Editorials

...society-is-to-blame pointed to the "inevitable criminality" of the youths who faced deteriorating neighborhoods, job discrimination, and inferior education...

...Yet it may be presumed that few passengers in Goetz's subway car felt removed enough from the present threat of danger to offer the same degree of support as others did after the fact and from a safer distance...

...Many in the lower economic brackets share with the poor and the near-poor similar insecurities...

...By not acknowledging the reality in front of people's noses, these observers undermine their own credibility and increase public impatience...

...National concern about crime is justified and the public does well not to succumb to the artificial choice between social spending to eradicate poverty or to improve education or to boost teenage employment on the one hand, and spending to control and prevent crime on the other hand...

...It should note that even in the years while the pastoral was being composed, economic events swung dramatically, confounding both settled and upstart economic theories...

...In trying to forestall reliance on punishing individuals alone, looking instead to long-term solutions, these commentators tend to dismiss people's immediate fears and losses...

...This phrase has been derided by conservative critics of the letter as some kind of foreign import from Swedish socialism...

...Conspicuously absent from this list is the need for more prisons, for speedier trials, and for a better way to handle repeat offenders...

...Many of those who enjoy economic security along with supervisory or managerial status confront decisions during the work week that seem to contradict the obligations preached on Sunday...

...Nonetheless, they run a danger here...

...More importantly, without the "policy applications" as a measure of the bishops' meaning and seriousness, the whole enterprise is very likely to be sunk in a swamp of conflicting interpretations and easy acquiescence...

...The letter already connects its appeal for economic rights, equality, and economic democracy to the Founding Fathers' great experiment in political democracy...

...Most American Catholics, who are not poor, also know they are not rich...

...Both sets of problems merit attention...

...They must not be left with the sense that the language of the bishops' letter is simply talking about some other world than the one they know...

...So retain the "policy applications" but put them in a "twin" document...

...Commonweal: 132 The result has been to stake the bishops' credibility and authority on precisely that part of their draft where they are relatively tentative rather than most definite...

...may seem, at best, an exercise in noblesse oblige...

...On the other hand, such joint racial support formed the basis for at least one writer's assurance that the Goetz case "promises the end of race and racism as relevant categories in which to discuss the problem of crime...

...Commentators continue to accuse the bishops of exceeding their competence and authority by venturing into specifics...

...The first draft provides only the briefest description of the economic events provoking this letter — and mainly noting the diversity of interpretations at that — before beginning the biblical reflections...

...To little avail...

...Does urban survival necessitate the daily cultivation of blinding ourselves to what is before us...

...The text by Jacques Maritain, "A Society Without Money," discussed by Bernard Doering in the February 22 issue is scheduled to appear in English in a forthcoming issue of the Review of Social Economy...

...Yet they experience much in their economic lives that the bishops should be addressing...

...The impulse behind that advice is sound — make this letter effective pastorally...

...They have recognized that even people sharing the same general moral principles may reach different conclusions about specific applications...

...REVISING THE LETTER The bishops are back at work...

...Although most of those polled by the Times approved Goetz's deed, the respondents also endorsed these proposals to reduce crime (highest percentages first): youth job training, better schools, citizens' neighborhood patrols, more foot police, more drug rehabilitation programs, and last, the death penalty...

...Does the public in fact opt for either the law-and-order or the society-is-to-blame argument...

...In fact, the notion has perfectly good Christian and American pedigree...

...6. Strengthen the letter's treatment of economic democracy...

...This section could be strengthened with descriptive material concerning employment, poverty, international trade, etc., now found in the' 'policy applications" section...

...The litany of heinous deeds is recited in the newspapers of every urban area...

...after the fatal killing of a Brooklyn woman whose cries for help were heard throughout her apartment by tenants who did nothing...

...This important acknowledgment, which was to accompany Professor Doering's identification, was inadvertently omitted...

...Instead, there seems to be a leap over the judicial system at this point to the death penalty...

...The solution is not to eliminate the "policy applications...

...The joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties" of economic life are not limited to the poor, and unless the bishops call this to mind, the letter they write may simply not catch fire in the imaginations of many Catholics...

...There is a problem of language here...

...They have underlined the limited authority with which they propose to examine specific economic policy issues...

...Reaction to the Goetz case around the nation revealed the false dichotomies mat make their way into newspaper columns, Op-Ed pieces, and editorials, eventually polarizing public debate on crime and criminal justice...

...they are being nagged with reminders that, on top of everything else, the letter should be shorter and simpler...

...It is crucial to note that the poll was taken four weeks after Bernhard Goetz shot four black youths who approached him on a Manhattan subway...

...Must we, after all, follow the example of a Goetz whose actions, nurtured by despair about the justice system, amounted to a usurpation of lawful authority...

...But it should also sketch the major transitions affecting our economy, and it should spell out the ways in which people/ee/ these events — the' 'joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties" of which Gaudium etSpes spoke, as they emerge in relation to economic life and change...

...Predictably, other reactions among professional writers have tended to fall into 8 March 1985: 131 two camps: the law-and-order advocates and the society-is-to-blame commentators...

...5. The letter must speak to the middle class...

...The perception of increased crime, at least the kinds of crime people must contend with on a more or less daily basis, is grounded in reality...

...The bishops face a perplexing problem...

...New Yorkers find no relief in the data that ranks New York tenth in major crimes among American cities...

...editorialists...

...Most American Catholics, like most Americans, are not poor...

...Given this somewhat balanced list from the citizens of a major city one wonders whether the public is equally willing to allocate funds for schools, programs, and police, as well as to volunteer time patrolling the neighborhood...

...Talk show subjects, a T-shirt business, and a fund-raising effort bubbled up in the froth of serious people, black and white, who are tired of crime...

...The difficult task of revising the pastoral letter on the economy is underway...

...So what about citizens in the nine cities outranking New York...

...And they have made practically all these points in flashing neon lights...

...Certainly it speaks to the needs of the poor and powerless in proposing a rightful economic minimum that would not leave anyone excluded from social participation...

...Give it a conclusion of its own (once again addressing the nature of the policy debate), and shift the present "Conclusion" to the first document on vision and norms for the economy...

...Too bad the muggers in the story of the Good Samaritan fled so easily, but then, that story was told not to solve the problem of crime, but to answer the question: who is my neighbor...

...Take, for example, the fact that the number of major crimes reported in New York City declined this year, the third year in a row...

...That might — just might — help the public understand the relationship between the two concerns, restore some attention to the questions of broader vision, and provide a shorter first document for pastoral purposes...

...2. Place the letter historically...

...The first draft does succeed in unmistakably communicating one thing — the litmus test of a just economy is the way it meets the needs of the poor and the powerless...

...Not really...

...Not only must the drafters consider scores upon scores of proposed revisions...

...Burning public rage inflamed the responses of those who initially hailed the citizen-take-action maneuver of Goetz and sparked articles, editorials, and letters-to-the-editor by the thousands...

...Could a candidate who ran on such a platform be elected...

...Publish two physically discrete and self-contained documents, voted upon and issued in conjunction1 with one another — the first dealing with the Catholic vision of economic life, the second with policy issues...

...That is not the case in the U.S...

...That, at least, has been the guiding principle behind our own proposals, some of which can be said to come' 'from the left," some' 'from the right...

...The society-is-to-blame commentators, on the other hand, appear to diminish the element of personal responsibility that most people recognize as basic to society...

...It should acknowledge the successes of our* economy as well as its failures, and indeed point out how the former no less than the latter give rise to moral challenges...

...And it speaks to questions of the meaningful-ness of work and the sharing of initiative and responsibility, questions posed to people at all levels of economic security...

...3. Speak in a more distinctively American voice...

...The bishops answered that question, but alas, they seem to be up against a terminal case of functional illiteracy among reporters and...

...Now we can add our sympathy in view of the job still to be done...

...Had the races been reversed, so this argument goes, public sentiment would have also been reversed...

...The letter needs to urge not only the criteria for a just economy, but point out the kinds of power equilibria without which the achievement and maintenance of a just economy is unlikely...

...after the well-publicized death of a youth battered with a baseball bat inside a video arcade full of other young people...

...The bishops deserve congratulations for getting that message across, especially at a time when it is none too popular...

...Economic power is translated into political power — and back into economic power...

...For example, 26 percent of the women polled, and IS percent of the men, stated that staying home after dark is one way to reduce crime...

...The biblical language of rich and poor, picked up by liberation theology, may need little translation when applied to societies where eighty percent of the population is poor...

...subway crime up 3.5 percent...

...Law-and-order saw in Goetz's gunfire a sign of "health" even "moral health...

...4. The letter must address issues of power...

...assault up 9.6 percent...

...Does crime imprison the innocent more often than the guilty...

...Similarly embarrassing is our misspelling of Renee Weber's name on both the cover and p. 122 of the same issue...

...The start of the new paragraph in the third column on page 87 should read: "The Culture of Narcissism broadened the argument by bringing back the alienated intellectuals from The New Radicalism and linking them to the therapeutic elite of Haven in a Heartless World.'' Our apologies to Professors Doering, Weber, and Fox, and to the editors of the Review of Social Economy...

...In the current draft, they have fully acknowledged the difficulties and complexities of moving from the biblical vision and ethical norms of Part One of their letter to all the debatable data and contending economic theories of the "policy applications" in Part Two...

...Unfortunately, the law-and-order advocates make it all too easy for citizens to vent frustration while avoiding responsibility for a distribution of crime that statistically shows social factors are at work as well as individual responsibility...

...1. Seriously consider dividing the letter in two...

...If popular misunderstanding is to count against the current presentation of the "policy applications," it should also count against removing them...

...In the February 8 issue, a line was dropped from Richard Wightman Fox's review of Christopher Lasch's The Minimal Self...

...Such perceptions intimately affect the way people live...

...Even as intelligent an observer as Joseph A. Califano, Jr., can ask whether recommendations about this or that income-maintenance program are "on the same level as moral principles and biblical admonitions...

...At the same time, these Catholics and Americans may find in their work a pride of accomplishment, a sense of initiative, everyday discipline, or simple warmth of comradeship that needs to be recognized and encouraged...

...Such language, moreover, risks suggesting that everyone who is not poor (and in the U.S., we have a distinct measure for poverty) is rich...

...Even where the contradictions in the American experience yawn wide, there is rich material for the bishops' moral reflections, material moreover with an accent more familiar and understandable than that of papal encyclicals or Rawlsian philosophy...

...Or can we cultivate community, and from that joint enterprise, protect ourselves and our values...

...Perhaps there is a bit of nostalgia in the desire for foot patrols and neighborhood groups, a yearning from within the world of high-rise apartment buildings for a symbol to assert that each urban dweller is not really anonymous and alone...

...CORRECTIONS Several serious errors crept into the last two issues of Commonweal...

...That step would almost certainly be viewed as a disavowal of the first draft's endorsement of a strong positive role for government in the economy...

...half of those polled responded: crime...

...Many in all classes feel an uncertainty about the point of their work, a tug between job and family, an anxiety about getting the "best chance" for their children, and a pressure to relieve their fears through consumption...

...More important, it has distracted attention from fundamental questions about contrasting economic visions...

...The groundswell around Goetz was partly an identification with him as a victim, a victim of thuggery, oratleasta victim of fear of thuggery...

...As usual, both extremes have elements of truth in their favor, and both omit some elements of truth and obscure others...

...Crime forces the issue: what does it mean to live in neighborhood, as in sisterhood or brotherhood...

...There is a real danger of cheap demagogy here, but that is a danger the bishops could well point out even as they draw on the images that sum up American experience, from religious settlement and political revolution to Western frontier and huddled immigrants yearning to breathe free...

...Sympathy will not prevent us from adding our own suggestions, however, even to the point of repeating that easy advice about brevity and simplicity...

...8 March 1985:133 An expanded call for "a new American experiment" in economic democracy would also assure that the bishops' vision and norms for a just economy, even standing apart from their specific "policy applications," would capture attention, and provoke reflection — in sum, do what an effective teaching instrument should...

...Crime is no respecter of cities...

...They have welcomed honest dissent and debate...

...That both blacks and whites expressed support for Goetz did not diminish the vehemence of this position...

...On the one hand, we read that racism accounted for the favorable public response toward Goetz who is white and against the four youths who are black...

...Still, when a New York Times poll taken last January posed the question, "What is New York City's most important problem...

...Close scrutiny of the statistics shows that while murder, robbery, and theft are down in New York, three categories of crime, which justifiably inspire public fear, are on the rise: forcible rape up 4.6 percent...

...But it also speaks to the American democratic heritage and to issues of power...

...eight weeks after Caroline Isenberg, a twenty-three-year-old Harvard graduate, was brutally stabbed to death on her apartment roof...

...The appeal of President Reagan's "second American revolution" or of the Simon/Novak commission's praise of free enterprise is based, in large measure, on their ability to link their arguments to historical American themes, to capture American pride in the nation's economic and political achievements...

...The very definitions of economic problems as well as the efficiency of economic programs are never unrelated to the distribution of power in society...

...These responses appear to combine the two approaches by providing a way out of unemployment, a chance to rise above drug abuse, education to foster positive attitude formation, while the advantages of increased police and citizen protection attest that not only the "root causes" of crime but its containment and prevention are vital...

...We have already expressed appreciation for what the writers of the first draft accomplished...