Thursday 28th March 2024

Home » Frontpage » Currently Reading:

A Potpourri . . . Can Distributism Be Imposed?

February 19, 2014 Frontpage No Comments

By GEORGE A. KENDALL

Readers may recall an extended discussion in recent Forum columns on the topic of distributism, the economic system advocated by thinkers like Chesterton and Belloc and grounded in Catholic social teaching. The letters to the editor focused specifically on this question: Is it practically possibly to implement the distributist idea? In my contribution I indicated that, obviously, distributism, closely related, as it is, to the principle of subsidiarity, cannot be imposed, from above, by a central government, because that would entail a contradiction.
However, there is at least some hope, however faint, in the possibility of its being imposed from below, through the subsidiary units exercising their legitimate authority, grounded in the natural law, as well as, here in America, in our Constitution, to push back against bloated central power and “impose” it from below.
But this needs at least to be qualified. The reason we have huge, centralized bureaucratic organizations, both in government and the economy, with most of the power concentrated at the top, is that the obsession with the pursuit of wealth and power has become normative in our society. That obsession is a form of idolatry, and idolatry happens when people turn away from their relationship to God and substitute something other than God for Him, giving to that something the love that rightfully belongs only to Him. When that happens, people put all their energy into the pursuit of the false god.
People who have deep roots in the Christian faith don’t do this. They of course want to be able to support themselves and their families and work to get a sufficiency of worldly goods and maybe a bit more, and they of course want to have some control over their lives and their surroundings, but not in the obsessional way that characterizes both socialist and capitalist societies. They are interested in other things, and put a substantial portion of their energy into these other things — like the salvation of their souls, human community, and family life. It’s about where our energy goes. In medieval society, people simply expended energy for different things.
Eamon Duffy’s book, The Stripping of the Altars, which details the way Protestantism was forced on the English people during the 16th century, illustrates this in its portrayal of how people lived prior to the Reformation. Certainly, people wanted to make money then, and there were greedy people, then as now. But most people didn’t put all their energy into that.
For instance, there was a proliferation of holy days during the Middle Ages, days which involved, not just going to Mass, but having processions and pageants and such, taking time off work and putting energy into these activities instead. There was also a proliferation of fraternal organizations dedicated to works of mercy, which included having Masses said for the souls of deceased members. And so on. Because people put so much of their time and energy into these activities, there simply was nowhere near as much time and energy available for building huge organizations for the purpose of maximizing power and wealth, and so there were fewer such organizations and they played a smaller role in the life of that society.
When people deeply rooted in the Christian faith are at least a large and influential minority in a society, you get something like distributism, a way of living that follows logically from a Christian life lived in accordance with the true order of goods. It’s not a system which can be imposed, not even, strictly speaking, from below, but a way of life that happens when people deal with reality on the basis of Christian principles.
All of which means that when the Church gets its act together and starts to seriously proclaim the Gospel without kowtowing to the powers that be, while the people who sit in darkness begin to see how empty and meaningless the cult of wealth and power is, people will begin to act in accordance with the true order of goods, and a political and economic order in accordance with Christian principles will slowly emerge.
That doesn’t mean we can just wait for this to happen, on the principle that things will only happen when large numbers of people experience a change of heart. Trying to teach people what a Christian social order would look like is an integral part of proclaiming the Gospel and a step toward bringing about conversion. There is little most of us can do about getting the Church to stop kowtowing to powerful people and start carrying out its mission, beyond proclaiming the Good News ourselves.
Political action aimed at restoring power to subsidiary institutions is also a way of moving society toward conversion, but distributism is not a “system” to be imposed by anyone. To make it such is to turn it into just another ideology.

+    +    +

If we see relativism as the enemy, perhaps we are not defining the situation clearly enough. Relativism, as used by “progressives,” is a tool for debunking those who don’t agree with their agenda. But they do not apply it to themselves. So pro-homosexual ideologues tell us to be tolerant of homosexuality on grounds that there are no moral absolutes on the basis of which it can be condemned, then turn around and assert a right to live the homosexual lifestyle. But to assert a right is to assert a moral absolute (whether genuine or spurious), thus abandoning relativism.
A consistent relativism gives us no basis for asserting things like “gay” rights. It gives us no grounds for seeing tolerance of homosexuality as any more praiseworthy than intolerance. If everything is relative, then no one has any rights, and those who persecute homosexuals are just as entitled (or not entitled) to do this as are those who defend them.
On the basis of pure relativism, we would have to say that Hitler’s agenda was as legitimate as anyone else’s — anti-Semitism and mass murder were his “truth,” and that’s all there is to it.
Brad S. Gregory, in The Unintended Reformation, speaks of modern society, with its enthronement of relativism, as the Kingdom of Whatever. I would suggest that this means that the world is whatever I want it to be and those powerful enough to force their Whatever on everyone else will prevail.

+    +    +

The assumption of continuity in nature so beloved of evolutionists is closely tied to the assumption that nature is a closed system. Since nothing transcending nature must be permitted to act on it, events must always be explained in terms of antecedent events, so that, ideally, if we had a complete knowledge of what was happening in nature at the very beginning of the universe, we would be able to accurately predict everything that followed. Discontinuities in nature cannot be allowed, because such discontinuities involve something new happening, something that can’t be explained on the basis of what happened before.
Thus the problem of the Cambrian explosion, where, based on the fossil evidence, in a very short time, geologically speaking, we went from exclusively one-celled organisms to highly complex multi-celled ones, with no evidence of a gradual transition. The complex organisms simply appeared.
The reaction of evolutionists has always been to say — don’t worry, we just haven’t found the fossils yet, but we will. Now this makes a certain amount of sense. If you have been working with a particular hypothesis and, on other grounds, it makes sense to you, you don’t throw it out just because, at one point, you’re having trouble finding the evidence needed to support it — you keep looking and you keep thinking. (“If you like your hypothesis, you can keep it.”)
But there are limits to this. If you spend a century and a half, as with the Cambrian explosion, trying to find the evidence, to close the gap, without success, but adamantly refuse to admit the possibility that the hypothesis might be wrong, you are no longer practicing science but are defending a dogma. You are desperately clinging to the Darwinist hypothesis, convinced that it must be defended at all costs, because the alternative would be to open your mind to the possibility of a discontinuity in nature. There is the feeling that if that is acknowledged as a possibility, science is somehow doomed.
But, really, why shouldn’t there be discontinuities? Why shouldn’t there be surprises? Certainly, most of us, in our everyday lives, find that life is full of surprises. There is the old saying that if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans. Most of us who are getting older can look back and realize that, if our younger selves had been told what we would be doing now, they would be astounded and probably refuse to believe it. Now of course the tendency of many, perhaps most scientists, is to try to reduce these apparent surprises to the events that preceded them and to show that the surprising events weren’t really so surprising after all, that they grew out of prior events which determined them.
This is called reductionism. It is the assumption that things that seem new and unique are always really nothing but something else, which in turn is nothing but something else, and so on (if you do this long enough, you make everything nothing but nothing).
But who says you have to do this? Certainly, events have connections with prior events, that is, causes, which help us to understand them, but the assumption that identifying these causes will do away with the newness of the events is just that — an assumption, supported by no evidence.
For Christians, of course, there is no problem with discontinuities. God is full of surprises, and the biggest surprise ever, the one that continues to astonish us and always will, is the Incarnation. We also affirm that, whatever connections human life may have with animal and vegetable life, the creation of the human soul at the time of conception is always a new event and a discontinuity. The appearance of man, a being endowed with reason, is also a huge discontinuity, though reductionistic “explanations” are hardly a rarity (Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man is devoted to this theme).
We can say the same for the coming of sanctifying grace into the soul of someone who was previously without it — the process of conversion. Those of us who were once outside the Church but are now within it certainly can testify to what a huge surprise, what a huge discontinuity, that is, however much we can trace the work of actual grace in us before our conversion. There is still something like the “leap in being” that Bergson spoke of.
Yes, nature and history again and again exhibit the gradual, continuous development that evolutionists speak of, and yet, surprises happen. Grace happens. The Spirit of God always broods over these waters, and at times there are clear signs of some mysterious, transcendent reality stirring them. It is not the proper work of science to dismiss this reality.

+    +    +

(© 2014 George A. Kendall)

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Abortion Advocates No Longer Consider It “A Necessary Evil,” They Celebrate Killing Babies

Last week, Kamala Harris became the first vice president in U.S. history to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. Though the Democratic party’s support for abortion is nothing new, Harris’ Planned Parenthood appearance does illustrate how that support has become a flagrant celebration of abortion as a public and personal good, essential to both “freedom” and to “healthcare.” At the appearance, Harris proclaimed,  It is only right and fair that people have access…Continue Reading

Wisconsin Supreme Court says Catholic charity group cannot claim religious tax exemption

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a major Catholic charity group’s activities were not “primarily” religious under state law, stripping the group of a key tax break and ordering it to pay into the state unemployment system. Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) last year argued that the state had improperly removed its designation as a religious organization.  The charity filed a lawsuit after the state said it did not qualify to be considered as an organization…Continue Reading

Walgreens and CVS Will Start Selling Abortion Pills That Kill Babies

The two largest pharmacies in America will start selling abortion pills this month that end the lives of unborn children by starting them to death. Walgreens and CVS will both sell the abortion pills despite the fact that they kill a developing human being and have killed at least dozens of women and injured tens of thousands more. They plan to initially roll out abortion drug sales in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, California…Continue Reading

Cardinal Burke announces novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’

VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — Raymond Cardinal Burke has announced the start of a global, nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, calling on Catholics to beseech Mary’s intercession on the Church and the world in the face of the “crises of our age.” In a new endeavour published online over the weekend, Cardinal Burke announced a novena beginning in March, and culminating on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

Texas attorney general targets Catholic nonprofit, alleges it facilitates illegal immigration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 21, 2024 / 21:15 pm Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down a Catholic nonprofit organization in El Paso based on allegations that the group may be facilitating illegal immigration, harboring immigrants who entered the country illegally, and engaging in human smuggling.  Paxton filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Annunciation House, which has operated in the state for nearly 50 years. The lawsuit asks the District Court of El Paso…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)