Light On Dark Water

This Is My Opinion of Evangelii Gaudium

Actually, I still haven't quite finished it, but I'm close, and I'm impatient to say what I think: this is a wonderful document. 

I mostly kept to my intention of avoiding commentary about the work, wanting to encounter it with as little preconception as I could manage, but it was impossible to avoid hearing the sounds of right and left clashing over it. It's a shame, and a measure of how much our poisonous political culture dominates everything, that a document which is above all a passionate challenge to all Catholics to live their faith more fully and to actively communicate it, should be treated as a weapon to be wielded in political combat. A document which deplores disunity has been made an occasion of it.

The Catholic left apparently is happy that EG has some harsh words for capitalism, for economic theories and practices which rely excessively on market forces. But the more important fact is that it poses a challenge for everyone, regardless of politics and beyond politics. I'd say that anyone who reads it and does not feel a profound personal challenge is missing its most important message.

I do have a few quibbles here and there, and I have to say that in its effort to cover a great deal of ground it begins to seem diffuse, and to lose energy somewhat toward the end. I may write something longer about it. But for now I only want to say how fine it is, and that it should inspire all of us to put it into practice. There is an Anglican collect which Fr. Matt mentioned a few weeks ago which urges us "to hear…, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest [the scriptures]." Those words kept coming to mind as I read Evangelii Gaudium. It may not be scripture, but that's what we should be doing with it. 

 

Maclin Horton

132 responses to “This Is My Opinion of Evangelii Gaudium”

  1. janet

    I really need to read this.
    I also want to say that this is a great example of the reason I love this blog, and why I think it’s important. There are so few people out there that would even attempt to approach this encyclical with any real objectivity. Everything this pope says, indeed, everything anybody says is judged by its usefulness in shoring up one’s own preconceived opinions. So, thank you for this, and for all the other posts thst you have written in a similar spirit.
    AMDG

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  2. Louise

    I agree, Janet.
    Thankyou, Maclin. One day when I am dealing with fewer challenges than I am right now, I will take the time to read this encyclical.
    I’m not sure anyone else could have persuaded me to, because I have had some concerns about this papacy (while aiming to keep an open mind) which I know you understand. Everyone else seems to be either simply for or against Pope Francis.

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  3. Louise

    I meant, people elsewhere on the internet, not the commenters here

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  4. Louise

    It’s a shame, and a measure of how much our poisonous political culture dominates everything, that a document which is above all a passionate challenge to all Catholics to live their faith more fully and to actively communicate it, should be treated as a weapon to be wielded in political combat. A document which deplores disunity has been made an occasion of it.
    That’s a very sad thing.

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  5. Mac

    Thank you, Janet. I strive to do that, and it’s good to know that it comes through.
    Louise, I’ve had my reservations about some of the things Francis has said and done, but have pretty much been won over now. To some extent the reservations arose from distortions in the media and for that matter in the Catholic commentaries, so it helps a lot to read him directly. I may not even now find him as entirely simpatico as Benedict, but that’s ok–I mean, one has to expect that not every pope will appeal personally to one in the same way.
    To both of you and anyone else who hasn’t read it: it is kind of forbiddingly long, and not equally inspiring. You might try reading just the first chapter. I think you’ll be impressed. And challenged. And really I think the best of it is in the first two chapters (though I have a few pages to go).

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  6. Janet

    I read a good bit of the first chapter last night and early this morning and was very impressed. I’m going to put the second and third paragraphs in the bulletin this weekend.
    AMDG

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  7. Mac

    Very good choice. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” is another reference that comes to mind.
    Unless there’s something really striking in the last 20 or so paragraphs, which I haven’t read yet, I think I’d say the heart of it is in the first two chapters.

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  8. Janet

    You mean those paragraphs make you think of that text?
    AMDG

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  9. Mac

    Right. Those, and others as well. I pasted the whole thing into an Open Office doc so that I could highlight things as I read, and a number of passages are marked because they produced that reaction in me. That’s one reason it’s taken me so long to read it, too–I only have that copy at home, and Open Office is really not the most comfortable way to read it, even on a computer.

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  10. Janet

    You know, you can save the PDF version and email it to your Kindle account, and then deliver it to your Kindle. I did that so I could highlight stuff.
    And I agree, even the bit I’ve read has really had that effect on me.
    I’m afraid I’m going to have to save paragraph 3 for next week’s bulletin. No amount of squishing could get both paragraphs in.
    AMDG

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  11. Robert Gotcher

    Janet, that is why God made 4-pt. font. And magnifying glasses.

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  12. Janet

    The age of our congregation (of the editor of the bulletin) precludes 4 point font. 😉
    AMDG

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  13. Mac

    I thought it was probably possible to do that with the Kindle, but it was too technical for me.:-)

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  14. Louise

    I might be able to manage one or two chapters, so now I’m inspired to read those. Thanks. 🙂

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  15. Janet

    Louise, This is the paragraph I’m printing this weekend:
    The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spirit which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.
    I find the part about the danger to believers to be so true. So often I see daily Mass-goers who are so permanently angry or so permanently listless, and I admit that I’ve been known to suffer from both of those conditions myself, although not all the time.
    AMDG

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  16. Grumpy

    Thanks for this, I enjoyed it. We are plannng to read the doc over Christmas

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  17. Mac

    I think you’ll like it. Aside from the good stuff that Janet has been talking about, you may find it interesting that there are a couple of paragraphs that sound sorta…postmodern. I guess it’s Communion-and-Liberation-speak. Nothing against C&L but Giussani (sp?) is sometimes kind of obscure.

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  18. Robert Gotcher

    B16 was a master of C&L speak.

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  19. Daniel Nichols

    I read it on the Vatican site, not exactly hurriedly, but excitedly. I want to read it again prayerfully and slowly, but am waiting for the one I ordered from Amazon to arrive. I really prefer paper; not only can I curl up with it but I can underline it. Man, I love this pope. I keep thinking that I am going to wake up and it turns out to have been just a dream…

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  20. Mac

    Pretty sure it’s real.:-) After some initial reservations, partly due to very selective reporting and commentary, I can say I officially love him, too.
    I prefer paper, too, in general, except that I’d actually rather read something electronically than on the stapled-together 8×10 paper I’d have had if I’d printed the online version myself. More than a few pages of that is a big hassle. And I have to point out the irony that we are talking about reading via Amazon (whether paper or Kindle) a document which criticizes big business.

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  21. Mac

    I never thought of Benedict that way, Robert. I usually found him lucid, and C&L speak somewhat obscure.
    Here, btw, is an instance of what I was thinking of in my remark earlier. It’s from a section called “Time is greater than space.”
    “Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return.”
    To which I added the note: [??]

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  22. Robert Gotcher

    What B16 borrowed from CL (or at least it sounds like borrowing) is the idea that Christianity is first of all not a doctrine, but an event, an encounter.
    The time/space quote makes it sounds like Francis is a P rather than a J in Myers-Briggs.

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  23. Mac

    I meant to reply yesterday to Janet’s comment about anger and listlessness. I’m a little bit surprised to hear that said about daily Mass-goers, but anger has certainly been a pretty visible part of Catholic life for as long as I’ve been in the Church. I associate it with traditionalists on the one side and progressives on the other. Sort of a mirror of our general social division.
    But that doesn’t seem to be what Francis is talking about, exactly. I can see in myself, mostly in my past self, the same combination, but with me it had to do with a general sense that life was difficult and the Church, as an institution, was not helping. At all.
    That description of the psychology of consumerism is perfect.

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  24. Mac

    Ok, at that level I can see the Benedict-CL connection.
    “P rather than J”?

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  25. Janet

    Well, you probably have a point. The people I’m thinking about are mostly older, more traditional people whose anger stems more from the changes they have seen in the Church-some I agree with and I don’t, and liturgical abuse that they see.
    That isn’t want Pope Francis is talking about in that second paragraph, but I think it is what he’s talking about in your C&L-ish quote.
    AMDG

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  26. Robert Gotcher

    Here’s a good description of J and P.
    http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/judging-or-perceiving.asp
    I’m a J, by the way, according to the test.

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  27. Mac

    I suppose I’m probably a J, too, but then…. Actually I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t even want to think about things like this, because they start me trying to classify myself, decide whether I like the classification, then feel bad if I don’t, generally become even more introspective and self-conscious than I already am, which is not pleasant.

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  28. Mac

    But yeah, Francis does sound more P than J.

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  29. Mac

    I’m truthfully not entirely sure what he means in the C&L-ish quote, but it does vaguely sound like he might mean something like that.:-/

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  30. Janet

    I would have to read it in context, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it means. 😉
    AMDG

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  31. Louise

    That’s a good quote, Janet.
    Thanks.

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  32. Daniel Nichols

    And I know your comments are in part, no doubt, directed my way re the scuffling over the document. I do not think this “scuffling” inconsequential; we have been enmeshed in a great battle since 1991 over the meaning of Catholic social doctrine, and for a few years it seemed almost like the neoconservative and libertarians were winning; they certainly became pretty influential in the Vatican of JPII in his dotage. And they have so deeply influenced the American episcopate (not to mention the presbytery) that the bishops have been unable to write an economic letter five years into the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. God bless John Paul, but he, well, equivocated, as in his famous passage in CA, hemming and hawing about what sort of capitalism meets the requirements of a just society.
    Not Francis: “The socio-economic system is unjust at its root.”
    To those of us who have been engaged in this battle for decades, it feels like a new captain has ridden over the hill, rallying the exhausted troops.
    Of course the letter is about more than economics; it is fundamentally about evangelization. But Francis makes it clear that a fundamental aspect of evangelization is justice, and reforming evil social structures that oppress the poor. Thanks be to God; if the neocons and libertarians had succeeded in identifying the Church with the global capitalist system the credibility of Catholicism would have been forever tainted.

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  33. Mac

    I wasn’t thinking of you in particular, but yeah, I did stay away from your blog as part of my general avoidance of the scuffling while reading EG.
    I don’t really agree with your view of the whole situation, not surprisingly, but I’ll leave it at that, since debate would probably not get anywhere.

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  34. Robert Gotcher

    Although I often disagree with Daniel, I do agree with this statement, as I’ve modified it: “if the neocons and libertarians had succeeded in identifying the Church[‘s social doctrine] with the global capitalist system the credibility of Catholicism would have been forever tainted [among secular intellectuals and social justice activists].” I also think Francis has closed that door more forcefully than previous popes (although they really did close the door–Benedict perhaps even more clearly than John Paul II), but not yet at as high a level of authority as it needs to be. Maybe it is better to say Francis is beginning the process of closing that door.
    It is very interesting to me that Weigel has become a great rah-rah for Francis, even though Weigel’s record on social justice issues is so tied to the Catholic neocon program. Has he begun to shift on those questions? I don’t follow him enough to know.

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  35. Art Deco

    It is very interesting to me that Weigel has become a great rah-rah for Francis, even though Weigel’s record on social justice issues is so tied to the Catholic neocon program.
    There is no ‘Catholic neo-con program’.
    It is doubtful you could find anything written by Fr. Neuhaus, Dr. Weigel, or Mr. Novak that discussed issues with a level of particularity which would actually place them in the midst of contemporary policy disputes here, there, or the next place.
    Circumstances in which a term like ‘Catholic neo-con program’ would make minimal sense would include the following:
    1. It was established that command economies, or economies dominated by state enterprise and pervasive mercantilism (like that of Mexico ca. 1964 or Argentina) were normal and free enterprise was deviant.
    2. It was established that it ought be one’s default judgement that every item on the wish list of those in the education and social work trades was desirable and that anyone who objecting to much of anything was behaving illegitimately.

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  36. Robert Gotcher

    Art, you are more educated on these things than I am. I have no idea whether “Catholic neocon” is the best designation for what I’m talking about. I’m specifically talking about the strong critique and I believe distortion of CA given by esp. Novak in 1991.
    Things I think are certain about Catholic social teaching. The Church affirms a regulated market economy. The Church believes cultural transformation, esp. the cultivation of virtue is necessary for justice. The Church leans in the direction of personalist solutions to social problems. The Church believes that the family is at the heart of a healthy society. In the famous pairings: Solidarity is the main theme, subsidiarity is the ancillary, but necessary theme; universal destination of goods is the main theme, private ownership is the ancillary, but necessary theme.
    There’s undoubtedly much more, but I’ve only had one cup of coffee this morning.

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  37. Mac

    I almost agree with that statement as you’ve modified it, Robert, especially as regards those who would have seen Catholic social teaching as discredited. An identification of it with socialism would discredit it in other eyes. I don’t think that there was or is any danger of Catholic social teaching being identified with the “global capitalist system” (or anything else), though it seems there are some who would like that. Nor do I think Francis has closed any door, though I think he has accurately described part of what’s happening.
    What I see is a constant wrangle over the proper relations of commerce, government, markets, etc., which might be healthy if the participants actually listened to each other. I don’t know where in history you would ever find a system that was not “unjust at its roots,” though the degree, livability, and stability vary a lot.

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  38. Mac

    I cross-posted with you, Robert–I agree with your 9:09.

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  39. Robert Gotcher

    I specifically think that some Catholic proponents of the market underestimate the actual distress a substantial part of the global population experience that the distressed can do nothing about themselves, that requires the assistance of virtuous people in the world, and when that fails, some kind of intervention by the state. If Francis closed the door to anything, I’d say it is that underestimation. He certainly didn’t close the door to markets. Or to the primarily personal nature of our responsibility. I acknowledge that there can be and should be wrangling about what are genuine needs, how much we can expect people to take care of their own needs, how much and how we can depend on the virtue of others, and how much and what kind of intervention by the state is needed and what kind is precluded.
    This is all very vague, of course, but I agree with you, Mac, that we should listen to each other, rather than label each other and dismiss each other because “they” are “them.”

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  40. Mac

    I don’t think it’s vague, or no vaguer than is necessary in addressing the big picture. I think it’s very accurate.

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  41. Janet

    I don’t know where in history you would ever find a system that was not “unjust at its roots,” though the degree, livability, and stability vary a lot.
    The theocratic government administered by Moses. And the social systems prescribed in Mosaic Law seem very just and maybe workable, although I don’t know if they were ever really practiced.
    AMDG

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  42. Art Deco

    I think you have several problems in discussing this. You have the policy mix that starboard politicians (in this country and abroad) will put up with, you have the policies they will assent to, you have political rhetoric by politicians (e.g. Ronald Reagan), you have political commentary (by Rush Limbaugh or Mark Steyn or Glenn Reynolds), and then you have what might be called ‘combox’ discourse.
    The content of combox discourse (or caller discourse) actually does resemble the caricature that peace-and-justice Catholics have of public policy pursued by starboard governments. You have this mix of historical and sociological confusion and bad attitudes (an plumb stupidity manifest in the use of terms like ‘tyranny’, ‘totalitarian’, and ‘Obama Marxist Regime’). People like Reynolds or Steyn do not do that, but they are predominantly engaged in critique, which does tend to leave discussion very unbalanced.
    When you come right down to it, Ronald Reagan was not much different in his public speaking (“Government always..”..blah blah blah). You have politicians who actually craft and implement reforms (Giuliani, Thompson of Wisconsin, Sununu of New Hampshire), but none of them ever developed much of a rhetorical shorthand which could displace the Reagan discourse. Alas, the Reagan discourse lends itself to self-validating narratives but not to making a lodestar for actual policy.
    You cannot reconcile the social encyclicals with the social thought of Ayn Rand or Herbert Spencer. The trouble that Catholic Republicans have to confront is that their politicians and fellow partisans often talk like they thought Herbert Spencer delineated the principles of proper social policy (even though Republican policy is nothing like that).
    What’s distressing about this is you talk to partisan Republicans about policy and you draw a complete blank. Their mind is completely occupied by complaints – about the President, about this or that agency, about their tax bill, &c. The only amendment to public policy or political architecture they can comprehend would be repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments. There just is not a whole lot of there there. As for the politicos, you have hacks like Mr. Boehner and lying Ken dolls like Marco Rubio.
    Another problem is the advocacy and policy shops. They tend to focus on lobbying, press releases, and working papers elaborating on narrow topics. As far as I know, the Ethnics and Public Policy center is the only one likely to have people employed therein who have been informed by the social encyclicals or discussions in oddball fora like The Chesterton Review.
    The Popes have been speaking into a public forum that cannot process and digest their words very well at all.

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  43. Mac

    “You cannot reconcile the social encyclicals with the social thought of Ayn Rand or Herbert Spencer. The trouble that Catholic Republicans have to confront is that their politicians and fellow partisans often talk like they thought Herbert Spencer delineated the principles of proper social policy (even though Republican policy is nothing like that).”
    Very true. I don’t have time at the moment to say much, but you made me think of this piece in Crisis which I read yesterday. Somewhere in there, I think closer to the end than the beginning, she goes into that area.

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  44. Mac

    I don’t know, Janet…I guess in its abstract design it’s just, though as you say it may not have been implemented that way. I don’t think any of us would like to live under it. Maybe because it’s just.:-/

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  45. janet

    I’m not sure we’re talking about the same aspects, but I don’t really have time to explain. For the most part I’m thinking about the division of property and and the Jubilee which would keep any family from being permanently in poverty, and other things like that.
    AMDG

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  46. Mac

    Oh, I see–yeah, that’s pretty just. I was thinking of the rules of personal conduct, which are often pretty harsh.

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  47. Daniel Nichols

    Robert: I was not talking about the Church’s credibility among intellectuals and activists, but among the poor a’nd working class, whom you rightly note are victims of corporate capitalism. Sirico and the neocons have done all they can for thirty years to feed this system, and are well-funded by corporate wealth to do so. And since 1991, with CA, they have striven to identify Catholicism with capitalism, and have succeeded in many people’s minds, not least the thousands of priests who accepted Acton’s offer of an all paid holiday at one of their conferences, held in classy hotels. I do not see this struggle as “we are all basically in agreement and only disagree with a few prudential judgements, so let’s be nice.” I view those who feed the global corporate socio-economic system as enemies. Enemies, first, of the poor and of workers, and thus enemies to anyone in solidarity with those who suffer. Don’t worry, I am a Christian and strive to love my enemies.I do not advocate violence, but more than one pope has warned about the wrath of the suffering.

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  48. Robert Gotcher

    Daniel, you said, “I was not talking about the Church’s credibility among intellectuals and activists, but among the poor and working class.” Quite. I thought of that practically the second I sent the post. And I anticipated that you would say exactly that. I was suprized it took so long, since it is so obvious. I also agree that the dispute is not simply over prudential judgment.
    Because I don’t presume to read hearts and I presume that people who claim to be Christian are trying to live their lives and think in a Christian way, I don’t know whether the failure of some of the people in question is the result of ill will or simple ignorance (which I hope is the reason I make bad judgments about things). That is why I tend to think they really don’t get it–the plight of the poor and specifically their paralysis in light of some of the current social structures.
    That is also why I think we need to listen to people like the Zwicks, even when we may disagree with them on particular approaches. They see and witness to the effects of bad human choices and unjust structures first hand.

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  49. Mac

    The point is not to be “nice,” but to exercise charity. This requires assuming your opponent to be operating in good faith and good will, and to treat their views as they themselves understand them.

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  50. Robert Gotcher

    Mac, I hope that is what came across in what I said.

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  51. Mac

    It did. I was replying to Daniel’s “so let’s be nice.”

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  52. Daniel Nichols

    Loving your enemies doesn’t mean you don’t have enemies. When I see deliberate deception, as I have, first with the neocons then with the libertarians, and when I see them funded by corporate money I draw the conclusion that these are enemies.
    And Robert, it took so long to respond because this is a very hard and busy time for letter carriers, complicated by the wintry weather, which hit us hard and early…

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  53. Robert Gotcher

    Daniel,
    re: letter carriers–I bet.
    re: “when I see them funded by corporate money,” This presumes that all corporate interests are always nefarious or at least inimical to the common good. I’m just not sure you can draw that conclusion. But, you may know more than I do about such things.

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  54. Art Deco

    Daniel, Fr. Sirico runs a small publicists’ office that not one Mass-going Catholic in 100 has ever heard of (much less whose work product they can evaluate). I have never quite figured out why the Paulist order and then the Diocese of Kalamazoo assigned him to do this, other than perhaps they do not want him doing anything else.

    When I see deliberate deception, as I have, first with the neocons then with the libertarians, and when I see them funded by corporate money I draw the conclusion that these are enemies.
    What’s deceptive, and what tools do you have to recognize it?

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  55. Art Deco

    The budget of Acton is now fairly bloated. It is still about 1/4th that of the Cato Institute, about 1/5th that of the Southern Poverty Law Center (which does no serious work), about 1/5th that of the Center for American Progress (of the Sorosphere), about 1/5th that of the American Enterprise Institute, and about 1/10th that of the Heritage Foundation. It has, however, raced ahead of the Discovery Institute, the Mackinac Center, the Heartland Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, with a budget between 1.5x and 2.5x any of these.
    Charity Navigator and the summary documentation provided by the institute itself are not clear on who their donors are. There have been some newspaper reports on a donation here and there. They appear to have had a rapid increase in revenues in recent years and put much of the additional inflow into their endowment. The Institute itself reported that 41% of their revenue arrived from two sources. The Bradley Foundation (which I believe is now defunct) was a donor in the past and the DeVos family (who founded AmWay) are reportedly donors either directly or through their foundations. The IRS form 990 indicates Fr. Sirico is overpaid.
    I am still lost about your ‘corporate money’ angle. Corporate foundations are famous for passing cash out without much thought to who gets it (a long running complaint of starboard publicists). Should I stop watching public television?

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  56. Daniel Nichols

    Deception, Exhibit A:http://www.caelumetterra.com/cet_backissues/article.cfm?ID=56

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  57. Daniel Nichols

    More on Sirico: “The connection between Acton Institute and the wealthy Garza family of Monterrey, which was the source of Acton’s financing is little known, is this connection interfaces with the Legionaries of Christ, founded by the disgraced late Marcial Maciel, sexual predator and fraudulent priest. The long-time Vicar General of the Legion, Fr. Luis Garza, is the son of Alejandro Garza Lagüera, the founder, financier, and director in 2000 of Acton Institute. Luis Garza’s brother-in-law, Alfonso Romo Garza, is known as “the global seed king” as his company (Seminis — now part of Monsanto) owns 70% of the world’s vegetable seeds. Acton is an “Independent Think Tank,” which has a mission, “To litter the world with free-market think-tanks [which must be]…independent… of corporations, independent of governments, independent of political parties and even independent of universities.” (quotation by Atlas Corp. — partner company with ACTON — CEO, Alejandro A. Chaufen) And these “think tanks” have also proved to be independent of the legitimate hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The Acton Directors who followed Alejandro Garza Lagüera were: Frank Hanna, III; Frank Hanna, Jr.; and then Robert Sirico. The Hanna Family has been connected with the Legionaries of Christ for decades, and they continue to broker partnerships and to benefit personally from the Legion’s many front organizations. Today, Sirico earns a six-figure salary plus perks as President of the Acton Institute. His Saint Philip Neri House, an oratory where young men go for spiritual discernment has been “in formation” for 14+ years, but has never received official recognition from the Oratorians. Why has no one “followed the money”?
    And yeah, I’m sure the decision by wealthy Grand Rapids Calvinsts (also the Maijer family, who own a chain of big box stores in the Midwest) to fund a guy out to reconcile Catholicism with libertarian economics is just a casual thing , just tossing money around…

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  58. Art Deco

    Deception, Exhibit A:<a href="http://www.caelumetterra.com/cet_backissues/article.cfm?ID=56“>http://www.caelumetterra.com/cet_backissues/article.cfm?ID=56
    That’s not an exhibit of anything. That is a brief commentary on someone else’s reaction to a phrase in a papal encyclical.

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  59. Art Deco

    I am not getting your point. The Acton Institute took contributions from two families which also had a connection to the Legionnaires of Christ.
    So let’s see
    Acton >> Hanna / Garza >> Legion >> Maciel.
    Acton is tainted by a thrice removed connection to a priest who had a history of sexual misconduct.
    You would have done well on Jim Garrison’s staff.

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  60. Art Deco

    You have an issue with these guys:
    http://philipneri.fatcow.com/index.html

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  61. Daniel Nichols

    You know, “Art”, you think I would have learned years ago that conversation with you is futile. Most of the time I have no idea what you are saying and when I do I think you are wrong. To dismiss my analysis of the ways the neocons deliberately “edited” CA, omitting what challenged them, changing words and phrases to match their agenda, adding parenthetical words not justified by the original text, etc, as mere disagreement with someone else’s reaction to the encyclical is, well, dense. Change your alias to “Art Denso”. Please.I’m out of here…

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  62. Mac

    I disagree with Daniel on most of this stuff, obviously. And am not interested in rehashing the futile argument.
    However, there is definitely something amiss in the Nogelhaus editing of CA. It is highly tendentious to say the very least. The most charitable interpretation is that they were so zealous for their views that they really thought they were, in the manner of liberals preaching the “spirit of Vatican II,” getting at the true spirit of CA. In any case they deserved to be challenged. To my knowledge they never made any public response to the challenge. That stands as a blemish on my otherwise pretty high regard for Neuhaus, whose writings generally seemed superior to the others’.

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  63. Robert Gotcher

    It depends on what the word “deceptive” means in this context. If it is inclusive of a good-faith belief on their part that the modifications they made of CA actually reflect an accurate interpretation of the document, then “deceptive” is more like “erroneous interpretation.”
    If they know what they are saying is misleading and they do it anyway for some ulterior motive, then they are culpable and that is much worse, and worthy of strong denunciation. Or, if they modified the text without telling anyone they were doing so, that would be very bad.
    This reminds me of some interpreters of Vatican II who distinguish between the majority of the bishops and the “conservative” minority and then say we only have to listen to what the majority contributed. Or like Gustavo Gutierrez did on Theology of Liberation. He found language in drafts of GS that were more in line with his thinking, that were taken out before promulgation, then said that this is the real mind of the Council, if the minority had not forced it to be taken out.
    In any case, it is better to read the documents as written and to accept the plain sense of the words as a challenge to our own opinions.
    I fail to see how Fr. Sirico’s association with LC in any was affects an interpretation of his writings or of Acton. The writings stand or fall on their own merit, no matter what the motivation of the producers.
    Full disclosure: I wrote a couple of reviews for Markets and Morality in times past. This is not an endorsement of the Acton project. I was invited to to them for reasons unknown to me. I generally don’t agree with libertarians and disagree with Acton on some things. I don’t believe in the invisible hand and I’m as skeptical about supply-side economics as Pope Francis.

    Reply
  64. Robert Gotcher

    Mac, I wrote my post before I saw yours.
    I agree that their interpretation of CA should be challenged, but on the merits of their argument, not on any guilt by association or ad hominem.

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  65. Mac

    Exactly.

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  66. Art Deco

    I don’t believe in the invisible hand and I’m as skeptical about supply-side economics as Pope Francis.
    Come again? “Supply side” was a popular short-hand for a strand of thought associated with Arthur Laffer. I think some aspects of it were endorsed by other economists, such as the younger Steve Hanke and perhaps Robert Mundell. Laffer was notable for his policy prescriptions re marginal tax rates. Somehow I do not think you want to be in the weeds of disputes between small corps of professional economists. I do not think that the Pope needs to be there either.
    I am not sure what to make of your assertion that you “do not believe” in the “invisible hand”. Markets are self-organizing.

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  67. Art Deco

    However, there is definitely something amiss in the Nogelhaus editing of CA. It is highly tendentious to say the very least.
    Really? Much of the text of the social encyclicals has little precision or leads you to odd lacunae. It would take quite an effort to get the text so demonstrably wrong that you would accuse someone of being ‘deceptive’ (and I’ve been waiting for some time for either one of you to get down to brass tacks).

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  68. Art Deco

    Daniel’s recycling his insults now. Guess I’m not getting an explanation.

    Reply
  69. Mac

    Did you read Daniel’s piece from CetT? It contains specifics. If you don’t think those are tendentious to say the least, nothing else is likely to convince you. Remember, we’re not talking about what they said about the text, but about their editing of the text itself.

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  70. Paul

    “Markets are self-organising” is just nonsense. Markets are dedicated infrastructure, planned, built and managed, and access to them is controlled. They’re only “self-organising” if you pretend none of the organisers are really doing anything, or label all the organisers as “part of the market itself”.

    Reply
  71. Art Deco

    You would like an assessment of your friend’s 1994 missive? You ask, I tell.
    1. The first four paragraphs are gas, concluding with a genetic fallacy (a Daniel signature).
    2. The next is a verbatim quotation from the encyclical. DN is very taken with this component thereof:
    This may mean making important changes in established life-styles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources.
    This is a conditional statement and the practical implications of it even when applicable are less than precisely delineated. It would pass right by me, but I gather I am Denso, or whatever.
    Now, DN is exercised that RJN says this:
    “Talk about changing established life-styles in order to achieve justice or sustain the planet is a commonplace in political rhetorics…. The single use of that language in Centesimus Annus does tend to stick out…. It has, in short, all the appearances of being a throwaway line. Should we all consume less, and, if so, of what? And how will that help include the poor within the circle of production and exchange?…. The sentence about ‘changing established life-styles’ is most likely a vestigial rhetorical fragment that somehow wandered into the text.”
    If you asked me (and implicitly you did), I would say that the Holy Father had a half-formed thought that he did not think it a priority upon which to elaborate. The question of how the phrase got into the text is not ripe, so RJN’s remarks are ill-judged.
    That’s about all. I am not seeing how a vague reference to changing consumption patterns vis a vis natural resources could be a ‘central theme of his papacy’.
    3. The paragraph succeeding that is a dubious characterization and the paragraph succeeding that is a complaint that Fr. Neuhaus and Dr. Weigel did not render the encyclicals verbatim in their respective books. The succeeding paragraph is a complaint about an editorial choice – substituting an explanation for a brief text for the precise text. I am not sure why they did that, but it does not mislead.
    4. His next paragraph complains that Weigel an Neuhaus do not quote this paragraph:
    A workman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children. “If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice”.
    Would that these words, written at a time when what has been called “unbridled capitalism” was pressing forward, should not have to be repeated today with the same severity. Unfortunately, even today one finds instances of contracts between employers and employees which lack reference to the most elementary justice regarding the employment of children or women, working hours, the hygienic condition of the work-place and fair pay; and this is the case despite the International Declarations and Conventions on the subject and the internal laws of States. The Pope attributed to the “public authority” the “strict duty” of providing properly for the welfare of the workers, because a failure to do so violates justice; indeed, he did not hesitate to speak of “distributive justice”.

    It does not occur to DN that perhaps they did not because this leaves the faithful Catholic businessman rather at loose ends and requires some elucidation. They either do not have the materials or the time and the space to do that.

    DN’s next paragraph complains…
    You will not know, reading the abridged version, that the Pope praises cooperatives (C.A. 16) or says that “the worker movement is part of a more general movement among workers and other people of good will for the liberation of the human person and for the affirmation of human rights” (C.A. 26).

    It would not have occurred to me that RJN or Weigel had an issue with Mondragon or Solidarity or the Histadrut. I would wager it did not occur to either of them either.

    Then he complains…You will not know that the Pope quotes St. Thomas Aquinas: “…the Church replies without hesitation that man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all” (C.A. 30). Nor will you know that John Paul II says that “the human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people are far from disappearing” (C.A. 33).
    But the whole paragraph reads as follows: While the Pope proclaimed the right to private ownership, he affirmed with equal clarity that the “use” of goods, while marked by freedom, is subordinated to their original common destination as created goods, as well as to the will of Jesus Christ as expressed in the Gospel. Pope Leo wrote: “those whom fortune favours are admonished … that they should tremble at the warnings of Jesus Christ … and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for the use of all they possess”; and quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas, he added: “But if the question be asked, how must one’s possessions be used? the Church replies without hesitation that man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all…”, because “above the laws and judgments of men stands the law, the judgment of Christ”
    Which is a reminder that economic activity (and the use of property) has to be ordered to moral principles, not that all property is common property.
    Given that RJN once said that as far as he could see the quantum of “moral slobbery” in this world was as far as he could see pretty stable over time, I cannot figure why you would hold to the view that the deficiencies in any set of social relations would have ‘disappeared’.
    DN further complains that they do not quote this passage: You will miss entirely the Holy Father’s fierce denunciation of economic oppression: “Ownership of the means of production, whether in industry or agriculture, is just and legitimate if it serves useful work. It becomes illegitimate, however, when it is not utilized or when it serves to impede the work of others, in an effort to gain a profit which is not the result of the overall expansion of work and the wealth of society, but rather is the result of curbing them or of illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people. Ownership of this kind has no justification, and represents an abuse in the sight of God and man” (C.A. 43).

    Did it occur to you that perhaps RJN and GW were not altogether sure what the referent to this passage was? It seems to be a reference to the use of coolie labor, but I cannot be sure.

    And he complains, The encyclical also, of course, praises the role of “free human creativity in the economic sector,” albeit “circumscribed by a strong juridical framework” (C.A. 42). But this appreciation of economic freedom is balanced by the current of criticism that runs through Centesimus Annus, a current mostly edited out of the neo-condensation of the encyclical.

    Because RJN and GW are all for a ‘weak juridical framework’? For court systems which lose your files and run on bribes?

    More complaint:
    The encyclical reads, for example, in one key passage, “We have seen that it is unacceptable to say that the defeat of so-called ‘Real Socialism’ leaves capitalism as the only model of economic organization” (C.A. 35). This is rather straightforward.

    No, it is not. The paragraph in question goes on to discuss international development and it is not clear what the Pope has in mind.

    Another complaint:
    Here is how the passage reads after neo-conservative editing: “It is unacceptable to say that the defeat of ‘real socialism’ leaves [the present operation of capitalism] as the only model of economic organization.”
    They are assuming that the Pope is referring to actual practice and not ideal types. That might be presumptuous, but it is not unreasonable. (They should have footnoted the passage rather than using brackets).
    While the Pope indicates that a modified form of capitalism, one in which market forces are balanced by the demands of the common good, can meet the standards of justice, he also clearly indicates that other forms of economic organization can also meet these standards. The neo-conservatives, though, believe that capitalism is the only game in town and here do not hesitate to add their own words to “correct” the Holy Father. As Rev. Neuhaus states elsewhere “despite his disclaimer, capitalism is ‘the only model of economic organization’.”

    No, the Pope clearly indicates nothing. He vaguely alludes to something undefined.

    The next paragraph is a windy accusation. The last three are gas.

    Reply
  72. Art Deco

    “Markets are self-organising” is just nonsense. Markets are dedicated infrastructure, planned, built and managed, and access to them is controlled. They’re only “self-organising” if you pretend none of the organisers are really doing anything, or label all the organisers as “part of the market itself”.
    No Paul. Public works are planned, built, and managed. Access to common property is regulated and certain trades are licensed. Transactions occur according to rubrics delineated in commercial and contract law. However, the actual mundane business of production and trade requires no central planner.

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  73. Daniel Nichols

    Gee Art Denso, I have been thoroughly chastised. What was I thinking? Obviously your explanations are so obviously reasonable that I must rethink my criticisms.
    As they say, NOT.
    I have seldom seen such a tendentious exercise in mental gymnastics. Your “criticism” of my analysis is so rich I hardly know where to begin. I will limit myself to one example:
    “7. DN further complains that they do not quote this passage: You will miss entirely the Holy Father’s fierce denunciation of economic oppression: ‘Ownership of the means of production, whether in industry or agriculture, is just and legitimate if it serves useful work. It becomes illegitimate, however, when it is not utilized or when it serves to impede the work of others, in an effort to gain a profit which is not the result of the overall expansion of work and the wealth of society, but rather is the result of curbing them or of illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people. Ownership of this kind has no justification, and represents an abuse in the sight of God and man’ (C.A. 43).
    Did it occur to you that perhaps RJN and GW were not altogether sure what the referent to this passage was? It seems to be a reference to the use of coolie labor, but I cannot be sure.”
    Yes, “coolie labor”, that must be it. What in the world could the Holy Father be talking about? While everything that is clear now was not necessarily so in 1991, that sounds to me like a pretty clear description of the modern socio-economic system, the one Francis describes as “unjust at its root”. “Illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people”? Nope, I have no idea what he was talking about. We certainly have never seen any examples of this sort of thing, shy of coolie labor. Boy, those popes are dense and hard to decipher, no?
    You are exactly like those Catholic pundits wringing their hands over just what “torture” means. You are a piece of work, Denso.

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  74. Mac

    Art, I didn’t ask for an assessment of DN’s piece. You complained of lack of specifics, and I pointed you to there for same, saying if you weren’t convinced I didn’t think other arguments would suffice. So, you aren’t. Ok.
    You’ve attempted the defense that Nogelhaus would not (as far as I know). I’m not convinced. “tendentious” is a judgment necessarily somewhat subjective, but I don’t know what else to call the editing of a document, not particularly obscure in itself, so as to emphasize the points you agree with and deemphasize those you disagree with.

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  75. Robert Gotcher

    In a kind of weak defense of Novak and company, I think they were not hiding what they were doing–they were presenting a reading of CA that they thought better brought out the heart of the document. I think they were wrong about it, although I’m not sophisticated enough or well-read enough to get into the minutiae of economic theory.
    I also think that it is always a wrong (and this IS my field) hermeneutic to interpret an ecclesiastical document by divining some kind of underlying real focus that is somewhat different from the obvious meaning based on what the author of the document would have said had he not had his hands tied by powerful men in the hierarchy or curia.
    Another version of this is to discern a ghost writer for a passage you don’t like and then say “You can ignore that because it is the ghost writer, and not Bishop X [or Pope Y]’s own thought.” People did that with Chapter 2 of Veritatis Splendor. Ugh, to also use a common popular phrase these days (like Daniel did when he said, “NOT.”).
    You need to interpret Church in light of the overall thrust of the writings of the given prelate, according to the tradition on that subject, and in accordance with Tradition as such, and in light of good, solid theology.
    I also think it is madness to think that Bl. John Paul II allowed throw-away lines in his writings. Once again, ugh!

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  76. Robert Gotcher

    This is extremely long, and I don’t have time to read it right now, but it is Mark Lowry’s take on the whole tension between what he called Catholic neoconservatives and Catholic Cultural Radicals (the signers of the statement Daniel posted earlier).
    Maybe some of you remember it and remember what you thought about it.
    http://cssronline.org/CSSR/Archival/1998/1998_041.pdf

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  77. Mac

    I’m working tonight and don’t have time to read that, but it looks very interesting. I am not, btw, a cultural radical. At least I don’t think I am–I’m not sure what it means. Maybe it will be clear when I read the piece.
    It doesn’t take all that long for me to reach a point of boredom and impatience with debates about the nature of the good society etc. In the end all societies have severe defects–which does not mean some aren’t a lot better than others–and the debates begin to seem rather airy.

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  78. Daniel Nichols

    Thanks, Robert; I had never seen that…

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  79. Art Deco

    that sounds to me like a pretty clear description of the modern socio-economic system,
    Only to a loon, Daniel. In a ‘modern’ economy, only a small minority work in agriculture (many and perhaps most proprietors), only a modest minority work in construction (many of the skilled tradesmen), and only a modest minority work in extractive industries, and only a modest minority work in manufacturing (skewed to skilled tradesmen). There may never have been a time when fewer people were in danger of being killed on the job.
    People work about 1900 hours a year; as opposed to the 2700 which would have been the norm at the end of the 19th century. They’ve never been more mobile or faced fewer search costs in looking for employment. Even in my lifetime work rules have gotten noticeably more lax.

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  80. Daniel Nichols

    Yes of course. He was talking about coolie labor. (Rolling eyes). “Illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people”? Yeah, what the hell was he talking about if not something from a century ago?
    But finally you are right about something (hey, it happens):
    “In a ‘modern’ economy, only a small minority work in agriculture (many and perhaps most proprietors), only a modest minority work in construction (many of the skilled tradesmen), and only a modest minority work in extractive industries, and only a modest minority work in manufacturing (skewed to skilled tradesmen)”
    In fact in our economy such jobs, which at one time payed living wage, are nearly nonexistent. You’re right. Nowadays the ex-working class is flipping burgers or washing cars or otherwise serving the more affluent. Meanwhile, today the stock market hit an all time high. Good news for the few, non-news for the struggling masses.
    What world do you live in, Denso? Your part of New York is not immune from what is happening in Ohio or Michigan or West Virginia. You don’t live in Manhattan or Silicon Valley. How is it you are so isolated?

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  81. Art Deco

    Well, Daniel, in the world in which I live, the following shares of the workforce are employed in wage jobs which incorporate little skill development and often lack fringe benefits if it’s a small employer (the metrics are courtesy the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
    9.0%: Sales (e.g. cashiers, counter)
    5.4%: Food Service
    3.3%: Personal Care
    (Orderlies, nursing assistants, …..child care workers, &c.)
    2.8%: Buildings and grounds
    2.3%: Materials handling
    (e.g. shipping and receiving, …..sanitation, &c.)
    1.5%: Transit
    (e.g. bus drivers, delivery truck drivers, parking lot attendants, &c)
    That amounts to about 24% of the workforce, many of them not the primary earner in their households, many of the remainder quite young, and many of the remainder with abiding deficits of what it takes to build human capital.
    If you or the Holy Father fancy you can live in a world where no one has a crummy job, you are bound to be disappointed. Any society more complex than an agricultural village has a division of labor, and that is going to be true in a command economy and it is going to be true if the mode of organization is private enterprise nestled in a nightwatchman state.
    Now, what sort of common provision you have and what sort of income redistribution you have make for interesting questions, as would be the costs and benefits of certain sorts of labor standards. These things are hardly elucidated in the passages you quote.

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  82. Mac

    I think your attention to the trees is preventing you from seeing the forest. That reasonably well-paying relatively low-skilled jobs of the sort that made the lower ranges of the American middle class so prosperous have been disappearing for 20 or 30 years now seems to be very widely acknowledged on both sides of the political divide. I think it’s a much more complex phenomenon than Daniel does, but it’s real.
    Comparisons to 1900 are not relevant. Materially, everyone in the developed world is better off than they were 100 years ago. That doesn’t mean we aren’t declining relative to 30 years ago.

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  83. Art Deco

    No, the comparison is very relevant. There is a secular trend in which labor is less physically taxing and hazardous.
    There have been some changes in income distribution over the last generation and changes in the share of income sluiced to labor as a factor of production. Currently, about 62% of personal income is distributed in the form of employee compensation. It has been higher in the past (and was at its peak during the 2d World War), but tends to fluctuate between 60% and 73%. I think we have been over these issues before here.

    There is the journalist’s narrative and their is the social reality. I will wager you in almost every case the latter is less florid than the former (bar in those cases where the press is protecting one of their mascot groups).

    By the way, you are not drawing out the implications of DN’s remarks: the work-a-day world in this country is some sort of dystopian hell hole. It is not.

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  84. Rob G

    “Comparisons to 1900 are not relevant. Materially, everyone in the developed world is better off than they were 100 years ago.”
    Correct — mass production, advertising, and consumption didn’t kick in until the 20’s. But the spiritual/emotional/psychological tolls of that new mass economy were at that very time already starting to be noticed by observers. Labor may well have become physically “less taxing and hazardous,” but that is not the only measure of “progress.”

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  85. Art Deco

    Rob,
    There was advertising in this country prior to 1920. There was also consumption. Mass production of consumer goods likely was a novelty, though manifest prior to 1920. Mass production of capital goods and raw material processing was not.
    Since no one ever suggested that the fact that work was physically less taxing was the only measure of progress, I am not sure why you find the rejoinder necessary.

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  86. Mac

    You were the one who brought that up as being significant.
    “There is the journalist’s narrative and their is the social reality. I will wager you in almost every case the latter is less florid than the former…”
    Certainly, but that doesn’t mean the middle class and especially the lower middle aka working class haven’t in fact seen stagnant or declining economic circumstances for several decades now. I’m not sure whether you are disputing this or just quibbling around the edges.
    “…you are not drawing out the implications of DN’s remarks: the work-a-day world in this country is some sort of dystopian hell hole….”
    No, I’m not. I don’t think it’s true, for one thing, and anyway I should think it would be obvious that I’m not engaged in defending Daniel’s view.

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  87. Rob G

    Mass consumption could not exist and mass advertising was not necessary until mass production got into full gear through the ‘teens and after WWI. The emphasis of mass advertising when it touched on work reflected the trend towards “labor saving,” “modern conveniences,” and “efficiency.”
    There’s no doubt that the papal writings have more than just physical concerns in mind when they speak of the economy. But that seems to be what you keep bringing it back to.

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  88. Art Deco

    Neither the middle class nor the working class have seen stagnant or declining incomes. Personal income data published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis does differ from wage data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but neither supports the thesis of a working class whose real incomes have been declining for a generation.
    Maclin, 1st you complained I did not remark DN’s specifics. Then you complained when I critiqued the specifics. Then you complained I had not perceived DN’s point, which you implicitly endorsed. Then you said that you were not defending his point. This is getting tiresome.
    Rob, I have eight great-great grandfathers. Three were employed in manufacturing. One organized in craft production in a factory setting. The other two were in the business of mass production, one of capital goods and one of consumer goods. You can purchase on eBay antique advertising fliers, palm cards and posters of companies owned by two of these men. It is not tombstone advertising, either, but handsome bits of graphic art and pitchman’s copy.
    These three men lived between 1831 and 1910.

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  89. Art Deco

    But that seems to be what you keep bringing it back to.
    I do not choose the subject matter here.

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  90. Rob G

    I’m talking post-Ford, Art. Obviously there were some amounts of production, advertising and consumption going on, but it’s hard, really, to call it “mass” until Fordism changed it all.

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  91. Art Deco

    but it’s hard, really, to call it “mass” until Fordism changed it all.
    No it is not.

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  92. Mac

    “Neither the middle class nor the working class have seen stagnant or declining incomes…”
    There seem to be an awful lot of seemingly well-informed people who disagree.
    “…1st you complained I did not remark DN’s specifics…” etc.
    No, that’s not what happened. The topic was very limited: Daniel’s charge that Neuhaus etc. distorted Centesimus Annus, not his own economic views. Rather than recount all that, which is visible above anyway, I’ll observe that once a conversation becomes self-referential like this, it’s generally ceased to be useful.

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  93. Rob G

    “No it is not.”
    Again, “there seem to be an awful lot of seemingly well-informed people who disagree.”

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  94. Art Deco

    There seem to be an awful lot of seemingly well-informed people who disagree.
    Personal disposable income per capita increased from $16,000 to $36,700 (as measured in 2009 currency units) during the years running from 1969 to 2012. Employee compensation accounted for 70% of personal income in 1969, but 62% in 2012. In order for the compensation of wage earners to have been ‘stagnant or declining’ over that time period, the compensation of salaried employees would have had to have appropriated the whole additional increment. That would mean that their compensation increased five or six fold (in real terms) while wage earners received no improvement. Not too plausible.

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  95. Art Deco

    Again, “there seem to be an awful lot of seemingly well-informed people who disagree.”
    The well informed people might just explain why ol’ granddaddy’s sheet metal factory was not engaged in ‘mass production’ but Henry Ford was (or maybe he was not but then suddenly was in 1920).

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  96. Rob G

    There are a great many people whose increases (if any) have not kept up with the cost of living. I know a lot of them personally, and what’s more, I am one. And I work for a Fortune 500 company.
    Our CEO seems to do alright though.

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  97. Rob G

    “The well informed people might just explain why ol’ granddaddy’s sheet metal factory was not engaged in ‘mass production’ but Henry Ford was”
    Simple: the refinement and subsequent widespread use of a lil’ ol’ thang called the assembly line to produce consumer (as opposed to industrial) goods.

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  98. Art Deco

    Correct — mass production, advertising, and consumption didn’t kick in until the 20’s. But the spiritual/emotional/psychological tolls
    and
    Simple: the refinement and subsequent widespread use of a lil’ ol’ thang called the assembly line to produce consumer (as opposed to industrial) goods.
    You mean the defining feature is an amendment to production processes and that exacts a spiritual/psychological/emotional toll on consumers. Got it.

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  99. Art Deco

    There are a great many people whose increases (if any) have not kept up with the cost of living. I know a lot of them personally, and what’s more, I am one.
    So what? The contentions concerned the compensation of wage earners in general, not people you know. Compensation practices for CEOs are a long running scandal. However, the people who receive such largesse are a tiny minority in the workforce at large.

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  100. Daniel Nichols

    Mr Denso is apparently the last person in the world to not understand that while corporate profits have soared and that stock market has reached new highs and that the very top tiers of society are getting richer and richer, while the middle class has increasingly become poor, the working class now displaced, while never leaving their home towns, the poor becoming ever more desperate. My natural impulse in response to Denso’s density is to simply cuss him out. I will refrain, but I do have a quote from Bruce Cockburn that I would like to direct his way: “One day you’re going to rise from your habitual feast and find yourself staring down the throat of the beast they call the Revolution.” Too radical for you? Only reiterating the words of Pope Paul Vi :
    “Otherwise their continued greed will certainly call down upon them the judgement of God and the wrath of the poor, with consequences no one can foretell.”
    – Paul VI, Populorum Progressio

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  101. Art Deco

    The share of gross domestic income accounted for by corporate profits fluctuates from year to year and has since 1969 varied between 5.43% and 9.88%. The median for this time period is 7.47%. The year in that set which was most flush was 2006 and the year the least flush was 2001. As of now it is toward the high end, at 9.78%.
    Before you cuss me out, you might make yourself more familiar with the schematic outline of the country’s economic and social condition.

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  102. Daniel Nichols

    “However, the people who receive such largesse are a tiny minority in the workforce at large.”
    A) Exactly.
    B) Except they are not part of the “workforce”, as what they do can hardly be considered work.
    I do not know what your life is like, but I cannot imagine that it entails much contact with the poor and the marginalized working class. You seem hopelessly out of touch with your brothers and sisters who are struggling to make ends meet. Oh, that’s right, they are not really poor, as they have refrigerators and TVs (often from the high interest rentacenters, but hey, the market determines value, right?)

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  103. Daniel Nichols

    Sorry about the syntax in the above comment; I must remember not to post in haste without proofreading. As for getting all prophetic on Mr D, I could have trotted out the copious studies and charts proving the decline of the middle and working classes, the rise of the new gilded elite, quoted a lot of serious scholars, etc. But I have gone that road before with Art, and know that he would simply ignore whatever data I have offered and move on to his next point. But yeah, those who mock -or deny and ignore- the poor do so at their own peril.

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  104. Art Deco

    Daniel, executive compensation is a scandal, but the people setting their own compensation consist of the CEO and a small palace guard. It’s gross, but the share of gross domestic income puked into these people’s pockets is small. Peter Drucker recommended legislative controls on executive salaries, but doing that will contain some of the grossness in this world; it will not affect workingmens’ wages to an appreciable degree.
    B) Except they are not part of the “workforce”, as what they do can hardly be considered work.
    Were that complaint valid, it could be applied to anyone with a desk job. We can check the BLS statistics, but I believe manual workers have been a minority among the employed for at least a generation.
    Sorry to be repetitive, but I participate in these fora to discuss issues, not to discuss me. In any case, what you imagine about my life is immaterial. In this country, production levels are what they are, income levels are what they are, distribution of income is what it is.
    You have not quoted any data in this discussion nor have I evaded any point you made. You traffick in the contents of your spleen, which is uninteresting to anyone who is not cursed with dealing with you one-on-one.
    As for televisions, they were nearly universal in American homes by 1970 – present in north of 95% of all households. Refrigerators were first manufactured and sold a century ago, mass marketed to the bourgeoisie during the 1920s, and common features in working-class households by 1960. You could find them in slum households by 1970. I am old enough to recall apartments with shared kitchens in my hometown as well as rooming houses and at least the latter had refrigerators for common use.

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  105. Rob G

    Art, are you sure you’re not Stuart Koehl?????
    Daniel, people’s experiences apparently mean nothing when compared to STATISTICS.

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  106. Mac

    I did some very brief (20 minutes or so) poking around in the stats yesterday in search of the truth about middle-class income decline. I found enough to convince me that the picture is indeed complex and people seem able to draw somewhat different conclusions from the data. One thing that was pretty consistent, though, was that over the past ten years the rich have gotten richer and the middle class and poor have gotten somewhat poorer. Also, that even though everyone’s income (in real dollars) has grown since the ’60s, the lower rungs had not grown as much.
    Inequality per se doesn’t strike me as the problem. If things are improving for everybody, it’s acceptable that the gap between top and bottom widens. The problem now is that things aren’t improving for everybody, and are actually getting worse for those nearer the bottom.
    I think it varies a lot from one region to another. In the industrial (or formerly industrial) Northeast and Midwest, where Daniel and Rob are, things seem to be a lot worse than, for instance, here, where they are not so great but not so very bad, either, outside of the chronically poor areas.
    I think we can all agree that CEOs pulling down multiple millions per year while squeezing their workers as hard as they can are a scandal. But as for whether people in the upper reaches of corporations work: I have seen that first-hand, and at least in companies that have any sort of entrepreneurial culture they work very hard. I’ve known several people who rose rapidly in technology companies, and they were all very smart and very energetic and worked very hard. I invite anyone who thinks it’s not work to have a go at it. Try, for instance, emulating the fellow whose father ran a garage, and who obtained doctorates in math and physics along the way to becoming a VP in a major corporation. The traditional gripe against corporate success (cf. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) was that you had to neglect your home life in order to get ahead, and it’s still true.
    I suspect there aren’t that many companies left that can cruise along remaining profitable while upper management plays golf.

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  107. Art Deco

    The main problem you get with senior executive compensation is that those transactions are not arms length, and the expression of that has grown more severe with time. Many moons ago (ca. 1980), Mark Green wrote an article on this subject and pointed out that the chief executives of Ford and General Motors were paid 6x their counterparts at Renault and Toyota. At the time, they were both receiving about $900,000 per annum. The increase in the nominal gdp per capita over the next 28 years was about 4-fold. So, if the compensation of these chaps had kept pace, they would have been receiving $3.6 million per annum. I think the actual figure (bruited about as they were requesting financing from Congress) was $14 million per annum. Around the same time, it was revealed that Robert Rubin had been paid a nine figure sum of money over a period of eight years for the service of advising Citigroup right into the ground. He actually admitted he had never heard of the financial instrument that had thrown the company into insolvency in November 2008. Since the people who get this bonanza are few, it is not reducing others’ living standards much. It is, however, coming out of the hide of all the company’s stakeholders.
    The metropolitan region where I grew up had had personal income per capita about 12% above the national mean in 1969 and had personal income 5% below the national mean by 2008. It lost relative position and had been demographically stagnant. It’s in the file marked ‘could be worse’. The principal local employer, which corralled 13% of the regional workforce in 1980, had by 2010 reduced its staffing by 89%. The area has survived and is still an agreeable place to live.

    The Mohawk Valley has been showing some signs of having hit bottom in recent years (maybe, maybe not). By that, I mean there are tentative signs of stability in relative incomes and in overall population levels. With per capita incomes 20% below the national mean, it is still better off than much of the Deep South, including Alabama.

    One thing that has not been referred to explicitly here is this: the Pope teaches the whole Church, and not all the problems identified in such documents are manifest everywhere or manifest with the same degree of severity. You would not expect to have the Pope go into too much detail about the signature problems of American political economy – about the rent seeking, madcap casino banking, poorly structured welfare programs, deficits in corporate governance, and ill advised labor law.

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  108. Mac

    You don’t mention the thing which, maybe along with the casino banking, is mostly responsible for the phenomenon Daniel denounces: the replacement of so many workers in manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs with cheap foreign and immigrant labor. I have a vague recollection that back maybe thirty years or so ago there was, associated with talk about a shift from a manufacturing to a “service” economy, a sense that this would be a good thing, because it meant the end of all that dehumanizing factory work. A “be careful what you wish for” instance, I guess (if in fact I’m remembering that correctly).

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  109. Rob G

    “it meant the end of all that dehumanizing factory work”
    Yeah — and replacement by all this dehumanizing cubicle work — data entry, call centers, etc. Be careful of what you wish for indeed.

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  110. Art Deco

    Yeah — and replacement by all this dehumanizing cubicle work — data entry, call centers, etc. Be careful of what you wish for indeed.
    Can you define ‘dehumanizing’?
    I have had data entry jobs. I cannot figure why you would find that sort of work objectionable. There were gripes about the management, but no one in the office complained about tasks per se.

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  111. Mac

    If you hadn’t prefaced your remark with the information that you’ve done it, I would have said that a job doing data entry would enable you to figure out why it’s objectionable. I have to do a bit of it now and then in my job (setting up tables that control some software function, or fixing a data problem not really fixable with a program), and I find it miserable. I would go nuts if I had to do it all day every day.
    A call center doing support wouldn’t necessarily be so very bad. I’ve also done some of that and don’t really mind it. Mostly I liked helping people solve problems. Though the human programming that defines what the operators do in big tech support centers could make that miserable. A call center doing telemarketing sounds hellish.

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  112. Art Deco

    I would go nuts if I had to do it all day every day.
    Waal, that’s you.
    I had a conversation with a retired faculty member from RIT a number of years ago. After retiring, he’d gotten a job as a security guard at the University of Rochester. He said it was the best job he’d ever had.
    Labor markets help people find their niche, and some people are better adapted to certain disagreeable jobs than are others. You are not going to find equal satisfaction across the market. That does not mean we are all living in Metropolis.

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  113. Rob G

    I’ve done both, both fairly recently in a fill-in capacity (although I’ve done both as my primary work in the past) and work in a large office that has active departments of both. Data entry is the modern equivalent of an assembly line job, one of those where you spend the entire day attaching nut A to bolt B. Not exactly the type of work humans were created to do, and not in any way fulfilling.
    The modern call center is mostly not about problem-solving but about efficiency. There are limits imposed on how much time one spends on a call, and how much time one spends between calls, and one’s evaluations take much more stock in his “productivity” than his quality. The “human element” is thus subtly taken out of the engagement with the customer/client, with a view towards call centers becoming ever more automated. Call center managers want as much automation and as least human engagement as possible, which tells you something about the job itself.

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  114. Mac

    “Data entry is the modern equivalent of an assembly line job….” Exactly, at least from the mental point of view.
    Your description of work in a call center is what I was thinking of when I mentioned “human programming” above. I once moonlighted doing support for a vendor of financial aid software. I kind of enjoyed that–it wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living. Since it was expensive specialized software the situation was nothing like what it would be for, say, a PC maker, where you get millions of calls from people whose machines won’t boot etc. It was very personal, and every situation was different. It was nice to get a call from someone at her wits’ end and facing a deadline and be able to help.

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  115. Mac

    Oh, and about the prof-turned-security guard Art mentioned: I can well imagine that being the case. One of my favorite jobs was driving a tractor on my uncle’s farm when I was a teenager.

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  116. Janet

    My son used to work at a call center for Dell, and the one thing I remember him saying to me about it is, “Mom, everybody there is stoned.”
    AMDG

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  117. Janet

    I used to work in a call center for AMEX and Ramada Inns making hotel reservations. This was in 1971. The system would frequently go down, and during those times we were told to confirm every reservation and they would call to cancel the ones where they couldn’t find rooms. So, even though I knew we had nothing open in Paris for something like 3 years, I would have to tell people they had confirmed reservations. They would be so happy, and I felt like a snake. I wasn’t stoned, but it might it have helped.
    AMDG

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  118. Craig

    I’ve never worked in a data entry job, but it’s something that I suspect (fear?) would appeal to me. Sometimes I really wish I had a job where I knew what the heck I was doing; perhaps the wistful glance at data entry is overcompensation borne of that sense of frustration.
    I did once do one shift in a factory. My job was to take things from the conveyor belt, do a quick (1 s) inspection to make sure they looked alright, and then put them on a pallet for shipment. Horrible, horrible work. I couldn’t sleep after one day on the job, and I never went back.
    My dream job, only half jokingly, is “parking lot attendant”. I could sit and read all day in that booth: heavenly! (And I wouldn’t even have to wear pants.)
    Incidentally, Mac, I had a very elaborate dream last night about this blog: it involved an idle comment by you that ended up sinking you millions of dollars into debt. And french fries. Lots and lots of french fries.

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  119. Janet

    Thanks Craig, I’ll never be able to drive into a parking lot again.
    Keying data from a stack of papers is kind of nice because you get to the point where you don’t have to think about what you are doing. The information somehow goes straight from the paper to your fingers. Working in a call center, however, is another matter. People are rude and impatient and sometimes downright mean. I thought people making hotel reservations wouldn’t be like this. I’m always pretty happy when I get to stay in a hotel. I was wrong.
    AMDG

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  120. Mac

    “Keying data from a stack of papers is kind of nice because you get to the point where you don’t have to think about what you are doing. The information somehow goes straight from the paper to your fingers.”
    I am the guy responsible for the software that people use to do data entry, so I’ve seen what appeared to be that phenomenon often. But it never worked like that for me. Maybe I just didn’t do it enough, but for me it was always a constant backtrack to fix mistakes. And if I went into that sort of automatic mode you’re describing the mistakes only got more frequent. And I’m a pretty good typist, except that I don’t do numbers well–never got in the habit of using the numeric keypad.

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  121. Mac

    And I posted that comment in spite of Craig’s dream, which I deeply hope was not prophetic.
    Imagine, Craig, if that job was the only thing between you and homelessness, and you had a family to support. Awareness of things like that, and of, e.g., Janet being told to lie about reservations, is what is missing from the rather bloodless and abstract praise of capitalism from academics and pundits in general. You often get the feeling that they don’t actually have much acquaintance with it. And I say that not in a “down with capitalism” spirit, but in a “let’s be real” spirit.

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  122. Mac

    And as for the rude, impatient, and downright mean people: I’ve always said that everyone should spend at least a year in a job where they have to deal with the public.

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  123. Craig

    Yes, I am well aware that my “dream job,” and those awful jobs too, would not pay enough to keep the ship afloat, with all the anxieties and risks that that entails.

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  124. Janet

    Oh, I meant to say, Craig, that if you did have that data entry job you would be having different dreams. You would be keying all night–especially if you typed a lot of account numbers. I remember dreaming 20601, 20601 all night long.
    AMDG

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  125. Craig

    Not ‘24601’?
    My previous comment came out a little more curtly than I intended. I agree with you, Mac, and in as good-natured and jovial a way as possible.
    Oh, those french fries!

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  126. Janet

    nope.

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  127. Mac

    I didn’t take it as curt.
    I very rarely dream about work anymore, but when I was doing full-time software development, I used to dream code that I was desperately trying to fix or at least understand code that didn’t make sense and was constantly shifting.
    I’m off to buy, if it’s obtainable, a bottle of Everclear, which is scary stuff. We’re going to try to make lemon liqueur from our bountiful harvest of lemons, and as-close-to-pure-as-possible alcohol is one of the ingredients.

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  128. Daniel Nichols

    I honestly cannot relate to anything you all are talking about. My work has always been work, as it has traditionally been understood: physical labor with clear goals. Often, of course, with dictatorial and unrealistic overlords pushing me to go faster, etc. The idea of not knowing what I am supposed to do with myself at work is bewildering, as is the concept of having a job where I can goof off on Facebook while on the clock.
    The one thing I can relate to is work-related dreams. I often dream that I am trying to deliver mail in totally surrealistic circumstances, mostly frustrating. I do not awake rested after such a night.

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  129. Craig

    You make a good point, Daniel. A slight clarification: it’s not that I don’t know what I should be doing at work. I do know. It’s just that I don’t know how to do it! I work in a research lab. It’s a lot of trial and error, head scratching, backtracking, revising, correcting, and, more often than I’d like to admit, getting nowhere. Not much fun, most of the time.

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  130. Mac

    I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that I don’t know what to do with myself at work, either. My work is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t done it, but it is certainly work, with definite tasks–it’s just not physical work. Your dream, Daniel, of trying to deliver mail in surrealistic circumstances is the exact physical equivalent of the crazy coding dreams I mentioned.
    I do sometimes not know what to do with myself in the sense of having multiple conflicting demands and having trouble settling on one. And usually when I do something immediately comes up to jerk me away from that. Imagine being assigned to a different mail route at unpredictable times and without regard for where you are on the current one.

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  131. Grumpy

    Art Deco: No, the comparison is very relevant. There is a secular trend in which labor is less physically taxing and hazardous.
    Art, could you explain what ‘secular’ means in this context? I came across the term ‘secular stagnation’ a few weeks ago. I could not figure out what it means. I asked two other theologians, and like me, they had never heard the term ‘secular’ to have any other meanings than those that relate to religion. Obviously in latin, the saeculum is the world, so it could mean ‘worldly’ – but I do not know what ‘worldly stagnation’ is, or what a ‘worldly trend’ is. Please explain.

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  132. Mac

    Sorry for the delay in the appearance of your comment, Grumpy. It was in the spam filter. It goes for weeks without causing a problem, and I get less diligent about checking it, and then it starts acting up again.
    I kind of wondered about that use of “secular,” too.

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