat.
This is the great objection to the Welfare State.
G K Chesterton and his fellow-distributists showed how the state can really help the poor. “ In Montenegro there are no millionaires–and therefore next to no Socialists. As to why there are no millionaires, it is a mystery, and best studied among the mysteries of the Middle Ages. By some of the dark ingenuities of that age of priestcraft a curious thing was discovered–that if you kill every usurer, every forestaller, every adulterater, every user of false weights, every fixer of false boundaries, every land-thief, every water-thief, you afterwards discover by a strange indirect miracle, or disconnected truth from heaven, that you have no millionaires. Without dwelling further on this dark matter, we may say that this great gap in the Montenegrin experience explains the other great gap–the lack of Socialists. The Class-conscious Proletarian of All Lands is curiously absent from this land. The reason (I have sometimes fancied) is that the Proletarian is class-conscious, not because he is a Proletarian of All Lands, but because he is a Proletarian with no lands. The poor people in Montenegro have lands–not landlords.

Phillip
Phillip
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 6:12am

“G K Chesterton and his fellow-distributists showed how the state can really help the poor.”

GK Chesterton opined that the state can help the poor. At least through distributism, That is a theory in search of facts.

This is not to say that the state does not have a role in assistance. Its that most current philosophies of the state fail significantly in actually helping.

Kevin
Kevin
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 8:06am

Intellectual banter and theological citations are certainly valid instruments for debate, but they become road blocks when the obscure the Gospel message in an effort to prove who is right and who is wrong.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 9:07am

Trenchant comments “on both sides”.

But it seems noticeable that when the church-government-complex-as-unified-socialist-institution and its self-proclaimed (and self-congratulatory) “preferential option for the poor” is challenged, very soon one hears the canard:

“Why don’t you guys just admit that you have left the Catholic Church?”

The “love” displayed in that comment reveals the true heart of the socialist revolutionary.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Saturday, November 7, AD 2015 9:19am

The well-known “preferential option for the poor” was communist-theory-in-drag that was fully embraced in the 1970’s by, and has since brought down, a well-known “intellectual” religious order (already pretty penetrated by communist theory in the 50’s & 60’s, it now turns out):

But the falsity of the “preferential option” is easily demonstrable in the NT. It of course would have excluded those evil capitalist men of means, such as Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10), Nicodemus (Jn 3:1-21), of course wicked old St. Matthew/Levi (Lk. 5:27-ff) (You would think socialists would love tax-collectors), and Joseph of Arimathea (noted in all 4 canonical Gospels as the man who actually DID SOMETHING and buried Our Lord), …

But who cares about those stupid old Scriptures, they just get in the way of The Cause.

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