Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Free the poor from government bureaucracy

In hisNov. 21 WCR exegesis of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Glen Argan writes, "Property is the basis for dignity (however) the majority of people on our planet . . . may have the right to property but it is a right they are blocked from exercising."

In his widely renowned book, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, the Peruvian economist and reformer Hernando de Soto illuminates the ways in which the poor are blocked. While capitalism itself is often blamed for maldistribution of wealth, de Soto finds that bureaucratic, legal/institutional impediments to formal property ownership are the fundamental cause of "capitalist apartheid."

To explore this firsthand, in the 1980s de Soto and his colleagues set up a one-worker garment workshop on the outskirts of Lima. Spending six hours a day at it, it took 289 days to register the business. The cost of legal registration was $1,231 - 31 times the monthly minimum wage.

Obtaining legal authorization to build a house on state-owned land took six years and 11 months, requiring 207 administrative steps in 52 different government offices. To obtain a legal title for that piece of land took an additional 728 steps.

In Haiti - the Western hemisphere's poorest country - it takes 176 bureaucratic steps and more than 12 years to legally settle on government land. This is typical of the institutional/legal structures de Soto found in "developing and ex-communist countries."

The poor in developing countries collectively own trillions of dollars in productive assets, but it is so difficult and expensive to have their property legally recognized that most of them forego the formal economy and operate extralegally.

De Soto explains that over the past 40 years the developing world has been undergoing an industrial revolution of its own, "one huge, worldwide industrial revolution. . . . For better or for worse, people outside the West are fleeing self-sufficient and isolated societies in an effort to raise their standard of living by becoming interdependent in much larger markets."

These people are now doing as our own feudal forebears did two to three centuries ago, though the present revolution is proceeding much, much faster than ours did.

Four decades of massive migration into cities has "overwhelmed their political and legal institutions."

In citing "blind spots" in our understanding of developing world problems de Soto writes, "Few recognize that the problems they face are not new. . . . The lesson of the West is that piecemeal solutions and stopgap measures to alleviate poverty were not enough.

Living standards rose only when governments reformed the law and the property system to facilitate the division of labour."

That is, for people to be able to work legally within the kind of large scale, specialized and cooperative trading economy - with well-defined rights and obligations protected by the rule of law - that Western capitalism enjoys.

Jesus told us we cannot serve both God and mammon (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13): service on the path of Spirit and service on the path of acquisitive greed leads us in opposite directions. But as Mr. Argan explains, the Church recognizes the essential necessity of the institution of property and productive work for human dignity.

Describing how life will be in the "new heavens and new earth," the prophet Isaiah writes, "My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands" (Isaiah 65:22). While direct charity is sometimes necessary, our best gift to the poor among us and in developing nations is not handouts that lead to welfare dependency and spiritual despair.

Our best gift is to work to free them from the institutional impediments that block their admission into a legal and open social economy with the kinds of opportunities we ourselves enjoy to apply their own effort, imagination and intelligence towards productive and rewarding work.

Derryl Hermanutz
Spruce Grove

Church has no authority to ordain women

Re: Recent letters to the WCR calling for ordination of women.

Those writers whose letters to the WCR have recently expressed interest in the ordination of women priests seem to have a misunderstanding as to the nature of the priesthood itself, otherwise they would not be proposing such an impossibility. Priesthood is a sacrament, and like all sacraments, it consists of both natural signs and words in order to be valid.

For example, the sacrament of Baptism consists of the natural sign of water used in conjunction with the appropriate words, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The use of anything but water, or the implementation of erroneous wording, renders the sacrament completely invalid.

Without going into greater detail which space does not permit here, let it suffice to say that the nature of water renders it symbolic of the sacrament of Baptism. The same holds true of Confirmation, with oil being used as the natural sign, and of the Eucharist, with bread and wine being used as the natural signs.

The Mass is a re-presentation of Christ's perpetual sacrifice on Calvary, a sacrifice our Lord, the bridegroom, made for his bride, the Church (CCC, paragraph 796).

The Catechism is in fact replete with such feminine images of the Church.

If the Church is the bride, the male priest, acting in persona Christi, is therefore a natural sign of the bridegroom. By her very nature however, a woman is utterly unable to symbolically represent Christ as bridegroom. This is by no means to denigrate women, who are by their own unique nature not only signs of creation, but more poignantly, of a redeemed Church itself.

The Church is therefore correct when it says that it has no authority to ordain women. As with all points of dissension however, would we not better spend our time thoroughly investigating the actual basis of the Church's teachings, rather than arguing amongst ourselves as to which of us is right?

Jim Verreault
Red Deer

Look closer at Vatican II

I would like to take issue with the statement made by Bonnie Kirk in the Nov. 7 WCR. In the article "Christ is truly present everywhere," Kirk makes the erroneous statement that Christ is "equally present" in the presider, the community, the Bible and the Eucharist. She adds that the idea that Christ is only present in the bread and wine is "before the Second Vatican Council."

As one who has read the Vatican II documents cover to cover on numerous occasions - from taking a course on Vatican II through Franciscan University of Steubenville to writing a manuscript on the council - I am familiar with this common misunderstanding of the council's true teaching.

Vatican II, in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, paragraph 7, does acknowledge that Christ is present in four modes - the priest, the people gathered, the Scriptures read and the Eucharist.

However, the document says that Christ is present "especially" - that is, in a special way - in the Eucharistic species. It specifically contradicts the notion of four "equal" modes.

Father Stravinskas was right when he said that the document of Vatican II would rival the third secret of Fatima as the greatest mystery in the Church. The third secret has been revealed. But we have yet to be imbibed by the true spirit of Vatican II.

The Second Vatican Council was a work of the Holy Spirit and it remains ignored and misunderstood by most and misused by others.

Wade St. Onge
Edmonton

Scent-free please

Thank you for printing the letter from Shirley Yuck ("Perfume, incense trigger allergies," WCR, Nov. 14).

One Protestant church in our city has had a scent-free seating area for over 10 years. No problem. Another Protestant church has a scent-free area and a pew with special devices for the hearing impaired. No problem.

So when I was diagnosed with asthma I felt comfortable in approaching our parish council requesting a scent-free seating area. No problem. Wrong! I was informed: "I was the only one to complain and the archbishop would never allow it."

A fellow parishioner came to my aid by writing a letter to the parish priest, pastoral assistant and parish council, supporting a scent-free area. The letter was never acknowledged.

Jeannette Schandl
Camrose

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