11. Francis helps us to see that an integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human. Just as happens when we fall in love with someone, whenever he would gaze at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals, he burst into song, drawing all other creatures into his praise. He communed with all creation, even preaching to the flowers, inviting them “to praise the Lord, just as if they were endowed with reason”.[19] His response to the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that exists. His disciple Saint Bonaventure tells us that, “from a reflection on the primary source of all things, filled with even more abundant piety, he would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’”.[20] Such a conviction cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for it affects the choices which determine our behaviour. If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.
(source: Laudato si’ (24 May 2015))
This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one’s own love-letters or blowing one’s own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.
(source: Orthodoxy – Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves. For it marked the moment when all the stale paganism that had poisoned the ancient world was at last worked out of the social system. He opened the gates of the Dark Ages as of a prison of purgatory, where men had cleansed themselves as hermits in the desert or heroes in the barbarian wars. It was in fact his whole function to tell men to start afresh and, in that sense, to tell them to forget. If they were to turn over a new leaf and begin a fresh page with the first large letters of the alphabet, simply drawn and brilliantly coloured in the early mediaeval manner, it was clearly a part of that particular childlike cheerfulness that they should paste down the old page that was all black and bloody with horrid things. For instance, I have already noted that there is not a trace in the poetry of this first Italian poet of all that pagan mythology which lingered long after paganism. The first Italian poet seems the only man in the world who has never even heard of Virgil. This was exactly right for the special sense in which he is the first Italian poet. It is quite right that he should call a nightingale a nightingale, and not have its song spoilt or saddened by the terrible tales of Itylus or Procne. In short, it is really quite right and quite desirable that St. Francis should never have heard of Virgil. But do we really desire that Dante should never have heard of Virgil? Do we really desire that Dante should never have read any pagan mythology? It has been truly said that the use that Dante makes of such fables is altogether part of a deeper orthodoxy; that his huge heathen fragments, his gigantic figures of Minos or of Charon, only give a hint of some enormous natural religion behind all history and from the first foreshadowing the Faith. It is well to have the Sybil as well as David in the Dies Irae. That St. Francis would have burned all the leaves of all the books of the Sybil, in exchange for one fresh leaf from the nearest tree, is perfectly true; and perfectly proper to St. Francis. But it is good to have the Dies Irae as well as the Canticle of the Sun.
(source: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900611.txt)
But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.
I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives’ fables against the old maids’ facts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.
(source: Orthodoxy – Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
By this thesis, in short, the coming of St. Francis was like the birth of a child in a dark house, lifting its doom; a child that grows up unconscious of the tragedy and triumphs over it by his innocence. In him it is necessarily not only innocence but ignorance. It is the essence of the story that he should pluck at the green grass without knowing it grows over a murdered man or climb the apple-tree without knowing it was the gibbet of a suicide. It was such an amnesty and reconciliation that the freshness of the Franciscan spirit brought to all the world. But it does not follow that it ought to impose its ignorance on all the world. And I think it would have tried to impose it on all the world. For some Franciscans it would have seemed right that Franciscan poetry should expel Benedictine prose. For the symbolic child it was quite rational. It was right enough that for such a child the world should be a large new nursery with blank white-washed walls, on which he could draw his own pictures in chalk in the childish fashion, crude in outline and gay in colour; the beginnings of all our art. It was right enough that to him such a nursery should seem the most magnificent mansion of the imagination of man. But in the Church of God are many mansions.
Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church. If the Franciscan movement had turned into a new religion, it would after all have been a narrow religion. In so far as it did turn here and there into a heresy, it was a narrow heresy. It did what heresy always does; it set the mood against the mind. The mood was indeed originally the good and glorious mood of the great St. Francis, but it was not the whole mind of God or even of man. And it is a fact that the mood itself degenerated, as the mood turned into a monomania.
(source: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900611.txt)
15. It is my hope that this Encyclical Letter, which is now added to the body of the Church’s social teaching, can help us to acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face. I will begin by briefly reviewing several aspects of the present ecological crisis, with the aim of drawing on the results of the best scientific research available today, letting them touch us deeply and provide a concrete foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows. I will then consider some principles drawn from the Judaeo-Christian tradition which can render our commitment to the environment more coherent. I will then attempt to get to the roots of the present situation, so as to consider not only its symptoms but also its deepest causes. This will help to provide an approach to ecology which respects our unique place as human beings in this world and our relationship to our surroundings. In light of this reflection, I will advance some broader proposals for dialogue and action which would involve each of us as individuals, and also affect international policy. Finally, convinced as I am that change is impossible without motivation and a process of education, I will offer some inspired guidelines for human development to be found in the treasure of Christian spiritual experience.
(source: Laudato si’ (24 May 2015))
The encyclical, with its sweeping and even apocalyptic denunciation of economic markets as intrinsically favorable to evil, does not strike me as friendly either to democracy or to tradition – or for that matter Christian metaphysics, whose first major historic confrontation was with advocates of the view that Francis seems to be embracing in his denunciation of economic markets – namely, that material things are intrinsically evil.
I will admit that I have not read the document. It’s obviously not worth the time. All other issues aside, anyone who makes a statement like “halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster” is not a voice to be taken seriously.
I haven’t finished it, as I’ve been busy with other things and so only nibbling at it, but I think “intrinsically” is going to be far too strong.
If you ask me if I would like to have seen some parts written differently–yes, I would. But even at the unassailably higher level of authority with which Paul wrote, there were things Peter warned about; and I suspect that had Peter written hundreds of pages, we would have heard sharp criticism from Paul.
More germane, the bull Unam Sanctam actually does contain a declaration at the penultimate level of authority, and yet 2/3rds of its analysis is now regarded as somewhat misguided (or just plain wrong at points).
This encyclical commands the respectful attention of all the faithful, and should earn our best efforts to understand it in line with the deposit of the faith and the unfolding of the tradition. When we’ve done that, and still find poor expression, indifferent matters, bywords, or mistaken science–or where we are compelled to reluctantly disagree with any matter not “of faith” or “of morals”–well, then we are of necessity constrained by our well-formed consciences more fundamentally than our interpretations of the words of a by-turns-breezy-and-windy encyclical about fairly complex matters.
But I think you’re directly wrong about the dualism charge, or at least in those terms. All of finance is built on the priority of notional goods over real goods, that is, on the notion that exchanges are determined to be just in monetary/contractual terms rather than in real terms. Any attempt to reconcile a market which treats securitized debt as an “asset” with reality is going to require confronting the difference between whatever is notionally “a market” and a marketplace.
I submit that we can–and must–have freedom to enter into real contracts and exchange real property, goods, and capital, without treating unreal goods as “wealth,” the clever swapping of unreal goods as real “market behavior” or the resulting maldistribution of real property, goods, and capital as real “justice.” Which does not at all justify seizure of capital by the regime, nor regime/corporatist collusion to manage capital and convert labor into a public “resource.” It might, however, justify severe reform and devolution of bureaucratic and corporatist power, especially in the finance and insurance sectors.
“I suspect that had Peter written hundreds of pages, we would have heard sharp criticism from Paul.”
Yes, that’s a very wise insight – one Francis would have benefitted from.
“All of finance is built on the priority of notional goods over real goods, that is, on the notion that exchanges are determined to be just in monetary/contractual terms rather than in real terms.”
All of finance? All of it? Really? See, this is exactly the kind of overly broad, implicitly apocalyptic statement that undermines one’s credibility. My Christian friends who work in finance could educate you on how much real good is being accomplished in their world, and how destructive you are when you make Manichean statements like this. You are hurting a lot of good people here, and discouraging real accomplishment of real good by real Christians (not to mention virtuous pagans as well).
The problem is not that we disagree on whether virtuous markets are possible, the problem is that you demand up front that nothing like that currently exists (i.e. all people currently working in finance and commerce are doing the devil’s work) and only an apocalyptic catastrophe can establish it (i.e. compromise and solidarity with our neighbors are of no value, there is no common good and even no common reason, only a war to the death between light and dark).
I have to deal with the downstream effects of that kind of thinking, and it’s very ugly.
Further thought: You do have a meaningful critique of one (1) aspect of existing finance practices. What I want to help you see is that your Manichean rhetoric prevents me from discussing it with you. When your opening move is to threaten to destroy all the good work people like me and my friends have been trying to do, I’m forced to take a sharp position against you, and we have no space to discuss your real ideas intelligently.
You ask me to give Francis “respectful attention” but if I do so I’m actually helping put the terms of debate in a form that will destroy all the good I’ve worked to promote. We simply can’t have a world in which this demand for apocalyptic confrontation is taken seriously. To defend what I need to defend my response to the apocalyptic must always be “I refuse to listen to you until you drop your apocalyptic stance and enter into dialogue with me on terms that respect me.”
In other words, I can’t give “respectful attention” to those whose whole stance is to disrespect me.
Well, call me wrong (really, you may–and I consider it possible to respectfully think someone is wrong about something really important, or I would have had a really hard time as a Catholic today having lunch with my Independent Baptist pastor father), but I don’t think I mischaracterized finance by much. I began to apologize for saying “all of finance,” then reread and recalled that I meant that literally. What I did not do (in the “all of finance” sentence) was say that this was entirely bad or produced only bad results.
I don’t deny that my blue-sky reforms would pretty much invalidate most current financial advice. But then, my blue-sky reforms would also defund and disestablish the secular higher-ed institutions that provide my paycheck, so….
But in a literal and descriptive, not hyperbolic and not pejorative, sense, “All of finance is built on the priority of notional goods over real goods.” Recognizing that “priority” is not the clearest, I unpack this as meaning that “exchanges are determined to be just in monetary/contractual terms rather than in real terms.” And surely this is the case, unless the “real economy” is no longer distinguishable from the financial sector. Surely the “finance” component of a corporate director’s responsibility has to do with notional goods, with ciphers in the balance sheets and [fiat] currency in the payroll, even if he has other responsibilities as well. And in manipulating those ciphers, and adjudicating any issues that arise, financial services people and judges will be determining monetized results based on contracts–and any deviation from that will be regarded as “political” and possibly even an abuse.
And, again, none of that is intrinsically a criticism of this way of doing things. My point is simply that to call an effort to demand that this system reconcile itself to reality–that “finance” justify itself in terms of real goods more rigorously–is the exact opposite of dualism. It is metaphysical realism at work.
My view is that some parts of the finance sector would be able to pass scrutiny, and others wouldn’t. I am especially concerned at the influential and corrupting regulatory/corporate conglomerates–“creeping fascism”–which share an interest in reducing the possibility of reform or divestment (see Title IV education funding for a prime example, insurers and PPACA for another, and keep the list handy; it’s a choking systemic problem).
And securitization of debt is “buying and selling the poor,” or nothing short of out-and-out slave markets in public squares could ever be.
I think the real difference between us is not about finance at all (indeed, I expect that in practical outcomes we would agree more than we would disagree) but about social hermeneutics – the methods by which we think and talk about such things as finance. As an analogy, a deontologist, a eudaemonist and a utilitarian might all agree that I ought not to steal the backpack sitting on the floor of the rest stop where I’m sitting typing this message, but they would reach these conclusions by different means and those differences will sometimes (not always) be more important than the practical agreement.
So, for example, you say both “in a literal and descriptive, not hyperbolic and not pejorative, sense, “All of finance is built on the priority of notional goods over real goods.” ” and “some parts of the finance sector would be able to pass scrutiny, and others wouldn’t,” but in my hermeneutic those statements are flatly contradictory. I was at first tempted to think I had caught you in a contradiction but upon reflection I now suspect that while these statements are contradictory within my social hermeneutic they may not be in yours.
The upshot is that I’m not sure what to say other than that if we are going to talk to each other we must find some way of affirming the legitimacy of activities which seem to me to be presumptively delegitimized by your “all” statement. Does that make sense?
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