Healthy discussion on what “subsidiarity” means in practical terms

Posted on April 28, 2012 by John Brian Schuettler

Paul Ryan is the leader of the Republican effort to trim the Federal budget in the United States, to get the country out of its debilitating debt. Ryan is a committed and articulate Catholic who is frequently criticized by some Catholic leaders—especially among bishops and university professors—who tend to have a liberal preference for government intervention as the best solution to most problems. The result is a very healthy public debate over the proper understanding and implementation of Catholic social teaching, a debate that has been long overdue in the United States.

Rep. Paul Ryan spars with US bishops over criticism of budget cuts

Full text of Paul Ryan’s remarks at Georgetown University (The Daily Caller)

The debate is important, though Phil Lawler has noticed that Ryan’s critics have been “careless”, which is not surprising, as their views have been uncontested for a very long time: No, Paul Ryan does not admire Ayn Rand.

Federal Budget Choices Must Protect Poor, Vulnerable People, Says U.S. Bishops’ Conference

Posted on April 21, 2012 by John Brian Schuettler

Recent letters echo bishops’ consistent message that federal budget must form

‘circle of protection’ around ‘the least of these’

WASHINGTON—As Congress began working on the FY 2013 budget and spending bills this week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) wrote several letters that repeated and reinforced the bishops’ ongoing call to create a “circle of protection” around poor and vulnerable people and programs that meet their basic needs and protect their lives and dignity. The bishops’ message calls on Congress and the Administration to protect essential help for poor families and vulnerable children and to put the poor first in budget priorities. The bishops’ letters oppose measures that reduce resources for essential safety net programs.

In the letters, Bishops Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, California, and Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairmen of the Committees on Domestic Justice and Human Development and International Justice and Peace, respectively, urged Congress to resist proposed cuts in hunger and nutrition programs at home and abroad saying that “a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.”

On April 4, Bishop Blaire cautioned that “at a time when the need for assistance from [affordable housing] programs is growing, cutting funds for them could cause thousands of individuals and families to lose their housing and worsen the hardship of thousands more in need of affordable housing.” He also reminded Congress that the Catholic community is one of the largest private, nonprofit providers of affordable housing in the country and is deeply involved in meeting the health housing and nutrition needs of families across the nation.

Bishops Blaire and Pates reaffirmed the “moral criteria to guide these difficult budget decisions” outlined in their March 6 budget letter:

1.Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.

2.A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.

3.Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times…

Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.

In April 16 and April 17 letters to the House Agriculture Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee addressing cuts required by the budget resolution, Bishop Blaire said “The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.” Bishop Blaire also wrote that cuts to nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP- food stamps) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) will hurt hungry children, poor families, low-income workers and other vulnerable people. Additionally, he wrote that if cuts to the federal budget need to be made, savings should first be found in programs that target more affluent and powerful interests.

Federal Budget Choices Must Protect Poor, Vulnerable People, Says U.S. Bishops’ Conference (USCCB)

A generation betrayed

Posted on October 22, 2011 by John Brian Schuettler

In contrast to smug defenders of a broken capitalism that desperately needs reforming ( e.g. Carl Olson at Ignatius Scoop):

The “Occupy Wall Street” protest, and similar demonstrations that have occurred in cities around the Western world, reflect the fears and frustrations of young people, suggests an analysis in L’Osservatore Romano:

Youth and unemployment

A generation betrayed

The anger of protestors who for months now have invaded the public squares of half the world is that of a generation at a standstill, disillusioned by dreams of narcissistic and quarrelsome fathers. The slow death of liberalism of the 80’s and 90’s, is leaving us with a world split in two: countries that are no longer growing and are populated by a mass of unemployed, and countries that are growing too much and paying a high price in terms of rights, respect for the environment and growing poverty. There is no doubt: youthful rhetoric has always been the preferred argument of political classes unable to decide. Today, however, from the void created by choices not made, a more frightening monster could arise, one of violence and terrorism. Who is responsible? Outdated politics, inept governments, a backwards cultural system? Or is it the young people themselves who should be issuing a mea culpa?

According to the latest report of the ILO (International Labour Organization) the generation of 20-30-year-olds is marked by a dangerous combination of high unemployment, growing inactivity and precariousness making it difficult to plan an acceptable future and make long- term plans. This situation, “brings not only current discomfort from unemployment, under-employment and the stress of social hazards associated with joblessness and prolonged inactivity, but also possible longer term consequences in terms of lower future wages and distrust of the political and economic system.” It is becoming impossible for a young person to find anything more than part-time or underpaid work and this phenomenon – perhaps for the first time in history – has a planetary dimension: in the last twenty years in the Middle East and North Africa, nearly one youth in four has been unemployed, despite progress made in education.

Two notable aspects emerge from the ILO’s document. The first regarding discouraged young people, the so-called inactives who are outside of the formation system and job market and do not appear in statistics. In fact, the absolute number of unemployed young people in the world has diminished slightly from it peak in 2009 (from 75.8 to 75.1 million at the end of 2010, or a rate of 12.7%) and is projected to decrease even more to 74.6 million in 2011, or 12.6%. Yet, according to the ILO, the decrease is only due to the growing number of inactives who, discouraged, give up looking for a new job. In Europe, the ILO point to Ireland where the unemployment rate for youth has grown from 9% in 2007 to 27.5% in 2010 but could be even higher if those who are “hidden” were included.

There is a second aspect highlighted by the report: young people in emerging economies find themselves “trapped in a vicious cycle of working poverty.” That is, they are forced to work in conditions that are worse than those who don’t work or those who are inactive in more advanced economies. This occurs today especially in countries that are towing the world economy. In reality, the ILO document says, “the high employment-to-population ratios of youth in the poorest regions mean the poor have no choice but work.”

What to do? New generations today will not enjoy the system of social welfare which their fathers did. They will not have pensions, a social safety net, health assistance, cultural resources and all that we are used to calling the welfare state. To save what is salvageable, the ILO proposes the development of an integrated strategy for growth and the creation of jobs with a focus on young people, to improve the quality of jobs through strengthened labour standards and to invest in formation. A good program, on paper.

Luca M. Possati

October 22, 2011

[tags: Young people | Work]

***

Stimulus will not work in a system that remains unbalanced and broken, with the real economy skewed to support a non-productive financial class. And austerity will merely bring the final crash and counter reaction more quickly. It will not ‘get it over with.’ It is more like driving faster so you can impact with this bridge abutment rather than one further down the road. A flaming wreck is rarely a good outcome. We might consider fixing the car instead. But that would require a change of drivers.

Jesse -

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – La Douleur Plunges to New Post War Low in Yen

‘Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function.”

Posted on October 8, 2011 by John Brian Schuettler

Pope Benedict XVI taught this in his great social encyclical Caritas in Veritate. The Pope argued that the “market” works well only in a climate of mutual trust:

In fact, if the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well. Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function. And today it is this trust which has ceased to exist, and the loss of trust is a grave loss. (35)

Moreover, he taught, that “solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or ‘after’ it.” We must demonstrate, he wrote, not only transparency, honesty and responsibility but also that the “principle of gratuitousness and the logic of the gift” can be part of commercial relationships, finding their place “within normal economic activity.” This, he said is “demanded by economic logic” as well as by charity and truth. (36) It is in this context that the Pope emphasized solidarity:

Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone, and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State. While in the past it was possible to argue that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement, today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place. … Charity in truth, in this case, requires that shape and structure be given to those types of economic initiative which, without rejecting profit, aim at a higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents, of profit as an end in itself. (38)

Benedict emphasizes that in business activity, management “cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference.” (40)

A renewed commitment to solidarity will not eliminate all economic hardship, but it will change the way people think about it, and how they deal with it. Above all it will break down the isolation of those who experience it, especially the unemployed. Nothing restores a person’s hope like the simple trust that others—many others—will take him into account in their plans and solutions as much as they can. There is, after all, a big difference in every facet of community life between being included in the business and, as the popular expression goes, being “given the business.” The very freedom and shifting possibilities of today’s economies make authentic, built-in solidarity more important now than ever before.

Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Matthew’s first Beatitude says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (5:3), but Luke’s says bluntly, “Blessed are you who are poor.” If there was any danger of Christians evading the point by spiritualizing poverty, or by thinking that this Beatitude was addressed only to other people, Luke sets the matter straight: “Blessed are you who are poor.” And to make sure we get the point, he adds, “But woe to you who are rich.”

It is true that there are some wealthy people who share their wealth generously. And it is possible to place our trust in God even if we are wealthy; but in most cases it is unlikely that we will. It is in our nature to think only of feathering our own nest, and to buy ourselves out of all difficulties if we can. Let’s not destroy all hope by saying that this is deep in our nature. In itself it is a superficial tendency. But it is possible, if we don’t mind ourselves, to become superficial all the way down.

To rely on wealth for everything is to take the easiest course; it is not to reach out, and it is not to reach in. I don’t have to reach out to others (and soon I get out of the habit of reaching out to God). And I don’t have to reach into my interior resources (my pocket is not my interior). This ultimately isolates me from others and from my deepest self. We often hear of immensely wealthy people who have become virtual recluses. They have chosen to buy their own private world, and to worship Mammon, the god who can be bought. It must be a very lonely world. The only thing left for them is the “conspicuous display of wealth,” and there are plenty of celebrity magazines in which to display it.

The curious thing is that these magazines have a huge circulation. The super-rich must represent some kind of dream that many people have. It is a fruitless dream, is it not? Our faith calls us to dream of a world of “justice, love and peace,” and not only to dream of it but to work for it in every way we can. We have to watch our dreams, because we become what we dream. We are called to live a life that is radically different in its attitude to power and wealth, a life in which the world’s values are devalued and what the world despises is held in highest regard.

We always want more of something or other. There’s a kind of black hole at the center of our being. I know a man who lives a materially poor life but he devotes all his time to reading: newspapers, books, magazines, the internet…. Everything goes in, nothing comes out. It is just a variation on the same theme. There are many variations: greed for love, for recognition, for entertainment, for anything that will fill the void.

Luke’s gospel has much to say to us about wealth and poverty: see, for example, the parable of the man who stored up treasures for himself (12:16-21), and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31). He is attempting to save us from the great deception.

Do we stand with the Lord?

Posted on October 2, 2011 by John Brian Schuettler

Twenty Seventh Sunday In Ordinary Time – Year A

Citations of
Is 5,1-7: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9abst5e.htm
Ph 4,6-9: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9adejfd.htm
Mt 21,33-43: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9btbsfu.htm

‘The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished plant.’ (Is 5:7) With these words the Prophet, Isaiah gives us the horizon upon which to interpret Jesus’ parable. He is the Son who was sent to gather the fruit by the Master of the Vineyard. Some aspects of the parable appear to be of particular importance, especially for the present time.

First of all, the vineyard doesn’t belong to the tenants. The fundamental experience of human life consists in its irreducible gift! No one is the master of life because no one is the author of life! Life is a gift and, with it, the cosmos in which we live was also given to us.

This universal experience, that is so evidently obscured in today’s dominant culture that has a restricted idea of reason, is the horizon on which we live and work. Everyone works in the Lord’s vineyard. We are men and women that live and work in a context that was given to us, of which we are able to take possession, yet inevitably, someday, it will be taken from us. This emphasis doesn’t sadden our lives but rather makes them much more fascinating, filled with significance and responsibility, as we are not orphans but live totally in relation to God’s great plans for us.

In order to constantly remind humanity of that reality, throughout history the Lord has chosen a people to be the light for all nations. He has invited many prophets to bring that people, and also all humanity, back to a true relationship between man and the universe and between God and man.

The greatest gift that the ‘Master of the Vineyard’ could give to the tenants, to lead them back to their duty to ‘produce fruit’, was to send His Own Son. At this point the liar dramatically enters the parable and is able to make man believe that, by eliminating the Son of God, the ultimate closeness to the Mystery, they can become ‘masters’ of themselves and reality. There has never been a greater lie insinuated in a man’s heart!

To eliminate God means to meet our own destruction, the loss of the centre and significance of our lives, to be dispossessed of the vineyard, no longer able to bear fruit. The condition to continue to ‘work in the Lord’s vineyard,’ to be participants in the works of the Kingdom, is that we must be able to bear fruit. If, as single Christians we don’t bear fruit and we don’t humbly recognise that every fruit is derived from God’s Grace, in which we freely cooperate, it automatically will exclude us from the vineyard.

Mysteriously, the rejection and murder of the Son dilated the boundaries of the Kingdom, making them universal, which is catholic, by construction and vocation. In fact all men are called to the Church!

Thanks to this great plan, in which we are inserted without merit, we live the Apostles exhortation: ‘Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ (Phil 4:6)

The Blessed Virgin Mary, that mystical Vineyard in which the most beautiful fruit in history grew, sustains us in our life’s journey and helps us to yield the fruit that God expects from us.

CONGREGATIO PRO CLERICIS

THE HONOR OF GOD

Defending the Honor of God in a culture of death by renewing a Judeo-Christian Living Foundation

Category Archives: Subsidiarity

Healthy discussion on what “subsidiarity” means in practical terms

The “Occupy Wall Street” protest, and similar demonstrations that have occurred in cities around the Western world, reflect the fears and frustrations of young people, suggests an analysis in L’Osservatore Romano:

Youth and unemployment

A generation betrayed

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