Catholicism and Wealth Redistribution

(Catholic Family News) – Subsidiarity requires healthy and robust mediating bodies and institutions with important roles to play in preventing and correcting violations of commutative and distributive justice.  Calling simply for redistribution by the State violates the principle articulated by Pius XI: “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.”



Catholicism and Wealth Redistribution
 
By Brian McCall, J.D.
In a recent address to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major U.N. agencies His Holiness Pope Francis is reported to have called for “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state”  to help curb the “economy of exclusion.”[1]  Unfortunately, the Vatican has not made available the actual text of the speech and all that exists at the time of writing this article is a report by the media in attendance.  Yet, the call for redistribution by the State and general denunciations of inequality are consistent with many passages in His Holiness’ extremely lengthy Apostolic Exhortation,Evangelii Gaudium.[2]

Francis’ general denunciations of inequality and calls for wealth redistribution by the State have been hailed with joy by Marxists and others with Socialist leanings.  Although the great popes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were falsely accused of favoring Socialism,[3] these same popes were also accused by Socialists as unduly favoring Classical Liberal Capitalism.  The fact that both of these forms of Liberalism accused the popes of being of the other type indicates the truly independent stance of these popes on Catholic principles. 
As far as I am aware, no one has publicly suggested that Pope Francis favors Liberal Capitalism.  The only accusation seems to be one of Socialist sympathies.  Leo XIII and his successors were unjustly accused of being adherents of both Socialism and Capitalism because they rejected both systems as false philosophies (although acknowledging that the false systems may accidentally contain some elements of truth).  These popes taught neither Classical Liberal Capitalism nor Liberal Socialism but Catholicism which opposes all forms of Liberalism.  The popes avoided the errors of both of these Liberal systems because they refused to limit themselves to the imprecise generalities employed by the polemicists for both of them.  They presented Catholic teaching on economic justice with all its critical distinctions.  Thereby, they avoided the errors of both systems.

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