Pope Francis's attack on "libertarian individualism" not about libertarians - Father Robert A. Sirico:
May 5, 2017 - "In a recent message by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Social Science he outlines some moral concerns about a phenomenon he sees as invading (his term) 'high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools,' namely 'libertarian individualism'....
"When the pope speaks of libertarian individualism, he has in mind something which he says 'exalts the selfish ideal,' whereby … it is 'only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad.' [The] result is a belief in 'self-causation,' which I take to mean the denial of any givenness in human nature in favor of a radical autonomy in which morality is ... simply a matter of whatever I will it to be.
"All of this, the pope contends (and I agree), 'denies the common good.' One could add that it also denies the entire tradition of natural law via an exaltation of subjectivity and the detachment of conscience from the truths knowable via faith and reason.... He also seems to be critiquing any ethical system that sees freedom, in the sense of absence of constraint, as its own end and finality. For Catholics and other Christians, liberty is more than just negative freedom or the capacity to will X rather than Y....
"All this is standard Catholic teaching. The question that remains is whether the pope is offering a fair or accurate definition of 'libertarianism'
"Consider, for example, that there are many schools of libertarianism.... As interesting as it might be to examine the differences between these positions, I think it is more productive to outline some concepts to which I suspect all serious believers could subscribe....
"Human beings are not simply individuals, even if we colloquially employ this word to describe people. Certainly, human beings enjoy ... legitimate liberty.... Even the Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes speaks of private property as conferring 'on everyone a sphere wholly necessary for the autonomy of the person and the family, and it should be regarded as an extension of human freedom'.
"The social reality of persons to persons is what constitutes a human community. This is a bond - one which certainly comes with some constraints, but one which can’t be reduced to constraints.... Power is a form of constraint external to the person ... forced upon a person without regard to that person’s free will, such as an act of violence to conform another’s behavior. Authority, on the other hand, is a form of constraint interior to the person, some overarching code that the person himself believes in....
"From this standpoint, we start to see that many of the debates engaged in by people of all political persuasions - including self-described libertarians - concern when a bond has become an illegitimate constraint; or where a constraint, however necessary, is mistaken for a bond; or when societies are relying too heavily on constraints to do the work of what is normally undertaken by bonds. These are the questions which are, and should be, engaged in by societies that seek to take liberty, justice, and the common good seriously....
"The irony, however, is that we live in a time when a concern for liberty ... far from invading our cultures, is under siege ... threatened by the type of populism that has done so much damage in Pope Francis’s Latin America (and is presently destroying Venezuela) [and] strangled by the bureaucracies which rule European social democracies. Then there is the jihadism that is destroying the freedom of many, and literally killing thousands of Christians every year.
"So while the pope’s warnings against the radical individualism against which the Catholic Church has always cautioned are important, let’s hope that his words don’t distract attention from some of the profound violations of freedom occurring across the world."
'via Blog this'
May 5, 2017 - "In a recent message by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Social Science he outlines some moral concerns about a phenomenon he sees as invading (his term) 'high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools,' namely 'libertarian individualism'....
"When the pope speaks of libertarian individualism, he has in mind something which he says 'exalts the selfish ideal,' whereby … it is 'only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad.' [The] result is a belief in 'self-causation,' which I take to mean the denial of any givenness in human nature in favor of a radical autonomy in which morality is ... simply a matter of whatever I will it to be.
"All of this, the pope contends (and I agree), 'denies the common good.' One could add that it also denies the entire tradition of natural law via an exaltation of subjectivity and the detachment of conscience from the truths knowable via faith and reason.... He also seems to be critiquing any ethical system that sees freedom, in the sense of absence of constraint, as its own end and finality. For Catholics and other Christians, liberty is more than just negative freedom or the capacity to will X rather than Y....
"All this is standard Catholic teaching. The question that remains is whether the pope is offering a fair or accurate definition of 'libertarianism'
"Consider, for example, that there are many schools of libertarianism.... As interesting as it might be to examine the differences between these positions, I think it is more productive to outline some concepts to which I suspect all serious believers could subscribe....
"Human beings are not simply individuals, even if we colloquially employ this word to describe people. Certainly, human beings enjoy ... legitimate liberty.... Even the Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes speaks of private property as conferring 'on everyone a sphere wholly necessary for the autonomy of the person and the family, and it should be regarded as an extension of human freedom'.
"The social reality of persons to persons is what constitutes a human community. This is a bond - one which certainly comes with some constraints, but one which can’t be reduced to constraints.... Power is a form of constraint external to the person ... forced upon a person without regard to that person’s free will, such as an act of violence to conform another’s behavior. Authority, on the other hand, is a form of constraint interior to the person, some overarching code that the person himself believes in....
"From this standpoint, we start to see that many of the debates engaged in by people of all political persuasions - including self-described libertarians - concern when a bond has become an illegitimate constraint; or where a constraint, however necessary, is mistaken for a bond; or when societies are relying too heavily on constraints to do the work of what is normally undertaken by bonds. These are the questions which are, and should be, engaged in by societies that seek to take liberty, justice, and the common good seriously....
"The irony, however, is that we live in a time when a concern for liberty ... far from invading our cultures, is under siege ... threatened by the type of populism that has done so much damage in Pope Francis’s Latin America (and is presently destroying Venezuela) [and] strangled by the bureaucracies which rule European social democracies. Then there is the jihadism that is destroying the freedom of many, and literally killing thousands of Christians every year.
"So while the pope’s warnings against the radical individualism against which the Catholic Church has always cautioned are important, let’s hope that his words don’t distract attention from some of the profound violations of freedom occurring across the world."
'via Blog this'
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