By PAUL LIKOUDIS
Catholics today who are confused or dismayed by the so-called “radicalism” of Pope Francis — especially in view of his critique of “trickle-down” economics and the “tyranny” of modern finance —should understand that he is in line with a tradition that goes back to Pope Leo XIII, who in the foundational encyclical on Catholic social doctrine, Rerum Novarum (1891), deplored the fact that:
“[W]orking men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless under different guise, but with the like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”
It was Pope Leo’s encyclical that inspired the newly ordained Dominican priest, Fr. Vincent McNabb, to devote his life to the service of London’s poor, evangelizing, catechizing, and giving aid and comfort, while also teaching Dominican novices and carrying on a large public ministry, especially by speaking at large public events, notably the speaker’s forum in Hyde Park.
The life of Fr. McNabb (1868-1943) was the subject of a recent talk by Michael Hennessy to the Belloc Society in London on November 12.
Hennessy, a career, non-political employee of Parliament, described McNabb as the “Apostle of First Principles,” who “was always at pains to say that he only spoke as the Church spoke…to drive all of us, both within and without, back to first principles, to understand not just from custom or habit or from obedience or from fashion or fear of offense or human respect what is the Truth — and, from an understanding of that Truth, for us to draw closer to Christ, to Almighty God and thus to Blessedness.
“His was not an easy task — it was ascetic, hard, driven, [likely] to create as many enemies as friends, to drive some to mock him, to hate him. But this is perhaps the role of the alter Christus throughout the ages,” Hennessy observed.
Pope Leo’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, said Hennessy, was “the foundational text” of his life, and McNabb urged his novices to always keep a copy of it by their bedside, and to carry it with them while they were out and about. But Scripture and St. Thomas’ Summa, which McNabb translated into English while on his knees, were also foundational, and the basis for his critiques of society, the state, and modern economics.
Hennessy explained: “An example of how reflection upon a short passage of Scripture influenced his teaching about society and economics can be found in his book, Nazareth or Social Chaos. As with many of his essays, Fr. McNabb’s mind was set a-whirring by a text — in this case a line from St. John’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. St. John records how those who were hungry took ‘as much as they would.’
“Fr. McNabb comments: ‘If the Eternal Wisdom, instead of miraculously providing bread and fishes, had provided money, St. John would have been unable to say that as much as each one wanted Jesus gave.’
“As ever there is much to unpack from this text and from Fr. McNabb’s comment.
“Together they reflect upon the nature of charity, upon the practice of economy; they touch upon social welfare, and they of course give some insight into how Christ allowed His Will to be conditioned, as it were, by the will of Man. Fr. McNabb goes on: ‘In a system mainly of things, the average person may be trusted to limit his wants by his needs. But in a system mainly of tokens, the average person cannot be trusted to limit his wants by his needs — no man desires an infinite meal — no man desires an infinite house — no man desires an infinite field to till — but the undue desire of these tokens tends to a certain infinity . . . for tokens . . . excite an unsatisfied indefinite desire.’
“Thus, desire for money is infinite. Thus also desire for other tokens, other shadows of real things, is likewise infinite.”
Hennessy continued:
“Indeed, Fr. McNabb was always concerned with the primary, with real, things and saw any work or activity that moved even one stage away from the primary thing as less worthy and possibly less virtuous. As a result he loathed international finance which was as far removed from reality and the primary things as it was possible to go. As he put it, cuttingly:
“ ‘Some men wrest a living from nature. This is called work. Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature. This is called trade. Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature. This is called finance.’
“One can almost hear his lip curling in contempt, except that such contempt for others he forbade himself. Somewhat sorrowfully I wonder where he would have placed my own toil as a parliamentary official.”
Hennessy went on to describe the severely ascetic life McNabb lived, how he slept on the floor of his bare cell, to which he would not allow even a chair, of his life of prayer and study, of his love for the rosary, which he considered the “fundamental” of a Christian life. He described McNabb’s visits to the unloved, isolated poor in the “rotting flats” of London, his deep friendships with Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, and how he reconciled, at Belloc’s request, the lapsed Catholic poet and Arabist Wilfred Scawen Blunt, to the Church.
Then, Hennessy continued:
“I would like now to cite some quotations from Fr. McNabb’s own works to throw light on what he was saying to his contemporaries.
“This first piece is from the introduction to the book, Old Principles and the New Order, published in 1942, which was a collection of his essays printed in Catholic journals over the previous twenty years. As such, it serves as a useful introduction to his thought over those years of his public apostolate:
“ ‘This book rests upon certain dogmatic and moral principles, certain undeniable facts, and it makes certain practical proposals.
“ ‘The first principle is that there is a God, our Creator, Whom we must love and serve; and Whom we cannot love and serve without loving and serving our fellow creatures.
“ ‘The second principle is that the Family is the unit of all social life; and that therefore the value of all social proposals must be tested by their effect on the Family.
“ ‘The third (psychological) principle is that from the average man we cannot expect more than average virtue. A set of circumstances demanding from the average man more than average (i.e., heroic) virtue is called an Occasion of Sin.
“ ‘The fourth (moral) principle is that occasions of sin should be changed, if they can possibly be changed, i.e., they must be overcome by flight not fight.
“ ‘The great observed fact, of worldwide incidence, is that in large industrialized urban areas (and in town-infested rural areas) normal family life is psychologically and economically impossible; because from the average parent is habitually demanded more than average virtue.
“ ‘. . . From this observed fact that the industrialized town is an occasion of sin we conclude that, as occasions of sin must be fled. . . . Flight from the Land must be now be countered by Flight to the Land.’
“The occasion of sin,” Hennessy explained, “which Fr. McNabb was particularly, but not exclusively, referring to was the temptation placed before poor families living in poor conditions to resort to methods of birth control (‘no birth and no control’ as G.K. Chesterton so famously put it — ‘race suicide’ as McNabb put it rather more grimly).”
Grotesque Vices
“As Fr. McNabb wrote in 1925: ‘Full family life must be the acid test of any system calling itself civilization. But under our present system the possibility of full family life is practically and explicitly dead. As wages and rents now are, there is no possibility for the average working man to have the average family. In order to avoid this average family only two courses are now open to him. He may exercise birth control by abstinence, which is sinless, or by neo-Malthusian methods of mortal sin. His choice is therefore between mortal sin and what is for the average individual heroic virtue.
“ ‘In other words, the town civilization of today is for the vast majority of the married classes a proximate occasion of sin. But it is teaching of the Church that we must fly the proximate occasions of sin. To remain in unnecessary occasions of sin is to be guilty of the sin we should fly’. . . .
“Fr. McNabb in thus describing the City had in mind principally its temptation to race-suicide, to contraceptive greed, to sloth and selfishness. But he was also thinking of its preoccupation with token and unreal wealth, with the sham of fashion, with luxury and excess, with its focus on things that are to do primarily with enjoyment rather than with charity — giving to self rather than giving of self.
“ ‘A State organized for leisure is a State organized for pleasure. And a State organized for pleasure is a State organized for — Hell!’”
It was McNabb’s love for the family which motivated his apostolate to the poor, Hennessy continued, and also his vigorous defense of parental rights. And the legitimacy of a state is to be judged, insisted McNabb, on how it safeguards the home.
“Let no guile of social usefulness,” wrote McNabb, “betray you into hurting the authority of the Father, the chastity of the Mother, the rights and therefore the property of the Child. Social and economic laws are more subtle but not less infallible than physical laws. No program of good intentions will undo the mischief caused by an interference with family life….All our personal and social building, to be lasting, must be trued by the measures of that little school of seers whose names are the very music of life — Jesus, Mary, Joseph!”
And just as families are called upon to image the poverty, chastity, and obedience of the Holy Family of Nazareth, so too are states.
As Hennessy explained: “In many articles Fr. McNabb traced the decadent and withering effect of the state upon society to its neglect of poverty — through reckless expenditure, financial mismanagement, usurious practices — to its neglect of obedience — by going against the natural moral law and the laws of revealed religion — and to its neglect of chastity — by permitting, even encouraging, activities that undermined sexual or conjugal morality. Just as every individual should strive to be poor, chaste, and obedient, so too the state should aim to adhere to these three cardinal virtues.”
Hennessy concluded his talk with this observation:
“All ages have their vices. In that sense there has never been a truly Golden Age. But even Fr. McNabb would have recoiled — dumbstruck, I think — at the grotesque vices that are casually paraded across the capital, for all eyes to see clearly. Gross immodesty in dress; brazen homosexual behavior; the manifest and squalid impurity of advertisements, of cinema, film, and literature; the sexual vulgarity of language. . . .
“We live amongst a declining, decadent, post-Christian people, too deracinated and intoxicated with technological advancement and complete license in matters of physical pleasure to even approach the lowest rungs of pagan dignity. We are not — in all likelihood — their betters in any natural respect. Only supernaturally has it been given us by God’s grace to see where we should aim, and to turn our eyes from the gutter to the stars.
“Yet we cannot shun the world, nor must we see it in every respect as our foe. As Fr. McNabb wrote:
“ ‘We mustn’t go out into the world as if the world were our enemy and we have to conquer it. It is like the poor wounded man on the road to Jericho; it is hungry and we want to give it something to eat; thirsty, and we want to give it something to drink; homeless and we want to open the door and give it a lodging, a home, a hearth’.”
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