Huge Problems, Honest Approaches

One of the things I've noticed while visiting Washington, D.C. all too frequently this past year, is a major tendency of conservatives as well as liberals to cry peace, peace, when there is no peace. Many folks in Washington want to have harmonious cocktail parties and dinners, with antithesis muted to match the subtle shades of wallpaper. Just as "the life you save may be your own," so in Washington the person you refute may be the person you need to approach for a favor or a job; so false smiles often trump serious debate. Much goes unsaid amidst the search for supposed common ground.

I've also noticed that many people are starved for some interaction of the spiritual with the political. While giving a lecture in Washington I usually explain somewhere along the line that I am a Christian who takes the bible seriously; afterwards, I am amazed when people come up and thank me for my "courage" in acknowledging the claims of Christ. I hadn't felt courageous at all, but I've learned in Washington that it's often considered impolite to discuss public policy in other than soulless terms; it's even more frequent in academia for Christians in the liberal arts to remain, as one told me, "in the closet."

What is impolite in some public policy circles, the Acton Institute proclaims -- and it invites young scholars not to be in the closet, but openly to apply objective truth to politics and economics.

The five strong papers that make up this volume, all written by winners of the Institute's 1996 Essay Contest, show the success of Sirico & Company's strategy. In tribute to the suspense-creating style of both the Miss America contest and David Letterman, I'll start by summarizing the two honorable mention papers and then move onto the third place winner, then second, then first.

One honorable mention essay, entitled "The Two Faces of Moral Poverty," was written by University of Chicago doctoral student Kristen Burroughs Kraakevik. Ms. Kraakevik notes in her essay that welfare programs have consistently neglected the need for the poor to see and experience "the values and expectations of a good society." By replacing the family and community connections of the poor, government poverty programs have removed prime incentives to moral virtue; incidentally, Ms. Kraakevik, a Wheaton College graduate, witnesses every day the importance of family, because she is now giving lectures in modern American intellectual history to her three small children.

Another very honorable essay emerged from the brain of Matthew Coffin, a 1994 graduate of St. Michael's College, who is now studying at Mt. St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsberg, Maryland. Mr. Coffin's piece, "Slaying the Leviathan: Going Beyond the Great Society," argues that the dismantling of the welfare state is inevitable and well-deserved, and that Christians and others should seize the opportunity presented by the current crisis to restore an ethic of personal responsibility and local poverty relief. Acceptance of such policies, however, will only come if there is a wide understanding of "the joy of achievement" and "the thrill of creative effort."

The third place essay, Christopher Meade's "Catholic Principles and Welfare Reform," notes improvements in the current U.S. welfare reform debate over past discussions that were still trapped in statist approaches. Still, Mr. Meade, who graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1990, then worked with juveniles at a reformatory school, and then received an M.A. from Holy Apostles Seminary, points out the need to go deeper: He shows that human dignity requires the state to respect private ownership, entrepreneurship, and locally-based charity. Capitalism and charity are not in conflict, Mr. Meade notes, because human beings are truly free to give and receive charity only when they are free to create and acquire wealth.

Second place went to R. Dean Davenport's essay, "A Theological Perspective on the Rise of Poverty in America," which shows how government anti-poverty programs arose in part out of "a comprehensive religious paradigm shift" that occurred at the end of the 19th century. Mr. Davenport, who graduated from Georgetown College in 1996 and wrote an honors thesis discussing the critique of utilitarianism in normative economic policy, shows how modernist liberal theology kicked out ideas of sin and personal responsibility for disobedience to God, and substituted an ethic of "compassion" based on the notion that the poor are victims of sinful capitalist economic structures. Such a shift clearly robbed the poor of the moral resources they needed to lift themselves out of poverty.

And the first place winner? Drum roll... "Poverty, Virtue, and Grace," by Robert Johansen, a graduate of the University of Illinois with an M.A. from Catholic University, took home the grand prize. Mr. Johansen cites Scripture, church fathers, and 19th century American leaders, to show how charity is a duty that arises out of the Christian virtue of gratitude to God. Gratitude is also a virtue for the poor, who have a duty to receive charity in a way that leads them to better themselves and give honor to God.

Overall, these fine essays -- like fine new faith-based, grass roots groups that are emerging in communities across the country -- show that the dire consequences of the last generation's liberal ideas are promoting both intellectual and organizational renewal. We have a long way to go to recover fully the tools of effective compassion, but those tools are no longer lost; now that they are found, we are on the right road to replacing the failed welfare system with one that lifts its eyes to God and thus will not perpetually have to lower it eyes to the sewers.