CATHOLIC, NOT CAPITALIST/SOCIALIST
Novak, Michael
CATHOLIC, NOT CAPITALIST/SOCIALIST It seems unlikely that millions of young Catholics in America now learn even that there is a Catholic social theory, let alone what it is. Can one point to a...
...But they do not seem to know that Catholics in Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, Detroit, Cleveland and other cities are producing concrete "studies of social power" in their immediate localities-about poverty among Italians in New York City, e.g., and about the boards of directors of corporations in Chicago...
...A social reform based on helping families differentially, according to need, might be a tremendously important social innovation...
...It is based less on the work of scholars than on that of polemicists on one side of the argument...
...A family on welfare can obtain as much as $7900 per year, sometimes more...
...Were we wrong in theory, or only in application...
...Most of what passes as social thinking in Catholic writing today is almost entirely derivative...
...The picture that emerges is far different in tone and substance from the present one...
...if a family uses real estate purchases, improvements, and resale, to improve its standing, rather than relying on its wages...
...The Soviets prefer "social realism," and are as morally severe as Puritans...
...The social texture of Lima or Rio is obviously not the same as the social texture of Cleveland or Buffalo...
...Apart from some selected quotations from various Popes, synods, and Catholic publications, the volume represents a fashionable left-wing "study of social power...
...It develops none of the unique possibilities it occasionally points to...
...they do not indicate how one can master it for oneself or others...
...West Indian blacks, e.g., do remarkably well in America...
...As a stimulant to social action, this document has some good tables on gross inequities in America...
...On this base, better work may now be planned.y now be planned...
...intelligent socialists are asking...
...What we here get instead are vague exhortations to "justice," "participation," and "equitable distribution"- all of which are so noble as to oblige assent, without binding anyone to any (Continued on page 188) Michael Novak (Cont...
...The deliverances of "liberation theology," for example, are imported from book to book without ever passing through the concrete experience of real cultural traditions, actual social conditions, historically dominant attitudes and institutions...
...if a family draws on cousins, in-laws, and other relatives for free auto repairs, home improvements, paint jobs, and capital investment in a family business-as these and other conditions vary statistically from cultural tradition to cultural tradition, economic success in America also varies...
...They generate free-floating guilts, without producing a vision, a program, a policy, a strategy, or a set of tactics that enable the fifty million American Catholics, whether poor or affluent, to take a realistic step forward...
...One would expect Catholics in America to have developed a distinctive sociological and economic analysis of famliy traditions, but they have not...
...How odd, for Catholics...
...It does not challenge the cultural base of power in America, nor show how Catholics might organize themselves, nor touch the real depths of feelings of injustice among our people...
...This is an advance...
...is, for example, $8600...
...Moreover, there is no significant analysis in this volume of the differential role of family structure in economic strategies...
...The average wage of a factory worker in the U.S...
...Some day soon, Catholic intellectuals will begin to discover Catholic America, and write its accurate description...
...But it is out of contact with actual Catholic populations in Queens, Parma, the South Side of Chicago, Lackawanna, and Providence...
...It is MICHAEL NOVAK a good and useful booklet, and yet exceedingly disappointing...
...Cultural factors are more decisive than skin color...
...specific actions or any further specific steps in analysis...
...Catholic traditions antedate the traditions of capitalism and marxism...
...The authors of Poverty in American Democracy do make gestures...
...Getting this straight, they may find they have therein the rudiments of the effective progressive social vision for which the nation longs...
...It is an establishment document-more attuned to Harvard than to Charlestown in the North End...
...We get a glimpse, in Poverty in American Democracy, prepared by the Campaign for Human Development of the U.S...
...so also do Japanese and Chinese...
...Can one point to a field in Catholic thinking more underdeveloped...
...There is no family allowance...
...Derivative, indeed, is too weak a word: watered-down, non-theoretical, highly emotive capitalism or socialism, would be more exact...
...It goes without saying that the theory and practices of capitalism are in at least equal disrepair...
...These exhortations easily lead to rage against the "system...
...Catholic Conference...
...The present text seems innocent of cultural sophistication...
...As we reach the end of the Protestant era, both in America and in the world, what social vision have North American Catholics to bring forth...
...It relies very heavily at its critical turning points on Dorothy B. James' Poverty, Politics and Change, on Gabriel Kolko, Richard Parker, Sidney Lens, William Domhoff, on Piven and Cloward, on Mintz and Cohen, on Tom Christoffel, and on other staples of recent criticism...
...For both of the latter, Calvinist attitudes toward money, labor, and social engineering provide support, like bricks for ivy...
...Still, I applaud the bishops for supporting this initiative...
...The intention of the booklet is revolutionary...
...Graduate students in Seattle, or Santa Barbara, or Champaign, or Cambridge could have prepared most of it...
...If a family first pays off its mortgage before it sends its children to college, or the reverse...
...In Europe, conferences are held on the failure of socialism...
...By contrast, Thomas So-well's Race and Economics is a genuinely original and tough look at similar problems from a distinct perspective: that of a black American who is resolutely independent and unfashionable...
...Although it promises in its last section "a unique Catholic contribution to the upcoming bicentennial," it shows no real independence of mind...
...How does one work with-or against-cultural factors...
...They quote Barbara Mikulski, and speak from time to time of some of the distinctive cultures, traditions and economic situations in which real concrete Catholics in the United States find themselves...
...One out of every four Americans is Catholic...
...Moreover, as Sowell shows, there is considerable differentiation within cultural groups with respect to how they cope with poverty...
...its effect is reactionary...
...Studies of social power, like charity, would do well to begin at home...
...One would think that at least a few would have something distinctive to bring forth, some social vision better than any competitor's...
Vol. 102 • June 1975 • No. 6
