While in America, Pope Francis will almost surely repeat his call for the “redistribution of economic benefits by the state” as a remedy for what his November 2013 Apostolic Exhortation calls “an economy of exclusion and inequality.” Presupposing a causal connection between a “culture of prosperity” and “global indifference” to the poor, the Exhortation reads as follows:
We end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
Though leveled at contemporary society, the allegations bring irrepressibly to mind a timeless 19th century fictional protagonist whose name is synonymous with extreme indifference to the needs of others.
Scrooge, when asked for a donation for the poor retorts, “I help to support [government establishments for the poor]; they cost enough.” Paying taxes to support government welfare, in his mind, obviates private acts of compassion.
Through the exchange, Dickens casts light on the sobering consequences of trying to legislate love. It lessens the incentive to give, and proves a humbug. It provides a plausible justification for refusing to give: money for that purpose has already been confiscated.
If helping seems, as Francis asserts, “someone else’s responsibility and not our own,” perhaps it’s because the state has seized that responsibility from us. As I’ve written in articles over the past ten years, the welfare state imposes, in effect, a tax on the will to give. And there’s a related problem, seldom considered.
Redistribution creates favorable conditions for the societal pathogens identified by the pope. What “deadens us,” contrary to Francis’ declaration, is not the “culture of prosperity.” Rather, it’s the remedy he prescribes. By allocating to itself the role of caring for the poor, through forcible redistribution, the state inculcates the very “indifference” decried in the pope’s Exhortation.
Christian compassion, on the other hand, as Francis well knows, is made possible by changing the individual heart, one Scrooge at a time. (In Dickens’ tale, the potential for transformation was always present in Scrooge’s first name, Ebenezer, which means “rock of help.”) In the end, his sacrificial acts of love are the freewill decision of a heart won by the Spirits of Christmas.
Dickens’ vision is consistent with scripture. Perhaps he was even inspired by Luke’s account of Zacchaeus, a wealthy and penurious tax collector with a reputation for defrauding his countrymen. After a visit from Jesus (the ultimate Spirit of Christmas), Zacchaeus decides of his own volition to give away half his wealth to the poor, and promises to repay “fourfold” anyone he’d cheated.
To this penitent outpouring of compassion, Jesus responds, “Today salvation has come to this house … For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Christ thus emphasizes salvation not of the poor but of a wealthy man whose deep need is to become a free-will giver.
In the Exhortation, Francis refers to the rich as “the happy few.” Christ sees them differently. He portrays the rich as most desperate, holding up Zacchaeus as an example of the lost he came to save.
Christ’s salvation of the rich harmonizes perfectly with his passion for helping the poor. Free-will giving, like Shakespeare’s “quality of mercy,” is “twice blest;/ It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” Christ meets the needs of the poor to take even as he meets the needs of the rich to give.
Jesus says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Compulsory redistribution stands to impede the promised “more blessed”-ness. With each dollar the state takes from a prospective giver, it takes a potential blessing.
In the Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul distills a ubiquitous biblical teaching: “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Why, then, does this pope advocate compulsion? Does he fear that without the force of government the needs of the poor would be unmet? Then to Francis Christ might say what he said in love to the pope’s predecessor, even the Apostle Peter himself: “O you of little faith.”
Roger Banks (Twitter: @RogerBanksEsq) is a writer, lawyer, and student of literature and the Bible. His articles have appeared in NewsMax, Human Events, TownHall, DC Examiner, National Law Journal, and others. He is a graduate of Cornell Law School and Rutgers University (B.A. English) and lives near Washington, D.C.