Sed Contra: An Essay on the Modern Culture

A “sed contra” essay is to engage a cultural concern and to address it with the help of some philosophical or theological authority.

Today is both May Day and the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. When Pope Pius XII instituted this feast was he just conceding to the Communists? Is there really such a big difference between the Church’s defense of  the dignity of the worker and Marx’s worker’s paradise?

Are our ideals all that different?

Take a look at my life as a consecrated religious. On the surface, there’s a striking overlap between the life of a friar and the life of a Marxist. We hold nothing to be our own. We are bound to contribute to the welfare of our community. We embrace simplicity in our clothing.  

We even share principles in our founding doctrine. Marx’s famous maxim “from each according to ability; to each according to need,” which shows up on laptops and car bumpers the world over, first shows up in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. Acts 4:35, and Acts 11:29). 

But turning from the Acts of the Apostles to the Acts of the Bolsheviks, the comparison begins to break down. The community of Apostles was of one mind and one heart, seeking after the things of God. The Bolshevik revolution, intended to put Marx’s theory of a society of collective ownership, seized the hearts of men and demanded collective action. With no fewer than 20 million people put to death for the sake of the collective good, there has clearly been a grave departure from the Acts of the Apostles. 

Putting aside these atrocities, we can’t deny that Marx and his followers were attempting to rectify an injustice. Seeing the harsh working conditions and unfettered competition of industrialization, their revolution was an attempt to remove from the teeming masses what the Church herself called “a yoke little better than that of slavery” (Rerum Novarum, 3). But to seize with the right hand and give with the left is not an act of justice—it’s coercion.

Marx’s solution stems from a misunderstanding of the human person. For Marx, man is by nature productive, his value is in economic output. Karl recognizes that systems that exploit this are unjust, but his solution doesn’t remedy the situation, it tries to exploit it for a better outcome. Any theory that reduces a person’s value to a producer or a consumer, misses the mark. 

In contrast, the Church begins with man’s inherent human dignity. It is not work that makes man valuable, instead “the primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and beneficiary” (CCC 2460). We see in the readings for today that man’s labor is a privileged share in God’s act of creation (see Gen 1–2). Further, men and women, created in the image of God, are created with free will—a supreme dignity expressed especially when they give themselves freely in love. 

When we see the Apostles giving of their labor to build up the Body of Christ, we don’t see coercion, but charity—a free gift of their very lives. They aren’t striving to build up Marx’s idol of collective action, they are working for the common good. The crucial difference is love, the grace-filled sacrificial gift of self for the sake of others. Love can never be coerced, it is the free desire for the good of the other. When men and women forgo the fruits of their labors they make a free gift of themselves. 

But Marx picks up on the fact that, often, societies don’t operate this way. Notice that Marx and the Apostles both say, “Each according to his need,” not “his wants.” Man’s wants are limitless, we desire an infinite good. And though both the Marxist and Christian traditions recognize the same problem, they offer very different solutions. Marx forces man’s gaze to the collective through the abolition of personal property (see Communist Manifesto, chapter 2). A religious freely gives up property, to gaze on Christ.   

Consecrated religious don’t make vows of voluntary poverty because possessions are unjust. Rather, we give up something good for the sake of something greater. Property is a natural good, it represents humanity’s share in God’s creative act (CCC 2402, see also Gen 1–2). Because fallen man tends to seek out creation rather than its creator, Christ called his followers to give up everything for him. The problem isn’t property, it’s man’s inability to do without it. When the rich young man sought perfection, Christ’s answer was evangelical poverty, that is, giving up possessions for the sake of Christ. 

The call to evangelical poverty is always a free response to grace, which embraces human dignity, and is ordered towards a love of Christ. The poverty of the consecrated religious is not the suppression of man’s infinite desires, but their fulfillment. To give up our possessions is not for the sake of an earthly paradise. Christ doesn’t deal in five-year plans. His is an eternal kingdom. Evangelical poverty stokes the flames of the love of Christ, the currency of his heavenly city.

Not all are called to live lives of evangelical poverty, yet every Christian is called to charity.

The question each Christian must ask himself is not, “What must I give up for the sake of the state?” but rather, “What can I give up for the love of Christ?” When the rich young man sought his salvation, Jesus did not conscript him into a social program. He didn’t stop at aiding our neighbors. Instead, he said “Sell your possessions and give to the poor . . . then come, follow me” (Matt 19:21). 

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Image: Generated with AI ∙ April 16, 2024 at 3:15 PM