Catholicism’s Social Teaching

Dropping in quickly again to mention Just Thomism’s post on the Catholic Church’s socio-economic policy, as stated in its catechism:

The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with “communism” or “socialism.” She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.

In other words, it rejects both Adam Smith and Karl Marx; both individualism and collectivism. In explaining this to the class, it became clear that this was, in effect, to reject the ideals of the left, right and center. The class ended with no one in the room having any idea what the Church thought a just regime would look like.

I’ll ignore the glaring error of separating “human labor” from market forces (it’s not…even non-free market economists know labor is lumped in with market forces, because it’s, uh, a market force).

The problem here is JT’s—and possibly the Church’s—presumption that a regime could be just in the first place. It’s my contention that there cannot be a just regime by definition of what the state is: an entity that reserves the exclusive right of the use of force as its defining characteristic should not be supported by any Christian. At least, not supported any more than one of the various forms of the mafia worldwide that we could find—or, to put it in a more microcosmic context: a crazed man walking around, door to door, pointing a gun at people and demanding money.