We Must Infuse Catholicism Into Civil Society. Here's a Strategy.

THE MONEY PROBLEM

In Money Manipulation and the Social Order, Rev. Denis Fahey C.S.Sp. highlights the cause of civil society's economic self-destruction making clear potential solutions.

“The renting of the mystical Body," he states, "by the so-called Reformation movement and the uprise of private judgment or individualism on the supernatural level, let inevitably to the breaking of the guild organization and to the uprise of individualism, that is, of unbridled self-organization." The result? A market of goods and services lacking coherent character and unity of purpose. What we see is a melting pot that never cools into a distinct regional character.

Furthermore, we witness the accumulation of wealth for individual or familial progress without a coordinated plan to reinvest with others, tangibly, in the City. Real investment. Not investment aimed at exclusively or mostly at the growth of capital, but, a step further, the growth of commonwealth.

Wealth consists of the realization of the constituent parts of regional character through the coordinated efforts of elites and subjects. When successful a cultured ensemble of citizens, art, music, customs, manners, clubs, education, and businesses, arise to form a commonwealth. Without such effort and coordination, a sign of little charity, we get slums, bourgeois cookie-cutter suburbs, monopolistic internet marketplaces, museums, class and party struggle, and superficial communities. When charity is present we get Christendom.

THE DEFORMED MODERN CHRISTIAN

According to Professor George O'Brien, Calvinism's doctrine of predestination, which tended to emphasize success as a sign of predestination, played a large role in the creation of the present state characterized by "unlimited competition, unscrupulous under selling and feverish advertising was inevitably the subordination of human beings to production."

“The new conception of [Calvinist] Christianity," writes Father Eustace Dudley, "which replaced the old ideal, taught a radically different Doctrine regarding the relation of this life to the next, and particularly as regards the value and purpose of good works and more living." The old ideal that made cooperation between the classes mandatory, the old ideal that emphasized every citizen as a key player in realizing the personality of a locality was replaced.

Calvinism thus "produced the Prudent painstaking type of Christian with a great passion for [a limited notion of] duty, [rendering] impossible the fulfillment of his duties toward his weaker brethren."

The new "Christian" came to err with many political economists, in thinking "that his own enlightened selfishness" stimulated economic growth for the benefit of all. The higher his contribution to the GDP and the greater his thrift to invest in the stock market and "passive income schemes" the more respectable he became. After all, his taxes took care of the poor.

The actual tendency, however, was that "he soon came to classify the poor and less fortunate as the product of laziness and vice, and they, neglected and forgotten, became either the victims of [oligarcical] capitalism or were hidden away in state institutions under the stigma of poverty."

THE NEW CIVIC ASCETICISM: THE REMEDY

"The self-centered economic theories of Calvinism," argued Rev. Fahey, "replaced the self-sacrificing asceticism of members of Christ. The aim of society became not to supply a sufficiency of goods to families so that the human personality of their members might be cultivated to the utmost but to produce as much as possible irrespective of the deleterious effects on the personality of the workers engaged in production.”

So what is necessary? The restoration of a more comprehensive asceticism. One that requires us to strategize, coordinate, organize, and execute plans cooperatively. Long-term and short-term plans adapted to your current infrastructure and the strengths and weaknesses of your particular locality. The question is who will rise up to take on the Burden? Each man has the responsibility to work out how he can and will contribute to every aspect of civil society whether directly or indirectly. He will either pray to serve various leaders or will himself be called to carry the bitter but sublime task of bringing out the character of a particular locality.

Pray then for authentic Catholic elites and pious subjects.

Source: Money Manipulation and the Social Order by Rev. Denis Fahey C.S.Sp. Ch. 9.