QUOTATION: Church and State

A Church dependent (or even heavily reliant) on the sword (or purse) of the state has misplaced the trust it ought to place in God alone.

--George Weigel, "The Sovereignty of Christ and the Public Church", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Martyrdom

Thus the prototype of the Christian witness is the martyr. Indeed, the original Greek word simply meant "witness".  Its usage was not confined to those who had died for the faith; rather, all who had suffered persecution "for the sake of the Name" (Acts 5:41) were witnesses, "martyrs". And their witness was not simply to their own convictions, powerful as they were, but to the demands of living in the truth as these witnesses had been grasped by that truth in the person of the Risen Christ.

--George Weigel, "The Sovereignty of Christ and the Public Church", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: The Picture is Not All Bleak

Employing the new empirical rigor exemplified by the social magisterium of John Paul II, Catholic social ethicists of the 21st century would recognize that life expectancy is increasing on a global basis, including the Third World; that water and air in the developed world are clearner than in five hundred years; that fears of chemicals poisoning the earth are wildly exaggerated; that both energy and food are cheaper and more plentiful throughout the world than ever before; that "overpopulation" is a myth; that the global picture is, in truth, one of unprecedented human prosperity-- and, recognizing these facts, Catholic social ethicists would ask, why? What creates wealth and distributes it broadly? What are the systemic political, economic and cultural factors that have created this unprecedented prosperity, which is not (contrary to the shibboleths) limited to a shrinking, privileged elite? What can be done to make this prosperity even more broadly available? 

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Freedom is Based On Truth

Freedom must be tethered to moral truth and ordered to human goodness if freedom is not to become self-cannibalizing.  If there is only "my" truth and "your" truth, but nothing that we both recognize as "the truth", then we have no basis on which to settle our differences other than pragmatic accommodation; then, when pragmatic accommodation fails (as it must when the issue is grave enough), either I will impose my power on you or you will impose your power on me. Truth and goodness shape the moral horizon against which the deliberations of free peoples can take place in an orderly and productive way.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: The Role of The Church in a Free-Market Democracy

Democracy and the free economy are not machines that can run by themselves. It takes a certain kind of people, possessed of certain virtues, to run self-governing polities and market economies so that they do not self-destruct. The task of the moral-cultural sector is to form these habits of heart and mind in people, and the primary public task of the Church is form that moral-cultural sector.  Thus the Church is not in the business of proposing technical solutions to questions of governance or economic activity; it is not within the Church's competence to decide whether bicameral legislatures are superior to unicameral legislatures, or whether parliamentary systems are preferable to presidential systems, or where the top marginal tax rate should be set. The Church is in the business of forming the culture that can form the kind of people who can craft political, economic, and social policy against the horizon of transcendant moral truths, truths that can be known by human reason.  

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Living in Solidarity

A genuinely human society flourishes when individuals dedicate the exercise of their freedom to the defense of others' rights and the pursuit of the common good, and when the community supports individuals as they grow into a truly mature humanity-- that is what "living in solidarity" means.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Subsidiarity

The third classic principle is the principle of subsidiarity, which can be called the free associational principle or principle of civil society. Although it vision of a richly textured and multi-layered human society reaches back to Medieval Christian experience, this principle first appeared in papal teaching in Pope Pius XI's 1931 encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, which marked the 40th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The principle of subsidiarity which is an extension and development of the traditional Catholic claim that the state exists to service society, teaches us that decision-making in society should be left at the lowest possible level (i.e. the level closest to those most affected by the decision), commensurate with the common good. Classic American federalism-- in which local and state governments handle many aspects of public policy, while the national government exercises certainly strictly defined functions-- is one empirical example of the principle of subsidiarity at work. Articulated under the lengthening shadow of the totalitarian project in the first third of the 20th century, the principle of subsidiarity remains today as a counter-statist principle in Catholic social thinking.  It directs us to look first to private sector solutions, or to a private sector/public sector mix of solutions, rather than to the state, in dealing with education, health care, and social welfare.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: The Common Good

The second classic principle of Catholic social doctrine is the principle of the common good, or what might be called the communitarian principle; it complements and completes the personalist principle because men and women grow into the fullness of their humanity through relationships, each of us should exercise our rights in such a way that that exercise contributes to the general welfare of society, and not simply to our individual aggrandizement. Living in service to the common good is essential for the good of society, as well as for the integral development of persons.  Thus, in the classic Catholic view, society is a "natural phenomenon", not a remedial reality (...).

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: The Principle of Personalism

The first classic principle of Catholic social doctrine is the principle of personalism, which can also be called the human rights principle. According to this principle, all right thinking about society-- in its cultural, ecnomic and political aspects-- begins with the inalienable dignity and value of the human person. Right thinking about society does not begin with the state, the party, or the tribe; neither does it begin with ethnicity, race, or gemder. Rather, it begins  with the human person, considered as an individual possessing intelligence and free will, and therefore inherent dignity and value.  Society and it legal expression, the state, must always be understood to be in the service of the integral development of the human person.  The state, in particular, has an obligation to defend the basic human rights of persons, which are "built into" us by reason of our very humanity.  "Rights," in the Catholic understanding of the term, are not benefices distributed by the state as its whim or pleasure; they are goods to be protected and/or advanced by any just state.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Being Church

Be the Church - that is, be an evangelical movement that tells the world of God's passionate love for humanity. That, not institutional maintenance, is what the Church is for. When the Church is that, and does that, it flourishes...

--George Weigel