Totalitarian socialism is the sort we associate with communism, forced state ownership of all capital and oppressive state control, and it was this form of socialism leading to communism which the popes condemned so soundly.
On the other hand, Democratic socialism (which is what Sanders espouses) seeks to counter the abuses of unfettered capitalism through state regulation on behalf of the people. It aims to use democratic means to accomplish its goals and claims therefore to truly be government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Standing on my Head : Can a Catholic Vote for Bernie Sanders?
February 3, 2016 by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2016/02/can-a-catholic-vote-for-bernie-sanders.html
Dwight here made "Socialism" an otiose synonym of "Communism".
No, "forced state ownership of all capital" = Communism (dito if "of most capital").
Socialism would rather be = "fiscal socialism". Forced state ownership over more capital or at least more liquids than previously by higher taxes. Most parties, or all, which forwarded this, described themselves as Social Democrats.
Also "oppressive state control" and "Democratic socialism" are in no ways clearly opposed. Sweden and Norway have very oppressive state control, but it got voted in parliament, usually by Social Democrats, but sometimes by pseudo-conservative or liberal politicians who were just into the Socialist scheme so much they thought lowering the very high personal income taxes a little or giving companies a bit more freedom counts as "non-socialist".
Why do I speak of "oppressive state control"?
Norway has just kidnapped the children of a Norwegian mother and a Rumanian father, her husband, the Bodnariu family.
Previously they had attacked visitors from Czech Republic. Romanian and Czech nationals who have known Communism are well placed to see how Democratic Socialism as of Norway is aboout the same kind of oppressive state control, even if it is voted in parliament and parliaments are elected in free elections.
Here are some helpful articles from Prague Post:
Prague Post : Norwegian Politician criticises barnevernet
http://www.praguepost.com/viewpoint/praguepostnews/viewpoint/norwegian-politician-criticizes-barnevernet
... from Balkan Insight:
BalkanInsight : Romanians Condemn Norway over Child Welfare Controversy
Marian Chiriac | BIRN | Bucharest | 13 Jan 16
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/norway-decision-over-romanian-family-spurs-protests-01-12-2016
... and from Norway:
Norwegian nightmare: State-sponsored child protection racket
by Redaksjonen · 14. mars 2014
on Barnevern.org Historier om Norsk Barnevern
http://www.barnevern.org/norwegian-nightmare-state-sponsored-child-protection-racket/
And, as said, Sweden is basically the same:
Friends of Domenic Johansson
http://friendsofdomenic.blogspot.com
And though there was hope back in 2012:
HSLDA : Sweden : Breaking News:
Parents of Boy Seized by State Hopeful after Favorable Court Ruling
June 14, 2012
http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Sweden/201206140.asp
... even so, last time I checked the family is still not quite reunited.
But companies can buy and sell in Sweden, and personal income tax is only 56% all taxes counted, so Sweden is, on Dwight's benighted view, not the kind of socialism that Pope Pius XI condemned.
However, in Divini Redemptoris, he said things which apply very clearly to SWedish and Norwegian Feminism, as in State Sponsored Socialism:
10. Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man's relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement .
11. Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.
On Atheistic Communism
DIVINI REDEMPTORIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM MARCH 19, 1937
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11DIVIN.HTM
Sweden is also not free from what he called out on in Mit brennender Sorge:
8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community — however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things — whoever raises these notions above thheir standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.
9. Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.
10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.
On the Church and the German Reich
MIT BRENNENDER SORGE
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON THE CHURCH AND THE GERMAN REICH MARCH 14, 1937
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11BRENN.HTM
But weren't SWedish Social Democrats at least free from the racist plague, then?
No, back then Tatters, Gipsies and Lapps, as well as people judged having "deficient mental powers" were often sterilised. In Sweden and Norway as in Germany, and with us it lasted into the 70's. The same is also true of Canada.
But hasn't fiscal socialism been praised by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI as justice? No.
57. But not every distribution among human beings of property and wealth is of a character to attain either completely or to a satisfactory degree of perfection the end which God intends. Therefore, the riches that economic-social developments constantly increase ought to be so distributed among individual persons and classes that the common advantage of all, which Leo XIII had praised, will be safeguarded; in other words, that the common good of all society will be kept inviolate. By this law of social justice, one class is forbidden to exclude the other from sharing in the benefits. Hence the class of the wealthy violates this law no less, when, as if free from care on account of its wealth, it thinks it the right order of things for it to get everything and the worker nothing, than does the non-owning working class when, angered deeply at outraged justice and too ready to assert wrongly the one right it is conscious of, it demands for itself everything as if produced by its own hands, and attacks and seeks to abolish, therefore, all property and returns or incomes, of whatever kind they are or whatever the function they perform in human society, that have not been obtained by labor, and for no other reason save that they are of such a nature. And in this connection We must not pass over the unwarranted and unmerited appeal made by some to the Apostle when he said: "If any man will not work neither let him eat."[41] For the Apostle is passing judgment on those who are unwilling to work, although they can and ought to, and he admonishes us that we ought diligently to use our time and energies of body, and mind and not be a burden to others when we can provide for ourselves. But the Apostle in no wise teaches that labor is the sole title to a living or an income.[42]
41. II Thess. 3:10.
42. Cf. II Thess. 3:8-10.
QUADRAGESIMO ANNO
ON RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL ORDER
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS Xl MAY 15, 1931
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11QUADR.HTM
If you read the rest of the Encyclical, you will find it recommends very clearly minimum wages, but not with a word taxing in order to empower a great administration. Especially not one which doesn't respect the family.
I asked one Catholic of a sort, one pretended distrbutist of a sort, who announced he was supporting Bernie Sanders if Sanders was for abolishing abortion and for allowing Creationism in public schools (as France under Sarkozy did, in a way) and for increasing opportunities to school one's children and young at home adults outside these.
I got no answer, and I suppose he is instead for keeping abortion legal and for keeping Creationism illegal as per Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District sham trial.
I am not a priest, I am not a bishop, I am not a monk, I am not a prophet, I am therefore not giving spiritual directions. But if one asks my informed opinion (supposing - rightly - that I have such a thing) on whether a Catholic can vote Bernie Sanders in good conscience, I would say no. Not unless I see (or he sees) any declarations favourable to protecting life of unborn and freedoms of families.*
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Andrea Corsini of Fiesoli
4.II.2016
* Made on part of whom one is voting for.
No comments:
Post a Comment