Love your neighbor

The encyclicals of Pope Benedict XVI have rekindled the debate among our Catholic brothers and sisters on the issue of social justice. In his critique "Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red: The revenge of Justice and Peace (or so they may think)," George Weigel expresses a concern that members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace have inserted some socialistic ideas in the last authoritative Vatican document. People who care about individual liberties may fear that a certain lack of clarity in the sections discussing the poor could provide ammunition to those who seek to increase the power of bureaucracies, both national and supranational, over our lives. I am not a "Vaticanologist" (so it is possible that I am missing something) but I do not see the document as a clear and present threat to any of our unalienable rights. (See also Alisa's post from yesterday on the evangelical reaction.)

The encyclical clearly warns that the needs of those who fall through the cracks of the free market system cannot be met adequately by "giving through duty (the logic of public obligation, imposed by State law)." This is precisely the point that laissez-faire advocates have been making since the rise of the Nanny State. Further, not only are government welfare programs inefficient and wasteful, they are "corrosive" for virtue. Forced redistribution undermines the spirit of charity, "attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law."

It may have been better had the encyclical clarified a few points (such as what "cross-fertilization between different types of business activity" could look like). And it would have been great had the pope emphasized how globalization increases the capacity of humanity to create more wealth by opening new opportunities for "the peoples in hunger" to participate in a larger market as opposed to the so-called progressive idea of redistributing a fixed pie. But the core of the argument is one that should be enthusiastically supported by any Christian who loves freedom, justice, and truth:

"[P]roclamation of the truth of Christ's love . . . preserves and expresses charity's power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history. . . . [T]he search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth. . . . In promoting development, the Christian faith does not rely on privilege or positions of power . . . but only on Christ."