The good king, according to Thomas Aquinas, had to be motivated by charity. Love must animate the way he regarded and treated his subjects, especially the least of his kingdom. Thomas well knew that the great prophets of the Hebrew Bible summoned rulers, over and over again, to show solicitude for the widow and the orphan. Those who had no natural defender, those whose welfare depended upon the kindnesses of others, they were the ones kings were charged most directly to support and assist. For Thomas, this was simply another aspect of the common good that leaders must strive to conserve and promote. For the leader knew that no individual exists in isolation, that civilization is an enterprise lived in common, and that we are in the end all brothers and sisters.
Catholic social thought, as it has evolved ever since Pope Leo XIII issued that great call to action, Rerum novarum, in 1891, both draws from and remains committed to the Thomistic ideal. From Leo's courageous first footsteps to the grand encyclicals of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the popes have elaborated a rich theology of the state.
The state, the popes recognized, is above all social. It exists for the good of all. It is not a vehicle by which a few are enriched while others are beggared. The popes well understood, furthermore, that private property is never wholly private. John Paul II coined the expression "the universal destination of human goods" -- capturing in this term the realization that all that we have is owed to God, that it must not be used exploitatively, and that we must finally give an accounting of its use before God's majestic throne.
The popes have also insisted that the state has an affirmative role to play in protecting and improving peoples' lives. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have spoken eloquently about the dangers of marginalization. Forcing the poor to the edges of society, systematically stripping them of their dignity, depriving them of the means to support themselves, are social sins that carry social consequences -- from petty crimes to devastating acts of mass terror. The state is uniquely positioned to cure the malady of marginalization through the public services it renders. It teaches, it marshals resources, it regulates the economy. It ensures, in short, what Thomas called fair distribution of social goods. Similarly, the state is called upon to see to the needs of the disabled, the elderly, the frail and the enfeebled -- all of those, in short, whom a modern Thomas Aquinas might class among the "widows and the orphans."
For most of his public life, Paul Ryan has embraced a philosophy that is, frankly, at odds with these insights. Indeed, for most of his public life, he has enthusiastically endorsed the gospel of Ayn Rand. According to Tim Mak ("Vice President Nominee Paul Ryan's Love-Hate With Ayn Rand," Politico, Aug. 11), Ryan in 2003 was proudly distributing copies of Rand's novels to interns in his office, insisting that they read her. In 2005, he credited Ayn Rand as "the reason I got involved in public service." In 2009, he compared the Obama Administration "to living in an Ayn Rand novel." Even though, from time to time, Ryan has made faint-hearted efforts to distance himself from the atheistic portions of Rand's works, one is entitled to consider Rand as a singularly important source of Ryan's anti-statist views. After all, he said as much in a speech before the Atlas Society in 2005: "I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are" ("Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand's Ideas: In the Hot Seat Again," The Atlas Society, April 30).
Rand is best understood as a faded modern epigone of the social darwinist movements of the latter 19th century. Claiming the mantle of Charles Darwin but drawing the wrong lessons from his work, these pseudo-scientists tried to transfer insights from the workings of biology to social structures. All life, they argued, was a struggle. Man had to compete to live. Nature was "red in tooth and claw," and so also, by extension, were human relations. To a writer like William Graham Sumner, the great mass of the poor were little better than parasites seeking to use political means to suck dry the productive capacity of the well-to-do, the talented, the better elements of society. Many of these social darwinists lapsed into racism, as they attempted to apply their categories of thought to explain and justify colonial depredations abroad and Jim Crow at home.
Ayn Rand, to her great credit, rejected racism emphatically. But she celebrated much of the rest of the social darwinist creed. There is no room in her work for cooperation, for community, for concern for the less advantaged. The maximization of individual productive capacity, freed of the impediments of state control, is the byword of her philosophy, so-called "Objectivism." The noble entrepreneur, the far-sighted man of wealth and power, the bold individualist who casts off the shackles of the "takers" and the "hangers-on," is the hero of her fiction. Without him, society itself would crumble to dust.
These philosophical premises, of course, stand in contradiction to the social thought of the Catholic Church, as developed over two millenia of experience. Paul Ryan surely knows this. His tepid protest that he reads the Bible and so cannot be a follower of Ayn Rand rings hollow. The record of his public life is that of a man in thrall to a curdled, warped individualism. I, for one, would like to know what he thinks about the magisterium of the Church regarding the positive value of the state.
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: The Paul Ryan Catholic Dilemma
David Bosnich of the Acton Institute:
[One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.
This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”]
Nowhere in Catholic teaching does it say, as Mr. Reid implies, that social needs must be addressed by the highest level of government (in this case, by the federal government in Washington D.C.).
Source of quote:
http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-6-number-4/principle-subsidiarity
The problem, according to the author of Arcadia (a study of Wiltshire, 16th and 17th century) was when money came into the picture in this system after 1660. The leaseholds became rack rents. Poverty increased because of the more economically viable system of enclosure. Those who owned land became hired hands. The rich essentially abjured responsibility for the poor. Those who made money became power. In some ways, this became liberating, as you weren't stuck by a divinely ordained hierarchy. But if you couldn't or wouldn't exploit others for money, you would be crushed. Literally. By the literal "dark Satanic mills." (which is a metaphor for the mind, not actually factories in Blake's poem).
OT teaching teaches those that have are to provide for those that have not.
Scripture says leave a portion. 10% the suggest amount.
The poor had to GO and Geem that portion. They had to work to get it.
The widow and ophans were to be cared for, That does not mean they did not work.
Ruth worked.
Christ said the sparrow was provided for. Even the sparrow has to go and get what is provided.
God does not drop the food in the sparrows mouth.
If the government used the Biblical model we would not have the problems we have today.
We mustn't forget what scripture teaches about the lazy.
"Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor”
And today the socialist principles are making this nation a nation of dependents.
You would not do that to your own child.
The goal is to get people up on their feet so they can provide for themselves and contribute to others.
Maybe 10% would be good because we could not afford the military that we now have.
Christ spoke of caring for the poor over 1000 times in the Bible. How many times did He castigate the lazy?
Slavery was tolerated. Maybe cc1111 you might end up in the slavery section. I don't think you would voluntarily accept that. I wouldn't
As far as socialist principles, the early Christians practiced a type of socialism. Read Acts a little more carefully. Maybe you are right we should be more socialistic.
The Bible to a Christian is the story of the Good News of salvation and a plan for civil government. There even quotes from Christ that supports that.
I do agree that laziness is a vice. You do know that most of the poor are "working poor"? And you are aware that there are plenty of rich people living off trust funds that they didn't earn or work for a day in their lives? Are they to also be condemned, or are they OK in your book?
Remember what Jesus said about the poor and the rich ... and then reconsider your opinions.
Some of the rich do live off the rewards of the work of the ancestors.
That is not a bad thing.
That is how it is suppose to work.
It is also true the rich give much to the poor.
They have the money. They have the time.
Class warfare is not the answer.
Are you saying Jesus had something against the rich?
A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.
Is charity voluntary, or can it be coerced? My understanding is that coercion removes the element of free will from supposedly charitable acts and renders them void of morality, regardless of their original moral intent. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I object to the completely false use of Christian morality to justify forceful confiscation. The Bible says, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.”
There is plenty of room - it is to be 100% voluntary, based on rational free will, rather than 100% coerced by the Church or the State on the basis of mandatory altruism (which is, of course, not altruism at all in the absence of free will).
You are describing the early Progressives - the ones who believed that state could improve society through the application of policy - who pursued the ideas of eugenics right up until Hitler gave such enlightened racism a bad name. It was Progressive Democrats that really pushed Jim Crow laws - Woodrow Wilson brought them to the White House.
This does not conform too well with American rule of law and individual rights. But it does conform well with the collectivism of the Soviet Union.
"The state is uniquely positioned to cure the malady of marginalization... it regulates the economy."
As above, ditto.
"The popes have also insisted that the state has an affirmative role to play in protecting and improving peoples' lives."
Sure, and also a role in burning people at the stake. To some, the Church and/or State is all, the individual is nothing. He will be improved whether he likes it or not. History shows the Church and State are interchangable, with a tendency to hold and expand power over the individual, who is not deemed worthy of his own sovereignty.
"I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. "
Source: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s32.html
"That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."
Jefferson:
"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management."
"The first foundations of the social compact would be broken up were we definitely to refuse to its members the protection of their persons and property while in their lawful pursuits."
"Charged with the care of the general interest of the nation, and among these with the preservation of their lands from intrusion, I exercised, on their behalf, a right given by nature to all men, individual or associated, that of rescuing their own property wrongfully taken."