Conservative and Catholic (2)
02/01/2010
Sunday Night Journal — January 31, 2010
The contention that to be a conservative is to be less than fully Catholic has a further implication with which I disagree: that there is another set of socio-economic and political opinions which is fully Catholic, and to which therefore a faithful Catholic ought to subscribe.
I don’t think this is true at any very detailed and specific level. Obviously there are Catholic social principles which have the teaching authority of the Church behind them. And obviously Catholics are obliged to honor and to the best of their ability implement these principles. But there is room for a great many approaches to the implementation, and consequently for a great deal of legitimate disagreement. There is no simple and clear solution to most social problems which represents the only truly Catholic way.
For instance, in the comments on the Caelum et Terra discussion I mentioned last week, Daniel describes hearing Fr. Benedict Groeschel, whom I admire immensely, speak of illegal immigration and deliver
…a fiery denunciation against any hostility to our brothers and sisters who come here seeking work, and quoted the Old Testament on how defrauding the laborer of his wage is a sin which cries to heaven for vengeance. This last in reference to the fact that illegal immigrants pay Social Security payroll taxes, which they will never receive back in retirement.
As a description of the spirit in which this problem ought to be addressed, this is excellent, and one could hardly disagree with it. But it’s pretty useless as a solution to the problem, as it doesn’t even address the numerous conflicting claims of rights and justice involved in the situation. Just to mention one of those, there is the question of the effect of illegal immigrants on the jobs and wages available to citizens. I have seen with my own eyes African-American workers replaced with Mexican ones who are undoubtedly working for lower wages. Which has the stronger claim to justice at the expense of the other? Fr. Groeschel’s “fiery denunciation” can’t tell us. The immigration question represents an odd alliance of capitalists, who want cheap labor and don’t care where it comes from, and leftists who apparently don’t believe that the United States has any right to control its borders, or to treat its citizens differently from non-citizens. The American citizens who might have done many of these jobs don’t seem to matter much to either group. I think it was the younger president Bush who often referred to “jobs Americans won’t do,” neglecting to add the crucial qualifier “for the wages offered.”
Which suggests another example, the question of the just wage or living wage. It’s a clear Catholic teaching that workers should be paid a living wage. But there are many details of the implementation of that principle which have to be worked out in practice, with great attention to the possibility of unintended consequences.. Should, for instance, an employer pay a married man with children more than an unmarried person? If the answer is yes, should it be enforced by law? To do so would create a huge incentive for employers not to hire that married man. And what of the fact that the whole pattern of breadwinner-husband stay-at-home-wife has mostly dissolved here and in Europe? In principle all such vagaries and unintended consequences could be forestalled by more and more laws, but that effort tends toward the placement of most economic activity under state control, and that hasn’t worked out very well where it’s been tried.
Illustrations could be multiplied. My point is not to address either of these problems, immigration or wages, but to insist that the path from principle to policy is often not at all clear.
That a Catholic approach to politics is not fully encompassed in either conventional conservatism or conventional liberalism is obviously true. That a Catholic is compromised by aligning himself with one or the other is not therefore true. Each represents a way of approaching practical solutions, each emphasizes a different set of problems and preferred ways of solving them. However much we may complain about the inadequacies and distortions and inconsistencies present in the broad description of political forces in this country as a contest between “conservative” and “liberal”—I think “progressive” is a better term—the description persists because it is applicable enough to be useful; the forces denoted by the two terms do exist.
For my part—as I said last week—I find that on the whole my views coincide much more with conservatism than progressivism, and so am willing to call myself a conservative. That identification isn’t terribly important to me; it is only important at the moment because I resent the charge that it makes me less than fully Catholic. Others may hold themselves aloof from both sides, and I have no argument with that. And I don’t mind people considering themselves to be right and me wrong when we disagree; that’s life. Nor do I have any argument in principle with those who want to build a political movement which is explicitly Catholic and which would agree with conservatives about some things and progressives about others (though I suspect that any such movement would, in our climate, be treated as “conservative,” which would be very frustrating to its adherents).
But to declare oneself the enemy and superior of those who do associate themselves with one side or the other is only to create another side, a faction. I consider factionalism to be one of the great problems facing the Church, at least in this country. It usually involves the separating or distancing of oneself from others by going beyond the unity in essentials prescribed by St. Augustine and insisting on unity in matters where legitimate disagreement—Augustine’s liberty—exists.
And yes, I see the danger of starting a faction obsessed with deploring factionalism. My intention is simply to avoid participating in it as much as possible, and so, having made this point once, I don’t plan to harp on it.
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