Very true, but instead Romney and the Republican party decided to pick an Objectivist hill to die on, and blow their political capital on “no tax cuts for the rich”.

Foolish.

You’ve inverted the position, but the wording is definitely Democratic. The real Republican position was “No tax increases on anyone. Cut spending. This will grow America.”

Without spending too much time dissecting this, the Democratic position was “Increase taxes on the rich. Increase spending. This will grow America.”

As for absolutism — both messages are at some level absolute — all that makes the Democratic message not seem so absolute was the word “rich” — whose definition was defined by the concept of the “Democrat millionaire” — a family earning $250,000 or more. Still, the Democrats had announced their number, and it was certainly absolute.

Obviously, our economy is sick, the poor are suffering, and what should the solution be?

Somehow, the latter Democrat message of government redistributionism — inherently at odds with the Church’s message of social justice rooted in private act, won the day. Millions of people earning less than $250,000 voted to increase taxes on people earning more than $250,000, while voting to keep their own taxes as-is. The root fallacy of the Democratic position is that by voting to increase taxes on someone other than himself, a voter acts in favor of social justice. The truth is that when a voter votes to increase taxes on someone other than himself, he is stealing and, by that, acting against social justice.

Regardless of how it happened, it was the Church leadership which sold the meme of “social justice”.

You betcha. In a day of company towns and child labor, greater than 100% employer loans, the effective reduction of employees to indentured servants, the Church stood against these things around the world. The Church stated that the employer MUST provide, at a minimum, a living wage for the worker’s labor, such that the worker could provide for family and have a little left over for improvement. In a day of union violence, the Church stood against violence. It did not stand against unions, but it stood against union violence and employer violence.

We now live in an era where employers don’t have company towns, nor do they have child labor, nor do they perform violence against their workers.

And, by the way, it was the 1890′s, not the 1990′s, in which all of this happened, and the Church took its stand both against unbridled capitalism and against unbridled socialism. But the Church’s solution was a personal one, with the government having a minimum role.

Here is still more Catholic social justice:

To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.

The bottom line is that the Church supports “social justice” however it’s put into action, and therefore favors the Democrats because (dontcha know?) they are the party of the poor and downtrodden.

If you claim to be a Christian, you MUST support “social justice”. Not the Democrat version. The Christian version. It’s not how it’s put into action — it’s what it means.

And, as long as we are on the topic of claims, no matter what the Democrats claim with respect to being the party of the poor and downtrodden, they overwhelmingly do not do what they do out of any empathy for such, but merely to buy votes — as there are many of the poor and downtrodden who will sell their votes for a few pence from the Treasury and some false promises.

If you read Rerum Novatum, you can tick off the places where the Democrats meet the need, and you can tick off the places where the Republicans meet the need, and there is is — a Republican win. Not that the Democrats don’t score a few points here and there….

Even in a more unchurched America, a synthesis of social conservatism and more egalitarian-minded economic policies could have a great deal of mass appeal.

Very true, but instead Romney and the Republican party decided to pick an Objectivist hill to die on, and blow their political capital on “no tax cuts for the rich”.

Foolish.

But our elites seem mostly relieved to stop paying lip service to the Catholic synthesis: professional Republicans are more libertarian than their constituents, professional Democrats are more secular than their party’s rank-and-file, and professional centrists get their encyclicals from Michael Bloomberg rather than the Vatican.

Very true.

Too many Catholics (as well as other denominations) bought into the “social justice” meme if only because it was cheaper to argue for funding for government programs to help the needy rather than to get the parishioners to put more of their own money in the collection plate.

[Wethal on February 17, 2013 at 10:47 AM]

It’s a bit more complicated than that and one has to look further back than the 90′s to understand the problem because it was a vicious circle. Regardless of how it happened, it was the Church leadership which sold the meme of “social justice”. Collection plates were doing well up to then, though insufficiently for the some who wanted to do more and I had runs-ins with more than one socialist in the clergy whose idea of social justice was to throw more money at the problem.

But, yeah, eying the potentially deeper pockets of the government than they could wheedle out of the ones of parishioner’s, set in motion the Church’s turn towards statism and the eventual embrace of socialism. There were a lot of Catholics that left the Church during this this journey towards socialism for many reasons, among them a not insignificant number who were opposed to that path. Many more stayed but closed their pocket books. Others found that with support from the state more than sufficient for their wellbeing, had little reason to remain in the Church.

It’s true that the sex-abuse scandal has taken it’s toll on the Church, but the Church was dying of it’s own self-inflicted wound of embracing socialism long before that problem arose. It’s interesting though that the Church’s reaction to the sex-abuse problem — the inability to demand that people act responsibly and own up to the consequences of their actions but rather to take the easy way out — is the same one that informs their social justice policy.

Meredith on February 17, 2013 at 12:49 PM

Your nuns were getting the junction between economics and theology wrong then. Catholic social teaching revolves around assisting the poor lift themselves out of poverty. FDR’s welfare was better for this than current nanny-statism (WPA > food stamps), but the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, made it harder for the economy and consumers to recover, and therefore ran contrary to Catholic social teaching. If the Catholic God is the right one, I guarantee He shudders to look at the inner cities of today because, not in spite of, the dependency culture and oppressive atmosphere.

(Proper) Catholic metaphysics places a huge premium on free will, and thus demands a society in which charitable action is highly valued, and practiced, but under few if any circumstances required. Catholicism lends itself to federalism – or perhaps more accurately, federalism reflects Catholic principles – if not to pure unadulterated capitalism. It’s the men and women of the Church, not the teachings of same, that are attracted to Marxism.

“THE next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality. And it is coming, not from a few Socialists surviving from the Fabian Society, but from the living exultant energy of the rich resolved to enjoy themselves at last, with neither Popery nor Puritanism nor Socialism to hold them back… The roots of the new heresy, God knows, are as deep as nature itself, whose flower is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life. I say that the man who cannot see this cannot see the signs of the times; cannot see even the skysigns in the street that are the new sort of signs in heaven. The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow but much more in Manhattan — but most of what was in Broadway is already in Piccadilly.”

~G.K. Chesterton: G.K.’s Weekly, June 19, 1926.

It’s been many, many years since I was in high school but I can still recall the nuns gushing over FDR. They thought he was a saint. Now why do you think that was?

From the Church’s standpoint, social justice involves a government which does not prefer one class of people over another — a government which treats all equally. Second, it requires that a government treat these individuals in accordance with “natural law” — which is the Church’s way of saying “God’s laws”.

The term “social justice” also involves individual actions which fall outside government.

So, obviously, the question arises — what is the meaning of “natural law”? It is rooted in the Ten Commandments and in the Great Commandment. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall honor your father and your mother. You shall not covet your neighbors’ goods. You shall treat your neighbor as you treat yourself.

Implicit in these are a respect for private property, a need to give alms to the poor…

It’s in the latter that the Democrats fail to understand the Church’s teaching. Almsgiving is a private endeavor, as Scripture points out — you are not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so to speak. When government gets involved, everyone knows what you are doing — and when government treats taxpayers unequally, it does this counter to the idea of social justice — treating all equally.

Now, providing services by the Government to the poor does not countermand the Church’s idea of social justice — but if one taxpayer votes to use another taxpayer’s funds for this activity, out of proportion to the ones the former applies, then the former has committed theft. In fact, given that almsgiving is to be private and personal, it would be preferred that the Government not be involved at all.

The means of performing social justice must conform to the idea of social justice.

Catholic social justice includes the idea of subsidiarity — that a person cannot relegate to their government that which they ought to do themselves.

Perhaps that’s where the Church’s ideas are considered abominable by liberals — because it runs counter to everything they believe about the need for the Government to do it all.

Now, the Church certainly does not believe in unrestrained capitalism, and certainly does not believe in communism in any way or form — as Rerum Novarum attests. But Rerum Novarum militates for a solution involving the worker and the employer, and expressly sanctions the use of the state as a mediary:

It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.

An example of how the Democrats have failed to heed this idea can be found in something as simple as the idea of estate taxes. It seems fair to Democrats to tax the wealth of a dead person as it is transferred to his or her heirs. But take, for example, the family farm. It is not divisible, and therefore a tax demands that it be sold and a portion of the proceeds given to the Government and the remaining portion divided between the heirs. This simple tax has led to the demise of the family farm — those farms had to be sold to pay estate taxes, and they are now owned by large corporations who will never die.

Now, you can fix that problem by requiring that corporations die — but then you have moved this problem to yet another set of people. The corporation is a natural defence against confiscatory taxes of this nature, but why should anyone have to form a corporation to defend themselves against taxes? Such a requirement indicates that there was something unfair in the original construction of the taxes.

professional Republicans are more libertarian than their constituents, professional Democrats are more secular than their party’s rank-and-file, and professional centrists get their encyclicals from Michael Bloomberg rather than the Vatican.

LOL!!! Funny cuz it’s true.