To Fox News on Pope Francis: Every Disagreement Is Not a War

Adam Shaw, an editor for FoxNews.com, a self-identified Catholic who writes about Anglo-American and Catholic issues, posted to Fox News’ site last week his take on Pope Francis and capitalism, Pope Francis' War on Aspiration.

Here follows my response to Mr. Shaw.  Fox’s site doesn’t allow for comments, so you won’t see it there.  But I did send it to Mr. Shaw as an e-mail.  I have yet to receive a response.

In your post, you say, "The pope’s snub of the struggle for prosperity is a typically derisive attitude toward the American quest for self-development, and an attitude that is often encountered among rich European liberals, or, in this case, clergymen who have not had to work to provide a better life for their families."

While your next paragraph clarifies that you focus on the family part (as opposed to the "Clergymen who have not had to work" part), the facts suggest otherwise when it comes to whether this pope 'had to work' or not, knows privation or not:

1.  The Pope was born in the 1930's.
2.  He has described his own family's loss of everything during that time, in which his own father had no money and no job prospects.
3.  He worked as a janitor and a bouncer, as well as a chemical factory worker before entering seminary.

Not a Catholic myself, I am no defender of the Pope as pope.  But to dismiss his thoughts and views because he does not have children to support, while perhaps noteworthy, is not dispositive.  Even you do not think so, or you would not study the teachings of anyone who did not share your own life experiences, which would mean that you could not be a Christian, Jesus himself having not had (at least to our knowledge) a family himself.

Did he have 'credentials' necessary to speak about that which he did not know from personal experience?  The problem I see is in your logic more than in your own personal conclusions.  Agree with him; disagree with him, but it's problematic, I think, to dismiss Pope Francis because he does not have the life experiences you deem necessary from which to draw.

You then accuse him of 'blundering in', implying that his writings on capitalism, socialism and poverty arise in a vacuum of ignorance.

Consider, please, that the very dismissal you accuse him of you do yourself:  ignoring his context as you say he has ignored yours.  This pope is a man of South America.  Liberation theology, coming specifically out of the Central and South American context, did not arise in a vacuum.  It arose out of the context of massive exploitation of the peoples there economically, socially, politically and spiritually.  This pope speaks the language of liberation theology, a theology that is explicitly about experience.  His people have experienced capitalism first hand in a radically different way that we living in North America have.  It is from that context that he makes his conclusions.  They need not be yours.  But dismissive insults do little to further the dialogue.

Further along, you state, "Yet it is those evil capitalist Catholics who pay for the churches, fund the hospitals, the schools, the soup kitchens and everything else that allows the Church to actually help the poor."

I have to admit that one stunned me.  Having visited Catholic churches around the world, I have observed every stripe of believer, from every type of country with every type of government, contributing to the church and its work.  That includes 'capitalist Catholics', but it also includes non-capitalist Catholics.  To infer that somehow, the Catholics of the United States (which was how I 'heard' what you said) are THE source of the wealth and largess of the Catholic church is to (a) ignore history -- a whole lot of that wealth is compounding interest on the investments of centuries and (b) succumb to the pride of the wealthy -- where would you be without me?  (as a citizen in these United States, I consider myself to be one of the wealthy, so I'm speaking from inside the ball park here).

Finally, your closing quote, "Francis must stop making broad judgmental statements about those striving for success and bring himself back into conformity with Catholic social teaching and reality."  makes me smile -- sadly, but smiling I am.

'Francis must . . . bring himself back into conformity with Catholic social teaching' -- what on earth are you talking about?  I, for one, would really like to know.  You're surely not referring to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement.  Or the Nuns on the Bus.  Or the Berrigan brothers.  Or Oscar Romero.  Or Gutierrez.  Or Lech Walesa.  Or St. Francis himself.  Or Claire.  Or virtually any of the medieval monastics, who themselves eschewed wealth.  So really, what 'teaching' are you referring to?

You call the pope back to 'reality'.  What I hear (and this is speculation on my part, admittedly) is a young man in a capitalistic country who feels personally attacked by the words of the principal spiritual as well as earthly leader of his faith.

As a person of faith myself, might I offer some unsolicited advice (trust me, it's biblical):  when something said by another of faith makes me angry or uncomfortable, my first steps should not be to tell them why they're wrong.  My first steps should be self-examination (think plank and mote here), as I ask myself why these words spark such a negative response in me and seek out my own fault.  It's perhaps the hardest thing for any human being, including we Christians to do:  to intentionally engage in a wee dose of humility.

Because you are a fellow Christian and because you have such a broad public venue for your own thoughts and musings, I beseech you to do that work first.  It might just take you to a different place.

I know it smacks of pride on my part to presuppose that you haven't prayed, meditated, reflected, listened, etc. before coming to and publishing these thoughts of yours.  I make that inference based not on what you said, but based on what you didn't say, for you did not say anything about his context, except in dismissive tones.  You did not say anything about the southern (hemisphere) context out of which he comes.  You did not acknowledge the journey, let alone the autonomy and context, of the other.

I pray that in future, you will.

Yours in Christ,
Beth Pyles

[And what I didn't say then]  This should have been the main point rather than a post-script.  My lapse.

Living in the United States and having a job, family or no family to support, puts you and I ahead of a healthy percentage of the world's population.  It is, may I gently suggest, a bit presumptuous for either you or I to speak 'on behalf of'' the poor or identify ourselves as such, as you at least implicitly do when you refer to your challenges in providing for your family.  That is not to say you don't have challenges.  It is to say that those challenges are nowhere near the challenges of poverty and it is less than honest to say or think that they are.  That life may be difficult does not make one a victim.  That life's difficulties are unjust and threaten to take away life itself does.

Alas, and not surprising, a quick Google search revealed no quotes, comments, articles, blog posts, or analyses of Pope Francis' take on economics by anyone who is actually poor.  I wonder what they make of your Pope?

Praying on the Impoverishment of My Generosity

Rereading me some liberation theology – condemned, as always, but this time, struggling not to be bogged down in guilt (that I am not poor, but wealthy, very wealthy, by the standards of the world) – I stand indicted by some of the first words of the original Introduction to Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation: “My purpose is . . . to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord . . .”

Sigh.

And yet I recall to memory that to stand in judgment before my Lord is not to be bent down as a broken and caught-out criminal, but rather to stand in glory side-by-side with all, claimed, loved, redeemed, set and sent for purpose, fulfilled and unfulfilled, and that judgment this side of heaven is not my rod so much as my guide.

Yesterday we marked the anniversary of the declaration of war on poverty.  It sounds a bit ridiculous, all this war-declaring we seem to like to do.  But the impulse (I leave to others far brighter than I to judge sincerity of intentions at the time) to eradicate (at least some of) the problems associated with poverty – economic, educational, and health care lack – is a good one.

That the conditions of poverty are (often if not always) institutionally created, it also seems good to me that we endeavor to address them in institutional ways, ever mindful of my far more progressive friends’ mistrust of all things institutional.

But if dismantling is not to our liking, maybe what we need is more mantling – more cloaking, but with what?  Perhaps with righteousness – an unpopular word in my time and place.  But even more, perhaps, with love – the act of actual care, of walking alongside, of doing better at doing better.

This, then, in observing yet another anniversary of human (claimed) desire to eradicate the misery of poverty, oppression, injustice, is my prayer . . .

Lord, I hear You telling me that sitting at table together, being the guest rather than always the host, matters.  For the gifts I have received from those with so much less in a material way than I, I give you thanks.  For the lessons in humility, I give you thanks.  For Your ways not being our ways, my way, I give You thanks.  For Your not-always obvious or even apparent ways of blessing the poor, I give you thanks.  When I have trivialized Your beatitude bestowing upon them by trying to make it about something other than genuine material lack, I regret.  When I am impatient because the solutions are hard and often not obvious, I regret.  When I am tempted to judge the worthiness of another before I bestow Your graces shared with me upon them, I regret.  Help me to do better at doing better.  Amen.

BethRant1 - If the Irish Can Do It, So Can You

Facts matter.  And a professor at a respected university ought to know that.  But apparently, when Dr. Walter E. Williams wears the substitute-for-Rush-Limbaugh hat, he takes off his professorial robes.

Dr. Williams subbed for Rush Limbaugh yesterday.  I know because I listened to the show as I drove the mountains between West Virginia and Virginia.

During the time I listened, Dr. Williams touched on health care, gun ownership, social security, and a myriad of other topics of interest to his listeners, including poverty and welfare.

Dr. Williams' views are not mine, but they are his, and as such, I have no quarrel with the man.  But when it comes to facts, well, as my friend Anita is fond of saying, “the facts do not care” if we agree or not.

Hence do I introduce BethRant – a way to alert those reading that this is just that – my own rant against someone I think has gotten ‘it’ wrong and ought to know better.  Be warned: BethRants are political.  Of course, I think everything is political, but hey, that’s just me.

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When the poor Irish fled the Potato Famine and arrived in New York with just the clothes on their backs, did they get food stamps? If not, how did they make it? -Dr. Williams

Well, Dr. Williams, they didn’t.  The poorest of the poor could not afford to emigrate in the first place Watertown Daily Times, so they starved to death in Ireland - more than a million of them.  Then they died on the ships coming over – so many died that the ships were referred to as ‘coffin ships’.  Then they died in quarantine once they got here.  One expert estimates that more than a third of those on ships for Canada died en route or in quarantine. Constitutional Rights Foundation

Thus, those left to actually enter the Americas were the healthiest, the most physically fit, and those with the most resources.  It was survival of the fittest at its ugliest.  But even that wasn't enough.

In Boston, cholera was rampant among the new immigrants and sixty per cent of Irish children born in Boston during that time didn’t live to see their sixth birthday.  Adults lived on average just six years after arriving from Ireland.  Infant mortality was equally high in New York City. History Place

If one is to make the case that public welfare is not only not the business of government, but also is not necessary, when pointing to historical precedent, it is self-evident that the precedent must apply.  The fact is that the Irish immigrant experience to the Americas is not a case-in-point for Dr. Williams’ proposition that welfare is not necessary for the survival of the poor.  The Irish immigrant experience actually proves the opposite: absent any coordinated effort at assistance to those without food, they will die.  Some will die quickly of starvation and more will die slowly of malnutrition, disease, and the ground-swell of social ills that prey on those too weak to defend themselves against the onslaught.

But we know this, don’t we?

So why do we keep insisting that it isn’t true?

The only reason I can come up with is self-interest – greedy self-interest that requires a number of things in order to alleviate myself from my human obligation to help:

(1) I see myself as a good and moral person – absent this self-perception, the self-deception would not be necessary: I could simply say what’s mine is mine and too bad for you and be done with it.

(2) I must see my neighbor in dire need as someone who has brought their misfortune upon themselves – for if they did not bring this upon themselves somehow, if they are simply an innocent victim of circumstance, my good and moral heart would be stirred to step in and help.

(3) I must see history as proving my point – precedent, what’s been done before, has great persuasive value.  If it was good enough for the ancestors, so the saying goes . . . Of course, historical facts to the contrary can be awfully inconvenient to such an approach.  

And thus do I say, shame on you, Dr. Williams.  You are an economist by training and experience.  You should know better than most that poverty is a systemic thing much more than it is the narrative of any one individual and that systems gather power and wealth and resources unto themselves, loathe to share, especially with those in no position to bargain.

Does that mean the poor, as individuals or as a class, have no ability or no opportunity to alter their circumstances?  Of course not.  But let us not pretend that they enter the playing field with anything approaching an equal chance to you and I, who ate our fill last night.

So please, make your case against the modern welfare state somewhere other than on the backs of dead Irish immigrants -- they simply aren't strong enough to support your position.

RantEnd



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Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario. Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.  George Mason University