Papal Perspective on Life and Freedom

Popular opinion on political support of “culture of life” issues that frequently assumes John Paul II would have had a distinctly different emphasis than Pope Francis may be mistaken.

The "Angels Unaware" boat by Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz 

David Albertson recently found himself rereading John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life), during the weeks between the leaking of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion and the shooting in Uvalde.

Pope Francis has drawn criticism for reasserting an integral ethic of life—linking the climate crisis to the dignity of the unborn, for instance—and for resisting the reduction of political responsibility to a single issue. Many of Francis’s detractors assume that John Paul II would have endorsed their current strategy: to trade support for Republican neoliberal economics in exchange for the appointment of pro-life justices, by anti-democratic means if necessary. (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

Albertson found the text of Evangelium vitae suggests something quite different. John Paul II offers a probing social analysis of the “culture of death,” in the course of which he articulates some critical principles for a future politics of life. To be sure, the encyclical focuses rightly and above all on abortion and euthanasia. But only an inattentive reader could imagine that those are the only evils John Paul II was worried about. The encyclical offers a structural understanding of contemporary threats to human life, of which abortion is the signal, but by no means sole, instance. Evangelium vitae has many themes.

An insight of the encyclical identifies that the root of the culture of death is an economic system backed by a legal regime. The economic system is the commodification of human life, which calculates its value exclusively in terms of efficient profit accumulation (i.e. neoliberal capitalism). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

John Paul II asks Christians to examine how goods are distributed in our society and who exerts power within that distribution. For example, he examines what links together not only the recent increase in abortion and euthanasia, but also technological investments in artificial contraception, artificial reproduction, and prenatal eugenics.

 

The link, he concludes, is a certain approach to assessing the value of human life. If we read his analysis carefully, we can depict the main features of the ideology he describes: an excessive concern with “efficiency” (12), a reduction of human beings to disposable “biological material” (14), “the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return” (15), and the lack of “fair production and distribution of resources” among countries (16). The goodness of life is reduced to “economic efficiency” and “inordinate consumerism” (23). Human dignity is replaced by “the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness” (23). Human beings become commodities, “reduced to the level of a thing” among other things (34). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

In the encyclical, John Paul II asserts that absolute freedom also includes freedom from the social bonds of truthfulness, or freedom to invent alternative facts.

 

Once freedom becomes so debased that it justifies “the destruction of others,” then “the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim” (19). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

According to John Paul II, the erosion of truth itself is the final result of valorizing personal liberty, rejecting solidarity, and excluding the weak, sick, and poor from moral obligation by the rich and powerful. “At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining,” he writes, and “social life ventures onto the shifting sands of complete relativism” (20). In this situation, the state becomes a “tyrant” and democracy creeps toward “totalitarianism.” Instead of providing a secure home in which all live together, the state guarantees “the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members” by taking the side of the most powerful partisans (20). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

David Albertson expresses a theme of the encyclical that the culture of life—and with it, democracy and truth itself—can be sustained only when solidarity with “the weakest and most innocent” takes priority above all else, especially an idolatrous claim to absolute freedom.

References

Albertson, D., & Preziosi, D. (2022, July 13). American Idols. Commonweal Magazine. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/american-idols 

Finding the best mix of public and private care

As the Federal and Provincial governments embark on a program to reduce daycare costs to parents in Nova Scotia we need to develop the policy to obtain the best mix of public and private organizations to deliver the early childhood care that provides the most benefit for our children.

Childhood care resources

The decision of Michael Godsey, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and an English teacher based in San Luis Obispo, California, to work as a Public-School Teacher but send his daughter to a Private School has parallels to decisions that parents make about placing children in daycare. The large number of students in the public high school seems to reduce the likelihood of teaching a love of learning in contrast to the private school where it can be observed in the attitude of the students.

Public schools have my tax money, my lifelong employment, and almost anything else they need of me; pulling my daughter—one student—out of the system is probably the least of its worries. And on a more abstract level, the above criticisms fail to acknowledge the cumbersome, almost fixed nature of the dominant culture I’ve seen at public schools—one that occasionally isolates students who love learning, are teased by the "cool" kids and even bullied into joining the masses. No matter how much she voluntarily recites Shakespeare, the student I envision my daughter becoming would never be able to single-handedly transform a public school into an environment that is cool to learning.1 

The important learning of preschoolers is in their play. The Arrive web site provides information to newcomers about daily life in Canada. Regulated family child care (home child care – provided in caregiver’s home) in several provinces, is “approved” rather than regulated. Most family child care is not regulated, monitored or approved. No province/territory requires all family child care homes to be regulated, so long as they don’t exceed the maximum number of children.

Type of child care service	Regulatory overview
Full-day child care centres	Unlicensed centres are illegal in Canada. However, in some regions, private schools, religious schools or others that include very young children may be exempt from licensing.
Part-day child care programs (includes nursery and preschools)	Unlicensed programs are permitted in Saskatchewan and Yukon.
School-age child care programs	Some before and after-school programs, summer and holiday programs/camps for young school-aged children are not required to be licensed (including some that operate in school premises).
Kindergarten – offered by provinces/territories	In most provinces, kindergarten is part of the public school system and therefore, regulated by the provincial government.
Regulated family child care (home child care – provided in caregiver’s home)	In several provinces, regulated family child care is “approved” rather than regulated. Most family child care is not regulated, monitored or approved. No province/territory requires all family child care homes to be regulated, so long as they don’t exceed the maximum number of children.
Unregulated family child care (home child care – provided in caregiver’s or child’s home and includes “nannies” or “sitters”)	Unregulated family child care providers do not need a license, aren’t inspected or monitored, and are not required to meet specified regulations for training, physical space or other features.2

 

Helen Ward, President of Kids First Parents Association, advocates that If we want to help families afford child care, then we should fund families and not certain types of child care.

Is the federal $10-a-day child-care system the only valid option for Ontario? No, says Helen Ward, President of Kids First Parents Association. If you want to help families afford child care, then fund families, not certain types of child care. #childcare https://t.co/yYBW7MJX27

— Cardus (@cardusca) January 20, 2022

 

Preston Mulligan, of CBC News, reports that some daycare owners say they feel bullied and backed into a corner by the province.

Adam Axworthy of Axworthy and Associates provides accounting services to two daycares in the Yarmouth region and two more in Cape Breton. He said they've all reached out to him for some kind of guidance about how to respond to the governments' demands. "We are in a time where we should be embracing equality and pushing female entrepreneurship," he said. "We shouldn't be restricting it, and we certainly should give them the decency of adequate answers to form an opinion. We haven't done that here. "There is so much of a push federally, at the moment, for female entrepreneurship and equality. I find this to be quite … an affront to that." Marcia Nickerson, who started Allegro child-care centre in Halifax 25 years ago, said she has other concerns about the proposal. While she supports a more generous subsidy for child care, she said this approach "institutionalizes" child care.3

 

In research published by Dani Filc, Alon Rasooly, and Nadav Davidovitch in the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, looks at lessons to be learned from public vs. private to public/private mix in Israeli and Spain.

In support of private provision of healthcare, some researchers [13] claim that private provision allows for a more efficient utilization of resources. For example, operating room utilization in the private healthcare system is perceived as more efficient compared to such in the public healthcare system. However, numerous studies have shown that the patient composition in those two systems is entirely different [14,15,16,17]. Compared with their counterparts in the public sector, patients receiving private elective surgeries are younger, have less comorbidities, and are from a higher socioeconomic class. This widespread difference has led researchers to claim that the apparent efficiency advantage of private provision is related to “cream skimming” patients according to their risk [17,18,19,20]. Beyond the adverse outcomes concerning equity and the doubtful gains in efficiency, private provision and finance of healthcare can result in unnecessary, and sometimes harmful, cases of overtreatment. A systematic review of 21 studies [21] found that the odds of a Caesarean section (C-section) being performed was significantly higher in relation to women with private health insurance compared with women using public health insurance. In Chile, for example, three out of four publicly insured women who opt to give birth in a private hospital will have a C-section, while in public hospitals only one out of four women will undergo this procedure [22, 23]. Mixed-methods studies suggest that private obstetricians have women undergo non-medical C-sections since this procedure is more lucrative for the private practitioner and allows the “programing” (scheduling) of births [23, 24]. Evidence from Spain and Israel indicates that mixed provision of private and public services does not necessary lead to better performance, while harming equitable access and provision of health services.4 

Stella Creasy,  Labour MP for Walthamstow UK, offers the opinion that waiting lists must not be a pretext for privatising the National Health Service.

Patients need to have confidence that if they are referred to a private provider, it is in their interests, not their consultant’s. So, too, that any delay does not reflect the cost of treatment. A constituent who was booked in for urgent NHS cancer surgery at a hospital run by a major healthcare firm just before Christmas had the surgery cancelled at the last minute. They were told that this was because the facilities were needed for private – and so likely more lucrative – patients. This incident, and the pressures behind it, should concern anyone who understands that the NHS will only thrive if it is medical urgency, and not money, that drives decisions. Ministers may argue that more than 300,000 people left waiting more than a year for surgery is a side-effect of the pandemic, but lists have been creeping up for years. Rather than invest in NHS capacity, recent years have seen a conscious decision to divert funding to profit-making private healthcare companies. Without more scrutiny, this could see healthcare outcomes shaped not by need but whether you have the money to jump the queue, with taxpayers and patients alike paying the price.5 

The struggle to provide the highest quality health care and early childhood education by publicly funded organizations is to equip the public institutions with more highly qualified personnel to deliver the services. Continued neglect to properly fund public education and health by neoliberal governments not only establishes two tier care but ultimately increases the cost to society in poorer educational development and more serious illness treatment.

 

References

1	(2015, March 4). Why I'm a Public-School Teacher but a Private-School Parent. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/why-im-a-public-school-teacher-but-a-private-school-parent/386797/
2	(2021, December 17). Child Care in Canada: Types, Cost & Tips for Newcomers | Arrive. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://arrivein.com/daily-life-in-canada/child-care-in-canada-types-cost-and-tips-for-newcomers/
3	(2022, January 19). Female entrepreneurs in NS vow not to 'cave' in child-care showdown. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/daycare-owners-guidance-government-demands-nova-scotia-1.6319440
4	(2020, June 24). From public vs. private to public/private mix in healthcare: lessons .... Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-020-00391-4
5	(2022, January 23). Waiting lists must not be a pretext for privatising the NHS. Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/23/waiting-lists-privatising-nhs-pandemic-private-healthcare

 

 

Child care election battleground

Child care is the latest battlefield between the social democrat and the neoliberal view of the proper role of government.

Child Care Battle

 

Paul Lakeland comments that the many current crises in our world all have something in common. Each in its own way exploits and thrives on division—between the rich and the poor, humanity and the rest of the natural world, citizens and immigrants, the relatively safe and the deeply desperate. He believes these issues are all parts of one larger, fundamental crisis: the degradation of the very notion of the human, brought on by the complex mechanism today called neoliberalism.

If “neoliberalism” is a word unknown to you, or simply one that you hear without its impinging much upon your life or consciousness, this is testimony to its sinister force. Coined by Friedrich Hayek, it referred to his belief that all reality can be explained on the model of economic competition, and that all human activity can be measured in terms of wealth, value, or price. Price in particular was a means to allocate scarce resources, and for its efficient function, the market had to be free and competitive. “The market” for Hayek was not just a term for economic activity, but one that described society as a whole. Hence, he could extrapolate a vision of human beings as creatures who would and should follow their own self-interest in competition for scarce resources. Through this human competition, we would learn who and what is really valuable…1

Donald Gutstein, adjunct professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and author of Harperism: How Stephen Harper and His Think Tank Colleagues Have Transformed Canada, writes that Harper, as you may have guessed it, sits firmly in the neoliberal fold. These are the ideological roots of Harper's opposition to child care.

Neoliberal influential economist: Milton Friedman2

In education, a system of government-funded vouchers that would enable parents to choose the school—private, public, religious—their children would attend.

Government planning will always lead to worse results than if the market or voluntary organizations do it2

 

 Treasury-draining, dollars per year benefits will not create a single child care space, let alone a national program.  What it will do is make the introduction of any national child care that much more difficult to finance - and imagine - in the future.

 

References

1	(2020, June 1). Spiritual Resistance | Commonweal Magazine. Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/spiritual-resistance
2	(n.d.). The ideological roots of Harper's opposition to child care. Retrieved August 19, 2021, from https://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/the_ideological_roots_of_harper_s_opposition_to_child_care

 

Change of Direction

 

An opinion piece in the New York Times claims progressive capitalism is not an oxymoron.

Covid 19 and changes on our journey

 

As an economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz is always asked if we afford to provide a middle-class life for most, let alone all, Americans? Somehow, we did when we were a much poorer country in the years after World War II. In our politics, in our labor-market participation, and in our health we are already paying the price for our failures. Joseph E. Stiglitz suggests he neoliberal fantasy that unfettered markets will deliver prosperity to everyone should be put to rest. It is as fatally flawed as the notion after the fall of the Iron Curtain that we were seeing “the end of history” and that we would all soon be liberal democracies with capitalist economies.

Most important, our exploitive capitalism has shaped who we are as individuals and as a society. The rampant dishonesty we’ve seen from Wells Fargo and Volkswagen or from members of the Sackler family as they promoted drugs they knew were addictive — this is what is to be expected in a society that lauds the pursuit of profits as leading, to quote Adam Smith, “as if by an invisible hand,” to the well-being of society, with no regard to whether those profits derive from exploitation or wealth creation.1

David Kalkstein, a postdoctoral scholar, and Gregory Walton, an associate professor, all in the psychology department at Stanford University write that the coronavirus crisis has laid bare the health, social, and economic inequalities that have been growing in the United States for decades. This moment of upheaval is leading to calls across the U.S. for structural reforms to the social and economic systems in our country.

Why is COVID-19 increasing support for universal social policies? Our new data suggest that one factor is the normalization of financial hardship. More and more Americans are experiencing need firsthand. In our large longitudinal study, one in two respondents reported having their work hours cut, and one in five had lost a job due to coronavirus by late April. Those who experienced such COVID-related financial impacts were over 20% more likely to support basic income. And between March and April, our respondents became less likely to stigmatize those who would receive basic income, and more likely to see them as being “like me.” It appears that, as financial hardship becomes more common, empathy for financial need is growing.2

An article in the Economist reviews why the pandemic will be remembered as a turning-point. Out of the ashes of all that suffering will emerge the sense that life is not to be hoarded, but lived. Like the pandemic, climate change is impervious to populist denials, global in the disruption it causes and will be far more costly to deal with in the future if it is neglected now. A third reason to expect change is that the pandemic has highlighted injustice.

This disruption is in its infancy. The pandemic is proof that change is possible even in conservative industries like health care. Fuelled by cheap capital and new technology, including artificial intelligence and, possibly, quantum computing (see article), innovation will burn through industry after industry. For example, costs at American colleges and universities have increased almost five times faster than consumer prices in the past 40 years, even as teaching has barely changed, making it tempting to disruptors. Further technological progress in renewable sources of energy, smart grids and battery storage are all vital steps on the path to replacing fossil fuels.3

Perhaps people under lockdown have asked themselves what matters most in life. Governments may take that as their inspiration, focusing on policies that should include a new social contract fit for the 21st century.

 

References

 

1	(2019, April 19). Opinion | Progressive Capitalism Is Not an Oxymoron - The .... Retrieved June 17, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/opinion/sunday/progressive-capitalism.html
2	(2020, June 17). The Coronavirus is Changing U.S. Views of Social Policies .... Retrieved June 18, 2020, from https://time.com/5855091/coronavirus-crisis-is-opening-the-door-universal-social-policies/
3	(2020, December 18). Covid-19 in 2020 - The year when everything changed | Leaders. Retrieved December 19, 2020, from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/12/19/the-year-when-everything-changed

Economic Change for Common Good

 

Recent articles reporting on the work of scholars, moral philosophers, and research analysts about the opportunities for change in the economy after Covid-19 point to hope for action to address the deficiencies of neoliberal shareholder capitalism as an economic model that supports the common good.

For the common good 

Catherine Thomas, an interdisciplinary graduate fellow, David Kalkstein, a postdoctoral scholar, and Gregory Walton, an associate professor, all in the psychology department at Stanford University write that the coronavirus crisis has laid bare the health, social, and economic inequalities that have been growing in the United States for decades. This moment of upheaval is leading to calls across the U.S. for structural reforms to the social and economic systems in our country.

Take universal basic income (UBI), a policy that would provide ongoing monthly cash payments to individuals to cover basic needs. Advocates of UBI have long touted its inequality-reducing effects, as it would make the biggest difference for working-class communities. In two online studies, we see that rates of UBI support have reached 69-75%, compared to a maximum of 55% pre-COVID-19. In our first longitudinal study tracking 2,300 Americans between late March and late April, the greatest gains in UBI support were among conservative women, the same group that helped drive Trump’s ascendancy. In a second study of 400 Americans in April, over 80% of respondents expressed support for universal health care, 88% supported universal unemployment insurance, and 74% supported free public preschools. And this momentum is mirrored at the federal level. Following a bipartisan push for direct cash payments to Americans as part of the CARES Act, bills for basic income have now been proposed in the House and the Senate as of May. Milton Friedman wrote, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” The many crises of these past few months have set the foundation for possibly momentous social change and policy reform. Americans must now decide: Will this calamity further divide us—reinforcing inequalities and further polarizing Americans across party, race, and class lines? Or will we carry forward this sense of togetherness to become a nation united—working towards common goals and ensuring prosperity for all?1

Patrick Riordan SJ.,Senior Fellow for Political Philosophy and Catholic Social Thought at Campion Hall, asks “Who is going to pay for it all?” People now speculate about the possibilities opened up by the coronavirus pandemic, there is a frequently expressed hope that the ‘system’ might be reformed. The system is variously taken to refer to neoliberalism, globalisation, financialisation, increasing inequality, and the marginalisation of politics in the face of economic power. Capitalism is another shorthand for the system, stressing the freedom of markets and the curtailment of state interference. If reform is to happen, recent contributions to Catholic Social Teaching would insist that it needs a legal foundation: Pope Francis in Laudato si’ (§189) echoes the demand of his predecessor Pope John Paul II in Centesimus annus (§42) that the free market be constrained within an appropriate juridical framework.

A juridical framework to ensure that markets serve the common good would have to include many more principles than ‘protect property’ and ‘enforce contracts’. Many familiar liberties would also find their place, such as those listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the liberty to pursue a career, to take a job, to migrate – along with necessary constraints such as the freedom of speech and expression limited by the duty not to deceive with misinformation about products or services. Consumer protection legislation, workplace health and safety legislation, employment law, are all now part of the robust juridical framework constraining economic activity. But, we must wonder, surrounded as they are with so many legal constraints, why do markets not deliver a sustainable quality of life for everyone? Why does economic activity continue to destroy the natural environment and dehumanise and exploit and marginalise so many people? The teachings on those principles are complex we must highlight and foreground the neglected aspects of the principles: property holders have duties as well as rights, duties to use their wealth to benefit all, especially those most in need; and contracts are to be fulfilled, but such contracts that are exploitative of the needs of the poor are immoral and should be renounced, not enforced.2

Ed Broadbent, Chair of the Broadbent Institute, and Brittany Andrew-Amofah, Broadbent Institute’s Senior Policy & Research Analyst, discuss a progressive federal budget and how to pay for it. To “build back better” post-COVID, our efforts must be focused on transitioning towards a green economy and infrastructure program. The Task force for a Resilient Recovery, a project of the Ivey Foundation, outlined 5 bold moves for a green recovery, one that would reduce emissions, bolster electric power, protect our natural environment and see the creation of clean, competitive jobs.  With a total investment of $55.4 billion over 5 years, this plan could provide the substance for the “building back better” slogan.

The creation of an early learning and childcare system, universal pharmacare and a green economic recovery, will require new progressive tax measures to implement and sustain them over time. A recent Broadbent Institute report laid out a pandemic fiscal plan to pay for an equal and just recovery. Included are key items such as a wealth tax, the closure of tax loopholes and cracking down on offshore tax havens. In light of COVID-19, an excess profits tax is also necessary to ensure that above-average company profits acquired throughout the pandemic should be used to benefit the public, rather than line the pockets of CEOs and shareholders.3

The call for structural reform in the US, the moral suasion of CST (Catholic Social Teaching), and plans by the Canadian government for “building back better” are positive signs of hope that our recovery from Covid-19 will create improved conditions that benefit the common good.

 

References

1	(2020, June 17). The Coronavirus is Changing U.S. Views of Social Policies .... Retrieved June 18, 2020, from https://time.com/5855091/coronavirus-crisis-is-opening-the-door-universal-social-policies/
2	(2020, July 10). Who is going to pay for it all? | Thinking Faith: The online .... Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/who-going-pay-it-all
3	(2020, October 22). A progressive federal budget and how to pay for it - Macleans.ca. Retrieved October 28, 2020, from https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/a-progressive-federal-budget-and-how-to-pay-for-it/