Recovering Moral Vision: The Bishops Need Look No Further Than Their Own Previous Teachings

Imagine, if you will, a day when the bishops of the United States write pastoral letters arguing that socialism is a recipe for moral and political disaster, that economic progress in the Third World will not come about in the absence of moral uplift (particularly in sexual conduct), that the nation’s popular culture and intellectual mind is poisoning the wells of American freedom, and that the key to social security is a wider diffusion of private property.

Actually, you do not have to imagine such statements by the American bishops; you can read them at any well-stocked library. Until a generation ago the national bishops’ conference said all of these things and more in annual pastoral letters. The National Catholic Welfare Conference (the predecessor to the modern-day National Conference of Catholic Bishops and U.S. Catholic Conference), spent decades telling Catholics and Americans in general about the Church’s social philosophy. Dozens of the bishops’ pronouncements reside today in little-known anthologies, largely forgotten by Catholic laymen and clergy

Still more surprising is the fact that the National Catholic Welfare Conference was widely viewed as liberal or even socialist in its day. Traditionalist Catholics suspected the NCWC of heresy and radicalism from its very beginning in 1919; after all, the bishops and their staff in Washington supported unions, minimum wage laws, and various forms of social insurance. One of the bishops’ men, Msgr. John A. Ryan, even gave a radio speech that amounted to a thinly-veiled endorsement of Franklin Roosevelt at the peak of the 1936 Presidential campaign (as if to balance Ryan’s activism, one of his successors wrote speeches for Vice-President Richard Nixon). The NCWC, like American Catholics in general, felt more comfortable with Democrats than Republicans.

The bishops recognized the challenge to sound principles contained in rival social philosophies. The chief dangers in America, they believed, were individualism and collectivism. Individualism kowtowed to the classical laissez-faire liberalism of the nineteenth century. Its adherents, the bishops warned,

will tolerate no restrictions upon individual initiative or personal enterprise. They are liberal only to the extent that they wish to be liberated from all social responsibility. They call it free enterprise but the freedom is for those who possess great resources and dominating strength rather than for the weak who depend solely on their own labor for their well-being. [Church and Social Order, 1940]

At the same time, the bishops believed that collectivism swung too far in the opposite direction by advocating intrusive government control in all walks of life:

This system would ignore human nature and human rights as flagrantly as the afore-mentioned group of individualists. In fact, experience indicates that where this system has been tried human beings are victimized in a manner and to an extent even more disastrous. [Church and Social Order]

The bishops envisioned a middle way between the twin perils of socialism and classical liberalism. They advocated a “social reconstruction” in which citizens and institutions would cooperate through free markets and new structures built upon “vocational” lines. These mechanisms, with the cooperation of the state, would foster stability and harmony through a wider diffusion of the nation’s growing wealth:

The lack of sufficient private property leads to various forms of insecurity. This insecurity not only leads to the creation of a strong social tension expressing itself in social disorder, but is also contrary to the prescriptions of Christian morality…. Working men should be made secure against unemployment, sickness, accident, old age, and death. The first line of defense against these hazards should be the possession of sufficient private property to provide reasonable security. [Church and Social Order]

The bishops also paid close attention to the danger posed by totalitarian ideologies abroad. The bishops denounced Hitler’s “satanic resourcefulness” on several occasions, and, in 1942 (before the horrors of the death camps were publicly known in the West) they expressed “a deep sense of revulsion against the cruel indignities heaped upon the Jews.”

Their greatest fear, however, was communism. The bishops criticized the Soviet Union from the 1920s on. Even during World War II, while Stalin was an American ally, the bishops urged vigilance in words that were clearly meant to include the Soviets:

The ideology of a nation in its internal life is a concern of the international community. . . Surely our generation should know that tyranny in any nation menaces world peace. [A Statement on International Order, 1944]

This concern about totalitarianism extended to domestic politics as well. The bishops recognized that communism had an international appeal:

Many of the promoters of organizations calling themselves peace and youth movements, sponsors of stage and screen entertainment, and so-called crusaders for democracy . . .  are, consciously or unconsciously, propagandists and agents of communism. [Statement on Social Problems, 1937]

This opposition to communism at home, however, was not simple-minded. Although some bishops used similar logic to justify support for Senator Joseph McCarthy several years later, the bishops as a group kept the Senator at arm’s length and implicitly criticized his demagoguery in 1951.

The nation as a whole had to live in a partially communist world, and the bishops recognized that some good could come of negotiations with communists, particularly for the purpose of arms control. Nevertheless, the bishops saw perfectly well that the danger to peace came not from the technology embedded in modern weaponry but rather from the unjust aspirations of men who believed false ideas. Thus the NCWC urged Western leaders to use the proverbial long spoon when supping with communists:

Statesmen of the world must continue their often disheartening quest for peace, reductions in armament, and the interjection of the rule of law into the society of nations. They must also be firm in upholding principle and justice, knowing that appeasement in such matters leads only to the peace of the conquered. [A Statement on Freedom and Peace, 1958]

The battle lines between the free world and the communist bloc were not as clear in those regions which had recently been dubbed the Third World, explained the bishops, but communism, not poverty, was nevertheless the biggest threat to peace in the developing nations. This threat was twofold:

First, that of military aggression of which the more recent instances continue to exemplify both ruthlessness and perfidy; second, the widespread sowing of the seed of hatred within nations and among nations. To meet this constant threat to peace is the free world’s greatest problem. [A Statement on Freedom and Peace, 1959]

Despite their concern for sound social principles, the bishops recognized that, without moral reform, even the best social system could not last. For instance:

We voice a grave warning against the propaganda of so called planned parenthood, which violates the moral law, robs the family of its nobility and high social purpose, and weakens the physical and moral fiber of the nation. . .  God is not mocked with impunity. Neo-pagan views on marriage which are being propagated with misguided zeal in our country can only lead to moral ruin and national decadence. [The Essentials of a Good Peace, 1943]

Without virtue all progress would be halting and unstable. This logic applied to other nations as well, as the bishops implied several years later:

Man himself is the most valuable productive agent. Therefore, economic development and progress are best promoted by creating conditions favorable to his highest development. Such progress implies discipline, self-control, and the disposition to postpone present satisfactions for future gains. The widespread use of contraceptives would hinder rather than promote the acquisition of these qualities needed for the social and economic changes in underdeveloped countries. [Explosion or Backfire?, 1959; emphasis in original]

What binds these statements together is a vision of an objective moral order that calls mankind to seek not only life but virtue and piety as well. The bishops taught that the internal order of a soul, or a nation, cannot be viewed in isolation from that soul’s or that nation’s conduct toward others. In short, the objective morality taught by the natural law can never be disconnected from politics, economics, or even foreign relations. And, as a corollary, those who deny the natural law must be publicly but charitably challenged to recognize the true principles of social order.

True Prophets

It is difficult to imagine our modern-day bishops expressing themselves with similar conviction and clarity. The old NCWC’ s belief in an objective order for both souls and societies seems quaint today. Indeed, the very fact that it seems so archaic suggests that it has been muted by different concerns in the American bishops’ current social teaching.

Those of today’s bishops who wish to speak “prophetically” might do well to consult the statements of their predecessors in the NCWC. The bishops’ conference once offered a cultural and social criticism that attacked the complacency of Catholic and non-Catholic alike in a consistent and philosophic manner. Although the political and economic solutions devised for the problems of fifty or more years ago are not specifically applicable to current difficulties, the principles of the natural law — particularly its teaching that men and nations are bound by the objective moral order to pursue virtue and piety — are ready for contemporary application.

Author

  • Michael Warner

    Michael Warner is the author of Changing Witness: Catholic Bishops and Public Policy, 1917-1994.

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