Byrne on Day

In this post last year I mentioned Carol Byrne's book that debunks the Dorothy Day-as-hero myth (hear that, Cardinal Dolan?). Strange though it seems, there are misguided souls who still want to see Day canonized.

Byrne recently gave an interview about her book and her research here.

The Healthy Horse

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot.

Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

- Winston Churchill

Slow Learners

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC

Updated 8/10/2011: The chap from Delphi wrote me that Cicero was not the author of the remark above. I did a bit of research and confirmed the fact; it appears the quotation was from a fictionalized history of the Roman statesman. Looks like the authority of Cicero can't be invoked for this one; we're just obliged to take the wisdom and good sense of the statement on its own merits.

Marxists With Rosaries

Source

Below is the review I wrote recently on Amazon.com for The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis.

If you're interested in the subject of Catholic views of economics, then avoid anything coming from Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, or the CWM. What a horrible mess those people made!

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"The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis" by Carol Byrne is a well-researched analysis of the writings and activities of the two founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

I approached the book with the understanding that Day was a dupe for the Communists -- and it was a role she didn't particularly mind playing: she struck me as a mole with one good eye. She misidentified the source of many of the world's woes (liberal capitalism with its materialism yes, but not original sin, which would have implicated herself and her comrades as well) and so adopted incorrect remedies (liberation theology; agrarian reform; bolshevism -- materialist creeds all, a fact that she managed to reliably overlook in her efforts to overthrow capitalism). I gave Day credit for intending well, but not for having the wherewithal to completely overcome her radical Communist past. I read Byrne's offering to see how well that postulate held up under closer scrutiny.

The author provides numerous examples that illustrate how the truth was far sadder than I suspected. Byrne thoroughly demonstrates that Day maintained a radicalism steeped in Marxist thought: she was a Communist who became a Catholic, but rather than repudiate her old erroneous ideas, she set about to create a synthesis between the two contradictory creeds. It was an oil and water mix steeped in false pretenses, one in which the Catholic element lost out almost every time to Marxist angst.

To wit, Day and Maurin:
* were nurtured on a Socialist ideology,
* campaigned with active Communists and their travelers,
* unfailingly supported Communist teachings and activities,
* attended conferences organized by Communists in the USSR,
* promoted Communist writings and propaganda,
* advocated worker strikes that were started by Communist-infiltrated unions,
* denigrated cash given by capitalists but accepted it willingly from socialists,
* defended the use of violence and class warfare to achieve joint ownership of property and the forcible redistribution of wealth,
* maintained a posture of hatred for Western democracy and admiration for Leninist and Stalinist totalitarianism,
* weakened the West in its defense against Communist aggression in the name of pacifism,
* praised Garibaldi in Italy, Castro in Cuba, and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam -- men who used armed force to brutalize and murder their enemies,
* refused guidance from orthodox Catholic clerics, and
* re-interpreted the Gospels and papal encyclicals to support their radicalism.

Hats off to Carol Byrne for providing the documentation needed to provide the correct context and background for a more complete understanding of the CWM.

Cause of the Economic Crisis

Source

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the Institute for the Works of Religion (aka the Vatican Bank), said that the cause of the current world economic crisis is not bankers.

"The true cause of the crisis is the decline in the birth rate,” he said in an interview on Vatican Television's "Octava Dies."

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi

With a population growth rate of two children per couple -- or 0% -- Western society has shorted itself of workers. With fewer young people in the work force, there are not enough funds available to care for retirees and pensioners, savings are diminished, and material and technological development is compromised.

For a time the lack of economic growth was compensated for by the use of financial instruments such as an expansion of available credit. This technique of applying stop-gap solutions eventually resulted in the economic crisis we are facing today.

Now, Gotti Tedeschi said, "the only way to rebuild economic-financial balance is austerity."

Indeed: the solution is to eliminate debt and have children.

Watermelon Economics

Source

From the source above (scare quotes are in the original):

A tiny clique of politicized scientists, paid by unscientific politicians with whom they were financially and politically linked, were responsible for gathering and reporting data on temperatures from the palaeoclimate to today’s climate. The "Team", as they called themselves, were bending and distorting scientific data to fit a nakedly political story-line profitable to themselves and congenial to the governments that, these days, pay the bills for 99% of all scientific research.

* The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia had profited to the tune of at least $20 million in "research" grants from the Team’s activities.

* The Team had tampered with the complex, bureaucratic processes of the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, so as to exclude inconvenient scientific results from its four Assessment Reports, and to influence the panel’s conclusions for political rather than scientific reasons.

* The Team had conspired in an attempt to redefine what is and is not peer-reviewed science for the sake of excluding results that did not fit what they and the politicians with whom they were closely linked wanted the UN’s climate panel to report.

* They had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

* They had emailed one another about using a "trick" for the sake of concealing a "decline" in temperatures in the paleoclimate.

* They had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was "a travesty". This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever, and that "global warming" science is settled.

* They had interfered with the process of peer-review itself by leaning on journals to get their friends rather than independent scientists to review their papers.

* They had successfully leaned on friendly journal editors to reject papers reporting results inconsistent with their political viewpoint.

* They had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase and corrupt science for political purposes.

* They had mounted a venomous public campaign of disinformation and denigration of their scientific opponents via a website that they had expensively created.

* Contrary to all the rules of open, verifiable science, the Team had committed the criminal offense of conspiracy to conceal and then to destroy computer codes and data that had been legitimately requested by an external researcher who had very good reason to doubt that their "research" was either honest or competent.

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Reflection: One wonders why they would go to the trouble? Control of political and economic machinery, of course -- but to what end? Perhaps there's something to the thought that environmental groups engage in watermelon economics: green (i.e. superficially organic and natural) on the outside, red (i.e. socialist, communist) on the inside.

When is a Haircut Not Just a Haircut?

I got my hair cut yesterday. The little family barber shop I like has a red, white, and blue barber poll, stuffed fish mounted on the walls, and plays oldies music over the intercom.

When is a haircut not just a haircut? When the Hair Technician can't cut your hair without creating a permanent record in the cash-register/computer that includes your name and ZIP code.

At least, that was my experience a few years back when I tried one of the hot-shot haircut chains because it was closer to the house than my traditional spot.

"What is your name?" the well-manicured hair stylist asked, her fingers poised over the register keyboard.

"You don't need my name to cut my hair," I replied.

It turns out I was wrong: she froze in her tracks, and a look of panic popped onto her face. She typed something in, and then asked, "OK, what's your ZIP code?"

"You don't need my ZIP code either."

She blinked her eyes a few times, typed something in, and then resumed her normal routine. At the end of the event I received a receipt, which showed my salon name -- Michaael, spelled with two As -- and a ZIP code.

I haven't been back -- not that I'm so much a mounted catfish fan, but I don't like being hassled for something that I receive no benefit from.

I understand how these matters work: the salon wants my name and ZIP code to better market their goods and services to me; they want to know where I'm from so that they can better gauge what locations need new salons, which products to stock on the shelves, that sort of thing.

My point being that my name and ZIP have value to the salon, which means that I should be compensated for providing that data. The fact that providing said information "costs me nothing," as one colleague put it, misses the point: I have something of value -- i.e. my name and ZIP code -- and if a company wants to get it from me, they need to make it worth my while. The fact that they ask for it is sufficient proof that it has significance.

A happy irony here is that I'd gladly provide my name at my family barber shop: they know how to ask for that sort of thing without being annoying.

World Population

The United Nations Population Database provides low, medium, and high variants in its population growth estimates. Of the three, the low variant is consistently the most accurate.

What does the low estimate predict?

That the world's population will increase by about another billion people over the next 30 years -- peaking at around 8.02 billion -- and will then begin to decline.

One would think that this would quell the fears of the zero-population growth crowd, but so far they have stuck to their dogma that the world's population should be reduced to one billion.

This is not quite as odd as their trick of talking about undesirable populations. It leaves me inclined to ask if they themselves are a part of the undesirable population -- and if not, how do they know?

Sharing a Quote

Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

This morning a friend from the 'hood sent me an email with this note:

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
- Adrian Rogers

Adrian Rogers and I were born in the same town: West Palm Beach. Southerners are funny about that sort of thing, too: even though I grew up in Georgia since age three, I expect my obituary to read something like, "Sean lived 99 years in Atlanta, but he is a native of south Florida." I think it's quaint.

Another Rogers quotation worth noting is, "We have dads today that are interested in sports, business, and sex. They've forgotten their God-given assignments to teach the Ten Commandments." Kudos!

Of course, no one is perfect; the same guy also said, "I believe slavery is a much maligned institution; if we had slavery today, we would not have this welfare mess." No thanks.

Rogers is also opposed to smoking tobacco (which I don't care about) and drinking alcohol (my Irish ancestors are doing cartwheels, I'm sure). I have a shot glass in the kitchen that I got when I was in Ireland; it says "Leprechaun's Pint."

Anyway, regarding the original Rogers quote above, I agree -- after all, I know my own character: if I could get by on the sweat of your brow, I'd have the same struggle as the next guy to not take the opportunity.

St. Joseph the Workman

The Catholic Church’s Response to the Socialist May Day
“Be still and see that I am God...” – Psalm 45:11

St. Joseph, the Carpenter
by Georges de La Tour

In his Communist Manifesto Karl Marx called on the workers of the world to unite in a worldwide class struggle. Just over 40 years later May 1 was chosen by socialists as International Workers' Day, or May Day: the celebration of the achievements of socialism in memory of the 1886 Chicago labor riots, popularly called the Haymarket Riots.

In a speech given to the Christian Association of Italian Workers on May 1, 1955, Pope Pius XII established May 1 as the feast of St. Joseph the Workman. Whereas communism and its handmaid socialism fomented class warfare polluted with envy, the Holy Father declared that “far from being a stimulus for discord, hate and violence, May 1st is and will be a recurring invitation to modern society to accomplish that which is still lacking for social peace.”

Communism: War and Revolution
The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 by German-born Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, was a declaration of war against western society and culture, a tract some 12,000 words in length that called for the working (or proletariat) class to forcibly overthrow the ruling (or bourgeoisie) class and produce a classless society.

This new society would be attained after passing through a period characterized by a dispersed agrarian-based populace deprived of rights of property and inheritance and gathered into industrial armies that were governed by a State with a monopoly on credit, communication, transportation, and the instruments of production.

To attain this goal, the Manifesto eschewed “improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity,” and similar deeds of incremental reform that endeavored to change the fundamental structures of society through a series of prudent improvements implemented over time.

Marx vilified the proposition that capital and labor were complementary, vociferating instead that the two were constitutionally antagonistic. He argued that the internecine warfare waged by those who work for a wage upon those who possess capital and the means of production was an evolutionary step, the inevitable culmination of the history of the oppressors’ injustice inflicted on the oppressed.

In this manner communists furiously agitated ostensibly on behalf of the proletariat – i.e. in a perverse fashion that the Catholic Church and men of good will could never sanction, but only look upon with horror. The Marxists protested that they were protecting the afflicted, but they did so by denying men the honor owed them in their property, their good name, and their life. Further, by exaggerating the excesses of the predominant social systems, they sought a means by which to eviscerate the existing edifices of society – religion, country, family – and replace them with a totalitarian, materialistic, and atheistic despotism. Communism was total war on God and all that proceeded from acknowledgement of the Deity.

Labor in 19th Century America
A worldwide economic downturn spanned roughly the last 25 years the 19th century, one that followed on the heels of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war and the 1873 collapse of the Vienna Stock Exchange.

In the United States one response to this economic depression was the growth of labor unions and fraternal organizations. Capitalizing on the frustrations of the working classes, communists campaigned militantly to win leadership of labor unions. The labor union fights were frequently acrimonious.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) was a further complicating factor for labor issues. After the war the poorer classes sometimes formed their own derivative secret groups, modeled on the Freemasons who themselves boasted of members drawn from among society’s elites. One such worker’s organization, the Knights of Labor (KOL) begun in Philadelphia, favored a progressive income tax and the cessation of child labor, denied membership to bankers and stock market speculators, and engaged in strikes and boycotts in negotiations with employers. While the rank and file were workers, the leaders were usually men of means and – often enough – Freemasons with conflicting loyalties.

The bitter political battles within the KOL initiated by the Socialists soured relations among a number of key members, some of whom left to help found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU)[1] in Indiana in 1881. Though the KOL continued to grow rapidly, the FOTLU failed to ever garner much support (its chief legacy is its proposal to introduce the American Labor Day holiday, held the first Monday in September; the proposal became federal law in 1894). The KOL continued to muddy the waters of union relationships by unabashedly recruiting FOTLU members, providing workers to employers for rival-union strikes, and publicly excoriating FOTLU’s political and social initiatives.

The Riot in Haymarket Square
Hoping to shore up support and increase its appeal, in 1884 the languishing FOTLU initiated a national campaign to introduce a mandatory eight-hour work day which, if not adopted, would become grounds for a national strike.

Meanwhile the KOL’s leadership had begun to endorse the Progressive Cigar-makers' Union, a Chicago-based group of anarchist cigar makers that espoused a nakedly Marxist platform, radically denouncing capitalism and calling for open rebellion against it. The radical cigar makers opposed the FOTLU strike, and tempers flared.

The strike commenced with the arrival of the first day of May in 1886; over 350,000 workers from 1,200 factories participated. New York numbered 10,000 strikers and Detroit 11,000, but Chicago’s 90,000 strikers was by far the largest turnout.

On the third day of the Chicago strike, at the McCormick Reaper Works, police officers killed four participants and wounded several others while breaking up a fight between strikers and workers who had been sent to cross the picket line.

Later that day anarchists distributed fliers implying that the police murdered the strikers. The fliers announced a rally the next day at Chicago’s Haymarket Square. To the concern of the city’s mayor and the police force, one version of the flyer said, “Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!”

On May 4 the strikers converged on Haymarket Square. The police were there in strength, prepared for any contingency. The rally was uneventful, however, until August Spies, an immigrant German anarchist known for advocating political violence, took the stage to give a speech.

During Spies’ speech, his comrades distributed a flyer for the occasion written in English and German and titled “Revenge!” Its concluding sentiment was:

If you are men, if you are the sons of your grand sires, who have shed their blood to free you, then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms we call you, to arms.

As Spies was speaking, the police attempted to disperse the crowd. A scuffle ensued, during which someone threw a pipe bomb that immediately killed one police officer and injured many more, several of them mortally.

In an instant, the legend of the bomb-throwing anarchist was born.

Without hesitation the police opened fire on the crowd. Four strikers were killed in the ensuing riot, and five dozen police officers and well over a hundred on-lookers were injured. A number of men, including Spies, were arrested.

Aftermath of the Haymarket Riots
Eight men were tried for the riot and the murder of police officers. In an injudicious legal approach, the prosecution did not focus on whether any of the eight men had thrown the bomb; instead, the case centered on whether the men had incited a riot by their encouragement to violence. The jury – who, in poetic fashion, had been permitted by the judge to read the anarchists’ writings advocating political violence to attain social reform – returned eight guilty verdicts.

One of the convicted men received a 15-year prison sentence. The remaining seven were condemned to death; two of the men had their sentences commuted to life in prison, while a third committed suicide with a cigar bomb. The four remaining men – including Spies – were taken to the gallows, where they sang La Marseillaise before being hanged.

The sentences and executions were greeted with cries of protest from labor unions and newspapers around the globe. In 1893 the governor of Illinois declared that all eight men had been innocent and pardoned the three survivors. The police commander who ordered the dispersal was convicted of corruption. The true bomber, meanwhile, was never identified by authorities.

Three years after the riots, the Second International – a gathering of socialist and labor parties who fought for international socialism[2] – met in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and for the World’s Fair. Members called for demonstrations around the globe on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago riots. A few years later May Day was formally recognized by the Second International as an annual event. Further May Day riots followed, including two in Cleveland, Ohio in 1894 and 1919.

And so in the century to come, the May Day events of Chicago’s Haymarket became a rallying cry for the atheistic creed of communism manifested in deeds of crime, violence, torture, famine, repression, forced collectivization, mass deportations, massacres, and the destruction of the Faith and its churches and monuments. The atrocities were most pronounced in the region stretching from Lenin and Stalin’s Soviet Empire to the land of Chairman Mao’s “Glorious Revolution” in Red China, but the imitators were legion: the Korea of Kim Il Sung and the Vietnam of Uncle Ho, Afghanistan under Najibullah and Ethiopia under Menguistu, Neto’s Angola, Castro’s Cuba. Over 100 million persons would be murdered under these many regimes. These monstrous deeds were committed, the communists claimed, incredibly, to liberate the working man from the injustices of capitalism.

The Church and the Communists
The first encyclical of Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, promulgated in 1846, was the initial Papal condemnation of the error of communism. Thus, even before Marx and Engel’s “scientific” articulation of communism the Catholic Church battled with that modern terror that was absolutely contrary to the natural law. Pius XII was one of several pontiffs who spoke to remind men of the true solution to the world’s woes: not material success, not violent upheaval, and not atheism. What men of the world needed – what in fact they were obliged to do - was to give themselves wholly to Almighty God, not only interiorly but in all their exterior works.

The ideal model for men in this capacity was to be St. Joseph, the patron of social justice. The foster-father of the Son of God was himself a poor man, though of noble descent; he possessed no material wealth, held no prospects for worldly advancement, did not aspire to directly refashion society through revolution. And he was reckoned a just man to whom the Son of God Himself was subject as to a father.

Pope Pius XI declared St. Joseph to be the patron of the Universal Church. In 1936 Pope Pius proclaimed, “We place the vast campaign of the Church against the world of Communism under the standard of St. Joseph, her mighty protector.” Pius XI also gave the Church many allocutions, encyclicals, and speeches to combat the rapidly-spreading errors of the Marxist creed.[3] The most eloquent encyclical appeared in 1937, Divini Redemptoris, condemning atheistic communism. “This Apostolic See,” the Holy Father reminded the Church and the world, “knows that its proper and social mission is to defend truth, justice, and all those eternal values which Communism ignores or attacks.”

Feast of St. Joseph the Workman
Less than 20 years after the publication of Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XII carried on the work of his predecessor by providing the festivity of St. Joseph for besieged working men.

On May 1, 1955, Pope Pius XII granted an audience to the Catholic Association of Italian Workers, whose members had gathered in Saint Peter’s Square to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their society by publicly renewing their commitment to the social doctrine of the Church. On that day the Pope instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. The Pope assured his audience and the working people of the world that:

You have beside you a shepherd, a defender and a father in Saint Joseph, the carpenter whom God in His providence chose to be the virginal father of Jesus and the head of the Holy Family. He is silent but has excellent hearing, and his intercession is very powerful over the Heart of the Savior.

The Holy Father continued:

We put your Associations under the powerful patronage of St. Joseph. There could not, in fact, be a better protector to help you to make the Spirit of the Gospel penetrate into your life. As we said before, from the Heart of the Man-God, the Savior of the world, this spirit abounds in you and in all men; but it is quite certain that no worker was ever so perfectly and profoundly penetrated by it as was the putative Father of Jesus, who lived with Him in the closest intimacy and community of family and of work. Therefore, if you wish to be close to Christ, we also repeat again today, “Ite ad Joseph” – “Go to Joseph!”

No longer would the communists have the monopoly on a day of celebration on behalf of workers. Henceforth, the Catholic Church would have its own feast, and so continue its divine mission to guide, protect, and love the suffering, particularly those most in need of defense and help, the workers and other sons of the people.

Accepted as such by Christian workers, and almost receiving Christian unction, the 1st of May, so far from being a renewal of discord, hate, and violence, is, and will be, a recurring invitation to modern society to accomplish that which is still lacking for societal peace: a Christian feast, that is, a jubilant day for the concrete and progressive triumph of the Christian ideals of the great family of labor.

So that this meaning may be present, and in a certain way as an immediate exchange for the numerous and previous gifts which have come to us from all parts of Italy, we lovingly announce to you our intention to institute – as we in fact do institute – the liturgical feast of St. Joseph the Artisan, assigning to it precisely the first of May.

Does this our gift please you, dear working men and women? We are sure it does, because the humble artisan of Nazareth not only represents to God and to Holy Church the dignity of manual labor, but is also always the providential guardian of you and your families.

With this allocution Pius XII established a feast day to counter the communist May Day and the demented creed that inspired it. The Church was to have a festival to remind men of the dignity of work and to inspire societal life and laws that were founded on the equal division of rights and duties. Communism had been a machine for producing power, one that ignored all considerations but the utility of labor, destroying in the process the humanity of the laborer who operates the machine. To this madness the Catholic Faith would continue to be vehemently opposed, reminding its Faithful children in the illustrious example of the worth of the worker who is to be redeemed by the Son of God.

Apologia Pro St. Joseph
It is evil teachers who would have poor men regard their condition as a misfortune and a wrong, and urge them to seek redress by forcibly appropriating the goods of others. Thus it has pleased God to exhibit St. Joseph in all his glory as the true model of the working man. All laborers should turn their eyes towards him to learn their true dignity as Christian artisans who worthily support their families. Just as St. Joseph’s nobility as a descendent of the House of David was hidden from the eyes of men, so the working man, following Joseph’s example, would have a special dignity unknown to frenetic souls who do not know peace.

St. Joseph, the humble carpenter of Nazareth with a predilection for poverty who esteemed and loved labor, portrays the dignity of the manual laborer and the provider and guardian of the worker’s family. That God placed His Son in the care of St. Joseph is the supreme example of the worth the Almighty places on the laborer. In the encyclical Quamquam Pluries Pope Leo XIII wrote of St. Joseph, “regularly by his work he earned what was necessary for the one and the other for nourishment and clothing…” Comparing St. Joseph to the Old Testament Joseph, Pope Leo continued:

And in truth, beyond the fact — the significance of which has never been denied — that the same name was given to both, you well know the points of likeness that exist between them: namely, that the first Joseph won the favor and special good will of his master, and that through Joseph's administration his household came to prosperity and wealth; that (still more important) he presided over the kingdom with great power, and in a time when the harvests failed, he provided for all the needs of the Egyptians with so much wisdom that the king decreed to him the title “savior of the world.”

Devotion to St. Joseph has been known since the 4th century, but only in the Eastern Church. In the west the devotion acquired impetus with the preaching of St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gertrude, and St. Bridget of Sweden. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Some Saints are privileged to extend to us their patronage with particular efficacy in certain needs, but not in others; but our holy patron St. Joseph has the power to assist us in all cases, in every necessity and in every undertaking.”

In the 15th century Pope Sixtus IV introduced the feast of St. Joseph to the Roman Calendar. St. Joseph steadily acquired new devotees, until his cult was especially strengthened in the 16th century by the reformed Order of Carmelites. In 1562 St. Teresa of Avila, patroness of Spain, founded the little Monastery of St. Joseph of Avila, a convent of discalced Carmelite nuns of the primitive rule of St. Joseph devoted to solitude, silence, austerity, and poverty. The decision to name the convent for St. Joseph was influenced by his intercession to deliver Teresa from a serious illness in her youth. St. Teresa also chose St. Joseph’s as her place of retreat and refuge during the persecutions of the reformed order, when she was condemned to voluntary retirement. The Carmelite reformer wrote, “To other Saints Our Lord seems to have given power to succor us in some special necessity; but to this glorious Saint, I know by experience, He has given the power to help us in all needs.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, Popes Pius XI and XII – all point to St. Joseph to remind us that it is in the solitude of the forgotten places that God reveals Himself to humble hearts.

Blessed are the poor in spirit – those who lead just lives free from idleness, who desire to remain hidden and work peaceably – for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. What a respite from the restless activity of modern life!

Sources
* Pius XII, allocution to the Christian Association of Italian Workers: Acta Apostolicae Sedie 47 (May 1, 1955) pp. 403-4. Translation from the Italian by Rev. Fr. Christopher Danel (2007)
* The Life and Glories of Saint Joseph, Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. (TAN Books and Publishers, Inc.; 1980)
* Catholic: The Voice of Catholic Orthodoxy, No. 257 (The Desert Will Flower Press; April/May/June; 2007; pp. 16-7)
* Catholic Action for Christ Our King, Rev. Fr. Stephen DeLallo, FSSPX (Lepanto Press; 2006)
* The Black Book of Communism, Stéphanie Courtois et al (Harvard University Press; 1999)
* History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Philip S. Foner, (International Publishers; 1955)
* Knights Unhorsed: Internal Conflict in a Gilded Age Social Movement, Robert E. Weir (Wayne State University Press; 2000)

[1] The FOTLU survives today as the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
[2] One of the Russian members of the Second International was Vladimir Lenin.
[3] Including Miserentissimus Redemptor, Quadragesimo Anno, Caritate Christi Compulsi, Acerba Animi, Dilectissima Nobis

Stimulus Plan Variation

I do not like the stimulus plan being pushed through congress: it awards money to people who made a number of bad decisions without obliging them to correct what caused the problems to begin with.

Having accepted that money is going to be given out as part of a stimulus plan, one wonders how matters would go if the funds went to pay off mortgages instead of being handed to the banks? Then the banks would get their money, and homeowners -- whom the money originally came from anyway -- would have paid-off homes.

Would you triage recipients: those who are not in arrears and have kept up their payments get the funds first? Perhaps limit it to primary place of residence?

Still, such a plan would be unfair to the people who have been responsible managers of their mortgages -- about 90% of homeowners -- to help those who have been less than prudent. And it's unfair that people who bought too much house or made imprudent purchase decisions should be excused from the consequences of their greed and stupidity. Would it still be better than just giving money to banks and having the homeowners lose out anyway?

Money-Grubbing Corporate Capitalists

I read a news story yesterday about Hugo Chavez eating crow and approaching U.S. Oil companies for business to help keep the Venezuelan economy afloat. I composed the write-up below in Chavez’s honor.

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Click here to read the complete article

When US Airways flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River, "controlled chaos" broke out. One witness reported, "People started running up and down aisles. People were yelling and pushing."

But then matters turned around when calmer heads began to prevail. The men rose to the occasion, and chivalry even made an appearance when cries of "women and children first!" were heard above the din. The more able-bodied assisted the elderly and the infants, all the while maintaining order during the ordeal. By the time rescue workers arrived, the scene had changed dramatically -- one rescuer reported, "There was a lot of calmness...People weren't running around." One survivor even dealt with the trauma by joking that it was the "best landing I ever experienced." Experts in the industry say that it is incredible that an emergency water-landing resulted in all-hands alive and accounted for.

So who were the champs who kept their composure and came through in the pinch?

They were business executives from outfits like Bank of America, Wachovia, and TIAA-Cref. An international investment banker helped a woman out of the freezing water. The last passenger off the plane -- a married father of four -- works for Oracle Corporation, of all things. "God put me on that plane," the Oracle man said. "I was supposed to take the later flight, and God put me on that plane."

Will they never learn?

Morals and Ethics in Economics

By way of addendum to this morning's entry, today's column from David Warren titled Market Failure is worth perusing.

High Tory

The High Tory is a Brit (or sometimes a Canadian) who is pro-tradition, conservative, suspicious of novelty, and prone to sound like an aristocrat even when the family line is mongrel stock. In my experience he is given to magniloquent utterances. His natural sympathies are with gentry and landowners, whether patrician or plebian; his antithesis is the modern democratic mobile money-grubbing capitalist devoid of pedigree, heritage, or a sense of place.

Jolly Old England (rooted in an Englishman’s perception of an Englishman) gave way to the Englishman of The Stiff Upper Lip (rooted in an American’s perception of an Englishman), and (national perceptions aside) I’ve yet to read a satisfactory account of what precipitated the change. One possibility* is the influence of the pessimist Thomas Malthus, who married English economic notions with un-provable assertions about the probabilities of species survival. Malthusian economics produced new miseries for the poor with the approbation of men of means, who were excused from alleviating the sufferings of the lower class. Darwin, for the record, adored Malthus.

In my time I’ve come across pro-monarchy Americans who aspire to High Tory-dom (in sentiment if not in name). I don’t mind the phenomenon – it can be quaint in its own way, except for when the would-be monarchists are also sycophant Anglophiles. In that case you can forget the English charm.

During one online exchange I had with such a chap -- he was berating America and Americans not ashamed of their country** -- I declared that America is the best country in the history of the world, and if you don’t feel the same way about your country, why not? A string of sanctimonious salvos and smug barbs were promptly directed my way. I looked in vain for examples of British orthography in the assault, but the cavilling (sic) used only the uncivilized American spellings. Go figure.

For the record, as St. Thomas More is the patron of my confirmation, I hope to be excused at least of harboring anti-English sentiments as such.

Old Glory First Hoisted
Flying High Above the Union Jack

* This theory of causation is just speculative, no doubt idle, on my part.
** Patriotism in that particular venue was permitted only as a banal platitude, and then only if accompanied by numerous qualifiers and energetic hand-wringing to soften the effect. In my critic’s view, my unreserved love of country made me worse than a socialist. Bother.

Letter #3: Kith and Kin

In March 2007 the Beacon published an op-ed piece favoring expedition of the naturalization of illegal immigrants on economic grounds. My response was published the next week.

Here are links to the originals:
* Original Article: p. 34 of http://beaconcast.com/downloads/20070703_5
* My Response: p. 29 of http://beaconcast.com/downloads/20070703_6

Below is my letter.

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Do economics trump kith and kin?

Kith and kin specifically means “near acquaintances and relatives.” Frequently the phrase is used to describe a more or less cohesive group with whom one shares common language, customs, and history. Down to my bones, I have affection and gratitude for my country, my family, my faith: I can’t imagine who I would be without them.

Urging me, as do Joseph Davis and Bernard Lobracco, that I should put all this aside and endorse putting the naturalization of illegal immigrants on the fast-track because it is good for the economy is comparable to telling me that the most important factor in choosing a wife is to find a woman with prospects for a large fortune.

Thanks for the dime-store wisdom, but my heart is not up for the bidding; neither am I a mercenary who would sell out my heritage just to make a buck. There’s an opportunity cost to reducing all considerations to dollars and cents: the most valuable commodities life has to offer are always lost in the exchange.