John Cort's Christian Socialism: An Informal History
Scialabba, George
CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM: AN INFORMAL HISTORY, by John Cort. New York: Orbis Books, 1988. 402 pp. $12.95. "Any serious Christian must be a socialist." —Paul Tillich "Christian socialism is a...
...The convergence of what...
...And he will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it to me...
...With his carefully qualified definition of socialism, emphasizing self-management and decentralization, and his energetic, ingenious search for religious forebears, Cott seems to want to justify the ways of Christianity to socialists, to demonstrate that the church is hospitable to the loftiest secular ideals...
...Nor is there anything about the sanctity of life in the womb...
...The Catholic bishops have established diocesan, regional, and parish pro-life committees, encouraged the formation of political action committees, engaged in a great deal of direct lobbying, and sternly disciplined lay and clerical dissidents...
...Economic democracy," all but explicitly affirmed in the American bishops' 1986 pastoral letter, will be the eventual formula of reconciliation, the kiss of peace, between saint and socialist...
...Though the few authorities I've consulted doubt its authenticity, it is, whoever conceived it, surely one of the great passages in Scripture, indeed in all of literature: For I was hungry and you gave me to eat...
...Ambrose, around the same time: You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person...
...the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot...
...Or when did we see thee sick, or in prison, and come to thee...
...Then the just will answer him, saying, "Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and feed thee...
...Anyone— Christian or non-Christian—who supposes that "the poor you have always with you" is the Gospels' last word on the social question will be forcefully set right by Cores first two chapters...
...But then Maritain's social thought is so bound up with his abstruse and difficult neo-Thomist metaphysics that his exclusion is probably a felix culpa...
...Pope Pius XI John Cort has taken on a vexed and intricate topic: the politics of Christianity...
...Greed has something, but by no means everything, to do with this process...
...These statements go a long way toward meeting Catholics' natural-law-based objections to the universal abolition of private property...
...Cort's account of the biblical tradition has the merit of bringing out its this-worldliness, of demonstrating the obligatory rather than optional character of what might be anachronistically called income redistribution...
...Paul Tillich "Christian socialism is a contradiction in terms...
...or naked, and clothe thee...
...sick, and you visited me...
...CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM: AN INFORMAL HISTORY, by John Cort...
...If within a mere two thousand years, abortion was to become a problem so urgent as to require the near exclusive political activity of the Church, could the omniscient Redeemer have failed even to hint at this in the "summation" of his teaching...
...And St...
...Socialism is both a sentiment and an insight, an ideal and an analysis...
...Cort has shown that, differences over philosophical materialism notwithstanding, for the most urgent political purposes Christian humanism is indistinguishable from socialist humanism...
...But Christian Socialism is not simply a chronicle...
...Immediately after the sentence quoted earlier from Laborem exercens, the pope explained: "We can speak of socializing only . . . on the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with everyone else...
...As intellectual history, Christian Socialism deserves a straight A—even if, as political advocacy, it's less easy to grade...
...the latter about the evils of unregulated private ownership and the benefits of worker and peasant associations...
...But the socialist insight is also indispensable...
...It must, that is, be a global solution...
...WINTER • 1989 • 123...
...Above all, "there is nothing about sex in it...
...And there is another, less theoretical obstacle to unity of spirit between most socialists and "theologically conservative" (his own description) Christians like Cort...
...If the church did not altogether forget these teachings between the thirteenth and the nineteenth centuries, it underemphasized them fairly consistently...
...The less eloquent, more systematic Aquinas grounded these splendid sentiments in a doctrine of conditional property rights: private property "is not contrary to natural law," but natural law also dictates that "goods held in superabundance by some people should be used for the maintenance of the poor...
...Conversely, the sequence of papal encyclicals from Rerum novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) to Laborem exercens (John Paul II, 1981) have progressively modified the church's reluctance to commend collective ownership, until John Paul declared that "one cannot exclude the socialization, in suitable conditions, of certain means of production...
...we pay the debt of justice rather than perform the works of mercy...
...Gregory the Great, two centuries later: When we furnish the destitute with any necessity we render them what is theirs, not bestow on them what is ours...
...After several decades of the Social Gospel and liberation theology, only the most fervent right-wing preachers and politicians can be, or seem, unaware of the many sayings and parables in the New Testament urging active solicitude for the poor...
...Once the cycle of competition and technological innovation is set in motion, concentration is inevitable, and with it, disequilibrium —i.e., vast human misery...
...With characteristic directness, Cort remarks: "Eric Gill, the English artist-craftsman-writer . . . wrote a sentence that has stuck with me ever since and still symbolizes my own favorite brand of socialism: 'People work best when they own and control their own tools and materials.' " If Cort means, as he appears to, "individually owns and controls," then this seems a step over the line that separates a proper appreciation of human scale from nostalgia...
...Cort suggests that both socialists and popes have learned a great deal in the interval: the former about the dangers of centralized state control over the economy...
...I have no wish to bait the bishops, or Cort, but comradeship compels candor: to many secular socialists, this vast disproportion is a scandal...
...The only significant omission, acknowledged by Cort, is a discussion of Jacques Maritain...
...With characteristic papal ambiguity, John Paul leaves the metaphorical status of "workbench" open...
...in prison, and you came to me...
...Of Catholicism and that "wicked and perverse doctrine" (Pope Gregory XVI), that "grave and pernicious error" (Pope Leo XIII...
...Cori undoubtedly considers himself a loyal son of the Church, but it is impossible for even the most disenchanted apostate to feel a similar ambivalence about the author of Christian Socialism...
...For example, according to the 1951 Frankfurt Declaration of the Socialist International, "socialist planning does not presuppose public ownership of all the means of production," and "does not mean that all economic decisions are placed in the hands of the government or central authorities...
...Though not encyclopedic, Christian Socialism is comprehensive and judicious, full of vivid detail and narrative momentum...
...or thirsty, and give thee drink...
...Emphasis in original.] Cott contends that there is now "no essential difference between Catholic social teaching and the Frankfurt Declaration" of the Socialist International...
...naked, and you covered me...
...the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked...
...Cort has subtitled his book "An Informal History," but it's hard to see how a more "formal" approach (whatever this distinction signifies, apart from the author's welcome lack of academic tonelessness and timidity) could have improved it...
...Basil in the fourth century: The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry...
...When we get to modem times—to More and Muntzer, Lamennais and Kingsley, Pesch and Mounier, Tillich and Niebuhr —Cores story becomes somewhat more familiar, though there are still fascinating episodes: the four-hundred-year history of the Hutterites...
...These imprecations are a century old, and more...
...In the light of this enormous disparity of commitment between one cause and the other, it seems plain what the Roman Catholic hierarchy, at least, really cares about...
...You are handing over to him what is his...
...Hardly anyone, except perhaps a few neoconservatives, needs to be reminded by now that the Old WINTER • 1989 • 121 Books Testament and the rest of the Hebrew scriptures are full of rousing exhortations to social justice...
...All you might help and do not— to all these you are doing wrong...
...It is not clear that Cort and John Paul II fully appreciate this...
...The sentiment may be described as humanism or egalitarianism or solidarity or a desire to further the full, free development of every man 122 • DISSENT and woman...
...a stranger, and you took me in...
...it is also a problem...
...I prefer Oscar Wilde's term in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism": "the new Individualism...
...The singular contribution of Marx (whom Cort disparages relentlessly, and wrongheadedly, as a statist) was to demonstrate the global, integrative character of capitalism...
...Cort calls this passage the "end and summation of Jesus' teaching," and emphasizes that "it is not built around the usual sins and virtues...
...the fateful failure of Frederick Maurice to lead the English Christian socialists into an alliance with the Chartists...
...By contrast, the action recommendations appended to the bishops' pastoral letter on the economy were timid and tentative, and accompanied by an expression of concern that "in [economic policy] debates . . . we as Catholics not become polarized...
...And when did we see thee a stranger, and take thee in...
...But alas, a few obstacles remain...
...a dramatic confrontation between the leonine Marx and the comparatively lamb-like Wilhelm Weitling...
...Cort has a more urgent purpose: to reconcile his religious and political commitments...
...Aquinas added that it is the duty of the state to provide for the public welfare, to ensure each person "a sufficiency of those material goods which are indispensable to well-being...
...This argument emerges most fully in his provocative penultimate chapter, "The Convergence of Socialism and Catholicism...
...And whatever the solution, it must be able to assimilate without suppressing the powerful centralizing, and locally destabilizing, tendencies of innovation...
...And unfortunately, "near exclusive" is no exaggeration...
...the hard question, as I have suggested, is to determine what level and form of worker ownership can match capitalism's dynamism and mobility...
...Throughout Christian Socialism Cort refers, rightly, to Matthew 25: 31-46...
...Cort's own commitment, and this excellent book, should do his fellow Catholics proud...
...I was thirsty and you gave me to drink...
...Even more radical are some formulations Cort cites from the writings of the Fathers of the Church...
...Here is St...
...Of socialism and l'infame...
...With characteristic generosity, Cort observes that Michael Harrington "lost his faith and now describes himself as a 'Catholic atheist.' His commitment to Christ's poor, however, would put most Catholics to shame...
...the nineteenth-century worker-cooperative movement founded by Philippe Buchez...
...And St...
...the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute...
...Capitalist crisis is not merely a sin...
Vol. 36 • January 1989 • No. 1
