The Pope rightly criticizes three predominating elements of contemporary Western culture, whether Limbaugh likes it or not ...

A Critique of Crypto-Catholic Culture: 

What Pope Francis Should or May be Saying

by Timothy Gordon

Catholic Answers’ indefatigable Jimmy Akin recentlydefended Pope Francis against charges of Marxism leveled by the likes of the irrepressible Rush Limbaugh. In a word, Pope Francis is not a Marxist: on that score, Akin is flat right and Limbaugh flat wrong. The Pope concerns himself about Catholic social teaching and nothing more. Fair enough.

However, the story—notwithstanding its flatness—does not end there. While, as Akin clarifies, Pope Francis avers with unequivocality that “Marxist ideology is wrong,” he also reaffirms the West’s sneaking suspicion that the Pope holds out against capitalism to boot—and by the sound of it, just as steadfastly so. This rekindles the just-now-assuaged concern of many: it’s not capitalism which killed an astronomical amount of millions over the last two centuries, after all.

So what is all this Catholic criticism of limited government and free enterprise—two doctrines long supported, not opposed, by Classical and Medieval thought?

In an uncharacteristically moderate tone, I will mediate between Akin’s position and Limbaugh’s (each of these has my deference…in his own purview) by showing what Catholic social teaching actually requires. Thomas Aquinas, Hans Ulrich Von Balthasar, and Pope Benedict XVI all lend voice to the teaching wisdom of encyclicals topically relevant to the matter, such as Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum.

I only assume this is what Pope Francis has been saying…

Here’s the upshot. Three simple propositions of life in a republic (particularly the American one) can be vindicated on the basis of the Natural Law distilled by such Catholic social teaching: 

1) extremely limited government (microscopic even) in the context of sacrilized, “natural community” individualism, not a context of isolated, radical subjectivism;  

2) subsidiarity based on liberty, not license;  

3) capitalism, as long as it rejects consumerism. 

In each case, one notices, both a proper and an improper instance of a republican element suggests itself. 

The proper instance of each has its basis in the Natural Law. The close likeness being distinguished presents a cautionary example which subtly inverts the Natural Law. As such, even proper individualism is never more than a step away from devolving to subjectivism; liberty to license; capitalism to consumerism. Perhaps this has been the Pope’s point all along. Onehopes.

In short, radical individualism (subjectivism), license, and consumerismfollow only upon a wrongheaded conception of the sine qua nons demanded by republicanism and free enterprise.

But before delving into these three positions which may (or may not) contour the Pope’s critique of Western culture, as articulated in a handful of statements over the past six months, a few caveats bear mention. These serve to justify Limbaugh’s fear of papal Marxism a little, since his conjecture was based as much on what the Pope has not said as upon that which he has said.

First off, Limbaugh’s errant conclusion should be cursorily defended on the grounds of categorical logic alone: if one is not a capitalist, then what is he exactly? 

Any non-capitalist political economy posits one form or another of central planning, or simply, “statism.”

Just as Justice Antonin Scalia regularly responds to opponents attempting to reify some sort of midpoint between a jurisprudence of Originalism and one of purely fabricated judge-made law (abandoning the fixed meaning of text for judicial ad hoc, instead): “Originalism is the only game in town.” At least, it is the only game which upholds government by law, not whimsy.

 The “mid-point” is mythic, imagined, imperium in imperio, “the principle of the excluded middle.” 

And suggesting otherwise is jurisprudential delusion. Well, similarly, capitalism is the “only non-statist political economy in town.” Suggesting otherwise is economic delusion. 

If your government takes certain action involving the exchange of commodities, then you have statism. Period. There is no middle ground between an economy run by government and one not run by it. 

Thus, rejecting capitalism and Marxism together has—as a pseudo-notion gaining alarming momentum in the Catholic world—never gotten off the unintelligibility horn.

Secondly, the above “excluded middle” theory of political economy accrues to the muddled definition of the term “capitalism” itself, now bastardized beyond all recognizability. 

“Capitalism” involves two concepts, and no more: 

1) private ownership of property, or entitlement to benefit; 

2) a rule against governmental impairment—proactive or retroactive—of private contracts (e.g. purchase or employment contracts). 

That’s all. Capitalism doesn’t involve anything more conceptually complex than that, evil oil tycoons and cartoonish swan dives into of troves of riches notwithstanding. 

And as Akin affirms, the Pope explicitly defends the former aspect of capitalism, holding in Evangelii Gaudium that “private ownership of goods is justified.” 

Yet, like most conservatives or liberals, he deigns against commenting on the (only slightly) more technical second element, private contracts. 

But whether he would affirm or deny it, the Catholic Church has long acknowledged the necessity of reasonably unmolested private contracting:

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.” Rerum Novarum, p. 45: May 15, 1891.

In short, humans should contract with one another fairly. If they don’t, they violate the Natural Law—but the sacrosanct freedom of contract obtains. 

Thus, Limbaugh’s concern about the Pope’s fusty attitude toward capitalism is fair, or at least understandable, given the concept’s abiding mis-reputation.

And it’s even more condonable in light of the Pope’s comment that he has known “many Marxists who were good people.” 

While that may be the plain truth, Marxism remains the most numerically murderous human force since the 1800’s. One doubts whether the Pope would similarly neglect to “feel offended” if he were to be confused with a National Socialist, from whose ranks certainly there emerges at least one “good person,” in the attenuated sense in which he uses the term (a loophole for calling Commies or Nazis good, in my humble opinion).

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