Nobel Peace Prize Prez: Thumbs up on Child Soldiers

Markomalley, I want to thank you for giving me something very worthwhile to chew on. I copied your whole message into my Word program where I could blow up the size (for my squinty eyes) and change font colors when I saw something I needed to especially focus on; and now I see pret'near the whole thing is leaping out at me in red, blue and green.

So, good.

You make several important points, such as that “society” must be distinguished from “the State”; tasks which are duties of “society” are not, by that token, duties of “the government"; and that when State power does get involved in aiding subsidiary units, it must be to “harmonize” their functions, not to replace or usurp them.

Can you really say, though, that Mark Shea has jumped into a Statist position tout court? That Shea favors only “full government run State medical”?

It seems to me that these are exaggerations of Shea’s position, based on an error which both sides tend to make, which is, the fallacy of the excluded middle. Thus: if Shea objects to the domination of US health insurance by corporate giants (read: Aetna, Cigna, BCBS) then he must favor “full government State medical” (a Soviet-style system); and conversely if Catholic conservatives object to the “public option,” it must be because they are shills for price-gouging corporate creeps.

I rarely hear anybody, anybody, try to flesh out what might be a whole ‘nother set of alternatives, such as “Chestertonain Distributist Healthcare.” For instance, what would the Catholic Health Systems in the USA look like, if they were run on real subsidiary/solidarity lines?

Now there’s an interesting one. Because as I understand it, considering all systems globally, the U.S. Catholic system comes in third in patients served (after the Russian Ministry of Health, and the U.S. Veterans Administration); and the Catholic health system in the U.S. constitutes the largest non-State, non-profit system in the world.

Now there’s something that could be developed along Distributist lines, I’m thinking, with both Shea and O’Malley yelling “hooray.”

But unfortunately it seems to be throwing itself into the arms of both for-profit mergers and Statist hyperregulation, an ecclesio-institutional suicide being strategically accelerated by people like Sr. Carol Keehan of the CHA.

(Pause to frown deeply.)

To keep this short-ish: rather than unraveling the Total Problem Known as Mark Shea, I would rather have acknowledged that his cri de Coeur against the Obama policy mess involving African child soldiers, assassinations by Executive Order, and an Afghanistan policy which will accomplish nothing except getting American soldiers killed pointlessly, etc. is timely, accurate, and extremely important. These are substantive issues which deserve to be discussed.

(Sidebar: Later for Harry Potter. I think Shea is too latitudinarian with Rowling; but keep in mind that Tolkien couldn't even stand Narnia; and even Shea knows Rowling is more Alchemist than Inkling.)

Ma'am,

Can you really say, though, that Mark Shea has jumped into a Statist position tout court? That Shea favors only “full government run State medical”?

Honestly, the vast majority of Shea articles I've read are as the result of encountering them on FR. I unsubscribed from his blog and skip past his articles on Catholic Exchange or NCR when I come upon them. I've done so since he went off the deep end in 2005.

[NB: What happened in 2005 was that he went off the rails in regard to waterboarding. Not only did he consider this as a definitive case of torture in violation of Catholic doctrine (to me, by the way, it comes right to the edge...but not over it), but he also became convinced that the Bush regime became the epitome of evil in the world. And, in true Shea fashion, if you disagreed with him or wanted to discuss the issue, you immediately became a Bush-bot and were just as evil, a subject of his derision.]

Thus: if Shea objects to the domination of US health insurance by corporate giants (read: Aetna, Cigna, BCBS) then he must favor “full government State medical” (a Soviet-style system); and conversely if Catholic conservatives object to the “public option,” it must be because they are shills for price-gouging corporate creeps.

If you have some writing of his where he describes the ideal health care system, according to the views of Shea, I would be happy to read it. The words I've read when looking at where he's written around it, seem to be the same sort of words as those who advocate a "single payer" state run system as the ideal. Which, as we can both agree upon, is hardly the Chestertonian view.

For instance, what would the Catholic Health Systems in the USA look like, if they were run on real subsidiary/solidarity lines?

Pre-medicare and certainly pre-WWII, I would bet that Catholic health care was essentially what a distributionist health care system would look like.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the "Catholic" health care system in the USA is about as Catholic as the "Catholic" university system in the USA. In other words, it may have been Catholic at one time, but its Catholicity is now mostly a matter of heritage vice reality. I do not know of a single Catholic hospital that is actually a Catholic hospital run by a diocese or a religious order; rather, most are part of independent not-for-profit corporations (for example, Bon Secours). Some may have religious on their boards, but that is also not a universal characteristic (for example, Bon Secours has 13 directors, 4 are religious sisters, one is a Jesuit priest; the same general percentage applies to the Mercy Hospital System in the midwest, as well, and so on). I, frankly, have not looked at each and every Catholic hospital out there, so you may very well be able to give me one or more exceptions to that rule.

I don't claim to be an expert at health care or its mechanics. So I can't tell you exactly what a truly Chestertonian, Distributionist, Catholic health care system would look like. But I can tell you some characteristics that I'd see with such a system.

The system, to include doctors, hospitals, specialty providers, and so on, and the recipients of the health care, would be characterized first and foremost by both justice (commutative and distributive) and gratuitousness. I don't see that very much, even with "Catholic" providers.
- Health care providers (doctors, nurses, technicians) would begin to see their work as more of a ministry and less of a business. That shift in attitude would be foundational to everything (heal the patient and deal with the money part later on).
- Patients, on the other hand, would need to change their attitudes from the consumerist "cult of the body" (cf Benedict XVI message to the 2010 Health Care Conference) and begin to see the divine connection to the temporal.
Health "systems" (such as Bon Socours, Mercy, Johns Hopkins, or whatever) would be, at maximum, a very, very loose organization. Individual community hospitals would be the norm. Ideally, those hospitals would be managed by bona fide Catholic organizations (religious orders, dioceses, lay apostolates, and so on). (Or Baptist organizations, Methodist organizations, Presbyterian organizations, etc). They would be supported by the communities they serve and would have strong religious oversight.
Individual physician practices would need to be located where they are needed. This would necessarily involve some significant change in their attitudes (see above). I would hope that they would be able to go back to doing their own support services (blood work, x-rays...at least the routine ones). (Labcorp and the like are abominations to a distributionist)
And solidarity between peoples would be required. There are any number of areas where there are an abundance of physicians, an abundance of hospitals, and no problem finding health care. There are others where it is horribly scarce...even in this country.

Two quotes:

Today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place (BXVI, Caritas in Veritate, 38)
The only way to achieve true justice is to change people's hearts first - and then they will joyfully share their wealth. (St John Chrysostom, On Living Simply 43)

Are you familiar with JPII's Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (On Catholic Universities)? I would love to see a similar Apostolic Constitution written about Catholic Health Care. Because there are so many blasted arguments about the subject from people who are ostentatiously of good will.

The bottom line for me is that I have the belief that the physical reality that we see is a direct reflection on the underlying spiritual reality that we don't see. If you change the spiritual, the material will necessarily follow. But if you attempt to change the material without changing the underlying spiritual, you will invariably screw up, no matter how noble your intentions are.

I think GK would approve of both the above quotes. If you can find something of Shea stating whether he would approve of them or not, I would love to hear it. He is a highly intelligent man...and this I do not dispute in any way.

And by the way, the same considerations apply whether you are talking about health care, nation building, or, in this case, child soldiers. There are underlying severe spiritual problems that will frustrate any material action or inaction. Material nation building just doesn't work. (Look at Europe: we rebuilt almost the entire continent. Looked great for decades, but what is happening now over there?)

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