Liberalism, Catholicism, and the Good | James Kalb | Ecclesia et Civitas on Catholic World Report
Our political problems today result from confusion about the nature of man and the good.
Many people today find it obvious that what’s good is getting what we want, justice is getting it equally, and social justice is an overall system that promotes those goals in every setting. If you don’t accept this view, people say you’re hateful and oppressive, because you don’t want people to get what they want; you’re greedy and overbearing, because you don’t like equality; and you’re anti-reason, because you’re against rational systems for achieving obviously worthwhile goals.
That view of justice and the good is nonetheless defective, and the attempt to force it on the whole of life squeezes out better goods and more just forms of justice. The HHS mandate, which absolutely subordinates the integrity of Catholic institutions to the individual desire for free birth control pills, is a case in point.
But if that view is a problem, what do we do about it? The first step toward something better is a better understanding of what is good—that is, what goals are most reasonable to pursue. People today don’t like to raise that question, certainly not in a political setting, because it suggests that law and policy should be based on a particular understanding of how to live. They object to that, because some people will disagree with the understanding, so acting on it would amount to forcing someone else’s ideal of life on them.
The objection seems plausible, at least to people raised in a liberal society. It nonetheless falls apart on examination, because it’s impossible for a political system to avoid taking a view on what things are most worth doing. Liberalism, for example, holds that the point of government is to help everyone get what he wants. That view of government implies that what people should do (or anyway what’s most reasonable for them to do) is to go for whatever they happen to want, as long as it fits a system that gives equal support to all people and their goals. Liberalism thus has an account of the most reasonable goals for societies and individuals, and so an account of the good. The account may seem minimal, but it’s enough to define the way of life the contemporary liberal state promotes, a life based on career, consumption, and political correctness.
There are serious problems with the account of the good that makes that way of life the standard. That account flattens out the human good, since it makes what to pursue a simple matter of desire and manageability. Also, it fails to recognize goods that are not individual and transferable, since it makes justice consist of tallying up Tom, Dick, and Harry’s goods, and making the totals as equal as possible. The result is that the human good becomes very much like possession of a large sum of money, and justice like equalizing bank balances.
Many people blveeie that “usury” is the practice of charging interest on a loan. Because the Catholic Church has condemned usury and now supposedly permits and benefits from this practice, anti-Catholics argue that the Church has contradicted her own teaching. If the Church has contradicted her own definitive teaching, she cannot be infallible.The problem with the anti-Catholic argument is that the Church has never defined usury as “taking interest on a loan.” Instead, the Fifth Lateran Council (1515) defines usury as follows:“For that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk” (Session X).Thus, usury is not “charging interest on a loan.” Usury is profiting from something which produces nothing, without any effort. Depending on the circumstances, this could apply to money, bushels of wheat, widgets or other goods. To better understand the Church’s teaching on usury as it relates to money, we must understand how money was viewed and functioned before we had competitive markets.In the economies of antiquity, there was little or no opportunity to invest money to make a return. Money was used for private, not commercial exchanges. Accordingly, using Aristotelian terminology, money was considered “barren.” That is, money had no inherent value while idle. It could only be consumed or hoarded. Of course, the nature of money has changed over the centuries. In today’s global economy of competitive markets, money is no longer “barren.” To the contrary, money is “fruitful” because there are many opportunities to invest money to make a return. Thus, a transaction that would have been usurious in the past would not necessarily be usurious today. Because money in today’s economy is “fruitful,” the act of loaning money in such an economy at interest is not usurious (since money has value even when idle).Pope Benedict addressed this in his encyclical Vix Pervenit (November 1, 1745):
Posted by: Venuslyn | Sunday, May 27, 2012 at 11:50 AM