Catholic Vote’s Socialism Freakout Highlights the Necessity of Clearly Defined Terms

Bernie Sanders has been clear that he is not a socialist in the Leninist and Stalinist senses of the term. He has said that he does not “believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production,” and that he believes that “the middle class and working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down.”

The problem with Fugate’s thinking, and that of the Catholic Right on the whole, is that the term socialism is always used equivocally. Socialism is always in the totalitarian sense when coming from the Catholic Right, disregarding every clarification and redefinition over the years. If one reads the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, you will see more than a few similarities between it and Senator Sanders’s definition of democratic socialism. You will see even more similarities between the Compendium and Michael Harrington’s work.

The sloppy use of terms, including that of Christian charity – or simply, caritas – brings up Fugate’s most important point, that a welfare state destroys the necessity of caritas. To this claim, we must first consider the purpose of welfare as such. Social welfare, in its most general sense, is a system of public and private programs that provides for those things owed to the other in justice. This requires a public and private approach based upon solidarity and subsidiarity. Subsidiarity makes it clear that what can be accomplished at lower levels of society – be they individual, familial, or local – should never be simply assumed by a larger level. Solidarity is a social charity, the love of neighbor. Following the social philosophy of Karol Wojtyla, subsidiarity is not even possible without solidarity, for solidarity is preeminent among the social virtues. It is one of the Great Commandments, and is the motivating force in all matters of achieving social justice. But can one say that a promotion of welfare destroys caritas? More pointedly, does Senator Sanders promote the welfare state? The answer to this question stands on the precipice between yes and no, one which should be debated. I would tend to say, “No, he does not,” because his welfare idealism assumes work, even full-time work. Does Senator Sanders’s State subsume all the work of lower levels? Perhaps that is the question that ought to be debated more thoroughly, though that is not my program here. More importantly, Fugate makes an equivocation typical of Christians – of both the Left and the Right – that charity is simply a private act motivated by the desire to do good. But caritas – in its most basic definition – is “willing the good of the other for the other’s own sake.” I do not think that Senator Sanders approaches anything close to destroying this idea.

As I have said, Fugate is correct in saying that socialism and Catholicism are incompatible, if one is referring to the Church’s definition of totalitarian socialism. But she is incorrect in stating that Senator Sanders’s idealism is akin to that of Lenin or Stalin. She is incorrect in stating that Senator Sanders’s ideals destroy the necessity of caritas. She is incorrect in stating that Senator Sanders’s socialism “would render Catholicism, and it’s [sic] members, archaic,” because Christ himself said that even the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (cf. Mt 16:18). I doubt a 74-year-old Senator from Vermont could do what every empire, including that of the damned, could not.

Joseph Antoniello received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Theology from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. He is co-founder of The Harmonium Project. In 2013, he was one of only a handful of American representatives at the first International Meeting of Young Catholics for Social Justice, hosted at Pontifical Lateran University by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife.

This was a guest post. 

You might also want to take a look at the comprehensive survey What Do the Popes Truly Say About Socialism?

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