How would we respond to a request by the bishops if they were to ask for some general guidelines to help them in the preparation of their pastoral letter on the American economy? I have a few tentative suggestions. I have no idea how useful they are, but they may provoke others to consider the same question. The guidelines I have in mind would address themselves to how the bishops should speak to the American people (and to American Catholics) about the moral condition of their economic behavior and economic institutions: the style, the tone, the basic posture of the letter. This is not simply a concern for rhetorical window-dressing. The mode of discourse will effect what they say about American economic life.
To what on the American economic landscape should the American bishops give their attention? There are the all-too-familiar problems of poverty, unemployment, inflation, trade deficits, foreign competition, and the threatening possibility of whole societies going bankrupt . . . all interconnected and adding up to such complexity that even the professional experts seem to be baffled. It is doubtful that the bishops can improve on their analyses, let alone their suggested remedies. Besides, a re-writing of Adam Smith or even Karl Marx doesn’t seem to be what we need from our bishops.
What do we need at this time as a nation and as a community of Catholics? I am not sure. Perhaps what we need most of all is a profoundly religious reflection on the meaning and purpose of economic life. Once liberal societies, like the U.S.A., arrive at a certain plateau of economic affluence they inevitably show signs of moral fatigue as if the moral capital they relied on in their climb became depleted. If this be true, then the attention of the bishops should, perhaps, be focused on the strategies necessary to strengthen the foundations of civic virtue required to support the institutions of a free and responsible society. There is a uniquely catholic side to this. The Church in America was remarkably attuned to the religious needs of its constituency when it was primarily working class and consciously ethnic. But that constituency has changed profoundly in the past 40 years. It is now primarily middle class with a new set of religious needs and outlook. The classic problem of how to integrate faith and economic action is now borne by this rising social class. The Americanization crisis of the 19th century is still with us but in a new guise: how does the christian conscience live with power, wealth and responsibility? Hopefully, the pastoral letter will help the church be as creative in its response to this new challenge as it was when it met the needs of its poor, immigrant constituency of a generation or two ago.
So much for the general direction the pastoral letter might take. What about the guidelines? Here are a few. That they are derivative from the writings of others will be apparent.
Respect the ethos of the American people. At the core of American social morality lie the values of equality and individual achievement. Although each value tends to reinforce the other, there are times when they run into one another, each value serving as a check on the other. Throughout its history the nation has struggled to maintain a rough balance between justice and freedom. At different times one value is emphasized over the other until the people judge that it is time to restore the balance. The twin values of equality and achievement thus provide the basis for continual social change and at the same time provide a check on extremist tendencies. Achieving social reform is always a struggle, but sensitivity to this inner dynamic of American moral life improves the chances of success.
Acknowledge the progressive nature of American society. Over the last half-century the American people have generously supported the forward moral thrust of the nation as it emerged in the shape of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Great Society, including the historic civil rights legislation of the 60’s. The history of these innovations should be seen as successive stages in the development of American social morality. The bishops would be wise to acknowledge this progressive thrust of American society and to identify their own recommendations for further reform as merely the next stage in the continuing moral evolution of American democratic capitalism. Taking stock of our successes before setting out for even more difficult goals is necessary for social morale. The morale of a society is as necessary to the achievement of social ideals as are the ideals themselves. Nothing positive ever comes out of cultural despair.
Speak as the bishops of a Church rather than as leaders of a sect. Hopefully, the pastoral letter of the American bishops on the American economy will be in the tradition and the spirit of Vatican II as reflected especially in its document Gaudium et Spes. Reversing pre-Vatican II tendencies the Council fathers chose a churchly course rather than a sectarian one. Unlike a sect, which maintains a distance from the establishment and is inclined to see only evil, the Church was to be at the center of culture rather than at its edges. The linch pin in this new conceptualization was a refurbished notion of the laity. On it rests the entire conceptual structure erected by Vatican II; in fact, collapses without it. The evangelization of culture, economics and politics was essentially the task of the “insiders” who bore the burden of maintaining and developing society’s institutions. Thus, the axial model of the laity embraced by Vatican II was a public one.
The present sociological status of the American laity fits the Vatican II model. Catholic lay people have become integral members of the American economic and political mainstream. A generation or two ago they were “outsiders.” Now as “insiders,” they occupy various positions of leadership and responsibility on all levels of American industry and government. Although realistically critical like most Americans, they nevertheless love the institutions whose responsibility they bear. What this constituency needs is support and encouragement as they wrestle with the ambiguities inherent in their vocation. They will not be well served by a sectarian outlook which sees nothing but the demonic in the daily transactions of their commerce and industry.
Explore the difference between knowing the good and achieving it. Walter Block, a Canadian economist, in his commentary on the recent paper issued by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on the economic crisis in Canada, wrote: “it is one thing to identify with the oppressed emotionally, it is quite a different matter to fashion programs which will actually help them.” He argued that the policies advocated by the Canadian bishops to benefit the poor would actually have the opposite effect. Whether Block is right or wrong is beside the point. The point is that knowing the good does not guarantee knowing how to achieve the good. It was for this reason, I suppose that Jesus counseled his followers to be as simple as doves, but as wise as serpents. No one needs to be convinced that unemployment and inflation are evil. But how to solve one of them without at the same time exacerbating the other is another matter.
Ed Marciniak charged recently that, “Among many Church leaders and their staffs there lingers an abiding disdain for those christians who work inside the political and economic system and a predilection for those who are stationed outside or against the system.”This disdain for the “insider” may stem from the “outsider’s” tendency to reduce all issues and problems to simple moral imperatives, overlooking the prudential, political ingredients that have to do with the means. Doing the good is conditioned by limited resources, lack of sufficient knowledge, errors in judgment, and the unpredictability of human affairs. Thus the outsider tends to moralize, whereas the “insider” concerned about the unforeseen consequences of his act, wrestles with what works, what does not and why. The moralizers have been in the ascendancy; the bishops will now have the opportunity to restore the balance.
Condemn, if you must, the failures of the American economic system as moral evils; but by the same token praise its successes as social virtues. In recent years it has become customary to describe the failures of the economy as social sin. For example, unemployment is characterized as a social sin. Yet, the opposite, full unemployment and the creation of jobs, is rarely if ever described in terms of social virtue so that normal credit is given to those who create jobs in the first place. There is a kind of double standard here. Apparently moral compliments are to be denied those in commerce and industry because their bottom-line motive is self-interest. It is true that the American social system places a premium on self-interest but in doing so it evokes the virtues of self-responsibility, group cooperation in the pursuit of mutual interests, and discernment of what is going on in the real world. It is a fascinating paradox — one worthy of serious reflection by the American bishops — that a society which enshrines self- interest continually generates such a creative outpouring in business, in the arts and in voluntary associations bent on improving the moral and ethical texture of American society.