The bishops & the bottom line

...economy, the American Catholic bishops have a second great opportunity to impress on both the Catholic community and the larger public the vital importance of the moral aspects of public issues...

...Perhaps all this may be of some help in the discussion that is only now going to begin among the bishops, the Catholic people, and the public generally...

...These links prevent the bishops as well as other students of the U.S...

...But this indirect justification requires an appeal to the facts, a consider- ation of the actual performance of the American economy in meeting these needs...

...Why, then, do the candidates persist in claiming that their programs will produce full employment...

...These points of tension, it should be noted, partly overlap with and partly conflict with the criticisms of capitalism that would be made by Marxists, by populist radi- cals, by proponents of social democracy and of state planning, and by advocates of a Christian communitarianism as this is sketched out in Acts 4. For its defense against so many adversaries, capitalism has had to rely on considerations about the weakness of benevo- lence in our motivations and about the inadequacy of our knowledge, to the building of the grander forms of social order...

...It is only fair, however, to bear in mind that these possibilities confront secular as well as religious observers who would prescribe for the economy...

...FAITH & ECONOMICS: DISTRIBUTING THE JOBS I Computerization changes the rules FRED L. BLOCKL_ , & IOHN B. IUDIS T HE DEBATE OVER economic policy in the 1984 election revolving around who has a secret plan to raise what --has been one of the least enlightening ever...

...In the peace pastoral this dis- tinction is present in the contrast between, on the one hand, the way in which the bishops treated the principles of proportional- ity and discrimination in waging warfare and, on the other hand, their recommendations of a "no-first-use" policy, which they explicitly said did not require assent from the faithful...

...like any other major human endeavor, it produces tears and laughter, camaraderie and tension, success and failure, virtue and vice...

...But the church does operate a range of economically significant institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and school systems...

...and it has investment portfolios...

...Earlier Catholic theory as well as the statist ideological tendencies that shaped the monarchies of the Renaissance and Baroque periods looked to the achievement of the common good under the central direction of a state oriented, of course, toward respecting the rights and privileges of the traditional orders of society...

...A good initial question about the Catholic bishops' letter on the American economy and Catholic social teaching is whether the bishops will be able to break the sophomore jinx...

...It was a dramatic illustration of the sophomore jinx, a phenomenon that overtakes many athletes and others who make a brilliant beginning but who lack the resources or the character or the luck to continue forward to build a successful career...

...One one level, one wants to applaud their courage...

...These sources provide a rich body of matetial, largely conceived in response to the problems of industrialization, social strife, and decolonization as these affected Western Europe over the last hundred years...

...They may even consider their work, in some sense, as a vocation with a profound personal religious significance...

...legions of lawyers, brokers, accountants, and middle managers as well as the blue-collar ethnics of the industrial belt from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee...

...One reason is that FRED L. BLOCK is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of The Origins of International Economic Disorder...

...full employment, like the balanced budget, has be, campaign shibboleth, an altar at which all candidates must worship, regardless of their intentions...

...These first two elements should assure that the pastoral will be presented both as an extension and application of Catholic social teaching and as a contribution to a public moral debate which will have a bearing on the whole array of American economic and social institutions...

...Added to this is the widespread sense that both particular corporations and the American economy as a whole must be ready to compete on whatever terms are necessary with other industrial economies...

...C RITICIZING THE PRESUPPOSITIONS and the performance of the U.S...

...This, however, does not lead to complacent ap- proval of the activities of particular capitalists...

...If the conservative case for capitalism is to rest on its indirect long-term effects on the lives of people and on the ways in which it enables people to combine freedom and a decent standard of living, then attention must be paid to the facts of life among the mountain people of Appalachia, the inner-city blacks of Detroit and Cleveland, the migrant farmworkers of Florida and California...

...Nonetheless, it is not easy for most of the people who spend the prime time of their working day in this economic world to see any easy harmony between its often frenetic activity and their religious aspirations, or to feel that it nourishes and sustains them in a comprehensive way as human beings...

...It approaches them, to be sure, from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching as this has been developed in the series of papal social encyclicals begun by Leo XIII in 1891 with Rerum Novarum as well as in Vatican II's constitution on the church and the modern world, Gaudium et Spes...

...this framework would not be very different in intellectual merit and scope from similar frameworks that shape the policy decisions and arguments of other participants in economic debates...

...In working out this pastoral, the bishops have to work within a narrow strike zone...

...on another, one sympathizes with Thomas Carlyle's reaction to the news that the American transcendentalist Margaret Fuller had decided to accept the universe, "By God, she had better...

...But in the seventh inning of the game he was driven from the mound...

...and before that fateful July 4 he had won eight straight in his second season...

...Here I think we need to distinguish between the spirit of pragmatic innovation which has been a valued part of our culture from our beginnings and an ideological commitment to alternative ways of organizing society...

...First, it points to the importance of the connection between production and distribution and to the limitations of the characteristic emphasis by moral reformers on just distribution...

...For theologians and religious activists, for men and women of faith, such a claim will be unexceptionable...

...it offers many of the opportunities for a richer, fuller life that are open to ordinary Americans...

...Looking at the bishops' task in general terms we may well expect that the positions they take about the nature and prospects of the economy will involve both difficult decisions for them and fierce controversy among their expositors and critics...

...There is room, in this country and more so in developing countries, for vehe- ment criticism of particular corporations, policies, and indi- viduals...

...The church as an economic actor no longer has the importance that it had in medieval society or in such traditional Catholic societies as pre-revolutionary Mexico, where it was a major landholder...

...Capitalism has always been a problem for Catholicism be- cause of its individualism, its hope of achieving order through consent and exchange rather than by subordination, and its tendency to emancipate economic agents from other forms of social control...

...In the discussion and revision of their pastoral on the U.S...

...Church teaching has hardly radicalized the church itself in its internal workings, though it has contributed to important possibilities of reform...

...Whether it will carry much religious weight or conviction is another matter...

...for hundreds of thousands of lawyers, accountants, and consultants...

...been completed and will be sent out to the bishops after November 6. It will be presented to the press on Sunday, November 11, and will be discussed by the bishops at their meeting during the following week in Washington...

...Ever since eighteenth- century moral philosophers in Scotland and England began looking in a serious way at the emerging capitalist form of economic organization --a system of activity in which indi- viduals and firms would be free to make economic decisions in a decentralized way to meet needs and preferences as revealed in the marketplace and thus to satisfy their self-interest -- the moral arguments for capitalism have had to be indirect...

...The rapid introduction of computer automa- tion has Changed the most basic assumptions of modern economic policy --the relationship between jobs and economic growth...

...But anyone looking at the Reagan administration's record the worst recession since the Great Depression, and un- employment during a recovery that is on the same level as unemployment during past recessions -- or at the record of the last Democratic administration must recognize that full employment, as described by Reagan and Mondale, is at best an elusive goal...

...While this distinction does not eliminate all significant moral disagreements and may not always be easy to interpret, it does keep a vitally important distance between the affirmation of moral principles, which the church is called upon to present despite the variety of political and cultural circumstances, and the advocacy of particular policies, about which the bishops may make reasonable recommendations but where they cannot exclude alternative proposals...

...The view that ques- tions about the survival of capitalism are fundamental to what the bishops are doing is, I would argue, really an effort to discredit significant reformist criticism of the workings of contemporary American business by presenting it as radical dreams and agitation coming from people who do not under- stand the genius of the system...

...Rather, the central moral question about capitalism for someone approaching the debate from the standpoint of recent Catholic social teaching is the lack of fit between the view of human rights which has been propounded in that teaching, particularly in John XXIII's Pacem in Terris (1963), and the outcomes produced by the U.S...

...This, if it is well done, can provide an intellectual framework for their policy recommendations...

...The U.S...

...Such a delineation necessarily involves a critique of the more extreme expressions of individualism and self-reliance in our national culture...

...Real people are not fed by merely possi- ble bread...

...they will challenge but not condemn conservative apologias for the way things are...

...Proposals for the wholesale replacement of capitalism no longer have the vogue that they once did among the intelligentsia, largely as a result of our seeing the political and economic costs of the more radical alternatives...

...economic system...

...Take the issue of jobs...

...The biblical material which the bishops take as a fundamental starting point and the example of Jesus himself should prevent Christians from accepting the outcomes of economic history as a divine judgment on people and a rejection of the poor...

...In the present climate of opinion, the bishops would still be making a valuable contribution to the education of the American Catholic community and to the public debate on economic issues...

...At the same time they are not easy to achieve, and they require political and economic leadership that is strong and realistic enough to make hard choices and to elicit sustained support for them...

...Both the prophets of Israel and our ordinary moral perceptions should enable Christians to understand the continuing moral challenge that widespread poverty and unemployment constitute for any economy...

...But as a result of computerization, economic...

...It is, however, noteworthy that the Reagan administration has deviated from the purest type of conserva- tive doctrine in these matters by accepting the legitimacy of a "safety net" to protect those who suffer catastrophic reverses...

...If it is taken in .9the second sense, it will be seen as a bias that discredits even reasonable proposals...

...9 Fourth, the teaching authority of the church should be exercised in a way that emphasizes and illuminates the moral urgency of the key issues without being peremptory or au- thoritarian...

...Rather, they have to be applied to new situations and new problems in a way that respects the real diversity of the material and the ideas under consideration...

...In the Catholic approach to human rights theory, there is a clear affirmation of what are commonly called "social and economic rights," that is, rights to food, clothing, l~ousing, education, and medical care, as well as to different forms of social participation, of which the fight to a job is particularly important...

...The draft has I II FATHER JOHN LANGAN, S.J., a research fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, D.C,, also lectures in the philosophy and government departments at Georgetown...

...Capitalism, by producing greater wealth than a state-managed economy, will in the long run produce greater amounts of the basic necessities and will provide an economic system which can function for the benefit of the majority over time and will provide the beef to meet social and economic claims...

...9 First, the process of consulting a wide range of experts and representatives of groups whose interests are affected...

...This requires a critical sifting and reinterpretation of the tradition along the lines of what David Hollenbach, S.J...

...Rather, they should aim to keep the batters' attention with a judicious mix of precision pitches...

...But this material lacks the clarity and concision of the classical presentations of just-war theory...

...They will acknowledge both the complexity of the problems and the moral urgency Of addressing them...

...Mondale's current proposals --to raise taxes and reduce spending --would certainly not increase employment...

...The bishops, on the other hand, should not attempt to provide religious sanctions for a particular economic theory or program...

...for millions of union members...

...It includes CEOs of Fortune 500 companies...

...Here the bishops confront a significant opportunity to alert members of the Catholic community to morally significant aspects of what passes for business as usual...

...There is a certain presumption in the Catholic bishops' effort to offer synoptic criticism and guidance, for such a vast tangle of interconnected human activity...

...Here the bishops face the alternative pitfalls of being theory-dependent and theory-independent in a situation where there are many conflicting theories...

...It will have to meet both the test of conformity with Catholic social teaching as this has been propounded by recent popes and by Vatican II, and the tests of plausibility and applicability within the current Ameti- can context...

...Here the struggles for union organizing in the thirties and earlier, the place of the churches in struggling for the rights of black people, and the Catholic concern for the conditions of Hispanic workers are all relevant and exemplary...

...As in the peace pastoral, they would have established an important point of reference for subsequent action and reflection...

...The American economy is not geared directly to meeting basic human needs, particularly for those persons without the intellectual, psychic, or financial re- sources to take an active role in the economy...

...It is worth noting that the objectives I have just mentioned all strike thoughtful observers as worth promoting and that they have morally significant aspects...

...The bishops would do well then to present themselves as religious teachers concerned both to learn about the actual working of the economic system and to alleviate some of its negative effects...

...What all this comes to is that there is both point and diffi- culty in working out a restatement of major themes from the tradition of Catholic social teaching in a way that will be informative for the shaping of current American policy...

...But the church must urge the needs of the poor precisely as a moral challenge to the economy and to those who exercise significant power within the economy...

...This is not a matter of retelling a familiar tale of woe, but of acknowledging that many of the facts of economic life in the United States are morally troubling...

...The sovereign state with its right of national defense, the just-war theory and its dialectical relationship to the wit- ness of Christian pacifism, the institutional structure of the Department of Defense and NATO, the long-standing adver- sary relationship with the Soviet Union and its expansionist ideology -~ all of these taken together provided a frame around a relatively well-defined set of problems having to do with national security policy and the possible military and political functions of nuclear weapons...

...The crucial point for the current debate is not whether capitalism as a whole is a satisfactory system or whether it needs replacement by some alternative system, nor even whether it has serious failures and flaws (a point which few would deny...

...Walter Mondale sees the economy as a Chrysler Imperial idled at the side of the road...

...It should show a profound respect for the different social situations and perspectives of the various economic actors as well as a serious concern on the part of the church and its leaders to minister to the needs, hopes, and anxieties of the different parts of the one religious community that is the church...

...Reagan's model applies to the United States of the 1830s, when the Jacksonian Democrats fought the National Bank's restrictions on credit for westward expansion...

...But what should be taken as paradigmatic elements estab- lished in the peace pastoral and worth repeating in this new document...

...To employ a metaphor that has been enormously influential in explicating the history of science, the peace pastoral offered a new paradigm for the development of Catholic social teach- ing in an American context...

...In addition to the greater complexity of the task of doctrinal reinterpretation with regard to economic structures and the demands of social justice, there is also the greater complexity of the reality being reflected upon the economic pastoral...

...Their aim should n& be to mow down the opposition with a Series of blazing fast balls with a lot of radical smoke on them...

...ECONOMICS: THE DEBATE BEGINS The bishops & the bottom line IOHN LANGAN O N JULY 4, 1977, some friends took me over to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore to watch the Orioles play the Tigers...

...Third, it is not a complete rejection of the objective of meeting basic human needs...

...The big drawing card for the occasion was the Tigers' pitching sensation, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, who was in his second season of amazing the American League with his eccentricities...

...But it remains the case that for most American Catholics a job is a job, and the economic realm is one where the alternatives that are open and that are not forbidden by law are usually perceived to be morally indifferent...

...Second, it focuses on the difficulty of meeting basic needs in developing countries rather than on the imperfect but significant achievements of social democracy in more developed European societies...

...The words of the prophets, the parable of Dives and Lazarus, the Beatitudes, the prescriptions of the Torah for the protection of widows and orphans all make it clear that what the economy does to people and what people do in the economy cannot be relegated to the realm where technical considerations rule and religious concerns are merely peripheral...

...More fundamentally, the recollection of the church's mixed record as an economic actor, sometimes wise, sometimes gullible, sometimes gener- ous, sometimes selfish, provides an anchoring in realism about the ways in which church teaching about economic and social matters~actually affects human behavior...

...The corporate world, it cannot be denied, does pro.vide much of the vitality and creativity of our society...

...If radicalism is taken in the first sense, the American people are usually willing to consider radical proposals...

...and, as in the peace pastoral, the bishops will want to affirm both the relevance and the incon- clusiveness of the biblical material for contemporary policy discussions...

...The economic world of markets and corporate activity is not to be caricatured as simply a jungle or a rat race...

...These responses have not been perfect or consistent, but they have been effective over time in build- ing an, economy that has produced over a hundred million jobs and that has sustained both a high standard of living and a vital, open, and self-critical culture...

...Because of its limited aspirations and because of the failures and crimes with which its own history has been filled, capitalism has also been a preferred target of utopian thinkers, who enjoy the privilege of contrasting the rose and azure of imagined realms of social bliss with the dross and grime of industrial capitalism...

...What follows here is not an effort to guess at, much less to alter, the contents of this first draft...

...Among these latter, bringing down the federal deficit, protecting the na- tional and international banking system, maintaining Ameri- can exports despite the strength of the dollar, and controlling inflation are all more likely to attract the attention of policymakers than does the project of extending opportunities for participation and benefits to those who are on the fringes of the economy...

...When it has been attempted in developing countries, it has severely distorted the local economy...

...While there is ample precedent for achieving this delicate balance of credibility, complexity, urgency, and openness in the peace pastoral, especially where it addresses the various groups involved in national security issues, it is precisely with regard to the diversity of economic actors and their needs and ideas that a major difference between the two pastorals emerges...

...This is where their pitches will have to be in or near the strike zone...

...These attacks have not usually been threatening to capitalism, which enjoys the defensive advantages of the status quo, unless they have also been able to draw on the discontents of a public battered by economic catastrophe or by the collapse of a nation-state...

...In short, the diversity --and downright contradictoriness --of economic theories and theorists...

...they value honesty, consideration for the rights of others, professional competence, and integrity in the performance of work...

...nor do they feel enough confidence in welfare agencies and the effects of their programs on their clients to commit greater resources to these agencies and programs...

...On the contrary, fulfil- ling these tasks was a major accomplishment for American Catholicism and a major contribution to the public debate...

...On the other hand, they will be reminded of the strong religious elements and the abundant use of biblical themes and images in many popular American movements for social justice and for the economic betterment of the poorest and weakest sectors of American society...

...and they will encourage a pragmatic, reformist spirit which ques- tions important aspects of the status quo without rejecting fundamental values of the American tradition...

...Both Mondale and Reagan assume that producing more steel bars, washing machines, and hamburg- ers will create more jobs...

...This challenge is not a moralistic denunciation which aims at giving idealists and external critics a sense of Superiority over those who actually do the work and make the hard decisions...

...So large an area of human activity with so many consequences for human well-being and charac- ter cannot be exempted from God's sovereignty or God's judgment...

...Of course, the words of Scripture do not provide a plan for economic policy...

...The church and church organizations often have to work through such issues of economic justice as the proper functioning of unions, the development of a morally sound investment policy, the provision of adequate salaries and a sense of participation for employees of the church and its organizations, and the establishment of well-defined policies of openness and accountability in financial matters...

...The major area in which they will most need to exert themselves so as to extend the American tradition is the clear delineation of the moral claims of the solidarity that binds us together as human beings sharing a common destiny under God...

...Several points need to be made about this line of argument...

...These last two points illustrate how difficult and unsatisfac- tory it will almost certainly be to join the issue between Catholic social teaching and contemporary apologias for American capitalism...

...When it does this, it offers what I have been calling an indirect moral justification for capitalism...

...After all, the bishops are no longer rookies...

...A justpricefor labor, t You are new here...

...What we may reasonably expect is a series of positions clustering around the moderate left of professional economic opinion and with occasional deviations in radical, populist, or even conservative directions...

...The majority of the American people, however, do not seem to want a reorientation of the economy and of govern- ment activity which would dramatically increase the level of entitlements...

...This leads to protests, investigations, and demands for regulation and often shades over into sweeping ideological criticism...

...But the bishops will clearly want to avoid the appearance of giving religious sanc- tion to the views of economic doctrinaires...

...most likely, these measures, by reducing consumer demand, would cause greater unemployment...

...Rather it has to be a ' 'A justpriceforjust goods...

...Catholics may not provide many of the Andrew Carnegies or Ross Perots, examples of extraordinary entrepreneurial success...

...This may be more a matter of pointing to problems such as plant-closings, low rates of savings, lending policies to third-world and East-bloc coun- tries, marketing of tax shelters, attitudes to performance in the workplace, effects of welfare policies and welfare cutbacks on families, and less a matter of offering solutions that can be guaranteed to be both effective and morally preferable...

...In all of these practical tasks the church has both to confront and overcome past failures and to learn from the larger economic experience of our pluralistic society...

...This is the kind of challenge which has drawn generous responses from Ameri- can society in the past...

...some, particularly those in the recent encyclical of John Paul II on human work, Laborem Exercens, are really so genetic that they are compatible with a wide variety of institutional arrangements...

...In addition to the complexity of the economy itself, marked as it is by continuing technological innovation, by waves of fashion, and by long-term patterns of growt h and decline, there is also the complexity of intellectual discourse about the economy...

...has ac-complished in his treatment of human fights in the Catholic tradition, Claims in Conflict (Paulist Press, $5.95 paper...

...With a few fiscal repairs and a full tank of gas --high octane government subsidies for ailing industries --it will speed along the high- way good as new...

...Will they, as sometimes happens with those who are anxious both to protect and to repeat a previous success, allow their anxiety over getting it right to get in the way of their grasp of what is different in the new situation...

...Loosen and finally remove the bit, and the economy and jobs will surge ahead...

...Many of its specific recommendations have become outmoded, many were designed to address the problems of European societies...

...It is particularly liable to affect athletes who may be tempted to overstrain their physical resources or who have a limited set of skills or tricks which they can push to the utmost for a time but which are likely to be countered by others...

...The first two questions have little vitality, even among those religious radicals who manage to sound like a cross between Trotsky and Ralph Nader...

...On the other hand, the bishops know that they are leading a vast and differentiated flock, which is not composed simply of the oppressed of the earth...

...The superficiality of the campaign has only hidden a deeper confu- sion in the candidates' economic assumptions...

...They will almost certainly not put themselves in the position of endorsing one set of trade- offs and economic policies, nor will they take a condescending attitude toward those who actually have to make economic institutions work...

...The letter has to evaluate and prescribe for thousands of corporations, some of which have revenues larger than all but a few nation-states in the world...

...But paradigms that guide normal science or intellectual inquiry are not meant to be applied mechanically or mindlessly...

...The 1984 Democratic platform states that economic growth "means security, opportunity, and hope...

...but it is clear that very many Catholics, especially from the older ethnic groups, have done quite well indeed and that there is a certain fit between some elements of the Catholic tradition and its bureaucracy and some of the needs and values of corporate America...

...Furthermore, it is doubtful that such a reorientation of the American economy would make it either more productive or more attuned to the cultural expectations and values of most Americans...

...Both president Ronald Reagan and Vice President Walter Mondale have pledged that their programs will provide a job for anyone who wants one...

...Both the processes and the outcomes require moral scrutiny and moral criticism...

...Since capitalism does not aim directly at equality or at the inculcation of moral virtue (though it has to rely on the presence of certain virtues in its citizens if it is to survive) or even at the common good, it has always been open to moral broadsides...

...But another reason is that both Mondale and Reagan are working with obsolete models of the economy that make it seem as if their programs will produce full employment...

...The bishops have to recognize that the ethos of corporate America both shapes and is shaped by many of the most talented and generous people in their own flock...

...This again is a point of difference with the peace pastoral where the difficulty lay not so much in accepting a fairly standard account of how defer- rence works but in proposing a moral assessment of this rela- tively new phenomenon which would not collapse into amoral- ity or self-contradiction...

...The pastoral provided a solid intellectual and institutional base around which the fears and anxieties of the nuclear debate could find a certain rational clarity without losing all sense of urgency...

...It has had to make do with catalogues of its adversaries' excesses and follies, with proposals for channeling human selfishness into socially beneficial directions, and with its proven though uneven record in generating enormous sums of wealth...

...S OME MAY OBJECT that such an approach consigns the bishops to a merely reformist role, when they should be promoting radical change...

...These are all themes which are solidly supported by previous commitments of the church's social teaching and which still retain-some controversial bite in current circumstances...

...But unbeknownst to either Reagan or Mondale, the United States has entered a new economic era, dominated on one hand by fierce international competition, and on the other by a new computer technology that is revolutionizing the rules of the economic road...

...The presumption of the bishops in assaying the economy would be the more remarkable if such a project were not itself so thoroughly American in its combination of candor, moralism, and optimism...

...He had comp~led a total of nineteen wins in his first season against nine defeats...

...Until then most of us are in a period of uncertainty about what the document will say, and the authors of the document are in a period of anxiety about how it will be received...

...but it is an attempt to extrapolate from the accomplishments of the peace pastoral, to underline some aspects of the context within which the bishops will speak, and to suggest some ways of assessing their solutions to the prob- lems confronting the American economy...

...But in moving forward to offer a set of recommendations for national economic policy, the bishops will have to make up their minds not merely to propose a negative valuation of both unemployment and inflation but to argue that both these evils can be minimized in a way that is effective in the present situation of the U.S...

...At this time, of course, there is very little that the committee charged with preparing the letter and chaired by Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee can do...

...All these considerations produce a stalemate in our delibera- tions in which there is a widespread reluctance to add moral burdens to an economy which is seen as on the mend but still vulnerable and with many unresolved problems...

...economy is the largest economic unit in human history and because of its centrality today has innumerable links with other economies around the world through trade, through investment, and through the international workings of multinational firms...

...They would also do well to remember that the recent history of the church is marked by failures in both economic understanding and economic prac- tice...

...As we all know, this accomplishment was centrally the work of two men: Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago and Father Bryan Hehir of the United States Catholic Conference...

...As the careers of Michele 'Sindona of Franklin National and other banks and Roberto Calvi of the Banco Ambrosiano illustrate, the church enjoys no charism of finan- cial infallibility...

...Ronald Reagan views the economy as a stallion straining at the bit -- the bit being unnecessary government regulation and taxes...

...One success, which in retro- spect the peace pastoral clearly was, can actually increase the anxieties about possible failures and the worrying over specific details of the new project...

...9 Second, the conception of a dual audience for the docu- ment both inside and outside the church...

...Fourth, once the objective is admitted, then the debate turns largely to comparisons of different means and their advantages and disadvantage s . The conservative case is for satisfaction of basic needs and for the meeting of human rights standards in this area, not by government provision, but by the long-term working of the free market supplemented by private charity...

...There are, of course, very important elements in this tradition which require vigorous affirmation in post-industrial, pluralist, neoconservative United States...

...and for the rest of the year he did not win another game...

...reminder of how far we have to go in making promises of freedom and abundance effective for the millions of people who have proudly chosen to be Americans...

...Contemplating the situation of those persons who are marginal to the economy produces moral dissatisfaction among many people, not merely among leftist Catholic members of the so-called new class...

...Not a few of these people are deeply committed, to the preservation of human moral values in their work and in their economic activity generally...

...There, can be no question of the bishops' accepting a view of the American economy which simply acquiesces in the outcome of either regulated or unregulated economic processes...

...economy...

...Mondale's model applies best to the 1950s, when fiscal fine- tuning and a few well-directed subsidies kept the economy moving forward...

...JOHN B. JUDIS is a senior editor of In These Times...

...In the October 8 debate, Reagan stated, "We're not going to rest, or not going to be happy, until every person in this country who wants a job has one...

...This is not to say that it was an intellectually or politically easy task to provide a coherent set of answers to the problems or to keep the various elements of the frame from destructive collisions...

...T HE PASTORAL on the economy, by contrast, has to deal with a range of problems that run across all aspects of American and global society...

...The process of open consultation and revision of the document is a vital contribution to establishing credibility with an American audience and in safeguarding the bishops' claim to be heard on a complex issue on which they have little obvious expertise...

...9 Third, the use of a clear distinction between fundamental moral principles, which are taught by the church as binding in conscience, and more specific applications, which, while not so concrete as judgments in particular cases, involve a pruden- tial assessment of diverse policy considerations and tradeoffs...

...There are four that most observers would point to immediately...

...T HE CRUCIAL QUESTION for the bishops is how to deal with this reluctance to accept a broader vision of the goals of national economic policy...

...If they follow the example of the peace pastoral, they will take inspiration and direction from the Bible...

...The bishops are dealing with a central aspect of the life of more than 230 million people --more than three trillion dollars worth of goods and services together with considerable unre- ported but economically significant activity...

...But it is also true that for most of these same people the economic system is a realm of necessity, a secular and even amoral world in which personal and corporate competitors pose real threats, a world in which communication and evalua- tion are often reduced to the numbers that spell out short-term results and the famous "'bottom line...

...Among these are the comprehensive affirmation of human fights in Pacem in Terris by John XXIII, the consistent affirmation, by all the popes from Leo XIII on, of the fight of workers to form unions free of company or government domination, the rejection of class struggle and the insistence on cooperation and human solidarity as the foundation of our social life, the concern for international cooperation and for the building of international institutions...

...My own view is that the bishops should oppose it, but that at the same time they should show an understanding of the reasons and concerns that lie behind it, many of which are far from being foolish or merely selfish rationalizations...

...economy from offering any comprehensive treatment of it in abstraction from its international context...

...Thus pitchers are prime candidates for the sophomore jinx...

...economy from a moral point of view is always bound to be an uphill task, and both the bishops and their critics would do well to admit this...

...The bishops face the unattractive prospects of being criticized for adopting the views of one set Or school of economists and . according them a special religious status (an outcome from which both Marx and Lord Keynes would have derived sar- donic amusement), or for failing to deal with questions of economic policy in intellectual depth, or for offering an eclec- tic set of "good ideas" which may be neither coherent nor effective and which fail to make the tradeoffs and hard choices that real economic and political life imposes...

...Such an acknowledg- ment can be compatible with a recognition of the significant economic achievements of capitalism and with a vigorous affirmation that it is preferable to other economic systems, It can also be coupled with a humble acknowledgment that neither the church nor those it has consulted have a proven remedy for resolving the problems of poverty and unemploy- ment...

...The struggle of women and minorities to obtain higher positions in American corporations is, after all, a struggle for a significant good...

...The standard conservative line of response to these affirmations runs something like this: .State provision of basic necessities undermines the work ethic...

...What will distinguish what the bishops say from various economic newsletters and professional articles will not be any claim on their part to offer a fix or a cure for the ills of the American economy, but a steady insistence that the outcomes of American and international economic processes must be looked at in moral and religious terms...

...In doing this, the Reagan administration is following the standard conservative tack of accepting the substance of the welfare state even while trimming some of its less politically sensitive extensions and denying it full legitimacy...

...Will they be pitchers good for only one season or only one issue...

...It can even offer a free-market approach as a better means of meeting these needs over the long term...