The Rational Humanitarians 89
The Nordic countries have been among the first to carry forward this other great theme of Western civilization. Humanitarianism, however, is for us an independent theme and not a consequence of our rationalism. There is little or nothing in rationalism that necessarily leads us to take care of the mentally ill, the deformed, the invalid, nothing that argues for medical treatment for the aged and prolongation of the life of the senile, nothing that forces us to guarantee that a child born to retarded parents will be given as much care as other children. There are, of course, varieties of mercy in all known societies, but only Western civilization has developed a consistent concern for the dignity of every man and a consistent care for each and all individuals.
Humanitarianism, it is said owes much to Christianity. For a full understanding of the welfare state, we may have to go back and explore the function of the Virgin Mary as it evolved in the Middle ages. In
A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman describes the universal access that Mary provided in the fourteenth century for anyone in any circumstance:
In daily life the Church was comforter, protector, physician. The Virgin and patron saints gave succor in trouble and protection against the evils and enemies that lurked along every man's path.... Above all, the Virgin was the ever-merciful, ever-dependable source of comfort, full of compassion for human frailty, caring nothing for laws and judges, ready to respond to anyone in trouble; amid all the inequities, injuries, and senseless harms, the one never-failing figure. She frees the prisoner from his dungeon, revives the starving with milk from her own breasts.... A hardened murderer has no less access. No matter what crime a person has committed, though every man's hand be against him, he is still not cut off from the Virgin.6
The Reformation cut off Protestant Europe from the cult of Mary. In their welfare development, the Protestant areas secularized and materialized her vision of a helpful hand at every turn of life, available to the fortunate and unfortunate, the articulate and inarticulate. The Nordic countries are not unique in this development, only advanced.
The most elaborate manifestation of the welfare state — the one we find in
Sweden — is a product of Leftists in a rather secular state, often working in opposition to church officials. The welfare state may be unlikely to flourish except in a civilization in which values of
|
