#474: What Would King Say?

      Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 90 this past week.  As the nation celebrates his birthday, it is easy to honor King as a champion of civil rights, perhaps even easy to note that in 2019 America risks losing some of the gains he championed. 

But it is much harder for us to actually honor him as our national prophet--as America’s conscience--because that means honoring all the causes he stood for.  And those causes taken together, have not merely lost ground; they have nearly disappeared from our public discourse. 

Let me survey what King called the “three great evils,” and ask two questions: What would King say now?  And: Who in our public life still speaks for King? 

Racial Injustice.  Most celebrations honoring King focus on him as leader of the civil rights movement.  And surely a key message in his mission was that people be judged not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” By 1968 King had witnessed many gains, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  And since then, African-Americans have continued many gains. 

Still, were King alive today he might well say that too often people continue to be judged by the color of their skin, whether in efforts to suppress black votes, or in cases of police shooting unarmed Blacks, or in the rollback of the Voting Rights Act itself. 

And more recently the challenge of accepting people of color has increasingly focused, not only on the descendants of slaves, but also on immigrants and their children (indeed, our first Black president was the son of an immigrant, not the descendant of slaves).  And while King did not face the same issues over immigration that we face now, it’s easy to know what he might say--in fact he already actually said it:

“We may all have come from different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

Indeed, by the end of his career King would be increasingly clear that the evil of racism was not just a problem for U.S. blacks, but for all those oppressed by others:

“In one sense the civil rights movement in the United States is a special American phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American history and dealt with in terms of the American situation. But on another and more important level, what is happening in the United States today is a relatively small part of a world development.”

Looking around today, King might well say we remain far from fulfilling the goal of racial justice for all.

Inequality.  In later years King spoke more and more about economic inequality.  He often called it “poverty,” since up to 1968 the middle class was still gaining in wages and benefits, so it made sense to focus on those below the poverty line.  But since King’s death, the U.S. has seen nearly 50 years of steadily declining real wages even for the middle class, and we now see a wealth gap worse than any time since the great depression of the 1930s.  So when King spoke of poverty, he said:

“Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”

This question of a “broader distribution of wealth” has changed since his death, with fewer below the poverty line but more struggling to make ends meet as wealth has been even more concentrated.  This makes King’s view not less, but even more timely.  Today he would surely repeat these words:

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children... God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”

War. King lost many supporters and became an even more controversial figure when he campaigned against the Vietnam War.  Even other civil rights leaders felt this was not his role.  But they did not realize that, for King, this was the inevitable result of his own growing vision. 

Once he decided that nonviolence was the key to fighting racism, and once he incorporated the theories of Gandhian nonviolence into his own Christian theology, that naturally altered his views on war, as he moved from a “just war” perspective to pacifism.  He called this his “pilgrimage to nonviolence”:

“I felt that while war could never be a positive good, it could serve as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But now I believe that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons totally rules out the possibility of war ever again achieving a negative good.”

Indeed, King seemed to know that without a concerted anti-war strategy, the threat of mass destruction would spread.  Today’s worries about North Korea, Iran, and the U.S. abandoning the INF treaty all echo King’s warning:

“Nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology. The proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted…On the contrary, the detonation of an atomic device by the first nonwhite, non-Western, and so-called underdeveloped power, namely the Chinese People’s Republic, opens new vistas of exposure of vast multitudes, the whole of humanity, to insidious terrorization by the ever-present threat of annihilation.”

When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King made his rejection of militarism clear:

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.”

I have no doubt that he would say matters now have only become worse.  Since 9/11 the U.S. has engaged in multiple, seemingly endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. And unlike the Vietnam era, these wars are not even especially controversial.  In the 1960s a band of public leaders loudly opposed U.S. war policy: King, Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and many others.  In 2019, who are the public leaders opposing our warlike foreign policy? 

Yet our troop deployments and arms sales (not to mention defense pending) far outstrip all other nations.  It is as if Americana have accepted that war is inevitable and peace is impossible. King would disagree:

“World peace through non-violent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Non-violence is a good starting point.”

For Catholics today, King’s views are important for three reasons. 

First, his views on race, economic inequality, and peace fit almost exactly with Catholic Social Teaching of the last 50 years--especially with the teachings of the last four popes.  You can look it up! 

Second, King agrees with the Church that these three issues are linked:

“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together…you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others…the whole structure of American life must be changed.”

Third, King’s vision of the contemporary world exactly matches the Catholic vision emerging from Vatican Council II (1962-1965).  The Council saw technological progress as the hallmark of modern life, and praised such progress but offered this caution: technological progress confers new power, but the good use of that power requires a matching progress in wisdom and goodness. 

Here is how King saw the same “moral lag”:

“Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this.”

For King, as for Vatican II, this “moral lag” is at the root of what he calls the world’s three great evils:

“This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.”

And for King, as for Vatican II, the challenge lies in our moral progress catching up to our technological progress:

“Mankind’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony”

Based on his own words, then, King’s voice still speaks to our time, much the way Catholic Social Teaching does.  Taken together, they represent our brightest wisdom and our clearest hope--but who will champion of such vision? 

On a day when many seek to fence in King’s legacy to narrow questions of race, we should rededicate ourselves to his broader cause of waging nonviolent combat against racism, inequality, and militarism. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2019

#467: We CAN do Better than Fake Facts

  In an age where virtually all our nation’s public institutions have fallen into distrust, perhaps it is time to look beyond our borders. Perhaps a focus on some basic facts that are beyond dispute can provide a basis for public debate. 

We live in distempered times.  The general public, surveying the current events landscape, reacts with a wide range of troubled emotions: anger, embarrassment, fear, frustration, ridicule, disdain, even disbelief and shock at what is no longer shocking.  No matter our zip code, economic class, or political stripe, almost no one is happy with the current state of public affairs.

The climate for civil discourse is the worst I can remember--and I am a child of the 1960s, when U.S. cities burned and the nation’s capital was repeatedly besieged by impassioned demonstrators and three national leaders were assassinated.

I shared my Boomer generation’s desire for change, a desire to create a better world.  I saw many of our institutions--the government, the military, the police, the church, even the family--in crisis.  I found our country drifting into a spiritual malaise that sapped the moral energy we needed to revitalize our national values.  I saw the need for strong guiding values in the face of war, racism, and poverty, but by 1969 I had lost confidence in our established political parties.  I felt that, rather than providing visionary and moral leadership, the GOP and Democrats simply reflected the materialist and war-like values of their political bases.  Our leaders were following conventional wisdom of public opinion, rather than leading in a better direction.  I had lost faith in the system.

So I chose to abandon my own ambitions for a political career and to promote better values by working “outside the system.” For me, activism for a better world took the form of local action focused on faith-based communities. This was my response to that era’s crisis of values.

But 40+ years later we seem to face, not merely the crisis over values, but even a crisis over facts.  We are not merely divided by what we value, by what matters, we are even divided over what is real, what is true.

We see the signs everywhere as people dispute reality on a issue after issue.  We argue whether climate change is real or a hoax. Whether elections are rigged or fair.  Whether the current investigations are legitimate or witch hunts. Whether immigrants are a threat or a benefit.  Whether a travel ban means better security or unjust discrimination.

This begs a question: what relevance can faith have here? When people struggle to achieve common values, as happened in the 1960s, it made sense to look to faith-based institutions for moral guidelines—churches were prominent in the civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King was an ordained minister, not a public official.

But when people are reduced to fighting over facts--what use are faith-based institutions?

I am convinced our religious institutions can help us achieve common ground about basic facts that can renew our civil climate and revive the possibility of a productive public debate.  If we can agree on what’s true, we can then argue civilly and constructively about what should be done.  But how to agree on what’s true?

First, we step with a primary fact behind all others facts: Facts are mostly a matter of good sources.

None of us can verify every fact for ourselves.  We rely on GPS to know where we are going¸ and the speedometer to tell us how fast we are getting there.  We rely on meteorologists tell us a storm is on the radar, on clocks to tell us the time, on green lights to tell us it’s safe to go, on the Internet for nearly everything.  Every hour of our lives we depend on facts, but we get those facts, not from our own direct observation, but from sources we trust. We know the facts only because we believe those sources.   A wise philosopher once said that 95% of the most brilliant person’s knowledge is based on such belief.

It stands to reason, then, that our current crisis over facts is actually rooted in a crisis over sources.  In a word, what we believe depends on whom we believe-- and right now, our country cannot agree on whom to believe.

This is especially true when we speak of facts about public affairs.  Where people once prized freedom of the press, many now dismiss the mainstream media.  Where people once relied on “the fourth estate” of reporters and commentators, many (even our leaders) now turn instead to social media.  While the previous generation counted on investigative journalist to dig up the truth, we now turn to cable news panels to hear what we want to hear.

It makes sense, then, that to restore common facts we need to search for sources we can count on.

And forgive my career-shaped bias, but I find the Catholic Church a helpful source in the search for common facts.  I know this institution has been scandal- plagued for nearly a generation now (see CrossCurrents #442 https://swaincrosscurrents.blogspot.com/2015/11/442-spotlight-gets-story-right.html to see how persistently that scandal has crossed my own career path).  And last week’s allegations against Australia’s (and the Vatican’s) Cardinal George Pell once again has stained the church’s credibility.

Nonetheless, there is a case to be made for paying attention to the Catholic Church on public affairs--and if one does pay attention, the results are significant.

Let me cite two sets of well-established facts that could become the basis for a much wider discussion.

Fact Set One: Why pay attention to the Catholic Church?

Fact #1: the Catholic Church is the world’s largest organization of any kind, with more than a billion members and worldwide coverage. 

Fact #2: Its membership includes roughly 20% of all Americans, and these American Catholics have become an important swing vote in recent elections.

Fact #3: Despite the toll of the sex abuse scandal on the Church’s public reputation, the election of Pope Francis in 2013 brought a huge public relations boost to the Catholic Church.  Francis is among the planet’s most visible and respected—even beloved--public figures.  When he talks, people listen, and when he talks, he speaks for a consistent tradition of the Catholic Church’s vision for a better modern world dating back to 1891.

Fact #4: That vision presents a comprehensive analysis of world affairs, as well as set of principles for addressing our major challenges.

In my opinion, that vision, typically called Catholic Social Teaching (CST), represents the best single perspective on the crises facing our world and how they might be solved.  In particular, I believe that Francis is speaking to our time with a focus, a breadth, and a wisdom unmatched by any of our nation’s public figures. That’s why I pay attention.  And this leads me to a second set of facts. 

Fact Set Two: Facts about what Catholic Social Teaching (CST) actually says.

Fact #5: CST says promoting the common good is more important than pursuing personal benefit.

Fact #6: CST says people have a right to private property--but all our property must serve the benefit of others.

Fact #7: CST says that the market system must serve people, rather people serving the market.

Fact #8: CST says that healthcare is a human right, not a commodity or a privilege.

Fact #9: call CST says that immigration is a human right; while governments may protect their borders, they must respect the right of people to migrate.

Fact #10:  CST says that climate change is a reality, that it is a threat to God’s creation, and that the entire human family—but especially wealthy nations—face the moral imperative to address it.

Fact #11: CST says that economic inequality is the unacceptable sources of many evils, and must be fixed.

Fact #12: CST says that, while war may be justified under some conditions, the conditions of modern warfare make such justification rare or impossible.

Fact #13: CST says that religion is not to blame for terrorism. Rather, terror emerges from poverty, injustice, and fanaticism.

Fact #14: CST says that Islam, like Judaism, worships the same God as Christians.

Fact #15: CST says that taxation must serve the common good--even if that means redistributing wealth

Fact #16: CST says the world’s population comprises one human family and that this planet is our common home, so our goodness must be judged by our embrace of that family and our efforts to care for that home.

We’re all entitled to our opinions, but not to our own facts. So anyone can disagree with the statements above--but no one can say that these are not in fact the teachings of the Catholic Church. 

And those facts matter. For those of us who are Catholic, or those of us who admire Pope Francis, or those of us who simply seek a vision of a better future, these facts can be--as they are for me—a starting point for any discussion of public affairs. Even if we disagree with the positions they express, we cannot deny they represent the worldview of the world’s largest organization. And on that basis alone, they deserve our attention. They certainly deserve more attention than the fake facts flying all around us. We can do better than that. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#464: Is the Common Good the Enemy of Sovereignty—or Vice-Versa?

  A recent Harvard discovery suggests why this Sunday's French Presidential Elections French should interest Americans, and especially American Catholics.

"France for the French" vs. France, member of Europe

The French Election

Some observers have said the 2017 election for president of France is all about sovereignty, since Marine Le Pen wants to pull France out of the European Union and Emmanuel Macron wants to stay in the EU but reform it.

Le Pen’s supporters believe the EU Impinges on France's sovereignty as a nation; they want their country back, their money back, their borders closed, their industries protected, their immigrants expelled. They want “France for the French.”

Macron's supporters often do not actually support his politics or agenda, but they support France's continued membership in the EU. They know this means sacrificing some of the nation’s sovereignty: the Euro replaced the Franc, trade is subject to EU "free trade" regulations, the borders are open to anyone from the EU, even the traditional French license plates have been replaced by euro-style plates. But those prepared to vote for Macron believe that giving up some national sovereignty serves the common good of both the French people and Europe as a whole, especially in bringing peace to a chronically war-torn continent (see CrossCurrents # 463).

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) acknowledges the dilemma here. On the one hand, CST makes promoting the common good a top priority, which leaves little room for a self-serving agenda that ignores the effects on others. Pope Francis in particular has decried the “Exclusion” of others that occurs when policy is set to benefit some narrow part of any population.

On the other hand, CST also values “subsidiarity”—the principle of keeping decisions at the most local level possible, and solving problems by the participation of those closest to the problem.

The EU clearly aims to serve the common good of Europeans, but that means decisions get made, not at the local or regional or even national level, but at the international level which sometimes is far removed from the people affected. So common good and subsidiarity sometimes clash. How can this clash be addressed?

Some, like Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, take a hard line view of sovereignty. He argues that internationalism of any kind cannot really achieve the common good: for him, the real common good comes only with national sovereignty:

“The only democratic institutions that we have are national institutions.  So if you get rid of the nation-state, what you’re really doing is getting rid of democracy.”

In other words, Krein considers that, to serve common good, all sovereignty must be national.  This is exactly what Le Pen is proposing in her campaign, and it is exactly what Macron is opposing.

Wednesday Night's Debate

But it strikes me that such a hard line is completely arbitrary and also completely contrary to our experience as Americans.  That’s why last week’s Harvard discovery is so interesting.

The Harvard Find

Two Harvard researchers, Danielle Allen and Emily Sneff, have recently reported the discovery of an early handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence--only the second such copy in existence.  They call it the “Sussex declaration” after the location of its discovery in England. 

The significance of the discovery is that this version is slightly different from the one in the national archives.  That original in 1775 reflected the practice of the Continental Congress of having state delegations sign official documents as a group, with state labels for each group.

But the Sussex declaration dates from the 1780s.  By then the War is over, and war debts have led to conflicts among the states, especially farming states vs. the coastal mercantile states.  Eventually these conflicts would lead to a constitutional convention, but already the clash was between federalists (who saw the new nation as a single united people) and anti-federalists (who saw it as a collection of states).  The issue here was whether sovereignty would belong to the nation as a whole, or whether each state would retain its own sovereignty. 

The Sussex Declaration

This newer version shows the balance shifting to the federalists. Allen points out the key difference:

“The Sussex Declaration scrambles the names so they are no longer grouped by state. It is the only version of the Declaration that does that…This is really a symbolic way of saying we are all one people.”

Of course, during the time between these two versions, the US was governed by the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777 and ratified in 1781.  The guiding principle here was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of each state.  It legalized the Continental Congress, but gave that Congress very little power. There was no president, no judiciary, no executive agencies, no tax base--which meant no way to pay off the war debts.  Even the Congress had only one body, comprised of state delegations.

Shifting Sovereignty

The Articles of Confederation failed, because the national government lacked enough power to perform its essential duties.  This provoked a Constitutional Convention and eventually led to the U.S. Constitution which governs us today.  The essential difference is that the U.S. Constitution shifted much of our sovereignty from individual states to the nation as a whole.  But the shift involve major compromises, including a Congress split into two houses; Senate representing the states, and the House of Representatives representing the people by proportional vote.

In other words, US history is rooted in a compromise which recognized that sovereignty needed to be shared between the nation and its member states.  When Krein says that our only democratic institutions are national institutions, he is simply ignoring our own history.

What is happening in Europe follows a direct analogy to U.S. history.  If we think of France as a member state of the European Union, we can see that the issue of sovereignty, and the conflict over how much sovereignty France should sacrifice to the common good of Europe, is precisely the same issue as the argument over States’ rights vs. Federal power in the US.

From the point of Catholic Social Teaching, this means that American history can help show us how the tension between the common good and the principle of subsidiarity can be resolved.

We don’t need to look into the distant past to observe this history.  Recent events provided ample examples.  These show that debates over shifts in sovereignty reflect a tension that still exists in American Life.

Current Examples

1. Death Penalty. When Dhzokar Tsarnaev was tried for his role in the Boston marathon bombings, his trial took place in Massachusetts, which rejects the death penalty—and yet he received a death sentence, because his crime was determined to be a violation of Federal law.  Thus Massachusetts could not control the judicial process because the authority of the Federal government prevailed. The state does not enjoy absolute sovereignty

2. Sanctuary Cities. When Donald Trump attacks the notion of sanctuary cities, he is pitting the rule of local law enforcement in preserving public safety against the interests of the immigration authorities to locate and detain illegal immigrants.  Most states that have sanctuary cities are claiming that their law enforcement officials cannot be forced by the Federal government.

3. Healthcare. The current struggle to repeal Obamacare involves the question of whether the U.S. government will continue to mandate coverage, or the states will have the option to seek alternative plans.  Obamacare relied on the sovereignty of the Federal government; the repeals are pushing for state sovereignty.

4. Border Wall. Donald Trump’s border wall involves the Federal government imposing construction in many border states that oppose a wall.  Here again, the common good becomes the rationale for overruling local decision-making.

5. Tribal Sovereignty. When the Wampanoag Tribe tries to establish a casino on Martha’s Vineyard, this pits the tribe as a sovereign nation vs. the power of the local community, and invokes both state and Federal power to resolve the issue.  In this case, the dispute is about sovereignty on four different levels.

6. Gay Marriage. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage, exercising its own authority to regulate marriage on the state level.  But when the US Supreme Court imposed its Federal authority over state laws and regulations, gay marriage became legal across the US. 

7. “Romneycare.” Obamacare’s rules for health care were remarkably similar to the rules that already existed in Massachusetts under the program supported by a Republican Governor Mitt Romney. Romneycare reflected the state’s sovereignty, Obamacare reflected the federal government’s sovereignty

The Moral of the Story

In all of these cases, the question of sovereignty has been resolved on a case-by-case basis.  It is true that some people would prefer the Federal government to always impose its will over states, while others would prefer that states always get to decide all matters for themselves without any Federal interference.  But the vast majority of Americans accept a constant balancing act between two (or more) levels of legitimate authority.

Thus life in “these United States” involves a chronic but healthy tension between the sovereignty of the nation and the sovereignty of the states.  Neither sovereignty is absolute, so a Federal System like ours requires repeated negotiation to redefine the shifting limits of each sovereignty.

And that is exactly what Europe is going through today, especially if we think of each country as something like our states. 70 years after the Treaty of Rome established the idea of a united Europe, its federal system is still being formed.

The European Union has reached a moment much like the crisis caused by the Articles of Confederation.  In other words, its governing treaties are failing to provide the right mix of sovereignty between the European Union itself and the member states. 

It seems that, if Europe is to serve both the common good and honor the principle of subsidiarity, it will need to find ways to democratize its operations and reflect comment local and national interests and preferences rather than make all decisions by some remote process that does not reflect public will.

But the failure of the Articles of Confederation did not lead to the failure of the United States; it required instead a reformed federal system. Europe faces the same challenge, and France’s commitment to meeting that challenge (rather than quitting to protect its own sovereignty) will say much about Europe’s future prospects.

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#462: How to Judge Trump? By His Fruits You Will Know Him

Pope Francis on Trump: "Wait and see"

Everyone knows we are divided, and no one thinks that’s good. But we seem at a loss for a solution. Can the Catholic Vision help? How?

 Sometimes teachers learn more than they teach!

Recently I conducted a session for adults preparing to join the Roman Catholic Church.  An important question surfaced: are Catholic Social Teachings just general principles without much practical direction, or do they include specific actions to implement those principles--or are they someplace in between?

The question would be important anytime, since the answer determines how relevant Catholic Social Teaching  (CST) is to our daily experience of the society and the culture we inhabit.  But the question is especially urgent now, when Americans are divided into two equally unhappy camps.

One camp is convinced that America is in grave danger from terrorists, illegal immigrants, refugees, rampant crime, lost jobs, unfair trade deals, the media, and the power of establishment elites.  The other camp is equally convinced that America is endangered by a dishonest, incompetent, paranoid administration that is bent on conning the public and curtailing our rights and protections to achieve its mission of self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.

Observing these two unhappy camps locked in a power struggle, I recall a key theme from Vatican II (1962-1965): that the Catholic Church must position itself as a public source of wisdom, to help steer power away from evil and toward good.

This begs the question: can Catholic Social Teaching do that job? Can it provide the wisdom we need to steer this current power struggle in the US toward good results?

Pope Francis has been speaking to this question quite a lot recently. His comments focus on two notions of great practical value for people of faith.

Notion #1: “Wait and See.” One thing both unhappy camps share is inflated rhetoric.  One side invents its own facts: immigrants are pouring in, refugees import terror, crime is soaring, joblessness stems from free trade and regulation.  The other side spins hypothetical horror scenes of mass deportations, treasonous collusion, police state tactics.  Such rhetoric fuels the conflict but provides little basis for resolving it.

Francis prefers to wait for concrete facts.  In his January 22 interview with the Spanish newspaper  El Pais, when asked about of his own opinion of the new American president, Pope Francis avoided both alarmism and cheerleading.  He suggested, rightly I think, the prudence of basing any response on actual events rather than invented fears or anticipated outrages:

I think that we must wait and see. I don't like to get ahead of myself nor judge people prematurely. We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that will not be either. We will see. We will see what he does and will judge. Christianity always rests on the specific, either a position is specific or it is not Christianity.

…We need specifics. And from the specific we can draw consequences. We lose sense of the concrete. The other day, a thinker was telling me that this world is so upside down that it needs a fixed point. And those fixed points stem from the concrete. What did you do, what did you decide, how do you move. That is what I prefer to wait and see.

The public response to Trump’s travel ban is a perfect illustration of “specific” action.  The very day the government began detaining immigrants, green card holders, even those with visas, protesters thronged airports, vast crowds filled city squares, and the courts acted swiftly to halt the ban. This fits rather neatly with Francis’ advice.  Rather than jump to conclusions, we should respond to results. 

But this leaves open the question: on what basis do we judge the results?

Notion #2: The Relevance of Catholic Social Teaching.  Of course, specific responses presume preparation.  They require the ability to mobilize people who are ready to act and who know when the time for action has arrived.  Pope Benedict XVI famously said that the Church cannot stand on the sidelines in the fight for justice--but to arbitrate any contest, one must master the rules. So in many recent statements, Pope Francis has been demonstrating how Catholic Social Teaching (CST) can provide practical rules for the conflicts we face.

Such practical teaching must avoid two extremes.  If CST offers only general principles, arguing about how they apply might lead to endless debate that frustrates rather than promotes action.  But if CST attempts to dictate specific policies or actions, people may argue that the Church is stepping beyond its expertise into technical areas where its competence is suspect.  In short, if the Church wants CST to provide practical wisdom, then it must go beyond theoretical platitudes but avoid technical solutions.

And here Francis guides us, for in comment after comment he makes it clear that CST offers something different.  CST offers neither mere principles nor specific solutions; instead, it offers concrete criteria for judging actions that we or others take to solve problems.

This makes CST highly pragmatic.  Instead of obsessing over hypotheticals, it focuses on actual results.  Instead of claiming to provide concrete solutions, CST provides clear criteria for evaluating concrete solutions.  It’s not enough to take actions that achieve results; those results must fit CST criteria or be rejected. In this sense, the gospel message is radically pragmatic: we need not argue about rhetoric or theories, but ask rather which theories are working or not working. Thus CST cannot dictate solutions, but it can judge them.

And this helps us to prepare to act, because we can formulate the criteria in advance of any particular action.  Francis has demonstrated this over and over.  Examples abound:

Asked by El Pais about populism that carries a message of “xenophobia and hatred toward the foreigner,” the pope replied:

Crises provoke fear, alarm. In my opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany in 1933. After (Paul von) Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of restoring its character…“Let’s look for a savior who gives us back our identity and let’s defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever, from other peoples who may rob us of our identity.” And that is a very serious thing…No country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility of talking with their neighbors.

The use of “savior” here is key, since it implies that for Christians such a politics is idolatry—as clear a criterion as any in our faith!

Asked about the treatment of refugees and other religion, the pope was equally concrete:

You cannot be a Christian without living like a Christian. You cannot be a Christian without practicing the Beatitudes. You cannot be a Christian without doing what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25.

Matthew chapter 25 is Jesus’ injunction to help the needy by such works of mercy as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and welcoming the stranger. The pope went on:

It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help…If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.

So if criterion #1 is idolatry, #2 is hypocrisy.

In mid-February Francis sent a letter to a meeting of popular movements in California to express his view of popular resistance movements:

It makes me very happy to see you working together towards social justice…because it builds bridges between peoples and individuals. These are bridges that can overcome the walls of exclusion, indifference, racism, and intolerance…For some time, the crisis of the prevailing paradigm has confronted us. I am speaking of a system that causes enormous suffering to the human family, simultaneously assaulting people’s dignity and our Common Home in order to sustain the invisible tyranny of money that only guarantees the privileges of a few.

These are signs of the times that we need to recognise in order to act.…The grave danger is to disown our neighbours. When we do so, we deny their humanity and our own humanity without realising it; we deny ourselves, and we deny the most important Commandments of Jesus. Herein lies the danger, dehumanisation.

Criterion # 3: Disowning the neighbor leads to dehumanization.

Within the last two weeks some journals headlined the pope's opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline being constructed through US tribal lands. Actually, the pope never mentioned the pipeline. But he offered a clear criterion for addressing that case, when he told representatives of indigenous peoples at a U.N. agricultural meeting that the key issue facing them is how to reconcile the right to economic development with protecting their cultures and territories.

Francis at the Conference on indigenous peoples in Rome

Indigenous people, he said, have a right to their ancestral lands. And this provides a clear rule for action:

In this regard, the right to prior and informed consent should always prevail…Only then is it possible to guarantee peaceful cooperation between governing authorities and indigenous peoples, overcoming confrontation and conflict.

Finally, when Francis takes on the “Trickle Down Theory” for reducing economic inequality (see CrossCurrents #461), he does not talk about equality of OPPORTUNITY--he talks about the actual results of economic structures that, whatever the theory on paper, in practice LEAVE millions excluded from prosperity. We may argue about why this happens, and who is responsible, and how to solve the problem--but we may NOT deny that it is a problem that plagues most third-world countries as well as our own.

The preferential option for the poor is a matter of principle for Catholic Social Teaching, and no system that results in massive inequality can be justified by any theory. The pope believes the current model has had ample opportunity to prove itself, and has failed. So it is folly to expect suddenly better results if we cling to what Francis calls "the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system." He believes it is time to give “equal opportunity” to another model.

Thus, on issue after issue, this pope advises that we “wait and see” but also prepare ourselves with clear standards for judging what actually happens. And for THAT job, Catholic Social Teaching provides a valuable legacy.

"By their fruits you will know them...."—and By His Fruits You Will know Him.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017