The Catholic Church Social Teaching on Capitalism vs Socialism

Ask five Catholics what is Catholic Social Teaching, and you’ll get six different answers.  Similarly, what is “social justice"?  Different people will have different answers.  In this piece we will concentrate on the Catholic Church’s social teaching on economics, and specifically, socialism and capitalism.  In the last 150 years three different Popes have written encyclicals addressing the issue:  Pope Leo XIII in 1891 in his Encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI in 1931 and Pope John Paul II in 1991.   The second and third of these followed and built-upon the original of Leo XIII whereby he warned of the evil of socialism and the condition of the working class. 

After describing the oppressive conditions of the working class in 1891, Leo XIII asks whether socialism or capitalism is the answer.  It is important to note that the Church is not proposing any model of economic system. The Church is speaking out on the morality of each system.  Which one provides for the dignity of the human person?  Leo specifically condemns socialism as being contrary to the well-being of the human family.  Rerum Novarum is a brilliant piece of literature and a superb document; well written and argued.  He describes the faults of socialism: “To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State.”  Leo continues: “if these (socialist policies) were to be carried out, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer."

Leo argues that socialism deprives man of property, economic and political freedom. “Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interest of every wage-earner and deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of bettering his condition in life.”  This remedy goes against justice, Leo argues.  Every man has the inherent human right of controlling his life.  This is a right that distinguished him from animals. He was endowed with this right from his creator.  He refers to a human being given dominion over the earth and all that is in it, including animals and the fruit of the land: “Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth but also the very soil.  There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State.”   

 

Leo argues that nature and the laws of nature go with man’s freedom to do what he likes with the fruits of his labor.  “Those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced. Is it just that the fruit of man’s own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by anyone else?”  Private property is in conformity with human nature, Leo argues. He makes the case that socialism is analogous to coveting your neighbor’s property;  a reference to one of the Ten Commandments.  The web site Prageru.com has a terrific five-minute video titled “Was Jesus a Socialist?”  Click here to view it.

 

Man freely must be able to offer his labor for just payment.  His labor will enable him to buy his own property.  This will enable him to support his family and pass on his property to his children.  Socialism denies this ability, and therefore is an assault on human dignity.  “Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children.”

 

Leo then makes a frontal assault on socialism: “The practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error.  Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself.”  Leo contends that socialism destroys the family and is against natural justice.  “Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community goods, must be utterly rejected.”

 

Pius the XI in his 1931 Quadragesimo Anno Encyclical, building on the work of Leo XIII, is even more emphatic on the dangers of socialism. Pius XI updates Leo’s encyclical by talking about how socialism morphed into communism; a more lethal system than socialism.  He also attacks bad capitalism with the accumulation of wealth to the few in which free competition has destroyed itself and economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market.  “Communism teaches and seeks two objectives:  Unrelenting class warfare and absolute extermination of private ownership by employing every and all means, even the most violent.”  Pius XI goes on: “We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teaching of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.  

 

 Here is where Pius XI makes a bold statement that some, may have heartburn over: “If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Christian socialism are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”  He’s not done yet.  Speaking of socialism: “We have found it laboring under the gravest of evils.  We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.”

 

Pope John Paul II on the 100^thanniversary of Rerum Novarum in 1991 published a re-reading of it.  John Paul II talks about the failure of communism.  He, again, confirms what Leo XIII and Pius XI stated in their two encyclicals.  As to capitalism he states that “if by capitalism is meant an economic system which recognized the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative.”   John Paul II argues that “man fulfils himself by using his intelligence and freedom. Man’s dignity is tied to his freedom. Like Leo and Pius XI, John Paul II rails against socialism and communism: “This, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God.  Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of correct conception of the human person.”

 

Milton Friedman, the famous American economist, in an interview with TV talk show host Phil Donahue in the late 1970s has a short answer on capitalism vs socialism.  Click here to view it.

Historic Religious Prejudice: For Whom the Bell Tolls

 I've borrowed the title from the great American writer Ernest Hemingway who wrote the classic novel in 1940.  The book deals with the Spanish Civil War and its consequences for society in general. 

Religious prejudice is like acid on metal, it will eventually destroy the metal.   In recent days there has been renewed riots in Northern Ireland.  This time the riots are not because of religion, but for other political factors involving the EU and Brexit. Which brings me to the question, why are they not aligned politically with their brothers in Ireland instead of Britain?  The British have oppressed them for half a millennium.  This, to me, sounds very much like the Stockholm Syndrome.  Most would say that it is for religious purposes.  Catholics against Protestants.  That is the simple answer.

Religious prejudice and bigotry have been with us since the beginning of time.  We've often heard the prejudices between Catholics and Protestants; some of them are very critical of the other. In a Catholic Bible Study, I've heard the leader refer to Evangelicals as some kind of radical fringe group.  Equally, I've heard Protestants refer to Catholics as some sort of anti-Christ non-Christian cult.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In the 1990s I attended two Protestant Churches for about eight years.  I never once heard anything contradicting the Bible.  There are differences in applying the faith, but no major deviation from scripture.  I believe the problem is the misinterpretation or the misunderstanding of what is the core belief in both Catholics and Protestants.

Religious prejudice has some real fatal consequences.  It all started in the mid 11th Century with the schism between the Roman and the Easter Orthodox Church.  Because of the rancor that followed, Christians lost a large part of the Christian world to the Moslem Turks.  Greece itself, the home of the Eastern Church, was itself swallowed up by the Turks.  What is now Turkey was the original Biblical lands; the first seven churches of the Bible, such as Smyrna, Laodicea, Ephesus, Pergamum and others were there.  This is where Christianity started.  Within 400 years of the schism, the entire Eastern Roman Empire, more commonly known as the Byzantine Empire totally collapsed.  A very fine history of the Byzantines was done by historian, Lars Brownworth in his book, "Lost to the West." The obvious question comes up as to why Western Europe failed to help their Christian brothers, the Byzantines.?  The answer is religion.  They so despised each other that they would not help each other.  The result was the Moslem conquest of the entire Byzantine Empire by 1453, with the final conquest of the city of Constantinople.  Imagine if you will, that the free world had failed to help defeat Nazi Germany because we had religious differences.  For whom do the bells toll?  They toll for all of us, sooner or later.

 

His Glory, Your Blood

 You can’t read military history without sympathizing with the common soldier, whether it is the one on your side or the enemy.  War brings out the dark side of man; an example of man’s inhumanity to man.  All wars show the brutality and sheer insanity of the enterprise.  Let’s look at one example: The German invasion of Russia in World War II in 1941 (WW II).  The common theme was the madness of it all.  For the Russians, of course, there was a good reason:  defending themselves from a brutal oppressor.  For the Germans there could be no reason or logic, only depravity.  Let’s put it this way, you own a small house.  You want your neighbor’s house because its four times bigger; you hire a group of hit men (in the case of Germany, its Army) and you go to your neighbor, kill him, and take his property. 

The madness of Adolph Hitler had no bounds.  He wanted to be the master of the world by sacrificing his own people in the process.  All the glory would go to him.   In WW II they called America’s best commander, General George Patton, blood and guts because he used his soldiers to achieve success.  This is debatable, but for another discussion.  With Hitler, though, he invaded, conquered and occupied France, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and many other European countries and did It with some ease.  This probably led him to think of himself as unbeatable. After occupying all these countries, he wanted more, he wanted Russia too.  Russia is the world’s largest country by land size.  To any reasonable person, this would be considered total madness.  A major reason he used for invading Russia was his racism.  Just like his psychosis about Jews, he considered the Russians as sub-human and stupid, uneducated trash.  He wanted to eliminate them like the Jews so he could have more room (lebensraum).  He thought that he and his fellow Germans were a superior race. Hitler's aim was to eliminate all Russians and Jews and  replace them with Germanic people.

 

Failure to learn from history is perhaps the best example of madness, doing the same thing over and over and  expecting a different result.  Napoleon Bonaparte tried to conquer Russia in 1812 and failed miserably.  In this era, France had one of the best militaries in the world.  Of the 500,000 plus army he sent to Russia, only 5,000 survived to return home.  He was crushed militarily and by the winter. Napoleon repeated the same mistakes with England and the rest of Europe, sending men to their deaths just like a football coach sends his players to play the game.  Napoleon met his end at Waterloo, Belgium after his defeat by British and Prussian forces.  In Russia, if you were not killed in battle, the brutal winter weather would kill you.

The German invasion was a sure bet to be a failure.  First for the size of the operation, second for the problems with supplying a three-million-man army for long distances with no adequate roads, rail or air possibilities.  Second, when you have a madman in charge like Hitler, reason, and good military strategy go out the window and good military men who know better were forced to follow commands that would prove to be fatal; and this is what happened.  In the first three months of Operation Barbarossa, the Germans lost more than 500,000 dead.  It is estimated that more than 3,000,000 German soldiers lost their lives in Russia whether by being killed in action or by the weather or by being captured and then either shot to death by the Russians or starved to death, or disease.   The Russians, although they were defending themselves, made some very bad military decisions, sending waves of men into battle against German machine guns where they were all slaughtered.  The Russians, like Hitler, had to follow the madness of their dictator, Josef Stalin.  Russian commanders were beholden to Stalin’s ignorance and sheer incompetence when it came to military matters.  The blind leading the blind.  The Russians, also, were brutal with their own soldiers.  If a Russian soldier was captured and managed to escape, he would be killed upon returning by order of Stalin; punishment for being captured.  If a Russian soldier refused a sure death command, by charging German guns in an open field, for instance, he would be killed by his own commander.

 

The Germans had help in Russia by allies such as Italy, Romania, Hungary and others. The Italians, Romanians and Hungarians each fielded 250,000 soldiers.  All failed measurably.  There was no hope of victory for any of these condemned soldiers.  All was against them.  They were sent there without proper weapons, equipment, clothing, training, officers, means of transportation and so on.  These soldiers were basically condemned to death from the moment they set foot in Russia.  The Russian front was huge, extending more than 1,000 miles wide.  German soldiers were marched into exhaustion, fighting day and night.  The roads were nonexistent and with the bad weather most vehicles were stuck in the mud and failed mechanically.  German soldiers marched to exhaustion.  Their boots were so worn by the march and the bad weather, that many soldiers had to walk bare foot.  They were on constant attack on the ground and by the air.  When all was lost, Hitler would even refuse to let them retreat. 

 

Operation Barbarossa was also significant for the atrocities committed by both sides.  Upon the conquest and occupation of Kiev, for example, the Germans rounded up about 30,000 Russian Jews and shot them to death in open pits.  The Russians where not outdone.  In one case they captured 100 German troops and hung them by their hands, tortured them by lighting a fire under their feet and burned them alive; a horrific way to kill.  As the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana said, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  Here are some good examples proving this proverb.

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 For more detailed reading on this subject see the following books:

1. Kiev-1941, Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East, David Stahel, Cambridge University Press, 2012

2. Leningrad, State of Siege, Michael Jones, John Murray Publishers, GB, 2008

3. Stalingrad, Antony Beevor, Penguin Books, 1998

 

 

Was the Sicilian Bandit Giuliano a Folk Hero?

 In 1970 I read Mario Puzo’s book “The Godfather.”  As I recall, it was a well written and told story about the Sicilian Mafia.  When it was made into a movie, I saw it.  That was the last gangster movie I’ve ever seen. Although it was well made, I found the story troubling.  This type of movie genre became the rage of its day.  I’ve never understood why people like such gruesome stories.  I do not enjoy watching criminals commit their deeds; it was offensive to me.  Personally, I’ve had to endure many slights about my heritage because of the Mafia.  Seems that most people only know one thing about Sicily, the mafia.  This is akin to saying that if you were to describe Los Angeles you would say that the MS-13 Gang is its most important feature. It is stupid beyond belief.  Sicily has a glorious and tortured history going back more than 3,000 years.

In my morning Kaffeeklatsch with three other men, I often hear from one of them how much he loves some Netflix shows like “Breaking Bad” about criminals doing their stuff.  Recently I joined a Facebook group about people who are of Sicilian heritage, since I am one. Most posts are just silly stuff about people promoting their heritage.  A few days ago, I saw a post on the Sicilian group that was tasteless and a bit troubling.  The post was a love-in about the 1940s Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano.  Most comments were from people telling how their grandmother, uncle or other family member told them of how much Giuliano was so admired and loved by his fellow Sicilians.  One person called Giuliano a great man. I posted a short comment stating that Giuliano was a bandit and no hero.  One person responded by asking if I knew history or was he not right because he heard it from his grandmother who lived at the time of Giuliano. Well, here we go again.  Most people have no clue of history.

 

It is true that Salvatore Giuliano was very popular in Sicily and had a large following, but if that is the measure of a man, we’re in trouble.  Giuliano was a vicious killer, thief and robber.  He was an anti-authority rebel. He and his gang murdered over 100 police officers during his seven-year reign of terror.  It is estimated that he had about 600 men join his gang: a small army.  Indeed, he kept the authorities at bay for seven years, until he was shot to death in 1950 by one of his own men.  Giuliano terrorized the community with kidnapping, extortion and murder.  He cooperated with the Sicilian Mafia in his misdeeds.  He was a charismatic figure who was adept at manipulating the population. He got his start in 1943 right at the time of the American invasion of Sicily in July 1943; three months before I was born in Sicily. In May of 1947, Giuliano and his gang attacked a group of people gathered for May Day festivities at Portella della Ginestra near the town of Piana degli Albanese, by opening fire on the crowd and killing 11 people and wounding 27 others.

 

His criminal activity was centered in black market food smuggling in the aftermath of the total breakdown of civil authority after Italy’s defeat in World War II, when the law was anyone with a gun. In situations such as these the local populace has no choice but to be very careful with such criminals. So, it is easy to understand why so many people followed him like a cult figure. For an excellent summary of Giuliano’s history click here.

 

As mentioned earlier, I find people’s fascination with criminals a puzzle.  Why are such shows as “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos” so popular?  Would you like these criminals if you were the victim of their crimes?  This question is, perhaps, the subject of a psychology book.

 

So, was Giuliano a folk hero?  Depends on how you define a folk hero.  Was Billy the Kid a folk hero?  John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde or Whitey Bulger?  How about the Night Stalker of Los Angeles?

 

 

Madmen and Englishmen

Tony Blair was one of my favorite politicians in the world.  He was British Prime Minister from 1994 to 2007 as a member of the Labour Party. He was a most eloquent speaker and a true leader.  I used to watch the British Parliament on cable TV some Sunday nights and marveled at how he could make his adversaries look so small by the power of his argument.  A great man, in my estimation.  After he left office he converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 2009 to join the faith of his wife.   I recall reading that he waited to convert until after he left office because he would have caused a scandal to do it while he was still British Prime Minister. 

I've often wondered why there is so much hate, discrimination and outright animus against certain people and certain religions.  Catholics and Protestants distrust each other, as if we worshiped a different God; we don't.  I've heard both Catholics and Protestants make the most silly arguments against the other.  One friend of mine, regards evangelicals as some kind of odd fringe group; they're not.  So what drives this bias?  

I love reading the monthly magazine, First Things, a magazine that deals with issues of the day, especially those that touch on religion and the public square.  In the February 2021 issue there is a story about Edmund Campion (1540-81) and Elizabeth Anscombe.  Campion was born a Catholic but became an Anglican, since in his day, to be anything other than an Anglican in England was akin to being a bank robber or a murder.  King Henry the VIII had left the Catholic Church in 1533 in order to fulfill his madness of marrying multiple women so he could have the heir he wanted.  Henry, I believe, was totally insane.  All you have to do to verify this is look at what he did, the people he had executed for no reason other than he got up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to take it out on innocent people, many times people close to him.  To name just a few, he murdered two of his wives, Ann Boleyn and  Catherine Howard on fraudulent charges.  Click here for details.  Can you just imagine, today for instance, if the the king or Queen of England could order the execution of anyone he wanted?

Back to Edmund Campion.  After he converted back to the Roman Catholic Church he became persona non grata and a wanted, hunted fugitive. After being ordained a priest in 1578 in Rome, he secretly returned to England and joined a Jesuit order.   As the piece in First Things states, this was akin to being a British agent in a German occupied territory in WW II.  He was finally arrested and, along with two other priests convicted of "treason" and hanged.  As if being killed was not enough, he was then drawn and quartered; all for being a Roman Catholic.  Can you say that madness was rampant in those days?  Again, let's not be too bewildered.  Severe animus against people of other religion is still strong in England as it is in many other places.  God help us.

Edmund Campion was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

The Love of War

 In my last post I wrote about the rape of Belgium by the German war machine in World War I.  I'm now reading another book about the Siege of Leningrad in World War II, again, by the German war machine, no more than 20 years after their colossal defeat in WW I.  The Germans were just as brutal and inhumane as they were in WW I.  The book is called "Leningrad: State of Siege" by Michael Jones, 2008.  You may have heard of what the Germans did to Poland and especially to the Jews in WW II.  A testament to man's inhumanity to man.  Just as they did in Belgium in WW I, when the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, they had a multi-pronged strategy.  Click here for a map. The northern drive took them through the Baltic States which had recently been annexed by the Soviets.  Not having any love for the Russians, the Baltic countries welcomed them reluctantly.  What they did not welcome was the sheer brutality that they brought.  Not wanting to do it themselves, the Germans got the Lithuanians, for example, to round up a thousand Jews and bludgeon them to death in public solely for their religion, while German troops looked on. This was not the worst. Upon encircling Leningrad, they proceeded to starve the city to death.  

Mass murder, cruelty and sheer evil was their calling card. They delighted in targeting helpless civilians.  In one case they targeted a tram full of people and killed all in the tram. After months of not being able to get food, many died of starvation; approximately 20,000 per day died.  In the brutally cold winter, when temperatures got to -30 Celsius, people died where they stopped in the street, unable to take another step.  The Russians military tried to break the siege with troops they had marched on foot to Leningrad until exhaustion.  They ordered these exhausted troops to attack heavily fortified German formations without ammunition, in some cases.  When two Russian commanders, seeing the madness of the strategy, refused the order to attack, they were arrested and shot.  When Stalin was informed, he was happy.  He asked if they were shot in public.

I've often been puzzled by the public fascination with war.  The movies certainly popularized, and in some cases, idealized war.  Nothing could be further from the truth in reality.  Many people have not seen war up close.  I did in Vietnam in 1968-69.  Although I was not an infantry soldier, I saw enough misery of what war brings.  I got my first look at war immediately upon landing at the American Bien Hoa Air Base, not far from Saigon.  As we were landing, you could see the flash of artillery in the distance.  After getting on an Army bus and driving to Saigon right after landing, we were billeted temporarily at the St. George Hotel in the Cholon District of Saigon.  The hotel was full of bullet holes and scarred by war.  Combat was happening all around us.  My first duty was to guard the perimeter of the hotel during the night along with some South Vietnamese soldiers.  The next day we headed to Tan Son Nhat Airport, which had been overrun during the Tet Offensive a few months earlier.  While there we looked at pictures of the death and devastation that had just happened there and in and around Saigon itself.

As ugly and deadly as war is, there is a strange fascination with war by many in the general public.  The bad guys are looked upon as "macho" or "heroic,"John Wayne types, while those who oppose war are looked upon as cowardly.  As an Italian immigrant I have been the butt of some very stupid, idiotic banter related to this.  Example, I'm in a work elevator in Long Beach, California and someone who knows I'm an Italian immigrant says to me: "do you know what the smallest book in the world is?  A list of Italian war heroes."  So, let's see, the people who resisted the war madness of Hitler and Mussolini and did not drink the kool-aid are cowards but those who followed Hitler's murderous evil plan and drank the kool-aid are heroic?  

First of all, I would venture that a person who makes a stupid comment like that has no clue about the history of war in general or Italian history in particular. Do they know that an Italian Army of 250,000 fought in Russia alongside the Germans with half of them perishing? Did they  know that these soldiers were sent to Russia without proper clothing or weapons or fuel? Did they know that the brutal Russian winters killed those who were not killed in action?  Have they ever participated in a war on the Russian steppe in -40 degree weather? Do they know that Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia in 1812 with 500,000 troops but only 5,000 survived to return home?  Was he a war hero? Do they know what the Roman Empire was, how long it lasted?  Do they know what happened in WW I and who the participants were?  Do they know the madness of the Germans, starting with the Prussian Empire and what led them to be so war hungry?  They have no idea.  All they know is what they heard some else say.  They're simple parrots.  The madness of war and the ignorance of people can be deadly.  Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, as the Spanish philosopher Santayana said.