What Catholic social thought misses

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops provides a summary of Catholic social teaching in seven themes. They are,

1. Life and dignity of the human person.

2. Call to Family, Community, and Participation.

3. Rights and Responsibilities.

4. Option for the Poor and Vulnerable.

5. The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers.

6. Solidarity.

7. Care for God's Creation.

Few people would oppose these. I would quibble with their stance on the death penalty. God commanded humanity to execute murderers in the Noahic covenant. Not doing so devalues human life, the image of God, that the murderer took.

This statement under #3 betrays an egregious lack of understanding of economics: "The economy must serve people, not the other way around." The economy isn't a thing, a person or animal. It can neither serve nor be served. Economy refers to all of the activity of buying and selling that takes place. As the great Christian economist Frederick Bastiat wrote, we exchange services in the marketplace. We serve each other there. By definition, the economy is people serving one another.

Under #6, the statement reads, "Loving our neighbor has global dimensions in a shrinking world." Do the bishops really think that Jesus meant we are responsible for everything that happens to everyone on the planet when he gave the parable of the Good Samaritan? Not likely! Is no one responsible for himself?

What's missing? Property! The three great rights that God gave individuals are those to life, liberty and property. The summary mentions that workers have a right to property, but what about business owners? Do they have no rights?

The theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation derived the right to property from Aristotle and natural law. But that right is just the positive of "Thou shalt not steal." Workers can't steal from each other or their employer. Employers can't steal from workers. Refusing to pay wages is one of the main complaints against the rich in the Bible.

The government can't steal from workers or businesses. How does government steal? According to the Salamancan theologians, the state is limited to punishing criminals, settling disputes in courts and providing national defense. It has God's authority to tax people for the funds to perform those duties. But if it taxes more, it commits theft.

Also, the state commits theft if it uses regulations to take away control of property from the owner. Property exists only when the owner controls buying, selling and use of his property. If someone else controls any part of those, he no longer has property. The one with control now has it regardless of what a piece of paper says.

Rent is a good example. For a fee, the rent, the owner of a house transfers part of his use and ownership to the renter. The title holder and the renter share the property.

The issue of control has confused people for decades over the label of Nazism as socialist or capitalist. Yes, the government allowed people to keep a paper title, which led some to think Nazism was a form of capitalism. But the paper meant nothing. The state controlled every aspect of the business, including the decision of what to produce, how much, what to charge, wages, etc., making the system clearly socialist. Fascism is the most insidious version of socialism.

The summary of Catholic social teaching by the bishops has nothing to say about the property rights of the business owners. It throws all its weight to workers. But if workers can demand a higher wage than owners are willing to pay, they have stolen property from the owners. The Catholic theologians at Salamanca debated wages more wisely. As an aspect of just price theory, they determined that a just wage is one agreed upon by business owners and workers without coercion. Unions, minimum wage laws and most regulations are coercion.

But what if wages offered by a company couldn't support a man and his family? The theologians determined that the worker needs charity and charity is the responsibility of the whole community, not just the employer. The community must provide for the poor, though not through the power of the state because the state is limited to punishing criminals and settling disputes. If it taxes the rich to support the poor, the state commits theft. Charity must be voluntary to have any virtue in it.

The left argues that in a democracy the people have the authority to decide to help the poor through the state. But it doesn't, because the state has a limited role according to the Bible. And Jesus directed his commands to help the poor to the church, never the government. Church and government are two distinct institutions of God with separate purposes and means that we shouldn't confuse. If we don't want deacons chasing and putting on trial criminals, we should not require the state to do the church's job.

Under #4, the summary reads, "A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring." We should care about the poor as much as Jesus did. But we should do it with wisdom. Capitalism has lifted billions of people from starvation poverty and begging with its advent in the 17th century in the Dutch Republic. Though the US hasn't seen capitalism for over a century, still the poorest quintile in the US has a similar standard of living to the average in the EU.

Charity is good and necessary. But charity has never lifted anyone out of poverty. It merely keeps them alive in their misery. Capitalism has been God's method for reducing poverty for over 400 years. According to the World Bank, slightly freer markets, not capitalism, has raised over 500 million people from starvation in Asia over the past generation.

The bishops have made the interests of workers and owners antagonistic. But economics proves they are complimentary. Investment in land and machinery is worthless without labor. On the other side, labor without capital in the form of land, buildings and equipment, is just as worthless. Workers can produce very little without the appropriate capital for their tasks. The better the equipment workers have, the more they produce and the better they are paid. For example, a worker will dig very short ditches by hand, much more with a shovel, and even more with a backhoe. It takes wealthy people to buy the backhoe for the workers. The more wealthy people invest in new businesses and better equipment, the greater is the need for workers and the higher wages will be.

Bishops need to recover the Biblical sanctification of property. It is one of the Ten Commandments. Property is the guardian of all other rights, including freedom of religion.