Charity vs. the State

Justice and love are tied through liberty. Every law which attacks individual freedom is just a domination tool; every love which does not come from free will is only a caricature of the unity between God and the human being. The first Encyclical Letter by Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, involves a strong case for the necessary separation of justice and charity; and as far as it does not intend to merge them, strengthens liberty.

The State, throughout its history, has led a process of the socialization of human relationships. In its heretical desire to kill God and take His place, every government has tried to erase the person's charitable contribution. Love, according to the leftists, cannot be the reason for helping one's neighbor; disadvantaged people have a right to coerce the rest of society in order to improve their status. Solidarity, thus, is no longer an issue of charity and has turned into a monopoly of "social justice."

In fact, the monstrous redistributive apparatus of the Welfare State stems from a tyrannical ideology which practically invalidates charity as an instrument of assistance and human collaboration. Human beings do not need love, but the bread which the State has plundered from other individuals.

Real charity

Benedict XVI has denounced this materialistic conception because it "demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human." Love implies compassion for the neighbor, voluntarily carrying the heavy cross of those who suffer.

"The Christian's program – the program of the Good Samaritan, the program of Jesus – is "a heart which sees." The Welfare State obscures human vision; assistance is turned into a part of the political program and of an administrative procedure: "The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person – every person – needs: namely, loving personal concern."

The concept of neighbor becomes abstract; the needy are dehumanized among public roles. The repression needed to finance the Leviathan's huge and inefficient expenditures is validated by a manipulated ethical utilitarianism which does not define justice according to the intrinsic goodness of an action, but rather according to the convenience of the politicians.

We must recover the idea of neighbor not as the inaccessible collectivization of the necessities, but as the universalization of potential love to every specific human being which "is not reduced to a generic, abstract and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment here and now." Your neighbor requires human closeness and not the cold and indifferent walls of an administration created by the sweat of foreign brows.

And when we do not love by compassion, but by obligation, by routine or by custom, we can be pious and obedient, but not charitable. "If in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be "devout" and to perform my "religious duties," then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely "proper," but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well." What value does the indifferent acceptance of fiscal theft have, a theft whose objective is to waste the loot in whatever public programs are absolutely removed from our effective charitable action? Charity is performed on a daily basis, with our property, and according to our free will. A charity empty of liberty is a charity which does not fulfil its purpose of loving the neighbor and, through the neighbor, God.

Marxism's revolutionary "justice" in social relationships has nothing to do with love. It is, as Ratzinger settles in "Faith, truth and tolerance," cruelty witnessed by the necessity of victims and sacrifices in its social progress. The world is not improved by the State's institutionalized violence but rather by "doing good now with full commitment and wherever we have the opportunity, independently of partisan strategies and programs."

Imposing suffering on people who are not disposed or prepared to accept it is not just an anti-libertarian offence, but also anti-Catholic: "God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has "loved us first," love can also blossom as a response within us." The State wants us to bear a load different from that which each one would have accepted; it discards love as the cause of union among men and institutes regulation and political control.

This is why "those who practice charity in the Church's name will never seek to impose the Church's faith upon others." Faith, lived and believed, is an experience of love from and to God which has no possible relationship with the chains of unbreakable adherence that the State requires.

Therefore, the universalization of social justice, of equality of results, means the denial of love as well as of real justice. It denies love because it tries to expel love from its true field: "Love – caritas – will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love." It denies real justice because each person does not receive "what is his or her due."

Autonomy and the responsibility in the community

Liberty and private property – justice – are undermined by an omnipotent State which turns the individuals into slaves of a redistributive machine and which replaces the ties of family, community and religiosity. As a result, according to Saint Augustine, the State is just "a bunch of thieves."

Opposed to the coercive schemes which the socialists favor, it is necessary to vindicate the role of the individual in his community: "The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility."

Autonomy and responsibility are the two foundations which support individual freedom; it is indeed the same support upon which charity must rest in order to have a real moral component which does not transform the Church into "another form of social assistance." On the one hand, the State leads us to the dependence of political power and to irresponsibility for the needy; on the other, liberty allows the exercise of charity through the links of human cooperation.

Thus, capitalism strengthens both individual autonomy and society, the latter defined as the sum of those ties assumed voluntarily and charitably. Agreements among people benefit both parties; exchanges go beyond their materiality and become a way to satisfy the neighbor that is different from an absolute lack of reciprocity: "Man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive."

Liberalism – not defined as anti-Catholic laicism derived from the French Revolution – but as a set of values which recognize the natural dignity of the individual whose most distinctive mark is liberty – is the framework inside which charity can truly take place without either limitations or political interference. In fact, the Church is a paradigm of free people who join their will in the practice of faith and love of the community.

Opposed to the love nationalization impelled by the ideologist of social justice and the Welfare Sate, Benedict XVI has vindicated the necessity of the separation of love and justice. Neither justice is the way for loving, nor should love be confused with coercive obligations.

Nonetheless, love and justice, despite being separated, reconcile themselves through human liberty. Love must be freely given and received and justice must take individual liberty as the starting point from which springs the "loving" nature of the human being.

The omnipotence and the absolutism of the State must be substituted by the charity of the community.

This article was originally published in Spanish for the Church supplement of Libertad Digital.

April 24, 2006

Juan Ramón Rallo [send him mail] is a student of economics and law. He is a founding member of the Spanish libertarian think tank Instituto Juan de Mariana and writes weekly for the Spanish newspaper Libertad Digital whose English version is The Spain Herald. His weblog can be visited here.

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