Ihs Press

[PeterPaul]

I thought this might be interesting to some people here. It is VERY long, so I am sure few will want to read the whole thing.

It is an interview with John Sharpe of IHS Press and I think it is a great article.

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with John Sharpe

With the kind permission of Stephen Heiner of TrueRestoration, we are honored to bring you this interview he did with John Sharpe, who heads IHS Press - one of the premier publishers of works promoting both Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism.

There has been much controversy swirling around both Mr. Sharpe and IHS Press for a while. Mr. Heiner gets to the bottom of such controversy and why, as well as discussing Distributism in depth.

I hope you will enjoy this piece. And again, we at the DR thank Mr. Heiner for allowing us to publish this interview.

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The purpose of this interview is to address some rumors that have wandered the web as “secret reports,” denouncing “nefarious connections” that John had. Above and beyond this spirit of attack, secret meetings, and email forwards there is a hostility to the work of IHS Press – painting its mission – the propagation of Catholic Social teaching – as an “impractical fantasy.” We hope to address all these matters in due course.

SH: John, you’ve been personally attacked since 2001. Why has it taken so long, and my asking you, for a response on your part?

JS: Well, it’s not totally correct to say I haven’t responded. Anyone who asks me anything in charity and good will gets an answer. As for people who create websites about me or about IHS Press (though it’s quite flattering) but who don’t have the common decency to get in touch with me first to find out the facts – no, I don’t “respond” to them, because those types of people are going to do and say what they want, never mind what I say or do. I suspect, in fact, that a reply on my part would only lead to further charges of dissembling, lying, and hair-splitting, and that kind of back-and-forth would just waste more of everyone’s time, including my own, not to mention putting my detractors in yet another near occasion of sin. In fact one of my most determined opponents, who I believe you have recently corresponded with on one of your chat groups, seems quite free with charging me with being of bad character, lying, and desiring to “acquire and wield the instruments of power.” (I’m not making that up!) So no, I’m not responding to that – it’s completely ludicrous. Not to mention that I’m obviously not very good at “seizing power.” I just barely get my daughters to bed on time.

Besides, these “attacks” – as distinguished from the reasonable questions from people of good will, all of which I have answered in all cases -- are a distraction. They have little to do – even though they are made to seem relevant – with the important question, i.e., the Social Doctrine of the Church and its implementation in the 21st century.

If those making the loudest accusations on the Internet were really interested in the truth, and in “fraternal correction” of errors that they perceive in my own actions or those of IHS Press, they would contact me and attempt to convince me – with the rational argument characteristic of a reasonable man – of my erroneous ways. But they have never done so – well, almost never (in one case I was contacted and the person involved said he was satisfied with my answers and content to support my efforts, but later on, without further contact, he publicly circulated a “dossier” he complied about my alleged evils and that of some of my contacts. He then flatly refused to reply to any further correspondence from me, so it’s hard to envision him as a man of good will who’s just trying to save me from myself. And there is another who blasted me a couple of times on his chat group (which I sincerely regret ever having participated in), but he did not correspond with me in any other way whatsoever. He now claims, as you know, to have invited me to have further conversation, and portrays me as the one who failed to acknowledge his offer. I may not be remembering correctly, but if memory does serve, that’s an outright falsehood.) Instead they post their lies and distortions and misrepresentations in public, hoping that I will dignify them with a public reply. I will not.

Remember, this isn’t about me. No matter how bad of a person I am, Distributism is either true, or it isn’t. It’s either conformable to the Faith, or it isn’t. And whether or not sinners, heretics, and fanatics (all of which categories I fit into, according to some; at least they’re right on the first count) support Distributism has little to do with its truth or its rectitude. That’s a simple enough fallacy to identify – you know, ad hominem. If you read the “attacks” you’ll find them long on assertions and irrelevancies, and short on doctrinal argument demonstrating Distributism’s incompatibility with the Faith. And that’s because such a demonstration is ipso facto impossible.

My guess is that since that’s impossible, the only remaining avenue for the effort to discredit Distributism is to attack its supporters. In some cases that’s an effective technique, but it’s more characteristic of non-Catholics (Abe Foxman seems to do it pretty well, for instance) than Catholics, of whom it is downright unbecoming.

Why did you start IHS Press?

I was in Italy, stationed there in the late 90s when I was still in the submarine business – as the Undersea Warfare Officer for the American submarine force HQ in the Mediterranean – when I met an Irishman, who is now a good friend and partner in IHS Press, at the traditional Mass in Naples. Deric and I began a correspondence and friendship, in which we had occasion to discuss the numerous interesting books published originally in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. I suggested that they all ought to be available for today’s Catholics and everyone else too. He said that he had also had a longtime hope of making those books available again, and IHS is the fruit of that mutual vision, along with a kind and modest donation from an elderly woman who wanted to enable a bit of what I hope is good work – Deo Gratias – before her death.

As our website (and the “About IHS” statement in the back of most of our books) indicates, we felt we had to go back to the 1930s, or before, to find the last point at which you had a body of Catholic thinkers producing a body of work dealing in an uncompromising, integral, coherent, and consistent way with the Social Doctrine, with modernity, and with the relationship between the two. In this body I include men like, of course, the Chesterbelloc, but also Fr. McNabb, Penty, Gill, Maxwell, Kenrick, Pepler, Shove, Fanfani, Thibon, Pesch, Fahey, Devas, Coughlin, Ryan, and more; this list goes on and on, and it includes the whole group of lesser-known but not less important thinkers from the inter-war social movements of all European countries, for instance, Germany (think of von Ketteler, Windthorst, Hitze, etc.), England (the whole panoply of Catholic Social Guild activists, Distributists, and some of the Guildsmen), France (the corporatists La Tour du Pin and de Mun, Villeneuve-Bargemont, de Bonald, de Maistre, etc.), Austria (Vogelsang, Siepel, Messner, Dollfuss, Schuschnigg), the U.S (the whole roster of National Catholic Rural Life Conference scholars), and so many more. (Have a look at Martin Conway’s books on what he calls “Political Catholicism” for a survey of Catholic movements ranging from England to Belgium to Latvia.) The hundred years between 1830 and 1930 saw no shortage of integral and courageous thinkers who called a spade and spade, saw the modern world for what it was, and articulated a – perhaps the – alternative.

World War II ruined all that, though, at least for the time being: the liberals joined forces with the Communists to combat “fascism,” and both were hailed by the post-war world as “victors.” From that point forward the notion of a “third way” that transcended the sterile poles of left and right was stigmatized in the public eye as somehow uniquely tied to Italian fascism and Nazi Germany, never mind that the Social Doctrine is itself a “third way” that cannot be pigeon-holed into categories of conservative or progressive, left or right, Republican or Democrat. This is clear from the references the Popes make (especially Pius XI) to steering between the twin pillars of shipwreck, individualism and Collectivism. It is beyond all of these, but those who accept the entire post-war worldview cannot seem to conceive of anything beyond the two, stock alternatives – and their conception leaves out of account not only the “odious” ideologies and “isms” of the 1930s, which is all very well, but it also ignores the Social Doctrine itself.

The rest, as they say, is history.

How do you get these books to republish?

Many of them are now in the public domain. In fact all of Chesterton's works become free of copyright in the U.K. at the end of this year, and many of the U.S. editions of his works are or soon will be in the public domain. Any of his other works -- or those of anyone else -- that aren't in the public domain we would pay royalties for, just like we would for the work of a living author.

Getting to the heart of what you publish, some people like to call Distributism Communism, mind you these people often misspell Capitalism as Catholicism, but how do you respond to the communism claim?

People who throw these labels around rarely understand what they mean in a real and historical sense. Communism, in its essence, is the denial of the existence of the right of private individuals or families to own productive property. It’s not the “curtailing” of that right, the “limitation” or “direction” of it, or the denial of it in limited, particular circumstances. It is the principled denial of the idea that families and individuals have the right to own productive property, and absent that denial there is no Communism or Socialism. And unless you can prove that someone engages in that categorical denial, you can’t, either accurately or validly, call him a Communist. You can look that up in Cathrein’s “magisterial” work on Socialism.

If you take the broad definition of Socialism or Communism that many neocons and Capitalists use, everyone who mails a letter at the Post Office – which is owned and operated by the government -- is at least implicitly “conspiring” with Communists for the destruction of private ownership. But that’s pure and simple nonsense, isn’t it? Indeed, how do these people react when they read the words of Pius XI where he says, “certain kinds of property, it is rightly contended, ought to be reserved to the State since they carry with them a dominating power so great that cannot without danger to the general welfare be entrusted to private individuals”? Was he a Communist too because he allowed for public ownership of certain kinds of enterprises?

As for Distributism, how one gets from a doctrine or philosophy that says that there should be MORE widespread private ownership of productive property to a doctrine which denies ownership of productive property to men and families is a complete mystery to me. Frankly, it is intellectually dishonest to even imply that there is any similarity between Distributism and Communism (unless you’re operating at the level of the absolutely absurd, like saying Distributism and Communism are somehow ideological “cousins” because both are, quite similarly, not the word “catfish”). Those like TIA who try to hint at that similarity by reviewing books by Arthur Penty and illustrating the reviews with pictures of Joseph Stalin are coming very close to LYING. If advocating that the use and ownership of private property be controlled and limited in view of the common good is Stalinism, then Pius XI is a Stalinist. Look at QA §49: “when the State brings private ownership into harmony with the needs of the common good, it does not commit a hostile act against private owners but rather does them a friendly service....”

Finally, if these were honest scholars making honorable investigations into Distributism, they’d feel compelled to read the primary sources of the Distributists, which denounced Communism and Collectivism time and time again. Think of Penty’s Communism and the Alternative (1933) or the Belloc pamphlets against Socialism or the “manifesto” of the Distributists, before Penty’s of 1937, called Liberty and Property by H. E. Humphries from 1930, in which he calls Communism “utterly opposed to Distributism”; “Our difference with the Communists,” he says, “is on philosophy and therefore on everything else.”

Also, people who haven’t bothered to read a single Distributist work characterize it as a “forcible equal redistribution” of land a la the land confiscations of the communists. Beyond the fact that this absurd idea is not to be found in any single work of any single distributist, do you characterize your work as aiming for such a goal?

No. One who would maintain the contrary would be obligated to provide proofs that we pursue such an aim; and those proofs would be 100% impossible to find.

As for the Distributists generally, one might profitably recall Chesterton’s remark at the end of What’s Wrong with the World: “In speaking of a sweeping redistribution, I speak of decision in the aim, not necessarily of abruptness in the means. It is not at all too late to restore an approximately rational state of English possessions without any mere confiscation.”

Seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? But then I know that it’s a lot to ask of some people that they take the words of me, my colleagues and contacts, and our much more worthy predecessors at face value. There is always the more-or-less unsubstantiated imputation of some kind of sinister motive – like your friend’s suggestion that I’m clamoring after the “instruments of power.” But again, none of this can be substantiated by anything I or any Distributist has ever said or written.

 

[PeterPaul]

PART 2

All that said, I think that intellectual honesty demands that we admit that the question of the state seizing (or “facilitating” the sale of) an unused or neglected piece of surplus land from a wealthy landowner – again, after compensating him for it in some fashion – and making it available for sale to the landless proletarian at an affordable price, so that he too can own a piece of productive property, is perfectly acceptable according to Catholic doctrine. No one is proposing this today, and no one can even think about doing it today (at least not in this country...). Anyway, the author of Quadragesimo Anno – Oswald von Nell-Breuning, S. J. – says as much explicitly in his commentary on the encyclical he drafted for Pius XI, and in a way the entire history of the land movement in Ireland bears the point out. The great Cardinal Manning of England supported this Irish movement, and he was hardly squeamish on doctrine. Again, not that it’s likely to happen in this country today, or that’s it is even an approach that anyone’s seriously recommending, but it is worth knowing what the Church’s experts and thinkers have said and written on a given topic before hurling epithets.

Well, is the label Distributism problematic, since it may imply a RE-distribution?

Let’s start with a counter example, the term ‘Collectivism.” What exactly does someone mean by “Collectivist”?

First, he means someone who thinks that productive property should be owned in some fashion by the community, and second he means someone who views that collective holding of productive property as a refutation of the idea that productive property can be privately owned. So the essence – as we looked at a little before – is a denial of the right of private ownership of productive property. But it implies nothing about how that denial is to be realized. It might be Stalinist-style, murdering everyone who doesn’t give up his land, or it might be Fabian-style, implemented through voting, bureaucratic reform, and propaganda. The point is that the term “Collectivism” says a lot about the ideal form of society, according to Collectivists, but it says quite a little about how that form is to be brought about.

So with Distributism. The goal is a widespread distribution of ownership of productive property. How one gets there is another question, and those who say that Distributism necessarily implies a wholesale “re-distribution” make as much sense as those who insist that “Collectivism” necessarily means a wholesale “re-collection.”

Now this isn’t to say that “Distributism” isn’t a bit of an awkward word. Would it, however, be too much to ask that those who criticize the term – and point out that the Church never herself used it – familiarize themselves with the actual works of the Distributists? These Distributists themselves admitted that “Distributism” was an awkward, novel, and even undesirable word invented to express an idea that was so common as to, in fact, lack a specific term, owing indeed to the idea’s commonness. Will Titterton’s 1936 memoir of GKC records Belloc even jokingly “apologizing to God and man” for having invented the term, if he did indeed invent it, during the first official meeting of the Distributist League in 1926. But of course this doesn’t mean that the term is necessarily vague. It’s actually quite clear, and the articles of Irish political economist Charles Stanton Devas in the old Catholic Encyclopedia do quite a nice job of hinting at exactly what Distributists are aiming for, if in case GKC’s Outline of Sanity and Belloc’s few essays aren’t enough. Devas says: “the proper unfolding of human liberty and personality is historically bound up with [private property], and cannot develop where each person is only a sharer in a compulsory partnership, or, on the other hand, where property is confined to a privileged few. Suitably, therefore, the same Pope who had defended the true dignity and true liberty of man urged the diffusion [emphasis mine; he almost says “distribution”...whew, that was close] of property as the mean between Socialism and Individualism, and that where possible each citizen should dwell secure in a homestead which, however humble, was his own.”

As for keeping the term “Distributism,” let’s also bear in mind that we do have some obligation to historical accuracy and continuity. Catholics, of all people, should recognize the importance of doctrinal and even semantic continuity – remember how sacred the formulas themselves of our Faith are, along with the actual Faith they express. The fact of the matter is that for the last several hundred years priests and laity alike, thinkers and doers alike – all loyal sons of the Church – have risen up to speak with Christian Faith on matters of society, politics, economics. In England in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, a good portion of the men who did this were known as or called themselves Distributists. It’s simply a fact. Why not just admit it, live with it, pick up their torch, and carry it on?

Isn’t it intellectually dishonest for people to pretend they know what they’re talking about when they have never bothered to read a single Distributist work, such as the seminal An Essay on the Restoration of Property?

Agreed. But, interestingly, that doesn’t stop them from pontificating about all the evils of Distributism and those who advocate it. A more honorable, honest, and even Catholic approach would be to figure out what Distributism is, and then praise it or condemn it insofar as it is deserving, one way or another. If Distributism is so obviously against the Faith or condemned in light of Catholic doctrine, why are these very noisy critics so short on critical substance? The only piece to attempt – and I give him credit for at least sticking to substance – such a critique was John Clark’s scandalous hatchet-job of Belloc in The Latin Mass some years ago, and anyone who knows what Belloc believed and what the Church teaches knows that Mr. Clark was way off the mark. It’s a shame and a disappointment that TLM ever printed it. But again, it illustrates, by contrast almost, how plainly obvious it is that the Distributist vision is perfectly compatible with the Faith.

John, getting back to the idea of private property, there are some people in America, and lamentably, even some Traditional Catholics, who believe that private property comes with unlimited rights. No one can tell me how much property I can buy with my money.

That’s an outrageous assertion, at least for a Catholic. Narrowly considered, it’s fine to argue that a Catholic social order would not set a specific limit as to how much money you would have or how much land you would own. But that completely misses the point, because the issue isn’t how much property you have to consume (although I think it’s safe to say that the capitalistic “spirit,” indeed the whole mood of secular economics, whether Capitalist or Socialist, which sees man’s purpose as amassing and consuming as much property as possible, militates against the Catholic spirit of poverty which looks only for a frugal and becoming sufficiency of material goods, and therefore consciously rejects pursuit of more than necessary, and even feels an obligation to dispense surplus to those in need).

Rather the issue is, first, about productive property, and, second, what having too much does to the opportunity of others to have their share and to employ it productively. The argument against Wal-Mart isn’t simply that it’s big and sells lots of junk (though from a cultural or aesthetic standpoint those are probably valid criticisms), it’s that its bigness enables it to exercise an unfair advantage over smaller firms that are unable to compete – even while those firms represent people’s livelihoods and people’s fair share of productive property, the ownership of which everyone is entitled to, as Leo XIII and Pius XI made so perfectly clear. Note that I didn’t say “resources are finite” and people shouldn’t have more than their share. There’s a little truth to that – as in the case of land, for instance – but it’s not completely true. The more compelling point is that a certain huge mass of wealth enables companies to take competitive actions that shuts out their smaller competitors, and which they simply wouldn’t be able to do if they weren’t possessed of so much productive property.

When Henry VIII and his “nobles” confiscated the common lands that were held in trust by the community or the Church for use by those who would otherwise have been landless, the question was not really one of how he shouldn’t have enriched himself (by feudal law he was overlord of all England, anyway, so he had more than he could have ever been able to use or enjoy). It was more one of what the enclosures did to those who needed their small share of productive property, even if commonly held in trust, to provide themselves with both physical sustenance and also with – and this is even more important, and it’s an argument against the technology worshipers who say that people don’t need gardens and plots of land because technology makes all the “stuff’ (for consumption, mind you) we could possibly need – the sense of ownership, control, stewardship, and responsibility over the material means of their livelihoods, which has its own spiritual, moral, intellectual, and psychological benefits, and which is absolutely essential for all of us truly to work out our salvation while on pilgrimage toward heaven. These enclosures not only directly deprived peasants their share of ownership of common land, they massively enriched the textile manufacturers and merchants so that their newfound concentration of wealth could be employed to crush small competition – the guilds, basically – and enable the further amassing of wealth, unto the vicious cycle we have today. If anyone doubts this, let him look at the Shared Capitalism Institute’s statistics, which until recently (evidently) were available on the net, and quite convincing.

Well, let’s get to the accusations against you – the most severe one is “traitor.” Being a Pentagon employee, you must be pretty covert to conceal your treason. Are you a traitor, John?

 

[PeterPaul]

PART 3

To quote George Galloway from his recent Sky News interview, that’s a preposterous question. I’ve given 17 years of my life to Uncle Sam – with another half-dozen to go; my record of service during those years speaks for itself; if people want details, they can ask for them. I graduated 48 or 49 ( I don’t remember) out of some 900 from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and – consider the irony! – John McCain handed me my diploma. I’m a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy; at the moment I am working aboard one of the nation’s 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers as a department head, having completed tours of duty at the Pentagon, U.S. Joint Forces Command, and U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

So what do you think?

If the term “traitor” is applied to me because I was associated with a couple of books of essays expressing the opinion that the war in Iraq is unjust, all I can say is that it’s news to me that disagreement with the civil authority – whether in time of war or otherwise – constitutes “treason.” This would be news to our venerable “founding fathers,” and it would be even more news to the American justices who presided over the Nuremburg tribunals.

In fact it strikes me as rather patriotic to speak out gravely and clearly when one believes one’s country to be on the wrong course. One could even argue that a military officer is even more obligated than the average citizen to think clearly and responsibly about the use that is made of our country’s military power, and to sound the alarm in a lawful way when that power is misused or abused. It’s the whole notion of being obligated to follow a lawful order and obligated to disobey an unlawful one. By way of illustration, we might ask whether the opposite would be legitimate: seeing my country on the wrong course and simply shrugging my shoulders, saying “it’s not my responsibility – in fact it’s really none of my business; it’s rather the responsibility of those in positions of authority.”

Right: isn’t it your job to be a responsible citizen?

Of course, and you’ve made the point by choosing the word citizen. I am a member of the larger society – the nation – just as I’m a member of my family, the Church, and my profession, the military. As a member of that latter organization I surrender certain very specific and narrow rights, but I don’t surrender my citizenship or – especially – my knowledge of and obligation to follow the civil and moral law. As a citizen, therefore, I bear a responsibility – an even greater one now, with our “modern” constitution, which is supposed to give us a government that is “of, by, and for the people” (of whom I am one); this is Amerio’s point in Iota Unum (p. 251) – to do my part to help my country’s actions conform to the natural law and serve, rather than damage, the common good. This is true Catholic Action according to St. Pius X, to make public laws conform to justice (see Il Fermo Proposito).

Look Stephen: 2600 of our countrymen – and, sadly, countrywomen – are dead because of the war that we started in Iraq. If that war is just, then one can chalk those deaths up to tragic necessity. But if not – and I think the evidence is truly overwhelming that it isn’t, and when I say evidence I mean not so much “evidence” in terms of intelligence reports and secret knowledge of Iraqi activity, but “evidence” in the sense of what the Church and her theologians and philosophers teach about criteria that must be met in order for a war to be just – if not, then this is murder on a mass scale, objectively speaking, notwithstanding the subjective intentions of those doing the killing. And it’s murder of not only our young men and women, but murder of thousands and thousands of Iraqis who have died since March 2003. How can we be so cavalier about that? How can we be so willing to simply shrug and say, “Well, it’s got nothing to do with me; the President makes these kinds of calls, and my duty is to support him.”


Many of your readers, as I understand it, feel quite comfortable ignoring the Pope or the bishops when they’re saying something that doesn’t square with what they know to be true or right. How can they feel so free to do so as regards what is arguably the most supreme and important authority on earth, but for a lesser authority – i.e., the civil power, and specifically the President – they are powerless to pass judgment on the rectitude of his actions, and instead they merely invoke the authority of his position, as if that somehow transforms the nature of right and wrong or eliminates the burden of all men to both know right from wrong in particular cases and act upon it up to the limit of what circumstances permit?

This remark from page XXX (from the front matter) of Neo-CONNED! speaks directly to the point at hand; if you don’t want to take my word for it, at least take Fr. Delaney’s:
There is something immoral or amoral in the constant statement: I think it would be wrong, morally wrong, stupid, foolish for us to get into the war, but if we should get in, then it’s the duty of all of us to rally behind the President. National unity before all else!

National unity, even in the prosecution of an unjust war? If a war is unjust, then it must be opposed before the outbreak of hostilities and after. If a war is unjust, I must refuse to be a party to the injustice after the declaration of war, as well as before. It is only when nationalism is put before conscience that leaders can do what they will with a country, and a country’s wealth, and a country’s blood. If leaders knew that the people would not follow them into an unjust war, if leaders knew that in an unjust declaration of war, they would have to build prisons and concentration camps to house thousands upon thousands of conscientious objectors, leaders would not lead us to war. A sit-down strike even on the barbed wire of a concentration camp is the only answer to an unjust participation in war. (from Fr. John P. Delaney, S.J., The Catholic World, April, 1941)

The only way to make the charge of “treason” stick as regards the publication of the two books on the war in Iraq is to assert that when a nation prosecutes a war, every citizen, Catholics included, are obliged to concede that the war is just simply because the state decided to prosecute it. That line of thinking reduces ultimately to the absurd proposition that the duty of a Catholic as a citizen is to support every act of the government, precisely because the government does it.

This whole discussion reminds me of something one of my colleagues, David Alexander, recently told me – that he remembers that when Kennedy was elected, the sense was that now it was okay for “Catholics to be good citizens too.”
Well, whatever the relevance of that, I can certainly tell you that of the whole range of people who opposed the war in Iraq, there were not too many that don’t still qualify as “good Americans,” unless of course you make unconditionally supporting your country’s wars a prerequisite for being patriotic. The point is, if so many other people across the political spectrum can dissent from the reigning orthodoxy of the neoconservatives who are making our foreign policy without coming anywhere near “treason,” why can’t Catholics do so as well? This is perhaps where the phrase your colleague remembered comes in – there are a lot of Catholics who seem to want to make sure that our government thinks that we Catholics are the “best” citizens, in the sense of most loyal, most compliant, most submissive, notwithstanding the law or old-fashioned notions of right and wrong. Of course when the government orders something good and legitimate, by all means let Catholics be examples of loyalty and obedience – indeed, we should be the first to obey. But to insist upon this “reputation-building” by an outright waiver of the moral law...

Yeah, by waving the flag instead...

Right. We must obey God rather than men. Besides, what we’re talking about isn’t rocket science. People just need to READ and educate themselves with what constitutes a just war. At some point after a bit of reading – like Romano Amerio’s chapter on war in Iota Unum or Cardinal Ottaviani’s treatment of war in his text on the Public Law of the Church, in which, by the way, he argues for the abolition of modern warfare – it will become obvious just to what an extent our current foreign policy conflicts with the natural law and the law of nations. For heaven’s sake, it was Pope Pius XII – not some hippy idiot – who used the phrase “a war on war” in his 1944 Christmas message.

It’s been some time since I’ve read Amerio, but I remember references to war being a plague and a result of our own sins…

Well of course. And this is from the Church as well, where she prays to be delivered from war as from a plague. Amerio’s treatment is quite moving; he points out that war is fratricide – because at some level all men are brothers (he will therefore no doubt be accused of being a Freemason) – and also that it is a kind of sacrilege when wars are fought between baptized men. He envisions the eventual setup of a tribunal or authoritative international body that can arbitrate between nations that have disagreements, so that men can settle their differences by discussion rather than by violence, which is the approach to disagreements more befitting beasts than men. Ottaviani also looks in his writing to the triumph of reason and arbitration over force, but mention any of this to “our” people and you frequently get denounced as a supporter of Masonry, the UN, etc. Never mind that this too was endorsed by Pius XII in 1944.

Truly, no Catholic ever wishes for war. And in light of what you said about World War II being a death-blow, or at least a near-fatal blow, to our civilization, I can’t help but think about the axis of Fatima and Our Lady’s warning about wars to come. I think for me, reading Neo-CONNED! and Neo-CONNED! Again was a re-education in the horrors of war that jingoist simians like Sean Hannity just don’t get, no matter how many veterans call into his show or how many troops he goes to visit.

Ah, this reminds me of something else. I’ve seen a quote pulled out of context in which Reagan is complimented by the Archbishop, and so people then say, the Archbishop supported Reagan against the Communists, so he would support Bush against “terror” (whatever that is). Let me reproduce it for my readers who have not seen it.

For twenty years, Msgr. de Castro-Mayer and I preferred to wait; we said it was more prudent and more in conformity with Providence to wait because it is so important, so tragic, when it is not just a bishop, archbishop or cardinal, but the man in the chair of Peter. It is so important, so grave, so sad, that we prefer to wait until Providence gives us such evidence, that it is no longer possible to refuse to say that the Pope is a heretic. So, to say that I think we are waiting for the famous meeting in Assisi, if God allows it! Maybe war will break out, and here I take the opportunity to congratulate America and its President on their resolute action in Libya against an enemy of all civilization. In Europe they are all afraid, afraid, afraid of the Communists. Why? Until the Communists occupy all Europe. But President Reagan's action may have delayed war by making the Communists afraid; we don't know, because they are fanatics and could start war any time just to take power.

I highlighted the relevant quotes – it looks like an aside of the Archbishop in order to – as he often did – give a Catholic point of view to current events. He always saw the social order in terms of Christ and His Church and those corresponding rights, instead of saying, oh, well, we live in a capitalist secular democracy, that’s where God placed us, so we don’t have a duty to do anything about it, to make it, at the very least, a Catholic democracy. That being said, John, what do you think of this ripped-out-of-context quote that makes the Archbishop bosom bodies with Bill Kristol?

Well, I have no idea what was in the Archbishop’s mind when he uttered these words. It would be nice to have the complete context. If people extrapolate from this, however, to make the Archbishop into a supporter of the War on Terror – or World War IV as Podhoretz, Kristol, and so many others are fond of calling it – I’d say that’s a bit of a stretch. We should perhaps hesitate before putting words into his mouth about the GWOT [Global War on Terror —Ed.], as it is called.

And at the end of the day, what are we fighting for in this GWOT? The imposition of secular democracies on religious theocracies. Say what you want about the Muslims, at least they don’t have the social aspect of their religion clouded with some silly idea of separation of mosque and state.

Well the War on Terror is really a frightening look at how “conservative” sympathies – i.e., those that are inclined, correctly, to see Islam as a false religion and to see it as a threat (principally a demographic one) – can be co-opted and made to serve a far more sinister end. It’s about a global democratic revolution, and the “creative destruction” that Michael Ledeen sees at the heart of American foreign policy. This is scary stuff, right out of Albert Pike, with his third great global conflict between Islam and the liberal West. The problem is that as sincere Catholics we should at the very least not be rooting for either side, as neither is worthy of support in an integral way. More specifically, however, we are obligated to support people’s natural rights and legitimate freedoms, many of which are being violated under the guise of stamping out “Islamo-fascism.” And yes, we’re obligated to defend those freedoms even when it’s the freedoms of Muslims that are being violated. Injustice is injustice no matter whether it’s being perpetrated against people we don’t happen to like or agree with. As for the “Islamo-fascism” term, any time we’re being told that we are in a crusade against “fascism,” we should be very, very skeptical.

 

[BillH]

Remember, this isn’t about me. No matter how bad of a person I am, Distributism is either true, or it isn’t. It’s either conformable to the Faith, or it isn’t. And whether or not sinners, heretics, and fanatics (all of which categories I fit into, according to some; at least they’re right on the first count) support Distributism has little to do with its truth or its rectitude. That’s a simple enough fallacy to identify – you know, ad hominem. If you read the “attacks” you’ll find them long on assertions and irrelevancies, and short on doctrinal argument demonstrating Distributism’s incompatibility with the Faith. And that’s because such a demonstration is ipso facto impossible.

For what it's worth, I bought "An Essay on the Restoration of Property" from IHS a couple months back, and the interview sounds a bit like the preface of the book (which I otherwise enjoyed.)

As for ad hominem attacks, it seems a bit... inconsistent to decry them in one part of the interview and then refer to people you disagree with as "jingoistic simians" later on.

But I think the thing that makes me uncomfortable at times with Distributists can be found in this paragraph. Yes, I think Distributism is conformable with the faith. However, I'm not sure how to interpret the statement that "Distributism is either true, or it isn’t." It sounds to me like asking to decide whether the color blue is true, or is it not. Distributism is a socio-economic system -- one that has as one of its stronger selling points that it was "devised" by people who took the faith seriously. But yet, it is a socio-economic system that has its strengths and its weaknesses. It is not a metaphysical system, so I honestly do not know what is meant by "true" in this context.

In my opinion, the interesting question is not whether it is conformable to the faith (which I grant) it is whether or not it is the only socio-economic system conformable to the faith (which is what I suppose is meant by "true" in this context) And if not, are there other socio-economic systems conformable to the faith which might be superior on some relevant dimensions. I'm frankly not at all convinced on the first point, but too many Distributists seem to implicitly take it as a given.