Correspondence
Correspondence Exclusive justice? Washington, D.C. To the Editors: In his enlightening essay ["At the Heart of the Letter," June 21] Professor R. Bruce Douglass puts the essence of the...
...The bishops' paradigm is informed by what Henri Bergson called the "open morality" of the Hebrew prophets and the Gospels...
...To the Editors: The League of Women Voters strongly supports comparable worth ["Women, Work and the Question of 'Comparable Worth,' " May 31] as a concept whose time has come...
...ANNABELLE M. MELVILLE Back to beginnings Dallas, Tex...
...society...
...On the other hand, he believes that the promising methodological emphasis upon the Bible (as opposed to the customary use of natural law reasoning) leads to a one-sided conception of justice...
...Now, however, we are hearing from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and elsewhere) that all that the council ever really meant was that Ecclesia Unica "exists as" the Roman Catholic church, in toto and without remainder...
...In their pastoral letter, they have rendered a signal service to America and to mankind...
...Who is responsible for providing that capital...
...Today the grocery clerks get good wages, while the sales clerks get barely above the minimum wage...
...The idea that an Invisible Hand guides the economy to just solutions is both empirically foolish and philosophically fallacious...
...This reaches far deeper than a verbal quibble...
...But the battle against sex discrimination is far from won...
...Every rational person expects people to make proposals to guide that flux in one direction or another through tax reform, the budget, the rate of government spending, etc...
...It puts the entire ecumenical future at risk for, if left to stand, it points us back toward Mortalium Animos...
...But on Father Dulles's own showing, there are some major issues still far from settled...
...It also belongs to "authority" to be able to prevent disputes, once properly settled (as, say, by an ecumenical council...
...These are questions that cannot be addressed by means of a religious ethics derived from a nomadic or an agricultural society...
...Are the poor also responsible for providing their share...
...Paying working women the true value of their work is simple justice...
...Douglass has understood very well: that the bishops have attempted to articulate a paradigm of a just and loving political and economic order...
...Father Dulles does not tell us...
...from flaring up again...
...Most commentaries I have seen have accused the bishops of either violating the separation of church and state or being ignoramuses in the field of economics...
...At the same time, the bishops refuse to allow the definition of what constitutes the "economy" to be confined to the cogitations of "free market" economists...
...They are neither theocrats nor economic tinkerers, but philosophers and theologians of the open society...
...Properly conceived, the economy is the ensemble of relationships through which human beings seek to satisfy their everyday needs and to express their choices about the expenditure of surplus wealth...
...What a relief it is to read an intelligent discussion of the letter...
...All people, regardless of faith, are invited to test the paradigm against the totality of their experience...
...To the Editors: In his enlightening essay ["At the Heart of the Letter," June 21] Professor R. Bruce Douglass puts the essence of the bishops' pastoral in historical and systematic perspective...
...They are doing their job as clercs: speaking truth to power instead of celebrating the established order...
...Whether the term helps to accomplish what women hope for or not, the jobs that both women and men hold must pay enough to meet today's cost of living...
...What is a just reward for doing so...
...The bishops are not economic quacks...
...ALBERT C. OUTLER...
...Lower-valued jobs should still pay enough to buy groceries, pay rent, provide transportation, meet medical expenses, and provide clothing and a few pleasures...
...What makes the bishops' letter remarkable is that it calls into question the principles on which our present economy operates...
...To put it bluntly, the bishops say that at its foundations our economy is neither sufficiently just nor sufficiently loving...
...Years ago, the grocery clerks joined a union and went out on strikes...
...Will the November synod lend a hand...
...To the Editors: In a time when the word "authority" may prove more provocative than tranquilizing, it is reassuring to pursue the reasoned and orderly ramifications of Father Avery Dulles's thoughts on the authority of Holy Mother Church...
...It is, in fact, cheaper for society as a whole to provide for their sustenance through the regular economy than through the welfare system...
...They are artists sketching in the contours of what Dante called "the true city of which we can see at least the tower...
...To be sure, his recent disquisition ["Authority: The Divided Legacy," July 12] might imply that hope deferred maketh the heart sick, when with his customary clarity he treats how Paul VI and John Paul II exercized the supreme teaching and governing power of pope and bishops, "in spite of the hopes of some church reformers...
...A paradigm is not a Utopia...
...That justice is concerned too exclusively with helping the poor without addressing the question of a just arrangement to pay for the advocated welfare net, or a proper balance between efficiency and justice...
...WILFRIED VER EECKE Georgetown University No economic quacks Charlottesville, Va...
...For it is the essence of "authority" to be able to settle disputed questions, or at least to contain them within consensual grounds...
...If women choose to work as nurses, teachers, librarians —, the so-called nurturing professions — they should be honored, not penalized, by our society and that should be reflected in their salaries...
...Some do this on an informal basis...
...In order to reap the benefits of our economy, an average amount of capital per person is required...
...It is heartening to one old convert of the 1930s to be led by Father Dulles's dispassionate assessments to a renewed conviction that while preserving the structures of authority necessary to defend the Good News, the church, through the forthcoming synod of bishops, will further implement the recommendations which raised high hopes two decades ago...
...DANTE GERMING Comparable costs Anza, Calif...
...No moral majoritarian conformism lurks in the background...
...Everyone will agree that the present ensemble of relationships is constantly in flux...
...YVONNE M. ELIAS What salary reflects New York, N.Y...
...In 1964 and '65, we were given to understand (as we thought, "by competent authority") that this implied an "ecclesiology of degrees," which might open up new ways to Christian unity, by some sort of sublation other than the old "road to Rome" (i.e., abjuration of other heritages that some of us are prepared to acknowledge as irregular and even defective but cannot, for conscience's sake, repudiate as invalid...
...To the Editors: In his brief essay ["Authority: The Divided Legacy," July 12] Father Avery Dulles has provided us with an admirably clear summation of the current "state of the question...
...It is a target worthy of approximation, a stimulus to metanoia...
...LENORE CHESTER President, League of Women Voters of New York City Customary clarity Bridgewater, Mass...
...But he has also helped us see that the problem is still very far from stabilized and that many crucial issues raised by Vatican II are still suspended, by at least a few inches, off the ground...
...For instance, the council declared explicitly in three separate texts (and implied in many others) that Ecclesia Unica "subsists in" the Roman Catholic church — and in lesser degrees in other churches and ecclesial entities...
...Professor Douglass sees the problem for Catholic social thought as the problem of dealing with a dynamic or a growth economy...
...To the Editors: Bruce Douglass's analysis of the draft pastoral letter on Catholic social teaching and the American economy ["At the Heart of the Letter," June 23] is a major contribution...
...Examples are men and women who "fall victims to a downward cycle of poverty generated by economic forces that they are increasingly powerless to influence the poorer they become...
...others may use professional job evaluators...
...If any job is not valued highly enough to provide the kind (Continued on page 508) Commonweal: 482 (Continued from page 482) of wage that meets today's cost of living, why does the job exist at all...
...The ranking of jobs in order to set compensation levels is done by all employers right now...
...He correctly believes that this problem is not fully appreciated in the pastoral...
...The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have done much to eliminate blatant forms of employment discrimination...
...What are we supposed to make of contrary interpretations of conciliar texts by different Roman dicasteries...
...He applauds the pastoral because it is willing to show that much of our comfortable way of life "is not in the least theologically defensible...
...Like Professor Douglass, I applaud the essence of the bishops' pastoral and I respect its achievements...
...But this, too, seems to be happening...
...If instead of lowering the minimum wage for students, we increase the minimum wage to a realistic level, the concept of comparable worth should be truly irrelevant...
...To the Editors: Comparable worth ["Women, Work & the Question of 'Comparable Worth,' " May 31] is a term devised by women to bring attention to the great disparity between the wages men can command and those women can get...
...However, our contemporary economy requires an enormous amount of capital (machinery, education...
...Today, many women are heads of households and are the sole support of their families who eat as much as the mythic children of the past...
...Besides , it raises the problem of authority in a most perplexing fashion...
...Smaller salaries for women date back to the time when it was assumed that the man would be the "breadwinner" and that he would be the prime supporter of that mythical American family of husband, wife, and two charming, happy children...
...Market value rates, skill, effort, responsibilities, education, and working conditions are all factored in...
...Which is where we came in, ante concilium...
...They have failed to understand what Mr...
...The pastoral letter contends that the degree to which an economy is just or loving may be discerned by examining how it treats "those who are powerless or on the margin of...
Vol. 112 • September 1985 • No. 16
