Social Justice Ministry
Steinfels, Peter
lieve that they are over-taxed and pay a disproportionate percentage of the cost of welfare. They are right on both counts. But those working- and middle-class people draw a completely erroneous...
...The Review of Books 336 pages Paperback $1195 Orbis Books pubhshes a three-volume set on "The Church and the Poor" GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR THE WEALTH OF CHRISTIANS by REDMOND MULLIN A study of how Christians have dealt with the question of riches through history-- with implications and applications for our own times...
...JOE HOLLAND, Center of Concern' 214 pages Paperback $9.95 124 pages PaperbackS4.95 by egalitarian and anti-capitalist beliefs, .9 would be to raise the disconcerting pos- sibility that such struggles and such be- liefs might still have a further role to play...
...Most im- portantly, I am convinced that Reagan's sand castle recovery, as economically and politically real as it is fragile, will crumble sooner or later...
...Novak sees him offering a "crea-tion theology" to counter liberation theology...
...PETER STEINFELS i$ the editor of Com-rnonweal...
...Dorr sees him validating the OPTION FOR THE ORBIS BOOKS ON ETHICS AND THE ECONOMY POOR HERALDS OF A NEW REFORMATION The Poor of South and North America by RICHARD SHAULL "Interprets Scripture to suggest a new economic order for the U.S...
...The Ecumenical Rewew A At bookstores or from ~ ORBIS BOOKS Maryknoll, NY 10545 2-16 November 1984: 633...
...Donal Dorr examines papal social thought with an eye to discovering "the extent to which the church has committed itself to being on the side of those who are poor or oppressed...
...OPTION FOR TIlE ]POOR A HUNDRED YEARS OF VATICAN SOCIAL TEACHING Domd Dorr Orbis) $11.95, 336 pp...
...We should not forget, however, that it is in the common interest of the entire soci- ety to put an end to this needless, and now revitalized, misery...
...What a different problem Novak might have faced had he chosen some true believer in the church of laissez faire, John Bright, for example, or the once widely honored (especially in America) Herbert Spencer...
...I would hope we will turn to the poor out of a sense of justice and compassion...
...there were no liberal spokesmen who fiercely de- nounced every government or trade-union intervention on behalf of workers as a dangerous crime against Freedom and Property...
...he actually increased the federal tax burden of the poor...
...To be sure, I am profoundly disturbed by the new ideological and statistical attack on the poor...
...Obviously, for maximum effect, the two books should be read together...
...but then again these are topics on which Mill has long been recognized as a suspiciously "heretical" liberal...
...It will also be a way of digging a political grave for the Democ- ratic presidential party...
...One of the most decisive studies to date in the theologies of liberation...
...SOCi/L JUSTICE NINISTRT FOUNDATIONS AND CONCERNS l~ui Stddi-Mder, S.J...
...Nonetheless, Novak is right in criticiz- ing earlier papal statements for a disdain- ful attitude toward liberalism, born of judging liberalism only in its more ex- treme forms rather than its evolved and r REVIEWERS FRANCIS J. FLAHERTY is a reporter for the National Law Journal...
...Books: PAPAL TEXTS, POLITICAL TESTS H ERE, tO begin with, is an odd Couple --two books surveying a hundred years or more of Catholic social teaching, each from a very specific, and nearly opposite, point of view...
...For Novak, supporting "liberal institutions" finally boils down to supporting that very same capitalism...
...The middle isn't affluent and any effective strategy has to be based on taking welfare away from the rich rather than raising the taxes of the middle...
...This is a curiously denatured view of history...
...LI Jail, $24, $19 paper, 343 pp...
...Schwarz and Ed- sail are part of an intellectual counterat- tack, but there is an enormous amount of work to be done in rescuing the poor from their "objective" tormentors...
...The poor, in general, receive less in the United States than in any other Western industrial democracy and, as we have seen, their real living standard de- clined throughout the seventies and the eighties, The villain in the piece is not to be found in the poor -- who lost more in cash income than any other group during the last four years -- but in the rich who so successfully avoid paying their fair share...
...Michael Novak examines roughly the same body of thought with an eye to discovering the extent to which the church has set itself on the side of "liberal institutions," if not quite of liberal ideology...
...and a new form of community for the church...
...Presumably, there were no real-life models for Dickens's .9Gradgrind and Bounderby...
...Both make interesting efforts to assimilate John Paul II to their own con-cerns...
...through the process of "shock/resentment/wonder/challenge/courage/vision...
...JACQUES ELLUL 128 pages Paperback $795 OWNERSHIP Early Christian Teaching by CHARLES AVlLA "Reminds us that 'option for the poor' is not a new theological fad, but an ancient Christian legacy...
...Riveting...
...He is the same earnest apostle of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, although Free-dom with Justice is a more sober and, in my judgment, a better work, perhaps be- cause its author is here tied down to the particularities of texts and to the singular historical contexts in which they emerged...
...Novak (en- thusiastically) and Dorr (with misgiv- ings) agree in seeing John XXIH as an optimistic exponent of Western liberalism and reformist welfare capitalism...
...In presenting these figures respect- fully and yet pointing out their link to an unhappy current of Romantic German anti-liberalism, Novak usefully reminds us of the ambiguous elements in Catholic C'nmmnnwpnl-t5 ~/2 social doctrine...
...I am not thinking of his by-now standard rebukes to the church for "utopianism" or of his own truly utopian (and statistically garbled) approach to the poverty problem, but of his sections on Bishop yon Ketteler, Heinrich Pesch, Oswald von Nell-Breuning, and the German "solidarist" school whose critique of capitalism and individualism was an important source of papal teach- ings...
...The point is, the political strategy for a renewed assault on poverty cannot be predicated on the as- sumption that the "affluent" middle is going to exercise noblesse oblige toward those suffering at the bottom...
...W PAUL JONES, St...
...But it reflects Novak's fond notion that the wonderful equilibrium of today' s "dem- ocratic capitalism" unfolded naturally from Adam Smith's master plan...
...On the basis of a few passages Novak has encountered in economics texts, he gives the impression that the" Manchester School" was perhaps a creation of papal, or even socialist, imagination...
...Peter Steinfels Overworked Novak-watchers will be relieved to learn that in Freedom with Justice, the author has produced only a new book and not a new persona...
...FREEDOM 111111 JUSTICE CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT AND LIB- ERAL INSTITUTIONS Michael Novak Harper & Row, $17.95, 240 pp...
...Novak has no trouble showing that Mill's views on property, wages, and the future of the working class escaped the papal stereotype...
...Provocative but less successful is his attempt to measure Catholic condemnations of nineteenth-century liberalism against a real-life example, the John Stuart Mill of Principles of Political Economy...
...In this context, if Ronald Reagan has followed a class-biased policy, as Thomas Edsall so-thoroughly documents, then the Democ- rats will have to be at least as class con- scious as the Republicans are...
...If the Democratic party buys some version of a modified "flat tax," i.e., if it abandons the principle, so often honored in the breach, of progressive federal taxation, that will not simply be a blow to equity...
...I S TRANGELYENOUGH,I am not dishear- tened, not even by an election which Ronald Reagan appears likely to win...
...But that is not the case at all...
...This is critically important to grasp -right now given the fact that indeed there is going to be a great debate on taxation next year...
...Novak does not notice that the same criticism can be made about papal attitudes toward socialism...
...TOWARDS A CHURCH OF THE POOR 236 pages Paperback $8.95 SEPARATION WITHOUT HOPE 192 pages Paperback $8.95 JULIO DeSANTA ANA, Editor "Documentation, charts, and a stunning amount of bibliographical data...
...For him to recognize that such balance as exists in contemporary Western democracies was won through hard struggles, often guided modulated versions...
...But those working- and middle-class people draw a completely erroneous con- clusion from their justified anger: that since they pay "too much" for the poor, the poor are to blame...
...He did not simply give away billions to the weal- thy...
...For Dorr, being on the side of the poor or oppressed finally boils down to being vigorously opposed to Western capitalism...
...That trend pre-dated Ronald Reagan and existed under Democratic admini- strations, but Reagan has clearly made the very worst of a bad situation...
...With Populorum Progressio and the turn toward questions of global justice, it's mostly downhill from Novak's viewpoint and uphill from Dorr's...
...I am willing to grant that Mur- ray's heart is in the right place, but the fact remains that he has provided a sophisticated, profoundly flawed, rationale for Scrooge...
...And at that point, more and more people in this soci- ety are going to learn that the poor are, and were, the fast victims of macro-economic trends which threaten us all...
...or at most a benign German group of reforming economists...
...Where Novak adds discussions of German solidarism and British liberalism to his analysis of the social encyclicals, Don" adds explications of other papal speeches and statements, as well as of Conciliar and episcopal documents, in- cluding those of Medellin...
...ARTHUR JONES, Nattonal Catholic Reporter 256 pages Paperback $9.95 CHANGING THE WORLD An Agenda for the Churches by VINCENT COSMAO How the gospel message can become a proclamation of good news for the poor...
...And the people in the middle made no gains --the second quintile from the bottom suffered a net income loss, the third a slight gain, the top quintile went up by a hefty percen- tage --which is usual...
...Or if there were, they were only wayward and unaccountable abus- ers of liberal political economy...
...Paul School of Theology 160 pages Paperback $8.95 OPTION FOR THE POOR A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching by DONAL DORR A thorough, balanced, and careful study showing a solid traditional basis for the church's 'option for the poor.' Dorr "has done his homework...
Vol. 111 • November 1984 • No. 19
