Peter Maurin, the French friend of Dorothy Day
Peter Maurin
On the 4th May 1933 the first issue of Dorothy Day’s newspaper The Catholic Worker was published. It was her friend Peter Maurin who had suggested to her, a trained journalist, to start this project.
“In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the Popes in regard to social justice and the program put forth by the Church for the ‘reconstruction of the social order,‘ this news sheet, The Catholic Worker, is started.
First Issue of The Catholic Worker, 4 May 1933
It is not as yet known whether it will be a monthly, a fortnightly or a weekly. It all depends on the funds collected for the printing and distribution. Those who can subscribe, and those who can donate, are asked to do so.
This first number of The Catholic Worker was planned, written and edited in the kitchen of a tenement on Fifteenth Street, on subway platforms, on the ‘L,‘ the ferry. There is no editorial office, no overhead in the way of telephone or electricity, no salaries paid.
The money for the printing of the first issue was raised by begging small contributions from friends. A colored priest in Newark sent us ten dollars and the prayers of his congregation. A colored sister in New Jersey, garbed also in holy poverty, sent us a dollar. Another kindly and generous friend sent twenty-five. The rest of it the editors squeezed out of their own earnings, and at that they were using money necessary to pay milk bills, gas bills, electric light bills.“
To live in holy poverty and to work for the poor, the unemployed, and the misfits… 1933, imagine those times: Besides the war on liberal democracy waged by both Fascists and Communists, it was a period of a great economic depression all around the world.
The man who inspired Dorothy Day a great deal with his ideas and visions, Peter Maurin, was already 56 years old at the time. He was born on the 9th May 1877 as one of twenty-four children of a poor peasant family in southern France, and was named Pierre Joseph Orestide Maurin.
In the 1920s he emigrated to the United States, working as a tutor in the suburbs of New York for a while. His conversion to living as an orthodox practicing Catholic took place during those years and was inspired by the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Peter Maurin met Dorothy Day in December 1932, right after she had prayed for inspiration and guidance for her future work on the feast day of the Immaculate Conception…
Dorothy Day
Peter Maurin died at a Catholic Worker Farm near New York on the 15th May 1949, having suffered from dementia for several years. This day was the anniversary day of the encyclicals Rerum novarum by Pope Leo XIII and Quadragesimo anno by Pope Pius XI. It was noticed how fitting the day of his death was, as Maurin had seen it as his mission to spell out and live out the social teaching of the Church and to popularize these doctrines and the corresponding practices, bringing them to the man in the streets.
“The high ethics of the Canon Law are embodied in the encyclicals of Pius XI and Leo XIII on the social problem. To apply the ethics of the encyclicals to the problems of today, such is the purpose of Catholic Action.“
Peter Maurin: Easy Essays
Peter Maurin was greatly impacted by the economic theory of distributism as developed most notably by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and the Dominican priest Father Vincent McNabb in response to the social encyclicals of the Popes. These scholars were making attempts to paint a picture of an economic life in concord with Catholic values.
What follows are some more excerpts from Maurin‘s Easy Essays – short and at times poem-like fragments capturing his thoughts on social and political issues and on the call and mission of the Church in these modern times of ours.
A critique of modern society and of the socio-economic system of industrialism
“Industrialism is evil because it brings idleness both to the capitalist class and the working class. Idleness does no good either to the capitalist class or the working class. Creative labor is what keeps people out of mischief. Creative labor is craft labor. Mechanized labor is not creative labor.“
Peter Maurin: Easy Essays
“Andrew Nelson Lytle says: The escape from industrialism is not in socialism or in sovietism. The answer lies in a return to a society where agriculture is practiced by most of the people. It is in fact impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without a proper regard for the soil, no matter how many urban dwellers think that their food comes from groceries and delicatessens or their milk from tin cans. This ignorance does not release them from a final dependence upon the farm.“
“Modern society believes in the separation of Church and State. But the Jews did not believe in it. The Greeks did not believe in it. The Romans did not believe in it. The Mediaevals did not believe in it. The Puritans did not believe in it. Modern society has separated Church and State but it did not separate the State from business. The State is no longer a Church‘s State. The State is now a Business Men‘s State.“
“Before John Calvin people were not allowed to lend money at interest. John Calvin decided to legalize money-lending at interest in spite of the teachings of the Prophets of Israel and the Fathers of the Church. Protestant countries tried to keep up with John Calvin and money-lending at interest became the general practice. And money ceased to be a means of exchange and began to be a means to make money.“
“When John Calvin legalized money-lending at interest, he made the bank account the standard of values. When the bank account became the standard of values, people ceased to produce for use and began to produce for profits. When people began to produce for profits they became wealth-producing maniacs. When people became wealth-producing maniacs they produced too much wealth. When people found out that they had produced too much wealth they went on an orgy of wealth-destruction and destroyed ten million lives beside.“
“Our modern educators, our modern politicians, our modern business men have taken religion from everything and have put commercialism into everything.“
“The bourgeois capitalist calls himself conservative but has failed to conserve our cultural tradition. He thinks that culture is related to leisure. He does not think that culture is related to cult and to cultivation. He believes in power, and that money is the way to power. He believes that money can buy everything, whether it be labor or brains.“
“Fascist dictatorship is a halfway house between the rugged individualism of capitalism and the rugged collectivism of Bolshevism. There is no essential difference between Fascist dictatorship and Bolshevik dictatorship. The trouble with the world today is too much dictatorship and too little leadership.“
“Catholic laymen and women commit the great modern error of separating the spiritual from the material. This great modern error, known under the name of secularism, is called a ‘modern plague‘ by Pope Pius XI.“
“Pope Pius IX and Cardinal Newman consider liberalism, whether it be religious, philosophical, or economic, the greatest error of the nineteenth century.“
“When religion has nothing to do with politics, politics is only factionalism (…). (…) When religion has nothing to do with business, business is only commercialism (…).“
“Modern society calls the beggar bum and panhandler and gives him the bum‘s rush. But the Greeks used to say that people in need are the ambassadors of the gods. (…) Mahometan teachers tell us that God commands hospitality, and hospitality is still practiced in Mahometan countries. But the duty of hospitality is neither taught nor practiced in Christian countries.“
“People who are in need are not invited to spend the nights in homes of the rich. There are guest rooms in the home of the rich but they are not for those who need them. They are not for those who need them because those who need them are no longer considered as the ambassadors of God. So the duty of hospitality is no longer considered as a personal duty. So people without a home are sent to the city where hospitality is given at the taxpayer‘s expense.“
“But the hospitality that the ‘Muni‘ gives to the down and out is no hospitality because what comes from the taxpayer’s pocketbook does not come from his heart.“
“To educate is to elevate. To elevate is to raise. To raise wheat on a piece of land is to enable that piece of land to produce wheat instead of weeds. To raise men from the animal state to the cultural state is to educate men. The teaching of facts without understanding is a prostitution of education.“
“When the class on the top cares only for money, it does not care for culture. When the class on the top does not care for culture, nobody cares for culture. And when nobody cares for culture, civilization decays.“
“And we are now in the age of chaos. In an age of chaos people look for a new order. Because people are becoming aware of this lack of order they would like to be able to create order out of chaos. The time to create order out of chaos is now.“
Learning from Church history: How the Church used to serve the poor, and how the Irish cultivated Europe
“In the first centuries of Christianity the hungry were fed at a personal sacrifice, the naked were clothed at a personal sacrifice, the homeless were sheltered at a personal sacrifice. And because the poor were fed, clothed and sheltered at a personal sacrifice, the pagans used to say about the Christians ‘See how they love each other.‘ In our own day the poor are no longer fed, clothed, sheltered at a personal sacrifice, but at the expense of the taxpayers.“
Peter Maurin: Easy Essays
“We read in the Catholic Encyclopedia that during the early ages of Christianity the hospice (or the House of Hospitality) was a shelter for the sick, the poor, the orphans, the old, the traveler, and the needy of every kind. Originally the hospices (or Houses of Hospitality) were under the supervision of the Bishops, who designated priests to administer the spiritual and temporal affairs of these charitable institutions. The fourteenth statute of the so-called Council of Carthage, held about 436, enjoins upon the Bishops to have hospices (or Houses of Hospitality) in connection with their churches.“
“After the fall of the Roman Empire the scholars, scattered all over the Roman Empire, looked for a refuge and found a refuge in Ireland, where the Roman Empire did not reach and where the Teutonic barbarians did not go. In Ireland, the scholars formulated an intellectual synthesis and a technique of action. Having formulated that intellectual synthesis and that technique of action, the scholars decided to lay the foundations of medieval Europe. In order to lay the foundations of medieval Europe, the Irish scholars established Salons de Culture in all the cities of Europe, as far as Constantinople, where people could look for thought so they could have light. And it was in the so-called Dark Ages which were not so dark, when the Irish were the light. But we are now living in a real Dark Age, and one of the reasons why the modern age is so dark, is because too few Irish have the light. The Irish scholars established free guest houses all over Europe to exemplify Christian charity. This made pagan Teutonic rulers tell pagan Teutonic people: ‘The Irish are good people busy doing good.‘ And when the Irish were good people busy doing good, they did not bother about empires. That is why we never heard about an Irish Empire. We heard about all kinds of empires, including the British Empire, but never about an Irish Empire, because the Irish did not bother about empires when they were busy doing good. The Irish scholars established agricultural centers all over Europe where they combined cult – that is to say liturgy – with culture – that is to say literature – with cultivation – that is to say agriculture. (…) What was done by Irish missionaries after the fall of the Roman Empire can be done today during and after the fall of modern empires.“
“When the barbarians invaded the decaying Roman Empire Irish missionaries went all over Europe and laid the foundations of medieval Europe. Through the establishment of cultural centers, that is to say, round-table discussions, they brought thought to the people. Through free guest houses, that is to say, Houses of Hospitality, they popularized the divine virtue of charity. Through farming colonies, that is to say, Agronomic Universities, they emphasized voluntary poverty. It was on the basis of personal charity and voluntary poverty that Irish missionaries laid the foundations of the social order.“
“The motto of St. Benedict was Laborare et Orare, Labor and Pray. Labor and prayer ought to be combined; labor ought to be a prayer. The liturgy of the Church is the prayer of the Church. People ought to pray with the Church and to work with the Church. The religious life of the people and the economic life of the people ought to be one.“
What the Catholic Worker movement is about
“The Catholic Worker believes in the gentle personalism of traditional Catholicism. The Catholic Worker believes in the personal obligation of looking after the needs of our brother. The Catholic Worker believes in the daily practice of the Works of Mercy. The Catholic Worker believes in Houses of Hospitality for the immediate relief of those who are in need. The Catholic Worker believes in the establishment of Farming Communes where each one works according to his ability and gets according to his need. The Catholic Worker believes in creating a new society within the shell of the old with the philosophy of the new, which is not a new philosophy but a very old philosophy, a philosophy so old that it looks like new.“
Peter Maurin: Easy Essays
“The Catholic Worker has no party line. There is no party line in the Catholic Church.“
“Liberals are too liberal to be radicals. To be a radical is to go to the roots. Liberals don‘t go to the roots; they only scratch the surface. The only way to go to the roots is to bring religion into education, into politics, into business. To bring religion into the profane is the best way to take profanity out of the profane. To take profanity out of the profane is to bring sanity into the profane. Because we aim to do just that we like to be called radicals.“
“The Catholic Worker stands for co-operativism against capitalism. The Catholic Worker stands for personalism against socialism. The Catholic Worker stands for leadership against dictatorship. The Catholic Worker stands for agrarianism against industrialism. The Catholic Worker stands for decentralism against totalitarianism.“
“The Nazis, the Fascists, and the Bolshevists are Totalitarians. The Catholic Worker is Communitarian.“
“The way to take commercialism out of everything and to put religion into everything is not through political action. The way to take commercialism out of everything and to put religion into everything is through Catholic Action.“
“The Catholic Worker criticism of bourgeois society is the criticism of St. Thomas More. The Catholic Worker aims are the aims of St. Thomas Aquinas in his doctrine of the Common Good. The Catholic Worker means are the daily practice of the Works of Mercy and the fostering of Farming Communes where scholars become workers and workers become scholars.“
“Catholic Action is action by Catholics for Catholics and non-Catholics. We don‘t want to take over the control of political and economic life. We want to reconstruct the social order through Catholic Action exercised in Catholic institutions.“
“The only way to keep people from seeing Red is to make them see Green. The only way to prevent a Red Revolution is to promote a Green Revolution. The only way to keep people from looking up to Red Russia of the twentieth century is to make them look up to Green Ireland of the seventh century.“
“The Catholic Worker proposes fighting Communism the way the first Christians fought pagan Romanism, through the works of mercy. The Catholic Worker proposes fighting Communism the way the Irish scholars fought pagan feudalism, through Round-Table Discussions, Houses of Hospitality, Farming Communes. The Communists do not build Communism, they build Socialism. The Catholic Worker does not build Catholic Socialism, it builds Catholic Communism. The Catholic Worker builds Catholic Communism the way the first Christians and the Irish scholars built Catholic Communism. The Catholic Worker believes that there is no better Communism than Catholic Communism, and that there is no better way to build Catholic Communism than by building Catholic Communes. Catholic Communes are not a new thing, they are an old thing. Catholic Communes are so old that Catholics have forgotten them. Communists have not invented anything, not even the name Commune. The Communist ideal is the Common Good ideal – the ideal of St. Thomas More, the ideal of St. Thomas Aquinas, the ideal of the Irish scholars, the ideal of the first Christians. The doctrine of the Common Good of St. Thomas Aquinas is still a Catholic doctrine. We don’t need a new doctrine, we need an old technique. We need the old technique of the first Christians and the Irish scholars. What was good for the first Christians and the Irish scholars ought to be good enough for us. What was practical for them ought to be practical for us.“
Saint Fiacre of Breiul, Irish priest, abbot, hermit, and gardener in the 7th century. He moved from Ireland to France where he built his hermitage with a herb and vegetable garden, an oratory, and a hospice for travelers. He is the patron saint of herb and vegetable gardens.
Social reconstruction: the task of the Church and of the laity in our times – the prophetic call
“Ralph Adam Cram says: What I propose is that Catholics should take up this back-to-the-land problem and put it into operation. Why Catholics? Because they realize more clearly than others the shortcomings of the old capitalist industrial system. They, better than others, see the threat that impends. They alone understand that while the family is the primary social unit, the community comes next.“
Peter Maurin: Easy Essays
“The life of Christ was a life of sacrifice. The life of a Christian must be a life of sacrifice. We cannot imitate the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by trying to get all we can. We can only imitate the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by trying to give all we can.“
“The Holy Father asks us to reconstruct the social order. The social order was constructed by the first Christians through the daily practice of the seven corporal and seven spiritual works of mercy. To feed the hungry at a personal sacrifice, to clothe the naked at a personal sacrifice, to shelter the homeless at a personal sacrifice, to instruct the ignorant at a personal sacrifice, to instruct the ignorant at a personal sacrifice; such were the works of the first Christians in times of persecution.“
“Laying the foundations of a new social order is the task of the laity. The task of the laity is to do the pioneer work of creating order out of chaos. The clergy teaches the principles; the task of the laity is to apply them without involving the clergy in the application. The application to the social problems by the Catholic laity of the Catholic principles taught by the Catholic clergy is a new kind of apologetics (…).“
“Modern society is a materialist society because Christians have failed to translate the spiritual into the material. (…) If Christians knew how to make a lasting impression on the materialist depression through spiritual expression, Marxists would not say that religion is the dope of the people. As Raymond de Becker says: ‘The social task of the laity is the sanctification of secular life, or more exactly, the creation of a Christian secular life.‘“
“Sound principles are not new, they’re very old; they are as old as eternity. The thing to do is to restate the never new and never old principles in the vernacular of the man of the street.“
“Someone said that The Catholic Worker is taking monasticism out of the monasteries. The Counsels of the Gospel are for everybody, not only for monks.“
“When the Sermon on the Mount is the standard of values, then Christ is the Leader.
When Christ is the Leader, the priest is the mediator. When Christ is the Leader, the educator trains the minds of the pupils so that they may understand the message of the priest. When Christ is the Leader, the politician assures law and order according to the priest’s teachings. When Christ is the Leader, the technician devises ways and means
for the economical production and distribution of goods. When Christ is the Leader
the administrator administrates according to the directions from the technicians. When Christ is the Leader we have a functional, not an acquisitive society.“
“To build up the City of God, that is to say, to express the spiritual in the material through the use of pure means, such is the task of professing Christians in this day and age.“
“The future of the Church is on the land, not in the city; for a child is an asset on the land and a liability in the city. Read The Church and the Land by Father Vincent McNabb O.P.“
Post scriptum: Excerpts from the essays in The Church and the Land by Father Vincent McNabb O.P.
Father Vincent McNabb was an Irish Dominican, born near Belfast in the year 1868 as one of eleven children. He was a contemporary of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton; and, as mentioned above, the three of them were among those forging a new ecomonic theory – or let us rather say: new practical propositions for economic life – based on the social doctrine of the Church as put forth in Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII: a theory known as distributism.
Father Vincent McNabb O.P.
“The movement came as a response to the perceived twin evils of Communism and the unrestricted Capitalism generated by classical liberal ideology. Both of these systems emphasize the materialist dimension of man and are marked by a false faith in the continual unfolding of Progress. McNabb and Belloc vociferously pointed to the unity of Marxism and contemporary Capitalism in their materialistic leveling of man. (…) The Distributists were among the first to identify the destruction of the countryside and the erosion of the agrarian life as a wider social problem to be confronted through a posture of local self-reliance. (…) McNabb has been described as the most influential of the English Distributists and certainly the ‘most unabashedly radical‘. He held that machinery simply tightened one‘s reliance on the structure of cities and industrialization and that any back-to-the-land movement that relied on machines was ultimately inconsistent with the object of self-sufficiency. (…) Together, the Distributists and the agrarians stood for local traditions, self-sufficiency, an economic life centered on the household, the stewardship of the land, and local political activism. They stood against the mechanization of society, laissez-faire capitalism, consumerism, cultural homogenization, the destruction of rural and small town life and the veiled socialism of the Roosevelt administration. (…) The thought of Distributist thinkers can be set out according to the following canons: (1) Subsidiarity, or the understanding that the members of a primary association (e.g., the family) must structure their lives and direct their actions responsibly and that higher associations should not – without grave cause – usurp a smaller organization‘s ability to accomplish its task; (2) Proprietary interest, or the commitment to the widespread ownership of property and the means of production; (3) Defense of the local, or a suspicion of private or public entities that threathen (1) or (2), and a willingness to support public policy that encourages small, locally-controlled economies over the domination of large retail chains and global corporations; (4) Craftsmanship, or the confidence that local, community-based economies tend toward greater beauty, quality, and trust between the makers and the users of goods; and (5) Agrarianism, or the belief that a rural society is the best environment for safeguarding tradition, typically understood as family-centered life, self-sufficiency, anti-majoritarianism, the dignity of labor and craftsmanship, good health, small communities, and religious vitality. (…) It was Rerum Novarum and the Catholic social teaching that preceded and flowed from it that formed McNabb‘s social, economic and political views, not – as is so often asserted – a merely romantic mediavalism or quixotic love of the land. If McNabb favored guilds and a land movement, it was because Catholic culture had cherished such things as guilds and peasant free-holdings, and it did so for a reason: philanthropia, a love of man in imitation of Christ. McNabb was aflame, by demeanor and vocation, to work with and for his fellow man, the materially poor, the intellectually impoverished, and the morally indigent. (…) The hardship of industrial life, the material conditions that aussaulted faith and family, these were of interest to McNabb because they were of interest to the Church. Politics and economics were subordinated to Faith and Morals, as well as to Reason; they were not something separate; they were certainly not something to be treated as a neutral or casual matter, to be attended to as one saw fit, detached from the personal transformation that a Catholic underwent in his spiritual life. (…) McNabb‘s approach to social questions was distinctively Dominican. What do we mean by this? First, he assiduously applied Thomism to the practical problems of his day. Second, he manifested the spirit, and something of the flesh, of St. Dominic in his applications; this is evident in the profound simplicity with which each subject is set before his audience. McNabb displays at all times the lucidity of the Order of Preachers, and often he seems to conjure up the style of his medieval forefathers.“
Dr. William Fahey: Introduction, in: The Church and the Land, by Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P., IHS Press 2003, p. 12-17; p. 25-26
“For McNabb, public life was natural to man and involved Nature; public life entailed a stewardship of creation. Prayer and contemplation called for a specific social order, a social order that in turn provided the common graces to dignify the common man and guide him towards eternal beatitude. Hence the gravity of the problem perceived by McNabb. To the degree that there is not a Christian social order, the souls of men will be assailed and scorched. To the degree that there is not an honest Christian social order, the life of virtue – and indeed salvation itself – lie beyond the eye of the needle, and Man becomes a lusty camel satisfied with this world‘s blandishments. Man becomes a rich, well-fed, well-paid, and thoroughly amused beast. Joy, both eternal and temporal, evades modern men and women. Why? In the name of freedom we have been told to forsake the very material conditions which might support a life befitting human dignity.“
What follows are some crucial thoughts by Father Vincent McNabb O.P., as they appear in his essays of The Church and the Land.
“If there is one truth more than another which life and thought have made us admit, against our prejudices and even against our will, it is that there is a little hope of saving civilization or religion except by the return of contemplatives to the land!“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Call to Contemplatives, in: ibid., p. 31
“It was not Ireland, but industrial Ireland that was Protestant; it was not France, but industrialised France that was free-thinking. If there was a crisis in the fortunes of the Church it was because the economic centre of gravity had become misplaced by a subtle avarice which was endeavouring to serve God and Mammon.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Call to Contemplatives, in: ibid., p. 32
“First things first, for God‘s sake; or you will crash at once. Let your Exodus be after the coming out of Egypt. Leave the garden cities, and the flesh pots, not in order to scorn suburbia or to lead a simple life, but to worship God. Quit most of your fellowmen not because you hate them or despise them, but because you love them so much as to hate the conditions which degrade and enslave them. (…) Quit Babylon for love of the Babylonians. And do not seek ease or security you can obtain by using Babylon.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Call to Contemplatives, in: ibid., p. 33-34
“What is superfluous to your poor estate distribute. This is distributive charity; a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom. Measure your lands by your needs. Measure your needs not by the world‘s measures, but by the ell or by the King‘s Arm. Let your standard be not Babylon, or Thebes, or Paris, or New York, or London – but Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capharnaum, Calvary.
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Call to Contemplatives, in: ibid., p. 34
Go forth, Christian soul, to the unfallen earth, and there amidst the tares and briars sing the song of work that is worship.“
“As the family, not the individual, is the psychological unit of the Commonwealth, so the Home, not the room (or flat, or lodging), is the economic unit of the Commonwealth. For this reason amongst the many means of testing the soundness of a civilization the best means is by applying the test of Home. (…) A civilization based not on Home-work but on Factory-work is a civilization not resting on its base, for the Family or Home is the unit or base. (…) The home alone makes boys and girls, men and women, good men and good women, good Englishmen and good Englishwomen.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: Form A1. An Attempt at a Social Balance Sheet, in: ibid., p. 40-41
“The more a thing is found to be sulf-sufficient the better it is; because what needs another is clearly wanting. A city whose neighbourhood gives the necessities of life in plenty possesses a sufficiency more fully than another city which depends on its trade with others. A city having its sufficiency from its own lands is nobler than one which abounds through trading. Moreover, such a city would seem to be safer. The event of wars and the many mishaps of travel can easily hinder the transit of goods; and thus the city may perish for want of things.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: St. Thomas Aquinas on Town Planning, in: ibid., p. 54
“At the risk of appearing to be a fanatic, I venture to suggest that the time has come for balancing the Profit and Loss Account of modern industrial methods. Such a suggestion should be welcomed by all the upholders of these methods, if for no other reason than that stock-taking and balancing are amongst the most obvious features of modern industrialism. (…)
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Challenge to Modern Industrial Methods, in: ibid., p. 62-65
(…) we must consider how the Railway System has facilitated, not the saving of time, but the loss of time. In a simple agricultural community with its simple agricultural villages or towns, where everyone lived in his own homestead or worked in his own home, there was little or no time lost in going to work. Ten minutes at most (…) took a man to the work of the day. But nowadays by the help of Railways, men can spend as much as two or four hours a day travelling by train. Thus ‘Brighton and Eastbourne Expresses‘ are but expensive ways of losing time.
Consider, in particular, the Tubes! To many naive minds these underground thoroughfares are almost the fine flower of modern civilization; which Londoners point out with pride to their country cousins. Yet was there ever a more infernal contrivance for getting about from one place to another? Tube-travelling is like travelling in a coal cellar, with second-hand air and in such a din that human speech is possible only to throats of brass. No wonder men forced to spend a good portion of their day in these abodes of reek and din, far from human converse, bury their heads and minds in the morning or evening press to devour daily rations of news as one of the easiest and cheapest ways of forgetting what manner of men they are, and what an inhuman manner of transit they are forced to adopt for the joy of living out of London. (…) Railways, however, facilitate not merely quick transit but the quick growth of great towns; and great towns mean useless transit and scarce food. (…)
Consider factory production, known to us all as multiple or quantitative production; it is agreed even amongst the friends of this system that the system kills qualitative production. (…)
It is almost a platitude to suggest that no factory has the power to produce the necessities of life; at least, they can manipulate and modify material supplied to them. For the production of milk no machine equals a cow or a goat; for the production of flour no machine equals a head of wheat; for the production of beer no machine equals malt and hops. (…)
None of the necessaries of life really come by factory production; but from the land. Now in spite of motor-ploughs and chemical manures land does not produce more than it did (in proportion to the population) but less than it did. (…)
(…) our modern industrial methods have indeed produced more wealth for the few who control, without in any way producing wealth. Indeed, whilst some men have become richer, other men have become poorer, so that the State should no longer be called the Commonwealth but the Common Poverty.“
“(…) we may examine the conscience of our contemporaries towards dancing (…). To begin with, dancing is of a nature so human, and therefore, so divine, that il Beato Angelico, who knew the ways of Heaven if ever a painter did, has painted Paradise as a dance of angels with men, and men with angels.
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The Decay of Dancing, in: ibid., p. 67-68
When Adam and his wife Eve walked through the paradise of earth, the birds made music in the trees. To that music the feet of the happy two wedded a dance. Song and dance ended when the serpent came; for in hell there is no song, but only noise; nor any graceful dance, but only hideous grimaces.
I have a thought that the dance, which met its death in the Garden with the coming of the serpent, came to life again when Adam took his first-born in his arms and dandled him in sheer joy of fatherhood. It was born again when Adam, reaped with song the first autumn fruits of seeds he had sown with tears in the darkness of winter. It is always a dance I see when I look upon the sewer casting his seed or the ploughman turning over the furrow, or the harvester swinging his sickle. Again, what can a man do but dance when he hears the flail song in threshing time – or the music of the churn when butter is a-making?
Only those who, through love of things as against tokens of things, live on the land know what the dance is in its heart and being. Only away from the compression of the town have the feet of men and women room enough to shake off the divine fire of dancing. At the crossways they can dance when the sun or the moon is up. When rain falls or the storm is master of the sky and earth, each homestead has a threshing floor where the feet of these who dance come into their own on the noiseless clay.
A thousand pleas for dancing are found by those who live on the land. No men and women make such wedding feasts, or can find such good cheer to give their guests, or have such spacious places for the ritual of the dance. Mostly the dance is a lovely liturgy fitly carried out in the hallowed building of the home. The young and old take part in it; the young as actors, the old as judges and spectators. There in the sanctuary of home this ritual is a social thing, of as much joy to them who quietly sit and watch as to them who nimbly play their part in the thing or act itself.
Alas! as men have given up the land for the city, and home and homestead, for ‘rooms‘ or ‘flats‘, even their dancing is under sentence of death. Where in Bayswater or Kilburn or Rotherhithe is there any home where a wedding feast can be housed?“
“I. Is there any record of a people remaining on the land and shunning cities, or going out to the land by quitting cities, without a religious motive? II. Is is in the nature of things that only a religious motive can keep people on the land or can send them to the land from the cities? (…)
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The Economics of the Exodus, in: ibid., p. 76-78
Not some great cities, but all great cities, have passed away. (…) Yet only the city, and not the country, can be destroyed. There may be an end to Paris, or London, or Rome, but not to France, or England, or Italy. Indeed, in the hour when the city is given over to destruction its fugitives are finding in their Alma Mater, the earth, that education in the essentials of life which can come only from direct contact with the realities of land and sea and sky. (…)
(…) we are strongly of opinion that human nature being what Baptism teaches us that it is, religion alone can lead men out of the cities to the land, or keep them on the land in spite of the lure of cities. (…) The land is well-suited for wealth-making, but ill-suited for mere wealth-getting. Land-workers and their faithful companions, handworkers, give the community real wealth in the things they cultivate or make from the land. The city dweller, divorced from real wealth, becomes an expert in token wealth.
Now, by the skilful use of tokens in the great gamble of wealth-getting the city-dweller can amass wealth – and often real wealth – more easily than can the land-worker. It would therefore be abnormal, unnatural, or supernatural and divine if the city dweller went back to the life on the land.
Moreover, the town-dweller can divide his life much more easily and commonly into work and leisure; or, as some would say, into work and pleasure. On the land there is not the same place for leisure. (…) All this makes the truth in the proverb, ‘A farmer‘s work is never done.‘ Town-dwellers find the city organized to give them a thousand pleasures for their hours of leisure. Thus it would be abnormal and divine if the town-dweller left his pleasure-filled leisure for the work-laden life on the land.
Again, the life of the land-worker being a direct relation to things, is also a direct conflict with nature. It is not easy for man to deal with nature in all her moods. One or other of the four seasons of the year will usually find out what is weakest in man‘s physical strength. Now, town-life has ten thousand contrivances for dulling the sharp point of nature‘s fang. (…)
The very poor are everywhere a city-fungus of the very rich. No agricultural civilization has ever produced them. But city life, with its unstable industrialism, not only produces and fosters them for its self-existence, but keeps them within the city by unfitting them for life on the land.“
“(…) it is the doctrine of the Rerum Novarum that the Law and Policy of nations should be to increase the number of owners and thereby to decrease the number of wage-earners. (…) For us, Catholics, the Distributive State (i.e., the State in which there are as many owners as possible) is not something which we discuss, but something we have to propagate and institute.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The End of the Wage System, in: ibid., p. 81-82
“The Papal Encyclical lays upon States the duty of favouring ownership (…); so that as many as possible of the humbler classes shall become owners. Now as an owner, as such, is neither an employer nor an employee, but a worker, the more owners there are the fewer employers and employees will there be. In other words, the Rerum Novarum lays upon States the duty of passing laws which will tend to decrease the number of employers and employees by increasing the number of owners. (…)
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The New Industrial Charter, in: ibid., p. 108
Thus the Papal Charter seeks to bring about a state of things in which there will be the greatest number of owners and consequently the least number of wage-earners; in other words, the Rerum Novarum seeks not to perpetuate the wage system, but, as far as possible, to substitute for the wage system a system of ownership.“
“Industrialism, with its inhuman factories and mines, can do nothing to unmake the Britain it has made. Having taken the ploughman from the furrow, and still more the yeoman from his homestead, industrialism must be content that other countries with greater wisdom, if not intelligence, send their people out to the joyous toil of the wheat field and the vineyard whilst our people are condemned to the slavery of the coal mine and the cotton factory.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The Incubus of Industrialism, in: ibid., p. 93
“Social and economic laws are more subtle but not less infallible than physical law. No programme of good intentions will undo the mischief caused by an interference with family life. As well try to arrest a thrown bomb by a plea of good intentions as try to prevent the final ruin of the State by the plea that our ruin of the family was well intentioned.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: Nazareth Measures, in: ibid., p. 103
“Though land work is much more varied, healthy, interesting, and human than the normal occupation of a factory, yet the attractiveness of the towns, where factories flourish, unfits men for the realities of the land. (…)
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Grammar of Unemployment, in: ibid., p. 111-112
Thus a moralist might enquire how far a national decay of belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ leads to unemployment as a recurrent national disease. Again, a political thinker might ask how far is our system of primary, secondary, and university education calculated to unfit men for dealing with the production of real wealth; how far it fits them only for the production of token wealth; and therefore how far it infallibly leads to volitional unemployment.“
“The Rights of the Parent are Natural Rights. Our English language does not bring out the full force of the Latin words natura, naturalis, which are here used. It is almost a pity that we cannot literally translate the more accurate Latin by saying, ‘The rights of the parent are birth-rights.‘ In saying that we mean that these rights are not statutory rights depending on man‘s will, but they are natural rights depending on man‘s nature (natura, or birth). By this we do not deny that these rights may come into existence in any individual case, and thus may be occasioned, by man‘s act. Thus marriage, which is the remote occasion, and procreation, which is the proximate occasion of these rights, are confessedly the acts of man. But according to the teaching of Catholic theologians these acts are obligatory on the human race, not indeed as individuals, but as a race. (…)
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: Rights of the Parent, in: ibid., p. 120-122
The Rights of the Parent are prior to the Rights of the State. This is clearly seen by those who recognise the Catholic doctrine that the family as a family is prior to the State. Not only in idea but in fact, families must have preceded States. The primitive political organization presupposes a group of primitive families. Indeed, the very idea which lies at the root of a State, and all the political arts which make States possible, are borrowed from the natural organization of the family. The wedded union of two hearts that beget a third is no gift or doing of the State‘s. It is older than any commonwealth. It would still live if all commonwealths came to death. It is truer to say that the State has duties towards the family than that families have duties towards the State. A nation‘s chief duty towards this living and essential thing is to safeguard it. (…)
The Rights of the Parent are the Best Safeguard of the Rights of the Child. (…) Until the child is of an age to defend itself against those who merely seek to use it, or improve it as a means to an end, the child‘s rights are centred in the parent, the only one whom nature has empowered to love it as an end in itself. No other institution in the world either loves the child as the parent loves it, or even loves it at all. (…)
Indeed, the devoted love of even modern parents to their children is probably the vastest social force in the world. Although a violent crusade against parenthood has now been troubling humanity for a century, the devotion of parents as parents has no rival except the devotion of men and women as children of God.“
“Money is not primary wealth or even secondary wealth, because it is not real wealth, but only token wealth. A country or a county, a kingdom or a farm organized on a basis of token wealth is doomed to final failure. For the moment the organization for token wealth rather than for real wealth may result in an increase of token wealth. But there is an inevitable day whenever this show of wealth passes away; and only such real wealth as has been produced remains. (…)
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: Agricultural Mass Production, in: ibid., p. 124-125
I believe that ‘the desire of money is the root of all evil‘ in our economic world. (…)
I believe that money values are false values; as money weights are false weights. (…)
I believe that the salvation of our over-industrialized England must come from the land; but it cannot come from industrializing the land.“
“The market towns of my childhood were lovely to look at with their streets full of noble dwelling-places, where men lived over their work; and their shop was their home, as their home was their shop. How goodly a sight was a winding street filled with signs such as ‘George Smith, Grocer; Elijah Jones, Shoemaker; Reuben Dassett, Harness-maker; Edward Bloxam, Innkeeper; John Bovill, Flesher; Joseph Jameson, Joiner.‘ These music-laden litanies of Englishmen and women, of English crafts and trades are rapidly dying under the strokes of the anonymous Stores with their efficient G.H.Q. and their elaborate system of check and counter-check. (…) try to understand me when I own that whenever I see a business organized by the aid of typewriter and cash-register, I feel a chill about my heart. For many a man of today these things mean the last word in national efficiency – whatever that may mean. For me, the most efficient typewriting multiplier or cash-register is but the outward and visible sign of a diabolic system, which can succeed by supposing that everybody and especially every ‘hand‘ or ‘employee‘ is a rogue who is bent on theft. All these elaborate machines are, in their ultimate analysis, but a means for preventing ‘the other fellow from doing you!‘ England was once wittily called ‘a nation of shopkeepers.‘ The pity is that England has largely become ‘a nation of store-keepers,‘ where only a few own anything, and the mass of men and women are given a weekly wage for administering a typewriter and cash-register system, which looks on them as potential thieves until they are found out!“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: A Window in Wisbech, in: ibid., p. 126-127
“Alone the country with its homes and homesteads, its settled property, its round of world-enriching work, its touch with the realities of sea and land and sky, could save the Church from the literal fulfilment of our Blessed Lord‘s almost disheartening prophecies of the world‘s ending.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: Souls and the Land, in: ibid., p. 137
“Full family life must be the acid test of any system calling itself civilization. But under our present system the possibility of full family life is practically and explicitly dead.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The Social Need of Flying the Occasions of Sin, in: ibid., p. 141
“Men who consume, and control in order to consume, as much as they can whilst producing as little as they need are the impoverishment of the world. Their life leaves the world poorer than they found it. (…) But those who use for their life and work only what little they need, in order to produce things of body and spirit, are the enrichment of the world. They leave the world richer than they found it.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The Joy of Poverty, in: ibid., p. 147
“The Catholics of England met one of the fiercest and most effective persecutions in history by flying to the land. When the persecution ceased and Catholics, like commerce, shifted their centre from the land to the towns, Catholics did not grow in proportion to the growth of the population. (…) Neither the urban life nor the industrial atmosphere fitted in with their spiritual mentality.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: The Land and Unemployment, in: ibid., p. 153
“Here on the land, and on the land alone, is all to be found. (…) Here, and here only, when men have built Romes and Jerusalems for inevitable doom, may the nations flee as to a City of Refuge: yea, as to a very Hotel-Dieu – Hostel of God – where not a tear shall fall without springing up into flower and fruit, and God, in very joy for our wisdom returned, shall once more walk amongst the corn-fields.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: Land-work and Hand-work, in: ibid., p. 156
“The modern industrial system is incapable of giving a wage sufficient for feeding, clothing, housing the normal family. (…) It is not for the first time that we have pointed out how the present state of things offers the average parents a choice between the heroic virtue of conjugal abstinence and the mortal sin of Neo-Malthusian birth-control.“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: What Wilt Thou Have Me Do?, in: ibid., p. 162-163
“Thou Fountain welling up into eternal life, we have drunk wells of our own digging and are sore athirst. We have turned our backs on Thee; and now, O thou who bearest the world upon Thy shoulders, our backs are bowed with the yoke of worse than Egyptian task-masters. Call us home to Thy hearth, to Thy heart, that Christmas may be again what once it was (…).“
Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P.: To the Child in the Manger, in: ibid., p. 168