Going My Way? Wending a Way Through the Stumbling Blocks Between Georgism and Catholicism

• Author: MASON GAFFNEY
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00843.x
• Date: 01 October 2012
• Published date: 01 October 2012

RERUM NOVARUM

Going My Way? Wending a Way Through

the Stumbling Blocks Between Georgism

and Catholicism

By MASON GAFFNEY*

ABSTRACT. This essay surveys the issues between Georgists and

Roman Catholics in three classes: issues that are not peculiarly Roman

Catholic (RC) but play out across faiths and denominations, issues that

are peculiarly RC, and points of similarity and agreement. Addressed

in this fashion are the tensions that arise between the social gospel

and individual salvation, between specifics and glittering generalities,

between noblesse oblige and governmental reform, between the doc-

trine of original sin and tabula rasa, between the rich and the poor,

between the dignity of labor and the honor of predation, between

democracy and authority, between the regulatory emphasis rooted in

the philosophy of Aquinas and free markets, and between plain talk

and gobbledegook.

Introduction

There have been and are many Georgist Catholics and Catholic

Georgists. The divisions inside each group are perhaps as deep as the

divisions between them. This bodes well for future cooperation

between at least some Georgists and some Catholics.

Some outstanding Catholic Georgists or fellow-travelers in politics

have been Fr. Edward McGlynn (see Gaffney 2000), Governor Al Smith,

Mayor and Governor Edward Dunne, Mayor Daniel Hoan, union leader

Margaret Haley, presidential advisor Joseph Tumulty, Mrs. Henry

George, Governor John Peter Altgeld, and Mayor Mark Fagan. Some

current Georgist/Catholics are John Kelly of Peoria, Terry Dwyer of

Canberra, Bryan Kavanagh of Melbourne, and David Kromkowski of

*Mason Gaffney is Professor of Economics at University of California, Riverside.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October, 2012).

© 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Maryland. Some of them, like McGlynn and Smith, met stiff resistance

from upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) hierarchy,

but that is one of the internal divisions we will explore. Some, like

Patrick Ford and Terence Powderly, succumbed to the pressure.

The hierarchy has also repressed Catholic land reformers of other

stripes: the worker priests of France and the liberation theologists of

Brazil, for example. The knee-jerk reaction has been to cry “Marxism”

and clamp down. In turn, some Catholic land reformers in power have

suppressed the RCC and confiscated its lands, as in Mexico. Catholic

King Louis XV of France expelled the Jesuits, who did not return until

1814, under aegis of the Holy Alliance. Either way there has been

considerable hostility. The hierarchy has generally allied with big

landowners, while many priests, like France’s Abbé Pierre, have

identified with the landless.

This essay surveys the issues between Georgists and Roman Catho-

lics in three classes: issues that are not peculiarly Roman Catholic (RC),

issues that are peculiarly RC, and points of similarity and agreement.

I have not come to reopen the Thirty Years’ War. My hope and intent

is to help the points of agreement override the differences.

Generic Issues Between Georgists and Clerics, and Among

Clerics of All Faiths and Denominations

The Social Gospel vs. Individual Salvation

With the ascendancy of altar-calling evangelist Billy Graham, Protestant

Christianity leaped far away from the social gospel of, say, Walter

Rauschenbusch and WashingtonGladden of the Progressive Era and the

mild liberalism of The Christian Century. The Elmer Gantry phenom-

enon was of course well known before that, as was the “Monkey Trial”

subculture of Dayton, Tennessee, but they were on the downswing. In

the Cold War era, however, Protestant Americans suddenly responded

en masse and without much discretion, flocking to caricatures of

Graham, and televangelists like Bebe Patten, Jim and Tammy Bakker,

Paul Crouch, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Gene Scott, Jerry Falwell,

and many others of like bent. They attacked the social gospel with as

much vigor as they preached individual salvation.

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