LewRockwell.com - What's Wrong with 'Distributism' by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Beyond Distributism by Thomas E Woods, Jr.
Troubled by rampant injustice and inequality, many conscientious Christians advocate radical economic reforms. Distributism, a program that traces its popularity to Catholic writers Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, promotes the widespread ownership of property by tempering the market with guilds or similar associations. Thomas Woods, drawing on a wealth of historical evidence and informed by Catholic social teaching and economic insight, argues that the distributist case is severely flawed. By its nature, distributism must invoke the power of the state, a dangerous move that ultimately undermines its own objectives. Economic freedom in a market system, Woods advises, is a context more conducive to justice and human flourishing.
The Remnant Editor’s Note: This spring and summer will feature two major book publications by our longtime columnist Christopher A. Ferrara. Heading to the presses in a matter of days is The Church and the Libertarian, a defense of the Catholic teaching on Man, Economy and State against its radical libertarian opponents. (Remnant Press)
Coming on September 1 is Liberty: the God that Failed, which examines “the long chain of frauds and usurpations” by which the common man was subjected to the power of secularized central governments founded on the very principles radical libertarians defend (even as they complain about the resulting abuses of state power and call for an “anarcho-capitalist” utopia).
One cannot understand the perilous situation in which our Pope finds himself today without recognizing that he is struggling against a social order whose anti-Catholic and Masonic foundations have long since been forgotten. In the following excerpt from Liberty: the God that Failed, Mr. Ferrara provides a sketch of Pope Leo XIII’s own struggle against the forces that were constructing political modernity during his pontificate by the violent overthrow of Catholic social order in country after country. By reviewing this history we can learn not only how the Church arrived at her present state of crisis but also what we can expect in the future if she is not completely reformed according to her own sacred Tradition. MJM
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3 comments:
Leo XIII was a liberal in the humanist vein of Pio Nono, and reform began way back with with Venerable Rosmini. Unfortunately the grave evils of the 20th Century that erupted from the festering wounds of the 19th massively distracted the intellectual project of constitutional philosophy pursued by the Italian Catholics in Risorgimento.
Aggiornamento and Resourcement are the blessed salve the Holy Spirit has seen fitting for the 19thC sins of our Fathers (an imprudent focus on 'authority' at the expense of the Author). Any harkening to "tradition" is hollow, a clanging cymbal, if not animated by Love, proclaiming the liberty designed by Our Redeemer to be expressed, experienced and exhausted in the social order, in "communio." Those of us today who would claim an antique pedigree from an 100-year old heritage (Centisimus Annus) need to be familiar with the social context of centuries past. I recommend reading Rosmini's recently Italian-to-English-translated "The Constitution under social justice," http://books.google.com/books?id=y63Mggc2irEC
We have much to learn from his erudition, a scholar of natural law and expert in ecclesial-secular politics who foresaw the rampant moral hazard of the present day!
Worth a mention, from new editor of HPR, Fr Meconi,
"When von Balthasar called the Church to raze her bastions and confidently enter the world with message and vision renewed, he wrote: “Let us therefore not cling tightly to structures of thought, but let us plunge into the primal demands of the Gospel, which are also the primal graces, visible and capable of being grasped in the example of Christ, who gave himself for all in order to save all.”9 In this imitation of Christ we too must let go of all that keeps us from “plunging” into the demands of love. We must, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, go from God to the world speaking boldly (the gift of parrhesia), with “straightforward simplicity, filial trust, joyous assurance, humble boldness, the certainty of being loved” (§2778).""
tip of the hat to:
http://somehavehats.typepad.com/some_wear_clerics/2010/06/action-jesuit-excellentness-over-at-hpr.html
And to delve the mystery of the Magisterium instead of Ferrara may I recommend you read Southerner Flannery O'Connor of course
http://novelsandstories.blogspot.com/2010/05/flannery-oconnors-temple-of-holy-ghost.html
whose secret is a generative gift of Gothic wonder that far surpasses the crackpot conspiricies of RadTrads
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