Retirement ‘Disputatio’

It seems that one should save funds for a financially independent retirement to the fullest extent possible.

Obj 1: All are responsible for providing for themselves if they are able to do so. There comes a time when one is too old to provide for oneself by one’s own labor and must retire. This retirement is likely to come when one’s children are themselves providing for their own children. 

It would be unjust to presume support from one’s children or to fall back onto support from the state during retirement, as this would demand resources to fulfill a need that one should have provided for oneself through savings during one’s years of labor. Therefore one must save for a financially independent retirement.

Obj 2: Modern work is often degrading, producing profits for remote, wealthy shareholders, focused on tasks that are boring and unedifying, and sedentary to an unhealthy degree. It is virtuous to remove oneself from such work as early as possible, therefore one should save as much for retirement as possible.

Obj 3: The tax code allows for retirement savings in a way that decreases and defers money paid in taxes. The government tends to spend money in an immoral and wasteful manner. Therefore one should take advantage of the opportunity to place as many funds in accounts outside of the government’s reach, and these accounts are often retirement accounts.

Sed contra: Christ says: “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow.” (MT 6:34)

Respondeo: In saving for retirement, it is necessary that one act virtuously (not merely without sin) in three aspects: firstly the mode of retirement, secondly the amount saved for retirement, and thirdly the manner in which funds are saved for retirement. The specific way in which these conditions are met must be at the discretion of one’s family after good faith discernment, cannot be dictated by a detailed set of rules, and should not be judged by others. 

The mode of retirement: Many retire from all work when they remain capable of working in some capacity. However, Scripture says that our first parents were commanded by God to work prior to the fall. Therefore to work is a healthy aspect of human nature, and an open ended period of no work is against human nature and divine law. That this is true is seen in the heartbreaking physical, mental, social, and spiritual decline of many wealthy retirees.

The amount: Many save for retirement out of all proportion to real need. Doing so first harms one’s own soul, in that one becomes self centered and has a reduced capacity for charity. Doing so also harms the poor, who need real assistance here and now. 

The manner of saving: One must save and invest one’s money in an intentional fashion in morally strong organizations who do not act contrary to the Gospel. 

Rep Obj 1: The need to provide for oneself does not negate the mutual dependence of a healthy family and community. For many, there comes a time when they are no longer able to physically care for themselves. At that time, financial independence becomes an illusion that hides one’s dependence on paid strangers. 

A healthy family that can care for an aging parent (or other relation) and in which the aging parent can help with children and certain household tasks can reduce the burden of daily life and cost of living on all parties while providing an opportunity for mutual self sacrifice and charity. 

As to the state, most wealthy American retirees do not have a reduced dependence on the state, as they typically still rely on social security and Medicare. Strong family support is more effective at reducing state dependence than nominal individual financial independence.

Rep Obj 2: In many cases it is virtuous to retire from typical corporate work before the usual retirement age. However, retiring from such degrading work in favor of healthier work does not require investment-driven financial independence. In many jobs, one can reduce the required time commitment by working part time or as an independent consultant. 

Such a move becomes easier if one avoids heavy but typical middle class expenses (multiple cars, private school, living in a high tax area, larger house, home remodels) and does not assume the need for an income-producing retirement investment before leaving an unhealthy, higher income job. 

Rep Obj 3: Tax deferred investment accounts often invest in companies whose spending and activities are as wasteful and immoral as the government one seeks to avoid supporting. Examples include those with unethical business practices and oligopolies (Amazon, Alphabet), those who directly unborn harm human life (Johnson and Johnson), those damaging the natural environment (Exxon Mobil, BP), those promoting censorship and social engineering (Pfizer, Alphabet), and those whose business models are heavily based on usury (Visa). 

Further, such investment accounts often direct money to the bond market, which enables government borrowing, overspending, and thereby overregulation. 

Native Sympathies

 

            Nora Thompson Dean, one of the last traditionalists of the Native American Lenape people

As I listened to the latest Hardcore History episode on the Transatlantic slave trade (an article for another day), I decided to learn more about the natives who once lived in my area of the east coast of the US. 

My reading quickly took me to Nora Thompson Dean, a woman who spent her life trying to keep the traditions of her people alive for the next generation after they had been nearly annihilated. 

That sounds awfully familiar. 

Contra modern trigger-happy folk, comparison is not equivalence. I can say that I have a very dim understanding and shared experience with the Native Americans without suggesting that the experience of my people is at all equivalent to theirs in terms of human suffering and cultural destruction. 

As a traditional Roman Catholic of English descent, my culture and, to an extent, my people, have been eviscerated. I looked up how many pre-Henry VIII churches in England are Catholic today. The answer is two. Two! That’s all we have left of all of the churches of England prior to 1534. 

Our sacred language of Latin is, of course, almost eliminated and ridiculed whenever it shows its face. This is even more the case with our sacred music of Gregorian chant. Incense and the Roman Canon aren’t faring much better. All of this is to say nothing of the richness of ancient liturgy beyond the rubrics as they were in 1955: public Divine Office, the processions, the salvation history plays, the architecture, the public feast days. Many traditional Catholic ways of life on every topic from fasting to fertility to lending without usury are almost gone. There are no truly Catholic countries left, and those who have tried to restore them (such as the Cristeros) have been quickly suppressed. And we haven’t even gotten to the fact that the churches are empty, most dioceses will have to close half their parishes if they have not already, modern styles are horrendous. The European motherland was subjected to successive rounds of destruction in the Protestant Revolt, Thirty Years War, French Revolution, then came back for more in the World Wars, before capping it off with the sexual revolution and turn to socialism. 

It is just a handful of enclaves, who barely have the right to exist, who are struggling to preserve and hand on Catholic tradition to the fullest possible extent. Catholics are barely even allowed to live out the faith in a traditional manner in the modern world, even in historically Catholic countries with nominal freedom of religion. 

Modern people have this hangup that the Catholic faith is all about rules. That is not true, it’s just that the few remaining rules are seemingly all that’s left. 

And I feel justified in claiming some kinship with the Native Americans because it was often the same people who were responsible for both suppressions. 

That the Protestant Revolt, with its accompanying iconoclasm and suppression of the monasteries, happened in the same century of the conquistadors in the Americas and the dawn of the transatlantic slave trade should tell you something. That England took over the majority of the transatlantic slave trade immediately after the “Glorious Revolution” chucked their last Catholic king doesn’t seem so coincidental. That the Catholic monarchs of Europe who built a dreadful slave empire in sugar plantations were the same ones who were bullying the pope and naming corrupt bishops left and right should come as no surprise. 

The slave trade and the destruction of the American natives were not signs of the faith’s stranglehold on power but marks of its shocking decline through the preceding Renaissance period. It is not an accident that slavery rebounded in the 1400s as Europe’s best and brightest were abandoning the study of Catholic theology for pagan sages whose societies were propped up by slaves. Or that a society that perpetrated these atrocities with an eye toward riches was one that had abandoned medieval skepticism on money and commerce. 

Obviously one must also be mature enough to confront the reality that a time and culture in which the faith was much stronger still failed to prevent the mass brutality experienced in Africa and the Americas by Catholics for several centuries. Still, a clear eye will see that matters were substantially worse from a moral point of view in 1550 than in 1200. And an open hear would hear that the popes, while doing nowhere near enough, were early voices trying to strangle these monsters in their cradle in writings like Creator Ominum, Sicut Dudum, and Sublimis Dei. The perpetrators, Catholic and otherwise, come off much like the Venetian marauders who sacked Constantinople in 1204, the (largely Lutheran) mobs who sacked Rome in 1527, and any number of other infernal groups. “They come with fire, they come with axes, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning.” 

Why even mention this? As a reminder of what can happen when a society loses its faith, a recognition of just how far we’ve fallen, and how we have more in common with seemingly foreign groups than we think. As someone who hopes to see Hagia Sophia and Canterbury Cathedral restored to bishops in full Communion with the Apostolic See and a liturgy that would make a Renaissance pope jealous, I do wonder: can we realistically hope for a restoration of our own property and culture without respecting the rights of others to similar restoration? 

The Trouble with Russia

There’s been a surge in sympathy for Russia among some American conservatives in recent years. There are a few clear reasons for this. But there are more compelling reasons why this is misguided and misunderstands the reality of modern Russia.

Reasons for conservative russophilia

The number one topic that comes up is Russia’s law banning “homosexual propaganda.” To conservatives in the West who face required legal acceptance and reeducation on the topic at work, public schools, and in media, Russia seems like an oasis. Putin seems like a strong leader willing to push back against progressive moral rot. Any talk critical of Russia is chalked up as a liberal temper tantrum at a major power not giving into their cultural imperialism.

I’d say the second is the perception that Russia has triumphed over communism. After 70 years of communist rule, with groups like the League of Militant Atheists running state-supported propaganda, Russia is no longer a Communist nation. Over 70% of Russians identify as orthodox christian, up from 31% in 1991. The number of churches in the country has gone from ~2,000 in 1991 to over 20,000. 

To those in the West seeing a constant collapse in religious affiliation and practice since the 60s, Russia’s “conversion” seems like a miracle. Jordan Peterson’s publicizing of works by Russian anticommunist Alexander Solzhenitsyn also contributes to widespread admiration for Russians’ struggle and eventual triumph over communism. Catholic figures from Bishop Barron to Pope Benedict have spoken of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Fulton Sheen spoke of Dostoevsky’s warnings about communism. 

Third is probably the perception of personal friendliness between Trump and Putin among Trump supporters. Though this was overblown given the real actions taken by Trump and Congressional Republicans during his administration. 

A distant fourth may be the reality that Russia has been the main power taking action to protect Christians in the Middle East. 

Why this is a bad idea

Look past the cosmetics and you’ll see that Russia is by no means a nation dedicated to rebuilding Christian society. 

First, only six percent of Russians attend Divine Liturgy regularly, which is worse than Mass attendance in most western nations. It’s tough to make a case that Russia has converted and that their society has a Christian foundation when the “I’m Christian, but” attitude is worse there than anywhere else. And remember, even practicing orthodox christians fully accept divorce and many accept contraception. 

Second, abortion rates in Russia are significantly worse than in many western countries, including the US. It is tough to stomach people going on and on about Russia’s supposed moral superiority to the west given that abortion was and remains more prevalent there than elsewhere. 

Third, the communists are still around and retain much cultural influence. The Communist Party in Russia remains the second largest political party in the nation, with membership far outstripping the membership of the Communist Party of the US despite Russia’s much smaller population. Thousands have petitioned the Russian government to change the name of the city of Volgograd back to Stalingrad. Russian churches are being built with murals of Stalin and Russian Orthodox prelates are kissing the feet of Stalin statues. 

Fourth, many of the practicing Russian Christians are anticatholic. While we may appreciate Patriach Hilarion Afeyev’s denunciation of Western immorality, we must oppose his wish to suppress Eastern churches that wish to enter into full communion with Rome. It is not exactly difficult to guess what might happen to Ukrainian Catholic churches if Russian soldiers gain control over them. And members of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (ROCOR) do seem to have an anticatholic streak. 

Fifth, the Russians have staked their foreign policy on an alliance with Communist China, which may be the biggest political threat to the faith. Certainly they are a direct threat to any catholic and orthodox christians within their borders, just ask Cardinal Zen in Hong Kong. 

Sixth, the Russians have also made common cause with increasingly militant islamic Turkey. Russia didn’t exactly speak up when Turkey reconverted the mother church of Eastern Christianity, Hagia Sophia, back into a mosque. 

—

Russia is not a genuinely Christian nation in any real sense. At best it is mission territory whose few practicing christians are mostly in fervent schism and dissent from critical moral laws. It is a nation dominated by a cult of personality around its current opportunistic leader, allies with nearby antichristian states when convenient, and has scenes of idolization of dead communist leaders dotting the landscape. 

Publicly endorsing Russia as some sort of Christian ideal or healthy counterweight to the secular west is shallow thinking that makes one look foolish. Yes, it is a miracle that Russia has emerged from decades of communism with the faith that many of its people genuinely possess. But don’t lose the forest for the trees. 

And remember that the Leonine prayers following traditional Low Mass are still for the conversion of Russia. Pope Pius XI issued that intention after the resolution of the Roman Question, and that intention has never been changed. 

Historical Conflation

 

There is a lively trend of historical conflation these days. It goes like this:

—-

Coworker: I recently read this book called Braiding the Sweetgrass. 

Me: Ok, sounds interesting. 

Coworker: It’s about how the judeo-christian tradition encourages this mentality that’s harmful to the earth and how we can find a healthier view in indigenous cultures. 

—-

Were I not so slow-witted, I would’ve said that blaming the judeo-christians for modern environmental degradation makes about as much sense as blaming FDR for deregulation. 

It was not the theologically orthodox Christians and Jews who strip mined the earth and created modern suburbia but their enemies, the classical liberals, who acted the part of the materialist while sometimes masquerading as mainline protestants (oh hey, Rockefeller). 

This is a larger trend of assuming that if something bad happened in recent history, it must have been even worse before, or it must have been caused by a specific group of people who had long since lost their influence. The problem most often shows up in the context of blaming christianity for just about everything that went wrong in the late 19th/early 20th century. 

Christians were warmongers, despite the fact that wars were indisputably worse before and after Christendom (bookended as it was by the ghastly Roman civil wars and the Thirty Years War). Christians were indifferent to the poor, nevermind that the real dreadful rabbit holes of poverty came about during the Renaissance and after, when Europe was abandoning its Christian roots. Christians were racist, despite the fact that modern racism was an invention to justify race-based slavery, which itself was condemned by the Church as soon as it started and numerous times over the next 400 years. Christians were intolerant, despite the fact that modern progressives want to censor everyone from Dave Chapelle to JK Rowling while Christians like Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s wrote dialogs incorporating work from Muslims like Averroes, Jews like Maimonides, and pagans like Aristotle. Christians were no fun, despite the fact that pre-Reformation England (of all places) played host to churches erupting in riots of color, raucous plays and festivals for major feasts, and good beer. Christians were absolutist, despite the fact that Christendom seems like a positive anarchy compared to modern day governments. 

Most damaging, I think, is the blame placed on Christians for the world wars. It should be obvious that Popes Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII all but threw their bodies in front of the warring armies to bring about peace, besides running missing person bureaus, critical relief programs, backchannel diplomacy, and even a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler whilst hiding thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. 

Our modern society aims its post traumatic stress at Christianity for the ghoulish episodes of the transatlantic slave trade, European absolutism, the dehumanizing industrial revolution, and the world wars. It should re-aim at the proper targets: blind faith in the state and government centralization, unregulated technology, corporate monopolies, the greed of the secular rich, and nationalism. 

A Traditionalist Call to Arms

“Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

'Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?' Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fightand to hit with wicked fist. Fasting like yours this daywill not make your voice to be heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast,and a day acceptable to the LORD?

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

If you turn back your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day,and call the sabbath a delightand the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Isaiah 58:2-14