I have seen the formulation, “The State should not compel charity,” countless times. In discussing the minimum wage, an antagonist will claim that requiring a person be paid the minimum required to live a dignified life in our society is compelling the employer to engage in charity. Too many times I’ve seen people claim that the government is stealing money from the tax payer to give charity to another person.
I grow frustrated reading such things, because they are grossly wrong, as I teased yesterday. It is one thing to fail while trying. That isn’t what is occuring. Obfuscation arises from being simply unable to define enough. Interestingly, what is enough to live upon is a drastically higher number when speaking of taxes and very low number when speaking of employment. The question really isn’t that complex though. All that is in excess of what is required live a decent life is to be put toward furthering the common good. For those that get skittish about rights talk, there is the obligation, plain as day. As to what a decent life is, it is tied to a time, place, and people. Ultimately, peoples through their governments are called to further less advantaged peoples, but that shouldn’t distract from the fact that it would be a manifest injustice to allow the elderly person down the street to suffer an indignity that would be considered mild in other parts of the world.
This does not mean that the government should confiscate all income in excess of say $50,000 per year and allocate how it best sees fit. For starters, we have the concept of subsidiarity, and not the synonym for limited government that I see bantied about so often. For example, my mother, I’m pretty sure, knows better what could be offered me to aid best in my actualization as a human and Christian. My grandfather knows which members of the extended family are in greatest need right now. So obviously the family unit can be a great instrument in furthering the common good. We as a society use this knowledge and recognize that money we take away from the family in some way harms the common good. A local governement however may be able to provide signicantly greater benefit to the common good (and the family itself) through its directed action than the family. When a local government does so, it isn’t stealing from someone’s excess. It is doing its duty: ensuring society’s resources are put toward the common good. One of things I think that is underappreciated about Deus Caritas Est and Caritas In Veritate is Pope Benedict’s emphasis that charity is not just salutary but essential to a properly ordered society.
If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion….
To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. (CiV 6-7)
Perhaps, more later.
Is not the instinct of resistance to government charity solidly based? Charity is a virtue. Virtue adheres in private persons.
When the wealthy or the government “gives” to the poor it isn’t charity (in the common usage of the word), it is “paying a debt owed to the poor”.
To do this, either individuals, communities (the local parish -oh my goodness – or the government, is not an option, it is a moral obligation.
I think I am with BC. The minimum wage is not an issue of charity but justice. The right of workers to organize is not a matter of charity but justice. Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment compensation and Workers Comp are not charity but social insurance. Veterans’ benefits are not charity but justice.
And the parts of “big government” that conservatives like are justice as well. They like the Patent & Trademark office because it protects their precious intellectual property from knock-offs and fakes. They like the FDA because it saves Big Pharma from the endless (and just) lawsuits from marketed products that kill or sicken consumers. The like the National Center for Health Statistics because without it they would never be able to set mortality schedules for their insurance policies they sell to the aged.
Virtue does not simply adhere in “private persons” but in virtuous communities.
Libertarians do not believe in the first place that there is such a thing as “the common good”, but it patently does exist, as is shown by the example of vaccination for public health: getting a vaccine may not make sense to me individually, because of the real hazards involved, but it does make sense in terms of the good of the collectivity as a whole. It is a perfect example–and many others could be cited.
Thus it may not be good for me as an individual that the government takes some of my money essentially at gunpoint, but it could be to the common good that it does so.
Now if it is true there is such a thing as the common good, and we have a genuine democracy that allows a majority of the collectivity to determine what is to the common good, plus safeguards of rights are in place to protect those not in the majority–then God is in heaven and all is right with the world! Well, maybe not quite, but I hope the point is clear.
It seems that programs or organizations that result in helping those less fortunate are the result of charity–love. Every virtue seems to flow from love and, as the Pope points out God Is Love. Love is unitive. As Jesus prayed in John 17, I believe, that we are one as He and the Father are one so that the world may believe that He did come for all of us.
Our love or charity cannot remain fragmented as it is if we are to show the world that Jesus is real and that God is Love. The government programs that attempt to organize a coherent care for the needy are the result of the fragmented and disjointed efforts of Catholic efforts to help. The Catholic charities seem to operate from love but do not seem to be organized into a coherent unity and thus fall short of potential effectiveness.
However, it seems that both Catholic and Christian programs to help the needy do parallel government programs for the same purpose and what they seem to have in common is the operation of love as their motivation.
Love filtered through human beings ultimately will get distorted in its expression and mutate into something less than its source and consequently will have a less than desired effect. Then the critics will voice their objections from either side and blame the other.
The problem seems to be that the focus is on the failure of the other rather than focus on the motivation of love that initiates the desire to help. It seems that if love were to be defined as the starting point for such programs then the unitive aspect of love would influence a global and more inclusive picture of the dynamics of suffering and consequently, a clearer organized and unified effort to create the “earthly city” of unified love that all desire to have at the most vulnerable hidden and sacred unknown of our being human.
It is interesting that there has been no mention of the responsibility of the local parish community to “respond” directly to the needs of the poor within that community.
Redistribution of wealth within the Catholic parish setting makes for messy budgeting. I’d love to see, in the parish, more of that kind of “mess”. Actual love IS “messy”….
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” ~John Kenneth Galbraith
Imagine a catholic parish run with no “budget cap” on helping the poor within the parish community. No cap. As long as their is need, the parish gives. Secular wisdom: that would create financial irresponsibility and chaos.
Possible Christian Wisdom: The well will never run dry….
B.C. – You are right on. Contrary to the views of conservatives, Christianity IS about the redistribution of wealth.
Michael,
We can call it whatever, but “a rose is a rose is a rose”. lol
Regarding the concept of social justice and government redistribution rather than reliance on charity, I refer to John Rawls two principles of justice…
First-
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.
Second-
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that:
a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.
b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity