"When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims."

The April issue of The American Spectator has a thoughtful feature article on grace and gratitude by philosopher Roger Scruton:

The proper response to a gift, even a gift of charity, is gratitude. People who feel gratitude also wish to express it. The easiest way is to give in one's turn. By giving you pass on and amplify the goodwill that you received. Thus it is that, in America, where the tradition of giving is very much alive, and the state has not yet extinguished the desire or the need for it, people give to their old school, to their university, to the hospital that cured them, to the local rescue service that saved them, and to the veterans who fought for them. They give without seeking or expecting recognition, but simply because gratitude is expressed through giving.

However, the state is taking over many of the functions that were previously performed by charities -- not least education, health care, and the relief of poverty. And the state deals on impersonal and equal terms with its citizens. It has no favorites, and it is governed by the rules -- anything else is received by the citizens as an injustice. Hence charity is replaced by justice as the ruling principle upon which social benefits are distributed. But while charity deals in gifts, justice deals in rights. And when you receive what is yours by right you don't feel grateful. Hence people who receive their education and health care from the state are less inclined to give to schools and hospitals in their turn -- something that is borne out vividly by the figures concerning charitable giving. The spirit of gratitude retreats from the social experience, and in countries like France and Germany, where civil society is penetrated at every level by the state, people give little or nothing to charity, and regard gifts with suspicion, as attempts to privatize what should be a matter of public and impartial concern.

When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment. Since you are queuing on equal terms with the competition, you will begin to think of the special conditions that entitle you to a greater, a speedier, or a more effective share. You will be always one step from the official complaint, the court action, the press interview, and the snarling reproach against Them, the ones who owed you this right and also withheld it. That is the way European society is going, and American society may one day follow it. Agape, the contagious gentleness between people, survives only where there is a habit of giving. Take away gift, and agape gives way to the attitude that Nietzsche called ressentiment, the vigilant envy of others, and the desire to take from them what I  but not they have a right to.

Read the entire piece, which often compliments, some similar ideas expressed by Pope Benedict XVI in various encyclicals and addresses. For example, here is a passage from Caritas in veritate on gift and charity:

 Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin. The Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: “Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals” [85]. ...  Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance. It takes first place in our souls as a sign of God's presence in us, a sign of what he expects from us. Truth — which is itself gift, in the same way as charity — is greater than we are, as Saint Augustine teaches [88]. Likewise the truth of ourselves, of our personal conscience, is first of all given to us. In every cognitive process, truth is not something that we produce, it is always found, or better, received. Truth, like love, “is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings” [89]. (par. 34)

In a May 2009 address, the Pope stated:

The conviction that the world is a gift of God, and that God has entered the twists and turns of human history, is the perspective from which Christians view creation as having a reason and a purpose. Far from being the result of blind fate, the world has been willed by God and bespeaks his glorious splendor.

If life is a gift, gratitude is the proper response. But if life is an accidental commodity that can be weighed, measured, and otherwise stuffed into a box of empirically verification, there is little or no room for gratitude and grace, and men turn to false idols to fill the void that can only be filled by God. "When loyalty to God disappears," wrote Herbert Schlossberg is Idols for Destruction (Crossway Books, 1990), "there is no longer a barrier to an omnipotent state." It was a battle joined in earnest in the early 20th century, and still rages today, although the battle lines are often hard to make out and the stakes can be easily overlooked. As Benedict put it in an oft-quoted section of Deus Caritas Est:

The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person--every person--needs: namely, loving personal concern. (par 28b)

A big part of the problem, Scruton writes, is that "ingratitude grows in proportion to the benefits received. When those good things, like food, shelter, education, for which our ancestors had to struggle, are offered as rights, and without cost or effort, then they are 'taken for granted,' as the saying is, which means quite the opposite from 'taken as gifts.'" The political battles over entitlements, as important as they are, shouldn't distract us from the deeper roots of the battle, which come from various different ways of seeing who we are, why we are, and what we are called to be and to do.

• The Gift of God | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | June 15, 2009
• The State Which Would Provide Everything | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Comments

[Telemachus]

I've been thinking this way for a while. As the State usurps charitable giving in the form of "welfare," people become less and less capable of private charity. It's a spiritual muscle that atrophies. Empathy, love, and compassion will follow suit.

[Longing for Home]

Today's reading from Acts: "....no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own" and they "brought the money and put it at the feet of the Apostles."
When I was in College in the 70's, I came home one weekend to tell my parents that I had become a Socialist, based on these verses from the book of Acts. My dear mother (RIP) replied, "The difference is that those in the early Church gave everything by their own choice. It was not taken from them." I think I grew up a little that day.