I have seen the formulation, “The State should not compel charity,” countless times. In discussing the minimum wage, an antagonist will claim that requiring a person be paid the minimum required to live a dignified life in our society is compelling the employer to engage in charity. Too many times I’ve seen people claim that the government is stealing money from the tax payer to give charity to another person.
I grow frustrated reading such things, because they are grossly wrong, as I teased yesterday. It is one thing to fail while trying. That isn’t what is occuring. Obfuscation arises from being simply unable to define enough. Interestingly, what is enough to live upon is a drastically higher number when speaking of taxes and very low number when speaking of employment. The question really isn’t that complex though. All that is in excess of what is required live a decent life is to be put toward furthering the common good. For those that get skittish about rights talk, there is the obligation, plain as day. As to what a decent life is, it is tied to a time, place, and people. Ultimately, peoples through their governments are called to further less advantaged peoples, but that shouldn’t distract from the fact that it would be a manifest injustice to allow the elderly person down the street to suffer an indignity that would be considered mild in other parts of the world.
This does not mean that the government should confiscate all income in excess of say $50,000 per year and allocate how it best sees fit. For starters, we have the concept of subsidiarity, and not the synonym for limited government that I see bantied about so often. For example, my mother, I’m pretty sure, knows better what could be offered me to aid best in my actualization as a human and Christian. My grandfather knows which members of the extended family are in greatest need right now. So obviously the family unit can be a great instrument in furthering the common good. We as a society use this knowledge and recognize that money we take away from the family in some way harms the common good. A local governement however may be able to provide signicantly greater benefit to the common good (and the family itself) through its directed action than the family. When a local government does so, it isn’t stealing from someone’s excess. It is doing its duty: ensuring society’s resources are put toward the common good. One of things I think that is underappreciated about Deus Caritas Est and Caritas In Veritate is Pope Benedict’s emphasis that charity is not just salutary but essential to a properly ordered society.
If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion….
To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. (CiV 6-7)
Perhaps, more later.
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