Following on the spiritual dissatisfaction I expressed in my April 5th post, I’ve been reading On Faith, a newly released collection of the late Justice’s speeches and essays on his Catholic religion.
In one of his speeches, Justice Scalia considered how a Christian should think about socialism:
The allure of socialism for the Christian, I think, is that it means well; it is, or appears to be, altruistic. It promises assistance from the state for the poor, and public provision of all the necessities of life, from maternity care to geriatric care, and from kindergarten through university. Capitalism, on the other hand, promises nothing from the state except the opportunity to succeed or fail. Adam Smith points unabashedly to the fact that the baker does not provide bread out of the goodness of his heart, but for profit. How uninspiring. Yet if you reflect upon it, you will see that the socialistic message is not necessarily Christian, and the capitalist message not necessarily non-Christian. The issue is not whether there should be provision for the poor, but rather the degree to which that provision should be made through the coercive power of the state. Christ said, after all, that you should give your goods to the poor, not that you should force someone else to give his.
He makes clear that he is not addressing socialism as a system of government, which he says “can be decided on the social and economic merits of the matter”, but specifically as a Christian:
Christ did not preach “a chicken in every pot, or “the elimination of poverty in our lifetime”; these are worldly, governmental goals. If they were His objectives, He certainly devoted little of His time and talent to achieving them — feeding the hungry multitudes only a couple of times, as I recall, and running away from the crowds who wanted to put Him on the throne, where He would have had an opportunity to engage in some real distribution of wealth. His message was not the need to eliminate hunger, or misery, or misfortune, but rather the need for each individual to love and help the hungry, the miserable, and the unfortunate.
Charity, then, is not just for the sake of the poor, but is equally important for the giver — and so Christians should recognize that its usurpation by the government is a spiritual error:
To the extent the state takes upon itself one of the corporal works of mercy that could and would have been undertaken privately, it deprives individuals of an opportunity for sanctification and deprives the body of Christ of an occasion for the interchange of love among its members.
I wonder to what extent the decimation of women’s religious orders throughout the West is attributable to the governmentalization of charity. Consider how many orphanages, hospitals, schools, and homes for the elderly were provided by orders of nuns. They are almost all gone; the state provides or pays for these services. Even purely individual charity must surely have been affected. What need for me to give a beggar a handout? Do I not pay taxes for government food stamps and municipally run shelters and soup kitchens? The man asking me for a dollar probably wants it for liquor. There is, of course, neither any love nor any merit in the taxes I pay for those services; I pay them under compulsion.
From a Christian standpoint, even the poor are spiritually harmed by government support:
The governmentalization of charity affects not just the donor but also the recipient. What was once asked as a favor is now demanded as an entitlement. When I was young, there used to be an expression applied to a lazy person: “He thinks the world owes him a living.’ But the teaching of welfare socialism is that the world does owe everyone a living. This belief must affect the character of welfare recipients””and not, I suggest, for the better. Or at least not for the better in the distinctively Christian view of things. Christ’s special love for the poor was attributable to one quality that they possessed in abundance: meekness and humility. It is humbling to be an object of charity””which is why mendicant nuns and friars used to beg. The transformation of charity into legal entitlement has produced both donors without love and recipients without gratitude.
Meekness, humility, and gratitude. When was the last time you caught sight of any of those?
3 Comments
I believe if this post could be printed in newspapers across the land, there would be outrage and letters to the editor(s) demanding the writer be fired or driven out of town.
When the debt bubble breaks in approximately a decade and the economy goes into a freefall, the need for virtues like gratitude, humility, meekness will arise again generally (although you can see it in particular instances even now if you hang around the correct crowds).
Did you like the rest of Mere Christianity Malcolm? I was thinking you might appreciate, if nothing else, that Lewis could have been ahead of his time concerning HBD. He mentioned at least a few times in his wartime talks (whence the book) that individuals have different constitutions, different biologies, which can make their responses to human sin quite distinct. We tend to expect the same level of virtue from everyone, but that may not be how God (assuming He exists) sees matters, at least from a purely supernatural perspective.
Jason,
Yes, it’s always cheering (although a bit poignant as well) to be reminded that there was a time, not so long ago, when people in the West could see what’s in front of their noses, and could speak obvious truths.
There was much of value in Lewis’s book, and I’m glad I read it.