Dear Friends,
For all who wish to read a copy of Mr. Storck's paper from the "Catholicism and Economics" conference, please go to The Distributist Review.
For the article, please go to The Distributist Review.
Dear friends of The Society for Distributism,
Tomorrow we embark on a new adventure. As most of you are aware, Thomas Storck will represent The Society for Distributism at the Nassau Community College Center for Catholic Studies’ “Catholicism and Economics” conference/debate, in Garden City, New York. John Médaille, Ryan Grant, Jeremiah Bannister, Bill Powell, and myself will be present at the debate and we hope to see many of you there. Please make sure to stop by our table after the event and introduce yourselves. We look forward to meeting with you.
We will of course miss our colleagues Tom Laney, Donald Goodman, and Dr. Race Matthews. A toast will be made in their honor tonight as we gather together.
This conference will be historic in many ways. This fact doesn’t escape us. No doubt we will humbly attempt to do justice to the legacies of such men as G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Fr. Vincent McNabb. After all, these men paved the way for all of us.
Today we stand (almost a year since we were initially asked to participate in this event) in the midst of a global economic crisis. People around the world are asking questions. They have come to realize our officials and bankers cannot answer them and the citizens of this world are now listening to alternatives. We believe the answers to those questions are found in Distributism. For this reason I am asking all of you to pray for us. We wish to walk into this conference on our knees and leave it on our feet.
Many of our readers and members have sent us emails regarding the taping of this event, and whether this will become available. We are hopeful this will happen. If and when such a recording does become available we will definitely inform all of you immediately.
Walk-ins are welcome tomorrow. However upon arrival please make your way to the registrant’s table and inform them that you require a parking pass for your vehicle, if you are driving in. Otherwise, you may receive a ticket.
For those of you who cannot attend, please consider joining our mailing list. Please provide us with the city-state information as well. This will help us evaluate where events may be held in the future.
God bless you all and may this conference be one step towards restoring our sanity and our property.
Servire Deo regnare est!
Trifold Display
by Br. Philip Anderson, Prior
[Editor's Note: Please consider making a donation to Clear Creek Monastery. The Rule of St. Benedict is and should be an example to distributists across the world. The Benedictine monks at Clear Creek tirelessly work to "...build something beautiful for God" centering their lives in Ora et Labora (Prayer and Work).]
February 2009
Dear Friend,
As we enter the Lenten season — leaving behind the splendors of Christmas and looking forward now to that other pole of the liturgical year which is Easter — we discover that the greater simplicity and sobriety of this time of year lends itself
well to a meditation on man’s proper place in the universe as caretaker of creation.For many years now ecology has aroused much interest, not only in regard to the immediate practical decisions that must be made by governments and businesses, but also as a topic of discussion in the broader cultural context. Our contemporaries seem to experience an ever-increasing alienation from nature and a need to somehow “re-connect” with the earth, while scientists continue to point to signs that the ecological balance of the natural world is being seriously compromised by the excesses of our technology.
The Church too has participated in the discussion. The Holy Father recently alluded to these questions in an address to the members of the Roman Curia (December 22, 2008):
Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian creed, the Church cannot and must not limit herself to passing on to the faithful the message of salvation alone. She has a responsibility towards creation, and must also publicly assert this responsibility. In so doing, she must not only defend earth, water and air as gifts of creation belonging to all. She must also protect man from self—destruction.
What does the great monastic tradition issuing from Saint Benedict have to say about this essential relationship with creation?
In fact, for men and women living in Saint Benedict’s day, the question would have had little meaning. The vast majority of human beings lived in rural areas then, and for them life was intimately and necessarily connected to the rhythm of nature. The day’s activities were programmed according to the hours of sunlight. The year was punctuated by the various seasons in which planting, harvesting and every important task found its appointed time. In such a world, excepting the case of a few very rich people in large cities, it was scarcely possible to become disconnected from the rhythm of creation.
Nonetheless there is much in the wisdom of Saint Benedict that speaks to our present needs in terms of returning to a wiser way of life, a life closer to the land.
One of the pillars of the Rule is evangelical poverty. There would be neither an economic crisis in the world today, nor an ecological threat, were it not for the evil done by greed. Monastic poverty means being content with the simple things that sustain human existence in its inherent goodness. This poverty allows man to live in harmony with field and forest, without feeling the need to brutally strip the earth of her resources in order to realize an immediate gain. Although the economic reality in America has become increasingly complex in our day, it is still possible to recapture this joyous sort of poverty. We are not speaking of the tragic misery of the desperately poor, but of an attitude rooted in the Christian faith. E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economies As If People Mattered (first published in 1973) offers insights that seem more timely than ever. Another important work, Flee To The Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement, with a preface by Hilaire Belloc, charts a way forward in terms of an explicitly Catholic perspective.
Of course, the great corollary of evangelical and monastic poverty is work, especially manual work. Ora et Labora ("Pray and Work"') is often given as the Benedictine motto. The very early monks found that this work with one’s hands was something necessary in order to be able to pray well. Sometimes they would burn all the baskets they had woven during the year — having no need to sell them in order to make money — and start all over again, simply because this activity was good for body and mind! Saint Paul worked with his hands, even though he was entitled to live from his preaching of the Gospel. Manual work is an excellent way to put us back in touch with the wonder and beauty of creation, despite the fact that since the Fall man must toil by "the sweat of his brow" amid thorns and thistles (Gen. 3:18-19).
At Clear Creek we exercise many forms of manual labor, including carpentry, forging and much building, not to mention those domestic activities such as cooking and the making of clothing and shoes. In terms of our direct relationship to the land, the most notable activity would probably be that involving our forest, composed mainly of various types of oak trees. For several years now, thanks to a grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, we have been working to improve our land by clearing unhealthy trees from the forest, thereby letting in more sunlight. This allows certain grasses to grow, which in turn offer new pasture for our rugged-hair sheep. We intend to bring in goats as well to clear unwanted weeds and brush from the under wood. We also have planted many trees, especially pines. Monks learn many a lesson from the land.
It would all be to no avail, however, without something more. The French author and statesman, Andre Malraux, famously said, "The twenty-first century will either be spiritual or it will not be". Even if a nuclear conflagration is somehow avoided — and the threat has by no means disappeared — it will take something more than a form of "global awareness" to preserve the world’s natural resources. This is where the other half of Saint Benedict’s motto, Ora ("Pray”), enters the picture.
Among the animals of the forest only one is capable of ruining everything, the one who walks upright, the same one whom God established shepherd of all creation in the beginning. It is the spiritual struggle between good and evil being waged in his heart that causes man, either to care for creation, or to destroy it. This is what Pope Benedict XVI meant when he said in his discourse to the Roman Curia last December, "What is needed is something like a human ecology, correctly understood". It is through prayer that we realize this human ecology, transcending the limited resources of the natural environment.
Between the somewhat romantic musings of city folk, who dream of moving to the country to start a new life, and the harsh reality of having to earn one’s daily bread from the earth that has become rebellious to sinful man, there is certainly a wide margin, which is also a serious challenge. But do we really have a choice?
The well—known Catholic author and educator, John Senior, was once giving a talk to a small group of adults about this very idea of escaping from the excesses of a civilization worn thin with technology. While he was saying something to the effect that "real swimming" is done in the ocean or lakes — or more modestly in the "old swimmin’ hole" — an old-timer who was among the listeners brought forth the objection that "we used to lose a few in the ‘swimmin’ hole…'". Looking the man squarely in the eye, Senior replied, "Yes, but we are losing all of them in the swimming pool."
Monastic life does not hold the key to unlock all of the world’s problems, but a serious reading of the Rule of Saint Benedict can be an inspiration, not only for monks, but also for those living outside the monastery walls. This is especially true due to its precious sense of balance, organizing things around the poles of prayer and work. It is our hope that Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery, by living from the Rule, can help many to recapture the joy of a human existence rooted in faith – and the non-so-common realism of common sense.
May Our Lady of the Annunciation obtain for you an abundance of heavenly blessings.
Dear readers of The Distributist Review,
Paul Likoudis, News Editor for The Wanderer -the oldest Catholic newspaper in the United States- recently conducted an interview with yours truly regarding "Bellocian Economics," and has kindly granted us permission to reprint it here. Our thanks go to Mr. Likoudis for the opportunity. We would also like to applaud The Wanderer for their recent defense of distributism.
If you would like to subscribe to the online or hardcopy version of the newspaper, please go to The Wanderer website.
For the benefit of our readers, a Scribd version is below. Please feel free to copy the Scribd version onto your websites, however please add the following link to The Wanderer (www.thewandererpress.com).
Is There A Bellocian Response For Today’s Economic Crisis?
By PAUL LIKOUDIS
One of the signs of the times of the past two decades is a growing interest in Distributism, often described as a “third way” economic philosophy opposed to both capitalism and socialism. It was chiefly formulated by the British historian and journalist Hilaire Belloc and is firmly grounded in Catholic social teaching, especially Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Belloc never claimed he was inventing a new system; rather he wanted to return to an economic arrangement of society that prevailed in Europe before the rise of post- Reformation capitalism and the big banking houses that prospered on the poverty of the masses and war.
With the rise of globalization and the spread of “democratic capitalism” after the fall of the Berlin Wall, capitalism — as we all see much too clearly today — is in crisis. Catholics looking for a solution are looking to Belloc, his associates G.K. Chesterton and Fr. Vincent McNabb, OP, and the Americans Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, founders of the Catholic Worker Movement.
One sign of the Belloc/Distributism revival is The ChesterBelloc Mandate ( www. distributist. blog spot.com), put up by a 34-year-old New Yorker, Rich Aleman. This offers viewers an extensive library of writings by Belloc, Chesterton, Fr. McNabb, Day, papal encyclicals, and other Church documents, and contemporary expositors of Distributism such as John Sharpe, Thomas Storck, John Medaille, Joseph Pearce, Dr. William Fahey, among others.
“There is definitely a resurgence in interest in Belloc,” said Aleman, “which can be seen in the growing number of online web sites devoted to his work, the reprinting of his books, and many organizations in existence modeled on Distributist ideals. One example is the E. F. Schumacher Society, named after the German economist and Catholic convert, E.F. Schumacher. Their development of the Community Land Trust Model has proven itself a terrific method for restoring local farming.
“In such a scheme, the Land Trust purchases the land, while the farmer is responsible only for his home and barn; the land trust then establishes as a lease contract between the farmer and the trust for 99 years, thus removing the mortgage and tax burden from the farmer. The benefits of this as a transitional solution toward agricultural restoration are multiple.
“Then there are other Distributist ideas offered such as measured and small- scale technology, the creation of agricultural schools, the support for credit unions, microlending, and land associations tasked with relieving unemployment and home ownership,” said Aleman.
There are also political ideas that reflect the Bellocian ideal, Aleman added, such as the discontent on the part of the average citizen with the narrow difference between the politicians from both major parties, or that the left and right, Aleman said, “ are fashionable political markers with no true bearing on individuals. Our lawmakers are either pro-life while undermining the material necessities of the family, or pro-death and at the same time championing the legitimate rights of the workers.
“However, today the individualist and collectivist dichotomies of old are fading, and are replaced instead with a restored concern for independence for the family and social interdependence for the community, with a proper understanding that our material needs are subordinate to our spiritual ones. Thus, the alternative to the materialism of capitalism and socialism is a social and economic policy centered on a wealth- producing society through family and cooperative ownership.
“This last takes the form of worker- owned businesses, where the workplace is owned by the workers who produce the goods and services of society, such as the Arizmendi Bakery project that started in San Francisco and is spreading across California.”
The Arizmendi Bakery takes its name from Fr. Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, a Basque priest who founded Mondragón Corporation in 1943, a self-managed worker cooperative which currently makes $16 billion in a range of products, including appliances and small parts manufacturing, and has some 77,000 worker-owners.
Another example, Aleman said, is Confcooperative in Bologna, Italy, a Catholic cooperative inspired by Rerum Novarum. That and other cooperatives in the Emilia-Romagna region make over 40% of the region’s GDP.
A model of a renaissance in nonindustrial local agriculture is Polyface Farms in Staunton, Va., a Protestant endeavor to promote local farming through their school of husbandry. People who want to learn farming are provided room and board for various terms of apprenticeship, and upon completion of their term, these apprentices return to their own region able to apply what they learn.
In another case, there is the Catholic Homesteading Movement located in Oxford, N.Y., also instructing in the fundamentals of living off the land. Operated by Richard Fahey and his family, day and weeklong workshops are offered on topics ranging from organic gardening to fruit-tree grafting.
“People are willing to listen to alternatives such as Belloc and Chesterton proposed due to the financial crisis we are in,” said Aleman. “I believe the Distributists and other like-minded reformers of their time, spoke clearly to the hearts and minds of the common man, unlike anything seen before or since, and the reemergence of their work is once again popular and necessary.”
Belloc’s Economics
For Catholics who are completely unaware of Distributism, and Catholic social teaching, the basic thing to understand is that Belloc took as a personal mission Pope Leo XIII’s exhortation that “ the law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.”
Man always fully dedicates himself to the work and land that belong to him, as Chesterton reiterated through the parable of the Good Shepherd. Today most men have been convinced to pick between thousands of careers just to work for someone else, but the Distributists recalled to memory the natural desire for man to work and own for himself.
Money has been transformed from a means of exchange backed by commodities produced by the economy, to property. But money in itself is unproductive, as Belloc reminds us. Only productive property is a generator of real wealth and strength for the family and the local community. Land allows us to secure something for ourselves and is a shelter against the gap between poverty and wealth. Most of us work and save money for that purpose, so we can plant our roots and raise our families in a home, because its value to us transcends what the market tells us it is worth. For Belloc, a nation founded on micro-property is a stable and fruitful nation.
“Belloc believed that the consequences of narrowing the division between ownership and work presents for the family an autonomy from the consolidation of power, and wealth for the community, which man, as a corporeal being would always be partially dependent on. This productive property supplies the requisites for domestic autonomy, which in turn provides for a greater means toward achieving the ends of life, e.g., the eternal vision, or our original purpose,” said Aleman.
“By the family and workers owning the means of production — the tools, equipment, etc. — needed for labor to transform raw resources into goods and services, the family and the worker could be independent from big business and big government and pursue thrift as well as enjoy a robust spiritual life. After all, the ultimate goal of the ‘restoration of property’ — the title of another Belloc book — would lead to the Christian reform of morals, just as Pope Pius XI reiterated in Quadragesimo Anno, through the quest for a life of virtue, instead of the dog-eatdog world.”
Through the lens of Belloc’s analyses, people today can gain a better understanding of the economic, political, and social crisis this country is facing.
Belloc formulated his views on the coming of the Servile State, and the need for a Distributist society from the contemporary crisis England was experiencing due to overproducing as a consequence of the embrace of mass production in lieu of the small producer, Aleman observed.
“The problem with overproduction is that it creates under- consumption; large- scale business needs to churn out as many goods as it can create, while consumers are unable to match the volume of production dispensed. As a result, wages decline as the capitalist cuts labor costs in order to maximize profit. This cost reduction and desire of the capitalist to increase his purse leads him to ship his labor overseas.
“But of course here is the conundrum. The consumer and the employee are the same people, so as costs are reduced, the worker finds himself with a declining wage, and the employer expects the same worker to consume the goods he and other capitalists produce,” Aleman explained.
The only “solution” to overproduction is usury. The people with the profits lend them to people with the low wages. This sustains consumption for a while, but is ultimately selfdefeating, so the government absorbs the excess production. It fails because the government cannot perform this task as the productive base on which its taxes depend has been shipped overseas. So now we borrow money from nations that are making things to sustain consumption. But of course, that can’t go on forever. There is a limit. The results are staggering. Today our nation is twothirds consumption, and one-third production.
Stagnant wages, institutionalized usury, derivatives, impersonal investment, planned obsolescence, waste, and consumer debt transformed a nation of small businesses and small farmers into over-indulgent consumers, pitted between corporations passing their liabilities to taxpayers, an obliging government protecting them from liability, and the “stimulus” of Keynesian policies which inflated government in the first place.
Belloc’s solution to big government is decentralization. “Distributists are decentralists who believe most functions should occur at the smallest level as possible. In a Distributist state, the role of central government addresses challenges outside the scope of locality, such as defense, or international trade, amongst other things. Local guilds and other institutions exist to restrain the concentration of power or property, whether bureaucratic or commercial,” said Aleman.
The early movement and Belloc believed the implementation of Distributism would not come from above, but from below, in other words, not by government force but by a proselytizing popular movement convinced and eager to realize the various facets of Distributist living.
The Mandate
“What I strive to do with The ChesterBelloc Mandate,” Aleman said, “is to create a fountain of information for the academic and layman on the subject of Distributism and Catholic social teaching. Besides the work of Chesterton, Belloc, and Fr. McNabb, I’ve also included some of the work of Amintore Fanfani, Fr. Heinrich Pesch, A.J. Penty, B.A. Santamaria, Hilary Pepler, Cardinal Manning, and my favorite, K.L. Kenrick.
“The first time I ever heard the word ‘ Distributism’ was on Dale Ahlquist’s (president of the American Chesterton Society) show on EWTN about six years ago. My curiosity led me to an article by Thomas Storck, called ‘ What is Distributism?’ Storck’s work left a lasting impression on me, as did some of the great work of the now defunct Caelum et Terra.
“However, I found information on Distributism to be scarce and often piecemeal. Luckily, after reading the republishing of the Distributists’ work by IHS Press — another sign of the Bellocian revival underway today — I decided to consolidate as many essays and articles as I could find on the topic. Some of these materials required constant trips to the library, while others I searched for in schools across the country. I wanted to prove to the readers of the site that Distributist thought wasn’t limited to the classics, but extended to other publications such as America, Blackfriars, Commonweal, Orate Fratres, etc.
“I also wanted my readers to realize that Distributism wasn’t a small movement in Great Britain. From the various Catholic Land associations, the 24 branches of the Distributist League, the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, and the massive contributions from various columnists for Chesterton’s G.K.’s Weekly, Distributism permeated across the British Isle, and in Ireland where similar features of a Distributist rural economy were already in place.
“The feedback has been very positive, and over the years Distributism has risen rapidly amongst Catholics and other Christians. Online and print journals are often chatting about it on a worldwide level. As a result, I’ve added a foreign-language section dedicated to contemporary articles about Distributism I’ve found from Spain, Argentina, France, Poland, and the Czech Republic, among many others.
“But The Mandate and the reprints on it are one-half the topic. John Medaille, author of ‘The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Workplace,’ and I collaborate at The Distributist Review (www.distributism.blogspot.com), a contemporary online web site discussing contemporary politics and socioeconomic issues from a Distributist perspective. We believe we offer sound analysis about the current crisis in the Bellocian tradition.”
www.thewandererpress.com
The Wanderer
Publish at Scribd or explore others:
John: "It is long been rumored that Pope Benedict XVI has been preparing a new social encyclical which will address the current crises. Robert Moynihan writes of it here. The Pope may have given some hints about its contents during a meeting with the clergy of Rome on February 27."
Our readers may interested to read Mr. Moynihan's piece, which makes mention of a certain well known ChesterBellocian economic system.
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