Still more on money and priorities

I appreciate all the responses to my and Susan's initial posts on spending priorities and the needs of the "have nots."  S. Margaret John Kelly invokes the "universal destination of goods" as a necessary step along the road to "global solidarity [and] justice."  I have to admit, I've always found this idea a slippery one.  One the one hand, "God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples."  (Gaudium et spes).  On the other, the Church's social teaching clearly affirms that private property is both a "sacred" right and an important, freedom-facilitating intermediate institution.  (Rerum novarum).  That said, I certainly agree with Kelly that moral transformation is required for social transformation.

Susan is right, of course -- and I did not intend to suggest otherwise -- that the facts social problems are hard and the implications of CST not always clear does not mean we can "throw up our hands and say, 'gosh this is hard.'"  It does mean, though, that we shouldn't think (and I know that Susan does not think) that CST will often justify a "sheesh, this is easy, if we just remember the principle of _____" reaction to a social or policy question.

Rob notes that spending money on appropriate priorities need not require increased taxation, just re-allocation.  I meant to acknowledge as much in my original post.  ("I imagine we could go through the federal budget and find hundreds of billion-dollar items that we would want to trade for immunizing all children.").  I agree with Rob that it now seems pretty clear that at least some of the $406 billion spent on the war so far could have been better used.  (I'm confident we could say the same thing of, say, the way national, state, and local officials spend the money ostensibly directed at educating our children, or doing right by our senior citizens, or . . . ).