When Did Personal Responsibility Become More Important Than Helping Ot

[havok579257]

One of my big problems with a lot of people on these boards is that they put personal responsibility far and above helping other. That if you don't make enough money, have a good enough job to pay for all possible instances of something happening like a severe health condition or accident, have good enough healthcare, have enough food to feed your children, don't have the ability to send your children to the best private schools, well then to bad. Cause that's your problem and not mine and its more important to me that you not take my money than you getting the help you need. I guess I just don't see where the catholic church teaches that personal responsibility trumps helping others.

Oh and for the record so this does NOT turn political, I am not a democrat or republican or liberal or conservative... i am catholic.

[Aloysius]

subsidiarity and solidarity are two important principals. keep power from being overly centralized, while expanding our ability to stand with and help the poor and disenfranchised everywhere in the nation and around the world. exactly how that is done, under what system, how we balance it so that enforcing justice is not just an excuse for imposing tyranny... those are difficult questions. but as Catholics we cannot be the types of cold rational objectivists that don't think people in need should be helped not just by private charity but by the enforcement of the justice that requires that they be helped.

[qfnol31]

I want to post something here because I come off as a really big (neo-)conservative all the time, bashing that sort of funding. I highly believe in supporting the lower in society, giving to the poor, protecting the vulnerable, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, etc.

I just think that private parties like the Catholic Church are much better at doing so. I don't think that the government is the most efficient or trustworthy means of doing any of this. I think that private organizations, particularly religious communities, ought to be rewarded for doing so. I think private individuals should be rewarded as well and so I support tax breaks for individuals who give to the poor. I think that Catholics in particular have a responsibility. That's why I make sure my family tithes. When I wasn't swamped in work I used to volunteer all the time and hope to get my kids to do the same.

All this isn't to get praise, but to demonstrate that I think it is possible to be socially conservative and still care about those who need it. In fact, I think true conservatism of this sort requires that type of attitude. I just don't want government to be the only source of aid.

[Anomaly]

[b]II. RESPECT FOR PERSONS AND THEIR GOODS[/b]
[b]2407[/b] In economic matters, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of [i]temperance[/i], so as to moderate attachment to this world's goods; the practice of the virtue of [i]justice[/i], to preserve our neighbor's rights and render him what is his due; and the practice of [i]solidarity[/i], in accordance with the golden rule and in keeping with the generosity of the Lord, who "though he was rich, yet for your sake . . . became poor so that by his poverty, you might become rich."[sup][size=2]190[/size][/sup]

[b]2425 [/b]The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with "communism" or "socialism."

havok,
It's about respecting the property rights of people who labor for their property and the fact that although giving to the poor may be a moral obligation, there is no logical provison that it must be done against their will. We are free to do or not do. So yeah, sorry about your luck (or the fact that it seems God didn't love you enough to bless you with health, employment, or money) in losing your job, getting a disease, or not being able to send your kids to the best private schools.

Edited November 2, 2012 by Anomaly

[Aloysius]

This is probably a good time for someone to post all them there papal quotes that make the simplistic understanding of the Church's doctrines on property and subsidiarity rather uncomfortable by emphasizing solidarity and being okay with big bad government... but I'm just a guy eating popcorn....

despite my love of Ron Paul, my economist of choice is Heinrich Pesch who treats us more like human beings, not the cold calculating mathematical reductionism of Ludwig von Mises.

[CatherineM]

As someone who has had to use services, the Church was worthless to help. Catholic Charities and St. Vincent gave no help. The government did.

[Anomaly]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1351872282' post='2502954']
As someone who has had to use services, the Church was worthless to help. Catholic Charities and St. Vincent gave no help. The government did.
[/quote]failure of the Government to take money who's opinion my differ, or failure of the millions of Catholics who belong to an organization that preaches its a moral obligation?

[dUSt]

Who is Ot?

[Era Might]

The problem with "private charity" is that it is a choice, not a right. Nobody can "demand" charity, and that's not what people demand of the government. The overarching question is whether the physical well-being of people in a society is a matter of justice (the "general welfare" which the US Constitution requires the government to promote). Most everyone accepts the existence of taxes...the question is then, if the government is going to make such a demand upon us, to take our money for the general welfare, then we have a right to determine how that money will be used, and what constitutes "the general welfare."

What happens in a society where "private charity" becomes the norm of public welfare? The private charity givers become another oppressive system because they are already in a superior position...they are the ones doing the giving, and they always have that sword hanging over everyone's head. That's also been the logic in economic systems (e.g., companies in Latin America who became like benevolent plantation owners, but underlying the system was always the power relation between giver and receiver). One can see the same logic in contemporary conservative obsessions with giving people paychecks instead of welfare...the paycheck giver becomes the welfare upon whom workers are dependent, it's just a transfer of power.

Edited November 2, 2012 by Era Might

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1351872282' post='2502954']
As someone who has had to use services, the Church was worthless to help. Catholic Charities and St. Vincent gave no help. The government did.
[/quote]

The opposite was true when I had all my surgeries when I was young. Without the Church, the Doctors who waved their fees and Ronald McDonald I'd be dead or a veggie.

[Aloysius]

I think one thing people need to recognize is that enforcing justice CAN mean enforcing charity. sure we should to make voluntary charities so super-effective that there is no injustice left; but so long as there is injustice left the government can enforce justice on the situation. the Catholic doctrine that the resources of the earth are meant for mankind as a whole means that there is absolutely justification in Catholic morality for recognizing that when some people are unable to get by but others have more than enough to do so, justice demands that the excess wealth be used to help the less fortunate. because that's a matter of justice, the government can certainly enforce it. it's an uncomfortable truth for those of us who lean more libertarian like myself, and there are certainly various systems that this can be accomplished under so you don't have to be a dirty keynsian or a socialist or a democrat, but it's a fact that Catholic Social Teaching absolutely recognizes and whatever system we adopt we need to recognize it--the demands of justice mean that charity is not just a nice extra little non-obligatory thing that rich people can choose to do with their money if they wish to, it's an absolute requirement of justice.

[Aloysius]

this thread is making me really want to do some thorough Pesch readings and post a thorough argument, I even have the idea for where I'll place the Chesterton, Pius XI, and JPII quotes during the course of it, but I'm really trying to do readings for class but I keep getting distracted by phatmass :wacky: stop sucking me in phatmass!!!! AAAHHHHHH

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1351879395' post='2503026']
this thread is making me really want to do some thorough Pesch readings and post a thorough argument, I even have the idea for where I'll place the Chesterton, Pius XI, and JPII quotes during the course of it, but I'm really trying to do readings for class but I keep getting distracted by phatmass :wacky: stop sucking me in phatmass!!!! AAAHHHHHH
[/quote]
I am interested in this Heinrich Pesch guy, but I do not know where to start in terms of getting to know his views. Do you have any recommendations on books?

[Aloysius]

http://books.google.be/books?id=htpXgf5dyS4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Can't get the whole thing there, but that's a good book to get his works in. Both Pius XI and John Paul II were influenced by him in their economic ideas.

[Aloysius]

here's a good article about him: http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=0205-storck