The Catholic Answer
below is a
blog post that I found interesting. It deals with the question of capitalism vs. socialism and which is better to support. The answer? Neither!
Believe it or not, there is actually a "Catholic answer," a third way--
Distributism
Read more below:
As a Catholic, should I be Capitalist or Socialist?
Again, how about neither. The irony about both systems is that they are really two different manifestations of the same problem. That problem is ownership of property.
You see, under the Capitalist system, the majority of productive property ownership ultimately ends up in the hands of a few corporate bureaucrats. Under Socialism, the majority of productive property ownership ultimately ends up in the hands of a few government bureaucrats.
Neither system is just, and both systems concentrate productive property into the hands of just a few people.
The only real difference between the two systems is which people end up with the property. Shall they be corporate bureaucrats (capitalism)? Or shall they be government bureaucrats (socialism)? The Catholic Church teaches that the only real solution to man's economic problems is the complete opposite of both systems.
This is manifested in the widespread natural distribution of productive property to as many people as possible. By "property" one does not always mean land, though land is certainly included in that. By "property" one can also mean shares in a business, stocks, cooperative ownership, and other things of productive value.
This type of widespread distribution of property is called Distributism. You see, property is power, and ownership of property gives one the necessary power to take control of one's own destiny.
This is the beginning of economic social justice. It is only upon this foundation that we can begin to build the other elements of economic social justice according to Catholic teaching. So when it comes time to vote, we should vote for those politicians that promote small business over large business and government programs.
The ideal politician, from the Distributist mindset, would be one who promotes helping small businesses by eliminating unnecessary government regulations and simultaneously preventing large business from engaging in practices of monopoly and unfair competition.
Politicians should advocate strict enforcement of antitrust laws at both the federal and state level, as well as strict zoning laws for business size at the local level. Politicians should also support a living wage, private cooperative ownership of large industry, and perhaps creating arbitration courts for labor and business that exist outside the political realm.
Likewise, politicians should support the elimination of labor unions and replace them with the creation of guilds for various skilled workers of various types of industry. However, they should mandate that such guilds have spiritual direction of some kind (chaplains) for moral purposes, and that they work for the common good of both employees and employers, seeing as the two are dependent upon each other. Again, non-political courts of arbitration would do much to expedite this process, and politicians should support that...
As a Catholic, should I support big government?
No, big government runs against the Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity, and subsidiarity is the "hinge" upon which all of Catholic social justice turns. Catholic social doctrine supports decentralization (or downsizing) of big government bureaucracies.
The principle of subsidiarity teaches that it is immoral for higher government to do the functions that can be easily carried out by lower government, the family or the individual.
Subsidiarity also teaches that higher government should always function in a subsidiary role to lower government. Therefore, Catholics should support politicians who advocate "downsizing" or decentralizing big government in Washington DC, giving some of that power back to the states, families and individuals.
So when a politician starts talking about his latest government "program" to solve all your woes, ask yourself if this is going to increase or decrease the size of government. If the answer is "increase" the size of government, than the Catholic thing to do would be to vote against that politician and his big government program. In the Catholic economy of politics, power should go directly to the people, as much as reasonably possible, while higher forms of government perform ONLY those functions the people, and lower forms of government, cannot perform on their own.
I also like St. Teresa of the Andes and I think she was a Carmelite as well. So sad that a lot of these women died so young though.
. Some of the youngest saints I know of are St. Maria Goretti (d. age 12) and St. Dominic Savio (d. age 12/13).
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. I agree with the principle of subsidiarity (a task should be performed by the most immediate person or authority) and distributism (examples: farmer markets, CSA, supporting small business, etc.).
, but I bought none. Traditional fasting was making me fat 
So I went on a diet and lost the fasting weight and a few more lbs. 
