Socialism and Christianity

Some say that the United States is becoming more socialist. Some also say that Christianity, on which our nation was founded, is essentially a socialist religion: everyone shares what they have and no one goes hungry. But Christianity is not socialism. Socialists and communists say that we have only to educate people in rational principles for them to share their wealth. Christians know that knowledge alone will not motivate a man to share his wealth; only when he confesses that God is our common Father will he see the injustice of some children starving while other children luxuriate.

Christians know that only God’s grace can overcome human selfishness, while socialism imagines that the government can convince people to share their wealth. Authentic charity stems from a deep conviction of Christian stewardship: that everything is God’s and we are entrusted with administering His wealth. Socialism imposes government regulation in place of Christian stewardship. It doesn’t work. Socialism and communism have never worked. It didn’t work in Russia. It is not working in Korea or Vietnam or Venezuela. I can understand a young person dreaming of a socialist utopia, but as we grow up we realize that something more powerful than mere good will is needed. As they say if you are not socialist when you are young, you have no heart. If you are socialist when you are old, you have no head.

God owns it all

St. James in the second reading is clearly not naïve about man’s selfishness, but he believes that we overcome this limitation by firmly believing in God: “My brothers: show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” It is faith in our glorious Lord that saves us from our selfishness. It is hard not to respect an articulate, powerful person, those with law or medical degrees from Stanford more than to a muni bus driver. But if we treat the bus driver as less human than the Stanford law professor, it is because our faith in God’s fatherhood is somehow lacking. In God’s Kingdom, the rich and the poor have the same intrinsic value. As Mother Teresa (whose feast day was yesterday—she went back to God on Sept 5, 1997) said, “every person is Christ.” We strive to see and love and reverence Jesus in every person. We will only share our wealth to the degree that we believe in God’s fatherhood, his Lordship over everything. His ownership is our stewardship.

Most of us are middle class. Some are a bit poorer, and some a bit richer, but most of us in this parish can afford a vacation, a car or two, and afford a decent place to live. We may even have some money in the bank. God has provided for us. But have we provided for others? Do we imagine that we own what He has given us, or do we recognize the truth, that we are stewards of his blessings?

Labor Day

Tomorrow is Labor Day, which the Federal Government established in 1894 (the same year this parish was erected on Geary Boulevard). The holiday honors the achievements of American labor, and the labor movement of the time had no illusions that these achievements were attained without God’s grace. We are stewards, not owners. God always favors the poor, and we are all poor. He opened the ears of the deaf man in today’s Gospel—a poor beggar, a man invisible to most of society. Most of Christ’s miracles were done for poor people, for manual laborers. I have found that the farther we move from honest, manual labor, the more we forget who gave us everything we have. We begin to forget where we came from, and where we are going. We want, rather, to labor in this life so as to become capable of loving God forever in the next. Labor that works only for material gain, and only for gain in this world, is mere socialism, never capable of satisfying the human spirit. We honor our workers, and we give God the glory for what we have achieved through His grace.

My friend Fr. George Schultz, a Jesuit who teaches at St. Patrick’s Seminary near San Francisco, has written a good article on labor in the context of a Christian culture. Here is a link to his article in Catholic World Report—a good read for Labor Day 2015.


Recommended reading:

I’m in a little pueblo in Venezuela, giving a retreat to 25 Missionaries of Charity sisters (or rather, I hope that Jesus is giving the retreat to all 26 of us). I escaped the convent complex the other day for a brisk walk through the town with hopes of finding a path into the mountains. At the end of the road, I met the farmers Rigoberto and Edgar, who showed me a path up into the dense forest. Most folks along my way through town didn’t return my hearty renditions of ola! and  buenas tardes! They regarded me oddly and remained silent, but the farmers accepted my gringo accent and American attire (REI hiking shorts and a bright orange cycling jersey). Their honest faces reflected the honest earth for which they cared. Rigoberto gracefully led me to the upper cow pasture (they have eleven bovines), and from there I began hiking up the dry arroyo under towering jungle trees and impenetrable banks of leafy vegetation.

I wondered if my newfound farmer friends were “Chavistas.” Hugo Chavez’ grinning face and upthrust arm appear on almost every wall and billboard, with the words “Yes, there is a revolution!” He died in April, but like Vladimir Lenin, he seems determined to preside over his country even from the grave. His hand-picked successor’s face (Senor Maduro) also appears on election posters everywhere, even though the election took place three months ago. The slogan is canned and never varies: “I swear to you, Chavez, that I will vote for Maduro.” I heard it was a close race, but I’ve not seen one trace of the opposition. I guess there is no opposition. Meanwhile, Venezuela, after a decade of socialist government, and sitting atop fountains of petroleum, is still depressingly poor.

Venezuela languishes in the grip of socialism the way America languishes in the grip of consumerism. “The Party” dominates every public venue and every bit of the national imagination.  Hugo Chavez dominates Venezuelan billboards like Taco Bell dominates billboards in the USA. Even the rarely-seen ad for a restaurant or hotel will have “we stand with Chavez” on the bottom—and his grinning face. Just when I thought I could not take one more depiction of Hugo’s grinning visage, I turned a corner and saw, painted on a wall two blocks from the convent, a sex ad. Actually, it seemed to be government promotion for Sex and Birth Control training, complete with some crude drawings (Hugo’s face did not make an appearance).

It became blazingly clear to me: birth control is all about control. Of course, we all knew that. But what I realized is that contraception is about government control. What stronger leash can the government tie around people’s throats than control of their sexual appetites? “Careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power [contraception] passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law….” Who wrote that? Pope Paul VI wrote it 45 years ago, in Humanae vitae #17. For a citizenry addicted to sex-on-demand, government-sponsored birth control programs wield immense power, power to shape society into its own image and likeness. It has only to convince its citizens that birth control means that they control their sex life, when in fact folks accustomed to sex-on-demand cannot control themselves. In steps the government to help bring a little control into the situation. Soviet Russia famously did away with religious sexual disciplines and began doling out free birth control and abortion. Within a generation of state-controlled family life, society began to unravel.

The Venezuelan government’s control of its citizens is crass and obvious. Every two or three miles on the main roads cars must slow down for a “government inspection,” a quick review by scowling soldiers wielding machine guns. The U.S. government’s control of its citizens is less obvious, and less advanced, but certainly using some of the same techniques. Forcing birth control programming into national health care is certainly one of those strategies.

I don’t know whether my farmer friends are Chavistas or not. I don’t know whether they have bought into the government’s birth control plan, or whether they have kept true to their Catholic faith (I assume they are Catholic because, when I identified myself as a Catholic priest, they smiled broadly and offered me two big lemons from their trees). I don’t know whether these two farmers are still believers in God, or whether they have given up God for the government. I’ll have to ask them on my next hike, but I suspect that honest people in this beautiful country trust God, and His laws, more than Hugo Chavez’s socialist government. Let’s try to keep “In God We Trust” part of the American dream.