Amidst the discussion and controversy surrounding government assistance to the poor and the "free" benefits that all citizens should receive, one has a hard time discerning how a Christian should respond. On one hand we feel duped by those who take advantage of governmental benefits and on the other hand we feel compassion for those who really need it. We feel compelled to help and at the same time angry at a system that allows mass abuses; a system that discourages personal initiative and encourages a victim mentality that places responsibility for our economic deficiencies at the feet of someone else.With much more clarity and depth Michael Novak speaks to these issues in an article in the June-July issue of First Things. The article is entitled "The Future of Democratic Capitalism". You can go to the First Things website for the complete article. Here is some of what he says:
"Notwithstanding what happens in China, the sad fact is that almost everywhere in the world today, systems properly called capitalist and democratic are facing grave difficulties. It cannot be supposed that human beings always love liberty. Free persons must meet the burdens of personal responsibility, and for some, that responsibility is too onerous. If I may paraphrase Dostoevsky: “When people cry out for liberty, give it to them—in fifteen minutes they will give it back.” For most of history, humans have been remarkably un-rebellious under tyranny. If their simplest appetites are met, why should they take up irksome responsibilities?
So it is today. Not all human beings desire to be economically free. If they are free, they are obligated to bear responsibility for their own welfare. Of course, there is always some percentage of the population too old or too young, too ill or too disabled, to carry their own weight in economic responsibility. There will always be some people who rightly depend upon the help of others. By its own moral identity, any honest Jewish, Christian, or even secular humanist society must come to their aid.
Yet, as John Paul II pointed out in Centesimus Annus, there are huge drawbacks in entrusting such welfare exclusively to the administrative state. Such a state is a highly flawed instrument for helping the poor. For one thing, it tends to treat them (indeed, by legal requirements of equal protection,must treat them) as interchangeable units of the citizenry, and too often this means impersonally. That is, the state must treat them as clients rather than as full-fledged, responsible persons with their own unique backgrounds, needs, and aspirations.
Some do not trust private efforts, private businesses, corporations, or even individuals and civic associations to bring sufficient care to the able-bodied poor. Instead, they prefer to trust government to do so, even if only by borrowing money, for which task they pledge the obligations of their children and their grandchildren. Such persons may be models of compassion, but their generosity is dubious when they do not resolve to pay for their own moral actions."
