Robert Sirico la ripercorre agilmente nel libretto “Catholicism’s Developing Social Teaching”.
Il pilone centrale dell’insegnamento moderno è la Rerum Novarum.
La Rerum Novarum di Papa Leone XIII fu pubblicata nel maggio del 1891. Fu un documento fondamentale al punto da essere denominato la “Magna Charta della Chiesa” poiché in esso si pongono i fondamenti della dottrina sociale cattolica.
La CC si ritiene depositaria di un sapere profondo ma limitato. Limitato a cosa?…
… expertise is in the area of faith and morals, not social policy…
Ciononostante la Chiesa Cattolica (CC) è sempre intervenuta a tutto campo…
… Church has always commented on the moral dimensions of economics, politics, culture, and social life…
A ciò si aggiunga che la filosofia cattolica non è certo positivista (link), in questo senso considera fatti e valori inestricabili tra loro.
Poiché in queste materie la conoscenza umana evolve, anche l’insegnamento dei papi è necessariamente dinamico.
Il centesimo anniversario dell’enciclica è stato celebrato a dovere…
… In honor of the centenary of Pope Leo’s encyclical, Pope John Paul II declared 1991 a Year of Church Social Teaching and issued a ground-breaking new encyclical, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year—in honor of the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum)…
In linea con quanto appena detto, la Centesimus si presenta come una significativa evoluzione ma nel solco della Rerum…
… Centesimus Annus represents the continued development of the encyclical tradition,… highlight particular, and frequently underestimated, developments in Catholic social teaching over the last century… a significant deepening in thinking within Catholic social doctrine… I do not mean to assert that Centesimus Annus contradicts or alters… Centesimus Annus marks a true development and fulfillment of this body…
D’altronde, il mondo di GPII è un mondo che Papa Leone non poteva lontanamente immaginare.
Quando la CC si cimenta in queste materie una cosa è essenziale…
… It is essential that the Church understand the economy properly…
Non ci si dovrebbe limitare ad un’infarinatura marxista, come ancora si fa in certe Università dei Gesuiti.
***
Il Magistero della CC ha natura autorevole. Cosa significa?…
… What are the bounds of Church teaching? What is the authority of such teaching?…
C’è un ambito privilegiato per questo insegnamento…
… privileged insight into matters of faith and morals…
Ma “chi” esprime il magistero?…
… bishops, teaching in union with the pope on matters of faith and morals…
Su cosa si riflette?…
… Scriptures and Tradition…
Cosa rende infallibile il magistero…
… privileged status for such teaching is due to an enduring gift of the Holy Spirit referred to as infallibility…
Il confine della competenze (fede e morale) può risultare oscuro.
Paradossalmente è più sfumato per un cattolico che per un neopositivista: solo il secondo vede una reale distinzione tra conoscenza dei fatti e conoscenza dei valori.
A tutto ciò si aggiungono gradi diversi di autorità del magistero…
… A further distinction should be made between generally authoritative pronouncements by Church leaders and specifically infallible pronouncements…
C’è innanzitutto l’insegnamento di tutti i giorni, il magistero ordinario…
… The majority of Church teaching is referred to as ordinary magisterium… authoritative, but not strictly infallible…
C’è poi il magistero straordinario…
… Church teaching also may be exercised in a solemn or extraordinary manner…
Che si esprime con duplice modalità…
… when a given doctrine is defined by an ecumenical council… Pope…pronounced ex cathedra…
Anche il magistero infallibile può mutare…
… This is not to say that even an infallible pronouncement cannot be later developed and further refined, but it is to assert that the Church will not essentially contradict…
Se qualcuno si meraviglia allora vale la pena di ripassare il concetto di infallibilità.
Il magistero papale può avvalersi di strumenti differenti…
… popes can be found in instruments such as encyclicals,3 apostolic letters, allocutions, and homilies… documents of the various Vatican secretariats and commissions, the teachings of bishops (either within their own dioceses or in national conferences), and the teaching of pastors to their parishioners and of catechists to those inquiring into Catholic belief…
Chi sono i destinatari?…
… addressed to the whole of the Catholic… to all people of goodwill…
Alla luce di quanto detto come inquadrare la Rerum e la Centesimus…
… as encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus make no general claim to infallibility as such. Second, the subject matter of the documents—economics and the social order—are not areas of Church expertise except in the sense of the Church’s ability to speak about their normative dimensions and implications…
Il compito del lettore è quindi delicato…
… read the documents carefully and in context in order to discern where Pope Leo and Pope John Paul II claim to speak from the core of Church teaching, and where they are attempting to make a practical, prudent application of that core teaching to the day-to-day world…
***
In quale contesto storico è stata scritta la Rerum?
Dal punto di vista materiale eravamo reduci da due rivoluzioni…
… the two great revolutions… French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution…
Dal punto di vista intellettuale predominava un clima illuminista…
… period of advanced learning and discovery, during which the cultural focus emphasized human reason…
Alla società si guardava con le lenti del liberalismo, anche se di liberalismi ne esistevano più di uno. Gli assunti fondamentale…
… (1) a greater appreciation of human dignity and human freedom, (2) a desire to limit the negative aspects and unnecessary restrictions of government on human freedom, and (3) a focus on the rights of the human individual and the social order necessary to protect these rights…
Il liberalismo guardava in modo critico anche al concetto di autorità…
… Yet freedom from authority was also one axiom upon which some forms of liberalism were based…
La sciagura della CC consistette nel dover confrontarsi con il liberalismo continentale uscito dalla rivoluzione francese…
… the seething anti-clerical hatred generated by the French Revolution prompted the Church to be leery of liberal ideas…
Se il nemico fosse stato il liberalismo anglosassone le cose sarebbero andate diversamente…
… social thought in this area might have been very different had the Church encountered liberalism in its British…
Per i continentali l’autorità da sfidare era quella della CC, da qui il loro anti-clericalismo radicale…
… For many continental liberals, opposition to authority meant opposition to the dominant religious force: the Roman Catholic Church…
La CC fu attaccata frontalmente ricorrendo all’esproprio. Anche per questo la difesa della proprietà privata è stata sempre un caposaldo della dottrina sociale…
… the attack on the Church’s property, helped influence Pope Leo in his defense of private property in Rerum Novarum… This defense of private ownership would continue in papal teaching through the time of Centesimus Annus…
L’altro nemico fu il socialismo. Anch’esso attaccò frontalmente l’autorità della CC, la quale dovette così manovrare tra la Scilla e la Cariddi di liberalismo e socialismo…
… Like liberalism, socialism also emerged in varying forms… Forms of socialism also attacked the authority and institution of the Church… liberalism and socialism. The Church had to navigate its way through this debate…
***
Guardiamo più da vicino alla Rerum Novarum.
Ecco una tesi possibile…
… My thesis is that Pope Leo intended to steer the Church on a cautious path toward liberalism…
Può essere sostenuta da argomenti solidi?
Al Papa interessava una cosa su tutte: quella del lavoratore…
… Of primary importance for Pope Leo were the new and concrete social conditions for workers and their families…
Seconda preoccupazione…
… But Leo also had secondary concerns—namely, the condemnation of socialism…
Lo scontro con i socialisti fu particolarmente duro sulla proprietà privata. La proposta di abolirla suscitò la reazione papale…
… it is no exaggeration to say that in Rerum Novarum Leo looks upon this offer with withering disdain…
Giudizio sul socialismo…
… “is so unsuited for terminating the conflict that it actually injures the workers themselves”… socialism… violates the right of people to direct their own lives and to improve…
Come viene difesa la proprietà privata? Con gli stessi argomenti liberali (Locke), che sono poi quelli di Tommaso.
Da dove emerge la proprietà?
… God created the material world for the good of all… universal destination of material goods… the good of all…
E dove interviene l’individuo…
… the common purpose of goods does not imply “indiscriminate ownership by all” but permits the allocation of private property to be “fixed by the industry of men and the institutions of peoples”…
È l’azione che valorizza l’oggetto e che rende il soggetto proprietario di ciò che prima apparteneva a tutti (o a nessuno). Non esistono diritti assoluti, tutto discende dall’osservazione di come diveniamo proprietari dei nostri corpi…
… the right to private property is not merely some abstract theory; it is, rather, an extension of the rights that find their origin…
Una simile definizione distingue uomo e animale: solo il primo crea valore, solo il primo diviene proprietario. Ecco una citazione significativa…
… Since man expands his mental energy and his bodily strength in procuring the goods of nature, by this very act he appropriates that part of physical nature to himself, which he has cultivated. On it he leaves impressed, as it were, a kind of image of his person, so that it must be altogether just that he should possess that part as his very own and that no one in any way should be permitted to violate his right (#15)…
L’argomento ha quindi basi antropologiche in linea con Locke. Citazione di Locke…
… Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this, nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with and joined to it something that is his own and thereby makes it his property.… It hath by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men…
Con premesse del genere il rigetto dell’egalitarismo è necessario…
… : “There are truly very great and very many natural differences among men… necessary inequality in respect to these endowments” (#26)…
Passiamo ora alla questione dei lavoratori. Occupa i paragrafi 31 e 32.
Il papa elenca una serie di obblighi dell’imprenditore…
… he expresses his concern that workers should be given what they are “justly due”…
Altra avvertenza…
… He also warns against the use of what he calls “the arts of usury,”…
Usura? E qui scatta una domanda…
… Had Leo a deeper grasp of the role of the market in setting interest rates… This reference should be read as a prudential rather than a fundamental moral assertion…
Una volta superata questa ignoranza l’insegnamento verrà ricalibrato.
***
Nella sua ultima sezione la Rerum ci invita all’amore cristiano…
… The acceptance of the Christian faith can be achieved only by an exercise of free will…
La libertà, si noti, qui è essenziale. L’amore non puo’ essere imposto ma deve sgorgare spontaneo. Non trapela forse un’analogia con le raccomandazioni precedenti? Se sì ne andrebbero accolte tutte le conseguenze…
… freedom may be necessary for a just society…
Non confondiamo allora la carità con la giustizia. Quando si parla di carità? Quando di giustizia?…
… Leo does not make the mistake of collapsing justice into charity or love…
La solidarietà nella Rerum…
… “no one, certainly, is obliged to assist others out of what is required for his own necessary use” (#36),… “These are duties not of justice, except in cases of extreme need, but of Christian charity, which obviously cannot be enforced by legal action” (#36)…
***
Si arriva poi ad un tema centrale: i limiti dei poteri statali.
Da un lato la Chiesa teme la supplenza statale, dall’altro ne reclama l’intervento. Qui c’è un certo attrito.
Un esempio: il papa è preoccupato della condizione lavorativa, dopo aver chiesto garanzie conclude…
… “in all these cases, the power and authority of the law, but of course within certain limits, manifestly ought to be employed” (#53)….
Fermo restando il precetto di sussidiarietà…
… even when permitting governmental intervention, Leo is quick to establish a limitation set by reason and subsidiarity…
***
Ma i veri problemi arrivano coni paragrafi dal 61 al 66…
… free consent is not a sufficient criterion for establishing a just wage…
Il libero consenso sembrerebbe colpito e affondato. L’imprenditore deve tener conto di molto altro nello stabilire i salari…
… “To preserve one’s life,” he maintains, “is a duty common to all individuals, and to neglect this duty is a crime” (#62)….
Qui il contributo delle discipline economiche sembrerebbe del tutto ignorato…
… Leo would have benefited from a broader view of the way in which wage rates affect the whole of the economy. If the rate of wages is artificially high, the cost of the goods produced by labor will increase throughout the whole economy, placing many of those goods outside the reach of the workers, who are also consumers…
Il controllo governativo dei salari viene di fatto sdoganato.
Anche se il fine ultimo – si badi bene – non è mai il socialismo bensì una sorta di microcapitalismo (si auspica la conversione dell’operaio in piccolo imprenditore)…
… His interest in ensuring that workers obtained the highest possible wage was that he wanted them to become mini-capitalists…
Citazione:
… If a worker receives a wage sufficiently large to enable him to provide comfortably for himself [and his family, he will eventually be able to] come into the possession of a little wealth. We have seen, in fact, that the whole question under consideration cannot be settled effectually unless it is assumed and established as a principle, that the right of private property must be regarded as sacred (#65, emphasis added)….
In sintesi: il ruolo del governo resta vago. In questo solco si inserisce Giovanni XXIII…
… ambiguity due to prudence is echoed in the work of Pope John XXIII…
Citazione da Mater et Magistra…
… Differences of opinion in the application of principles can sometimes arise even among sincere Catholics. When this happens, they should be careful not to lose their respect and esteem for each other. Instead, they should strive to find points of agreement for effective and suitable action, and not wear themselves out in interminable arguments, and, under pretext of the better or the best, omit to do the good that is possible and therefore obligatory (Mater et Magistra #238)…
Ma è una vaghezza che si giustifica in chi non vuole e non deve entrare nel merito…
… he could not offer exact public policy prescriptions. Rather, his intention was to propose some guiding moral principles…
Quello che contano sono i principi…
… human dignity, charity, love of the poor, the bonds of the human family, and subsidiarity…
***
La Rerum puo’ essere interpretata in modo asimmetrico? Ovvero come una condanna secca del socialismo e al contempo un dialogo critico con il liberalismo?
Una simile lettura è possibile ma minoritaria. Di sicuro ha un pregio…
… such a reading of Rerum Novarum demonstrates the integrity of Centesimus Annus as a consistent development…
L’ortodossia resta la lettura “simmetrica” della doppia condanna…
… The usual response from better Catholic social thinkers is to recognize the condemnation of socialism but also to reject liberalism…
Eppure criticare non è rigettare: non tutti i liberalismi sono uguali.
Nemmeno la Rerum sembra a caccia di una fantomatica “Terza Via” (o socialismo dal volto umano). Nell’affermarlo godiamo dell’avvallo di GPII…
… Pope John Paul II makes this clear in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: The Church’s social doctrine is not a “third way” between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: Rather, it constitutes a category of its own. Nor is it an ideology, but rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church’s tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation that is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behavior. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology (#41)…
La dottrina sociale della CC non è una “terza via”, ovvero un’altra ideologia.
***
Alle spalle di Leone XIII – è bene ricordarlo – c’erano schieramenti episcopali ben definiti. Per lo più veniva condannato l’ordine vigente. Da Ginevra e Friburgo venivano le idee più radicali…
… Some condemned outright the new economic order… several of them, including the Geneva Alliance and the Fribourg Union, influenced Leo’s thought…
Leone non era avverso al benessere e alla tecnologia, purché fosse esorcizzato l’aspetto materialista…
… He rejected what he perceived to be the materialism of the new economic order, but he was not averse to technological progress…
Ma le figure più influenti nel dibattito cattolico di allora – il cardinale Emmanuel von Ketteler e l’economista Lujo Brentano – erano statalisti risoluti…
… According to Franz H. Mueller, “Ketteler … had become more and more convinced of the need of government intervention in social and economic matters, and particularly for protective labor legislation. Brentano … had insisted that only through unionization could the labor market become truly competitive.”…
La preoccupazione espressa nella Rerum per i lavoratori si tradusse in un sindacalismo cattolico a tutto campo…
… Rerum Novarum lent its support to various worker associations or labor unions… American effort to secure the Vatican’s recognition of the Knights of Labor impressed Leo deeply… he paid close attention to the pro-labor activities of cardinals such as Gibbons and Henry Edward Manning of England…
***
La Rerum condannava in modo esplicito il socialismo ma la sua ricezione – non si puo’ negarlo – fu “socialisteggiante”. I riformisti sociali più radicali uscirono allo scoperto…
… Leo’s encyclical gave them the support and recognition… now felt vindicated and supported by the document…
Il Laissez faire era il nemico…
… Pope Leo understood laissez faire as the philosophy of the business and political establishment…
Forse Leone puntava più sulla società civile, di fatto furono i movimenti politicizzati ad essere protagonisti…
… the key to Leo’s thinking was that such groups would work in what is now referred to as “civil society,” thus lessening the need for governmental action… The progressive Left swiftly took up the task of giving Rerum Novarum its own social interpretation…
D’altronde gli interventi invocati dal Papa non erano poca cosa…
… securing a “living wage,” eliminating Sunday labor, shortening the work day, and prohibiting or regulating the labor of children and women in the factories…
Come si puo’ immaginarli senza uno stato protagonista?…
… Ironically, several governmental expansions were justified, in part, by citing Rerum Novarum…
Anche se la lettura dell’enciclica fu senz’altro selettiva, come ammise anche Aaron Abell…
… “use the taxing power to favor the multiplication of property owners,” despite the fact that this was expressly warned against in Rerum Novarum (#47)….
Nella testa del cattolico impegnato tutto era chiaro…
… In the minds of such activists, public response was often equated with an increase in the role of the State…. many reformers saw the role of government as being chiefly concerned with promoting human welfare…
La proprietà privata era legittima solo se svolgeva un ruolo sociale (vedi anche la nostra Costituzione catto-comunista)…
… According to Abell, “A social view of property … served as the entering wedge for much contemporary and future American Catholic participation in social reform.”…
Questo in contrasto con il riferimento lockeano della Rerum…
… contrary to that expressed by Leo, who articulated a view of property rooted in the individual but also having social dimensions…
L’armonia tra proprietà privata e socialità è ben espressa da questo passaggio della Rerum…
… The Successors of Leo XIII have repeated this twofold affirmation: the necessity and therefore the legitimacy of private ownership, as well as the limits which are imposed on it. The Second Vatican Council likewise clearly restated the traditional doctrine in words that bear repeating: “In making use of the exterior things we lawfully possess, we ought to regard them not just as our own but also as common, in the sense that they can profit not only the owners but others too” (GS #69); and a little later we read: “Private property or some ownership of external goods affords each person the scope needed for personal and family autonomy, and should be regarded as an extension of human freedom.… Of its nature, private property also has a social function that is based on the law of the common purpose of goods” (GS #71) (Centesimus Annus #30)…
Lo statalismo dei cattolici si fece prorompente…
… The burden for relieving the poor, in this view, must fall directly on the State. According to Abell, “These early State interventionists upheld the right of workers to organize and to engage their employers on the battle field of industry; they doubted labor’s power, without the aid of the State, to wring justice from entrenched capital.”…
Un simbolo della tendenza: il Reverendo Edward Priestly…
… were coming to the conclusion “that we must, more than we have hitherto done, make over to the State a closer oversight of the relations between…
Crebbero le simpatie verso il sindacato…
… during the 1880s, sympathy for the labor movement was born in the hearts of nearly all socially concerned Catholics…
Per il Cardinale Gibbons era “l’unico mezzo efficace”.
Il sindacalismo fu chiaramente affermato in due congressi cattolici come Baltimore del 1889 e Chicago nel 1893, entrambi tesi a promuovere l’agenda progressista.
Socialismo e capitalismo erano ormai equalizzati nel sentire comune…
… The congresses were well-attended and equated capitalist greed with socialism and communism…
Regolamentazione della società e tassazione dei ricchi: i cattolici non volevano essere da meno dei fratelli protestanti…
… Protestant advocates who were friendly to the growing notion of the Social Gospel reacted enthusiastically…
La direzione era chiara…
… path toward an economy of welfarism and interventionism: a “third way.”…
Il Reverendo Thomas J. Ducey sintetizzava così l’agenda nel 1899…
… Church should now lead the people to emancipation from “social and economic slavery”…
Al tempo l’immigrazione era il fenomeno del momento, gli immigrati creavano divisioni razziali tra i lavoratori che impedivano un compattamento…
… according to Abell, the social movement never really gained momentum during the decade-and-a-half following the promulgation of the encyclical. Abell attributes this to racial dissention among American Catholics, a reference to the waves of immigration that swept the country in the last half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century…
Ma dall’est arrivarono anche i socialisti duri…
… The new arrivals, predominantly from central and eastern Europe after 1900, were often accused of being involved in Socialist causes… The period between 1912 and the beginning of World War I was the time of its greatest appeal… many Catholic priests and laity became involved in the increasingly active Socialist movement…
La censura del socialismo da parte delle gerarchie era ormai pressoché inutile…
… Social activists, in turn, argued that these condemnations by the hierarchy were exaggerated… Socialists enjoyed considerable popularity in the Catholic community…
Un protagonista di allora: Padre John Ryan, detto il “Semi-Socialista”.
Bisognava rendere la chiesa più socialista per impedire ai cattolici di saltare il fosso.
L’idea diffusa…
… These new reformers argued that socialism contained in itself seeds of Catholic truth…
Ryan elaborò una piattaforma politica cattolica…
… indirect methods of augmenting the workers’ income through legislative action, [including] the eight-hour day; restriction on the labor of women and children; legalization of picketing, persuasion and boycotting; conciliation and arbitration by State and national boards with compulsory powers; and relief of unemployment by State employment bureaus, labor colonies, and social insurance. Likewise, provisions should be made against accidents, illness, and old age. Finally, the State should launch a housing program, not only condemning and preventing unsanitary housing and congestion, but erecting decent habitations for the poorer classes, to be rented or sold—preferably sold—on easy conditions…
Altre richieste…
… Ryan also advocated public ownership of natural monopolies, progressive income and inheritance taxation, taxation on future increases in land values, and prohibition of speculation on the exchanges…
In altri termini: l’aspetto economico del socialismo andava salvato e la proprietà mantenuta solo per i beni di consumo.
La fedeltà all’enciclica fu sempre rivendicata…
… Ryan contended that economic socialism was not only in the best tradition of papal teaching but that its promotion was good strategy…
Le posizioni di Rayan si rivelarono vincenti…
… After 1908, a widespread Catholic movement for social reform developed, with Ryan as its leader…
Un gruppo che incarnò in pieno questa tendenza fu il “German Catholic Central Verein”, 125.000 membri, fondò il “Central Bureau for the Promotion of Social Education” e la rivista “The Central-Blatt and Social Justice”.
Obbiettivo: una scuola politica cattolico d’impronta socialista…
… It set up summer schools for social study in 1912 at Spring Bank, Wisconsin, and at Fordham University, and lobbied for a Catholic School of Social Science to be established…
***
Come si agiva dal punto di vista intellettuale? Ecco il “metodo Rayan” sulla questione del salario minimo…
… According to Ryan, those who reject the principle of a living wage must also reject the inherent worth of the person and the reality of all moral rights… an employer must also take into account the ethical value of the human… paying the employee on behalf of society… A worker’s productivity cannot be the sole determining factor… employer must support the worker’s family as well… living wage must not be determined solely by the work done; it is derived from man’s dignity…
Un’etica degli affari esigentissima che di fatto impediva di fare impresa.
I valori tirati in ballo erano insuperabili…
… laborer’s dignity… the right to a family living wage…
Il diritto alla famiglia era sulle spalle dell’imprenditore e ricompreso nel salario equo. L’uomo senza famiglia…
… he “deprives himself of one of the most effective means of developing the finer side of his character.… Only in the family is it possible for the majority of men to develop those social feelings that are essential to the welfare of a democratic society.”…
Una posizione, questa, che sembra distante da quella di Leone XIII…
… Leo XIII, like all subsequent popes, admits that worker productivity is an essential element…
Ryan ebbe un avversario intellettuale, il gesuita Moorhouse Millar, filosofo alla Fordham University. I suoi argomenti erano quelli tradizionali degli economisti…
… minimum-wage laws were too sweeping to account for differences across regions and across industries… Ryan seemed unaware of the unintended consequences of mandated wage rates, including increased unemployment and the rising cost of living…
***
La Verein si riunì nel 1909 e decise di stringere forti legami con le associazioni sindacali…
… American Federation of Labor, the National Civic Federation, and the American Association for Labor Legislation…
Il prete sindacalista per eccellenza: il Reverendo Peter E. Dietz di New York…
… He believed that Protestants were putting Catholics to shame by their energetic support of labor…
C’era una gara tra protestanti e cattolici a chi era più progressista.
Sindacato cattolico: Militia of Christ for Social Service. Ma le iniziative si moltiplicavano…
… American Federation of Catholic Societies formed a Social Service Commission to promote labor’s cause…
Scuole politiche vicine al sindacato…
… establishment of schools, as well as for inclusion of social science study into the curriculum…
E dopo la guerra?…
… Following the war, the organized Socialist movement began to disintegrate,…
Ma nella Chiesa i movimenti socialisteggianti non diminuirono. La ricostruzione era per loro un’occasione…
… The hierarchy formed the National Catholic War Council in 1917 to deal with post-war social reconstruction…
La conferenza episcopale americana aveva progetti ambiziosi…
… [S]ocial insurance against unemployment, sickness, invalidity, and old age; a federal child-labor law; legal enforcement of labor’s right to organize; public housing for the working classes; progressive taxation of inheritances, incomes, and excess profits; stringent regulation of public utilities rates; government competition with monopolies; … worker participation in management; and co-operative productive societies and co-partnership arrangements in order to enable the majority of wage earners to “become owners … of the instruments of production.”…
Ryan ricevette l’appellativo di “Right Reverend New Dealer”.
La “National Conference of Catholic Bishops” cambiò nome in “National Catholic Welfare Council”
L’impostazione socialisteggiante trova una sua continuità che giunge fino a noi…
… The Catholic social movement has continued from that time until the present to argue essentially the same points…
G. J. Hebert sulla transizione…
… Social changes during the period after World War II were naturally reflected in Catholic social movements. Specialization and organization became more and more characteristic of Catholic as well as other efforts. As the role of organized labor in American society was stabilized … the labor movement was less prominent than formerly as a battleground for social justice…
Ambientalismo ed emancipazione hanno rimpiazzato in parte la causa del lavoro…
… More than labor, today’s liberationist and environmentalist movements are the means by which the Christian Left wages its battles for “social justice.”…
Se c’è stato uno spostamento è stato a sinistra.
***
Non mancarono documenti successivi alla Rerum.
Nel 1931 la Quadragesimo Anno di Papa Pio XI. Papa Giovanni XXIII scrisse due encicliche sociali, Mater et Magistra (1961) e Pacem in Terris (1963). Oltre alla Gaudium et Spes del 1965. paolo VI dette il suo contributo nella Populorum Progressio del 1967. Tutto nel segno della continuità.
La svolta ci fu con la Centesimus Annus di GPII. Le virtù tipicamente liberali vengono celebrate per la prima volta in modo esplicito e non più equivocabile…
… More than any other Church document, this latest encyclical celebrates the creativity of entrepreneurs and the virtues required for productivity. John Paul lists these virtues: “diligence, industriousness, prudence in taking reasonable risks, reliability and fidelity in interpersonal relationships, as well as courage in carrying out decisions that are difficult and painful but necessary, both for the overall working of a business and in meeting possible setbacks”(#32). The pope affirms both the practical and moral legitimacy of profit, entrepreneurship, appropriate self-interest, productivity, and a stable currency…
Si distingue tra consumismo e “business economy”.
Il paragrafo 42 tenta di delineare un capitalismo dal volto umano…
… Returning now to the initial question: Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model that ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World that are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress? The answer is obviously complex. If, by “capitalism,” is meant an economic system that recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a business economy, market economy, or simply, free economy. But, if, by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework that places it at the service of human freedom in its totality and sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative…
L’equidistanza salta e quindi anche le interpretazioni simmetriche di doppia condanna…
… The Church has sided with a humane form of liberalism, at least in its economic aspects…
GPII incoraggia il libero scambio e mette in guardia dall’interventismo…
… the pope expresses deep reservations throughout the document about various forms of State economic intervention…
Si sa, in sedi come queste i toni contano ancora più delle parole…
… a considerably different tone from that of the United States bishops in their 1986 statement on the economy, “Economic Justice for All.”…
Forse la storia personale di GPII ha pesato…
… having seen the deleterious impact of governmental encroachments in Eastern European…
Anche l’assistenzialismo era una sua preoccupazione: il welfare fu nel mirino quanto i regimi socialisti…
… questions the legitimacy of extensive intervention by the welfare State, or what he calls the social assistance State… By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility… His criticism of the welfare State applies equally to all statist and collectivist agendas…
E dire che la partenza di GPII fu “lenta”…
… What appeared to some commentators on his first social encyclical, Laborem Exercens, as a turn to dialogue with Marxists…
Ma il finale fu grandioso…
… the warmest embrace of the free economy by an important Catholic thinker since the late Scholastics…
Dalla scuola di Salamanca i rapporti tra Chiesa e libero mercato non furono mai tanto idilliaci.
La Centesimus puo’ esere letta da sola. Ma è il confronto con i precedenti ad esaltarla.
Letta da sola…
… When read for its own sake, Centesimus Annus emerges as an uncompromising rejection of collectivism in its Marxist, Communist, Socialist, and even welfare-statist manifestations. While the encyclical allows for a certain amount of intervention by the State in such areas as wage levels, social security, unemployment insurance, and the like…
C’è la riaffermazione del principio di sussidiarietà, naturalmente. E c’è poi una distinzione importante…
… distinguishes the economic system from the ethical and cultural context in which it exists…
Siamo noi a dover rendere il capitalismo più umano! Non incolpiamo il “sistema” per le nostre mancanze…
… Centesimus Annus can criticize the excesses of materialism and consumerism and still endorse a free economy…
La mentalità consumista non è un portato necessario della libertà economica.
Ma è il confronto con i precedenti a destare meraviglia: per la prima volta si percepisce una competenza specifica della materia. L’interazione tra soggetti non è più vista in modo naif come un gioco a somma zero dove c’è chi prende e c’è chi è preso…
… When seen in this way, Centesimus Annus represents the beginning of a shift away from the static, zero-sum economic worldview that led the Church to be suspicious of the system of free exchange and to argue for wealth distribution as the only moral response to poverty….
E dire che ancora documenti di pochi anni prima segnalavano il mancato aggiornamento delle gerarchie con le scienze sociali più consolidate. L’esempio dei vescovi americani…
… it becomes evident that they are unfamiliar with the continental economic tradition represented by Wilhelm Roepke, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Israel Kirzner, or with the insights of the Virginia public-choice school…
L’imprenditore diveniva per la prima volta soggetto morale a pieno titolo…
… A further implication of this encyclical is that entrepreneurs and capitalists have been invited out of the moral cold to which they felt exiled in the past…
La stessa imprenditorialità era una vocazione.
Il dialogo con il marxismo poteva finalmente dirsi morto…
… The “Christian-Marxist dialogue” is dead, as many former adherents of liberation theology are willing to concede…
Ronald Nash, un cristiano evangelico, è la personalità che di recente ha formulato meglio l’auspicio della competenza allorché si interviene nelle materie sociali…
… “Compassion and love must be coupled with a careful grounding in the relevant philosophical, economic, political, and social issues. If the … social activist proceeds in ignorance of the accepted tools of economic analysis, he risks turning bad situations into something far worse.”…
