Fr. Hugh Barbour, the Chaplain for Catholic Answers, was on their Catholic Answers radio show on Labor Day for their daily question and answer session. In doing that, he gave a fascinating discussion on Labor from a very informed, and very traditional, Catholic prospective. The link to that discussion is here:
I don't expect the few folks who stop in here to go to the podcast and listen to it. That would be asking a bit much. But if you have the time, it's worth listening too. Fr. Barbour approaches the topic from the context of Papal Encyclicals on the topic, including Rarum Novarum and a second encyclical which I'd not previously heard of that was issued some forty years later on the same topic, and in recollection of the anniversary of the first.
This discussion is almost guaranteed to offend or upset in some sense, but it's worth listening to anyhow. It's high critical of Capitalism and Socialism. Indeed, it's so critical of Capitalism that I can imagine Capitalist absolutely cringing while listening to it. It touched upon Distributism, but obliquely and by name only once. It's highly sympathetic to Agrarianism but, and no doubt upsetting to many, it's extremely sympathetic and even romantic about the Medieval Feudal economy.
The gist of Barbour's talk is that the conversion of the economy into the modern economy, first an industrial economy and then a post industrial economy, dehumanized labor by separating the laborer from his tasks and rendering him nothing more than a means of making money for Capitalist. There's a lot to his points there, even if frankly his concept of a more ideal Medieval economy is excessively romanticized and perhaps even in error, as the feudal economy did not actually extend to all of Medieval Europe and had its own horrible excesses.
I suspect hearing Barbour, who is completely orthodox in his views, will be a huge shock for Americans including the numerous conservative American Catholics who seem to believe that Capitalism is 100% A Okay in its modern form. I've often found it interesting that Christians in the United States seem to fall into a quasi Socialist camp if they're liberal or a highly Capitalist camp if they're conservative even though, like many other things, there's no reason whatsoever that a person couldn't have economic views that didn't fit into lock step with a political view of some wing of a political party. Barbour laments the lack of a Catholic Party in the United States, which is clearly a pipe dream and something that wouldn't be a good idea on top of it, but there are European political parties that recognize what I've noted above and have a middle ground or Distributist economic view, although none of them have been powerful enough in recent decades to make up the majority in any one European parliament.
Anyhow, interesting and calculated to upset nearly anyone who listens to it.
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