Social Security system:
Models principles of solidarity

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

The Social Security program is 70 years old this month. And while this legacy of the New Deal came into being well before the term "solidarity" came into popular usage among Catholic thinkers, it is hard to find a better example of the principle than the Social Security program.

All connected

The new Compendium on the Social Doctrine of the Church puts it quite well. Solidarity has two complementary aspects: that of a social principle and that of a moral virtue.

As a moral virtue, solidarity affirms the truth that all people are connected, bound by our common humanity to a common concern for each other's welfare.

As a social principle, solidarity calls us to a commitment to the common good over a privatized definition of our self-interest. This commitment to the common good reflects the truth put so powerfully by Pope John Paul II in his 1987 encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, that "we all really are responsible for all."

The church also reminds us that our principles and values can serve as "points of reference" for the structures, arrangements, and policies that govern our life in society.

Social Security history

The Social Security program is an example of a policy and structure guided by such points of reference. Our ancestors understood this well when the Great Depression drove home the truth that life is uncertain. Healthy people could easily become ill. Jobs might disappear even for the hard working. War or misfortune could leave the strong disabled.

The experience of their own lives taught them that virtuous people were as prone as any to the pain and fears that accompany hard times and material want. And they also knew that the privation of some in the community touched all in the community.

Our ancestors could have concluded that the answer was for everyone to fend for himself or herself. But they made a different choice. They grasped that their present and their future would be more secure if they came together and made a covenant with each other and future generations.

Social Security did just that. Nearly all workers, regardless of their wealth, contributed. They did so in a spirit of trust. Those of working age helped meet the needs of elders and infirm with the confidence that if and when they might need such assistance in their old age, their descendants would contribute to their well being.

Our ancestors understood that wealth might be easier to attain if they ignored their obligations to each other. But they also knew that ignoring or disavowing their responsibility for each other was not good for society.

'Greatest Generation'

Social Security has proven to be among the most successful enterprises of the American experience. Before its inception, poverty was rampant among older Americans. Today, poverty among elders is well below the national average.

The program is not perfect. Future modifications may be desirable. But any changes in the program should be assessed in terms of their impact on this track record and their consistency with values that guided its inception.

The Americans of the 1930s understood the bond that links solidarity to the common good. In launching the Social Security program in 1935, they made a timeless moral virtue the foundation of an enduring public policy. Their legacy of Social Security is one more reason they deserve the title of "the Greatest Generation."

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

The 'new faithful':
As manifested in young adult Catholics

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

The ecumenical phenomenon that Colleen Carroll Campbell dubbed "the new faithful" - accomplished young professionals leading lives of intense Christian orthodoxy - has had interesting manifestations in the Catholic Church.

Is there a major American city that doesn't have a "Theology on Tap" program these days? Suds and the catechism seem to be an attractive mix.

Then there are campuses like Notre Dame, where students are reconverting their faculties and their schools, often against great odds. And, of course, there's World Youth Day.

Young Catholics

Now comes the new apologetics. Two books by younger Catholic writers demonstrate that the art of "making 'Catholic' make sense" has been recovered in a distinctive way for these unique times.

Matthew Lickona's Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic (Loyola Press) is a sometimes funky, sometimes lyrical explanation of how a cradle Catholic, who buys the whole package, thinks, prays, struggles, and manages to have a lot of fun while being self-consciously counter-cultural.

Lickona, a staff writer for the San Diego Reader, loves wine, movies, "alternative rock" (don't ask me . . . ), and the church. He's frank about his spiritual limits - "In times of suffering, I look first to myself. God is the backup, to be called upon when I find myself insufficient."

Yet he has a firm grip on the faith and a keen insight into what apostasy has done to contemporary society: "We're living in an awful middle ground. Some might call it Christ-hungover. He lingers, a painful leftover presence that punishes the conscience but brings no comfort. People are left with the sad thrill of transgression: the enraged bumper stickers, the endless appeals to sex that is 'perfectly natural' but still sold as 'naughty.' Such may be the penalty for knowing His rules without knowing Him."

Education failures

Then we have Mark Gauvreau Judge, hitherto known in Washington circles as the town's most ardent Senators fan. His grandfather, Joe Judge, had played for the team during baseball's golden years; grandson Mark kept the flame of local baseball passion alive for decades and is currently locked in an embrace of the re-commissioned Nationals.

Now, outside the ballpark, Judge lowers the boom on the silliness that beset Catholic high schools and colleges in the post-Vatican II period in a feisty memoir, God and Man at Georgetown Prep: How I Became a Catholic Despite 20 Years of Catholic Schooling (Crossroad).

Matthew Lickona writes elegantly; Mark Judge's prose has edge. Looking back from his early 40s, he knows he was cheated of a serious Catholic education at Georgetown Prep and Catholic University - and he's not happy about it.

Judge is no plaster saint; he freely admits that his own propensities for wild behavior (especially when fueled by drinking) made a circus out of his high school and (extended) college years. But he rightly asks why formation ceased being part of education in Catholic schools during and after the overheated '60s.

Grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous for helping him get his life together, he wonders, appropriately, why the trendy priests and teachers at some of America's most prestigious Catholic institutions didn't help him steer a better path.

Local Washington rumor has it that the Powers That Be at Georgetown Prep are unhappy with Mark Judge. Assuming that the self-examining spirituality of St. Ignatius still plays a role in those circles, the Jesuit panjandrums at Prep might consider whether their ire shouldn't be redirected, in what was once called an "examination of conscience."

Surviving the culture

Having survived the silly season, Matthew Lickona and Mark Judge have built integral, exciting Catholic lives despite the collapse of intact Catholic culture in the United States.

Growing up in the intensely Catholic culture of Bavaria, a more famous Catholic apologist, Joseph Ratzinger, discovered that the Catholic Church is a wonderful thing, a treasure-house of insights and experiences to be savored and explored, reflected upon and argued over.

Amidst the confusions of post-modern America, Lickona and Judge have discovered what Benedict XVI intuited as a boy: that the church is everyday life and soaring speculation, liturgy and art and music, all at the same time. Learning the connections is a lifelong project, full of adventure and beauty.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.