Pope Francis is making it harder and harder for some Catholics to stay Catholic. Is he stressing the familiar commandments about chastity and same-sex marriage, birth control and abortion to the point of discouragement? Incurring wrath of some critics, he is steering attention away from these vital issues with the hope that Catholics are well aware of them already, shifting instead to less familiar but also old issues like how the gifts of God’s creation must be made available to all people, even to those with less money and luck than us.
Like Jesus before the scribes and Pharisees, the pope is being scolded by the high priests of finance for, as Rush Limbaugh put it, mouthing socialism. Imagine the gall. What Rush calls socialism, traditional Catholic social doctrine calls redistribution, something abominable to those who think they have absolute right to material possessions in a country long accustomed to redistribute via taxes from those who have more to those who have less. It’s called progressive taxation. Those who get more pay more. The concept is both fair and simple.
The faulty premise of the papal critics is their presumption that the rich have possessions because they earned them presumably without the help of employees who do not fairly share in the fruit of the joint effort to manufacture something or serve someone. This too is a simple, fair concept. Catholic teaching long has held that workers are entitled to a living wage. This is pay that will allow the worker and his or her family to live not in luxury but decently. I take for granted that readers already know the unarguable numbers made available by non-partisan sources showing the growing gap between the rich and the poor. I also assume all know that if this continues, economic catastrophe awaits us all.
Another assumption of mine is that the well-to-do are in a far better position to engineer government to serve them rather than the common good, as is its sworn duty. It is the government that long ago decided, at the prodding of the wealthy agriculture lobby, to exclude field laborers from the minimum-wage laws, leaving migrant pickers vulnerable to the greed of unscrupulous employers. The homeless are at the mercy of state and municipal governments when seeking affordable – again, not luxurious-housing, since this is one of the many rights the poor have as well as do the rich, at least if you subscribe to time-honored Catholic teaching.
We American Catholics may not realize that we live in a land that takes rugged individualism as religious orthodoxy. It enjoys an almost theological aura. Some see concern for others as collectivism, its opposite. So they shun it. They prefer to guard their material possessions from less fortunate people, often minorities, telling them to get a job. Of course, that is easier than dealing with realities like there being three applicants in our country for every job offered. Those hiring tend to favor fellow Caucasians, claiming that others are not as well qualified. But then how could they be if they have been systematically denied decent housing, adequate schools, transportation to work and a stable family life unaffected by ghetto scourges like substance abuse, separation, incarceration and other social ills?
Redistribution complaints of the well-to-do express themselves in whole political parties lining up against the poor to cut their tax-supported benefits, lowering the taxes of those who deny any responsibility to the underpaid, under-respected underclass. Of course, Pope Francis is not endearing himself to these. I view some 70 online political cartoons every day. It’s instructive getting the pulse of pundits who reflect public opinion. One cartoon features Jesus and the pope side by side, with the caption “Commies.” Another shows Pope Francis being described morosely by one millionaire to another, “I’ve seen that guy before.” A third pictures Jesus preaching that we must give to the poor while a man with a revolutionary-era hat from which hang tea bags shouts, “Redistributionist!”
We American Catholics sometimes have to ask ourselves whether we should be more Catholic than American, or vice versa. We don’t like being in the position of having to choose, especially since we wrongly assume that what is American is Catholic and vice versa. You would think legalized abortion had settled that long ago. To the chagrin of many, the pope is showing what he means by wanting a poor church for the poor. Because these things are so, the Second Amendment must be repealed.
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