Catholicism and the Ideological Temptation
by James Kalb
The Church's mission is to proclaim the truth about man and the world—a mission which comes ahead of political alliances for limited goods that are quite obviously intertwined with intrinsic evils
Stubborn differences on political and social issues usually come out of problems regarding basic understandings. It’s not always obvious what the problems are. Most often they have to do with something that goes without saying for at least some of those involved. The result of that situation is that people see their opponents as willful, perverse, or irrational—as people who simply refuse to accept what’s obviously right.
Examples include “gay marriage” and other issues relating to sex. Those who see man as self-defining and the physical world as raw material for his projects see the issues one way. We write our own ticket in sexual matters, and anyone who disapproves is a bigot, would-be oppressor, and probably psychologically disordered. Those who see man as social, the physical world as meaningful, and the family as basic to society see them quite another.
Another example is the dispute between “social justice” Catholics who emphasize government protections and benefits, and their less statist, more distributist, or more libertarian counterparts, who emphasize the role of individual, family, local, religious, and other non-governmental arrangements, and therefore limit the direct role of government.
How the dispute plays out is somewhat complicated. It should be a matter of emphasis rather than principle, since Catholicism is prudent and moderate on such matters. It rejects libertarianism, which dissolves the common good into private goods, so that the function of government is reduced to protecting individuals from physical assault and violation of property rights, and also socialism, which dissolves private goods into the public good, and wants government to administer both as part of a single comprehensive system. Both views go astray by trying to impose a single principle on everything. They ignore the complexity of man as a being that is at once individual, material, social, and spiritual, and of society as a system made up of infinitely varied forms of cooperation and competition with respect to the whole range of human concerns.
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www.catholicworldreport.com
Stubborn differences on political and social issues usually come out of problems regarding basic understandings. It’s not always obvious what the problems are. Most often they have to do with something that goes without saying for at least some of those involved. The result of that situation is that people see their opponents as willful, perverse, or irrational—as people who simply refuse to accept what’s obviously right.
Examples include “gay marriage” and other issues relating to sex. Those who see man as self-defining and the physical world as raw material for his projects see the issues one way. We write our own ticket in sexual matters, and anyone who disapproves is a bigot, would-be oppressor, and probably psychologically disordered. Those who see man as social, the physical world as meaningful, and the family as basic to society see them quite another.
Another example is the dispute between “social justice” Catholics who emphasize government protections and benefits, and their less statist, more distributist, or more libertarian counterparts, who emphasize the role of individual, family, local, religious, and other non-governmental arrangements, and therefore limit the direct role of government.
How the dispute plays out is somewhat complicated. It should be a matter of emphasis rather than principle, since Catholicism is prudent and moderate on such matters. It rejects libertarianism, which dissolves the common good into private goods, so that the function of government is reduced to protecting individuals from physical assault and violation of property rights, and also socialism, which dissolves private goods into the public good, and wants government to administer both as part of a single comprehensive system. Both views go astray by trying to impose a single principle on everything. They ignore the complexity of man as a being that is at once individual, material, social, and spiritual, and of society as a system made up of infinitely varied forms of cooperation and competition with respect to the whole range of human concerns.
...........
www.catholicworldreport.com
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