Engaging words:

...Eugene Kennedy has noted that Weakland "acknowledges that the American Catholic church has, to the puzzlement of some of its believers, extended its focus beyond their personal lives to their professional lives, identifying them as organically related and bringing an end to the days when religion could be considered a private devotional affair, a garden walled off from the larger world" (Re-imagining American Catholicism, Vintage-Random House, 1985...

...economy] the Christian religious and moral tradition can make an important contribution...

...In a 1985 editorial, "Bishops, Business, and the Unfinished Task," he wrote that the economics pastoral's greatest success is that it has "provoked a public debate on the morality of the U.S...

...An important side-effect of the letter's rhetorical construction is that it makes the tradition of Catholic social teaching available to a great number of Catholics for whom it is still an alien body of knowledge...

...economy characterized by a level of moral seriousness which is precious to the public life of a democratic nation...

...Change comes slowly...

...Isaiah knew something that many prophets, modern and ancient, fail to recognize: no matter how righteous, their message alone will probably not persuade the people they most want to influence...

...Equally important, the text of the pastoral letter illustrates how religious texts themselves can speak to more than an exclusively religious audience...

...For instance, unemployment is a problem, not simply because of production, but because it "gnaws at the self-respect of both middle-aged persons who have lost jobs' and the young who cannot find them...

...The bishops have thus taken advantage of the variety of roles they enjoy in society...

...In the bishops' pastoral letter on the economy, rhetoric exeeds the art of persuasion to become the art of reconciliation...

...The bishops have taken the first step in this process by demonstrating their rhetorical imagination...

...Persuasiveness is not achieved by simply offering logical proofs or by appealing to authority, but by mustering convincing arguments...

...To be rhetorically effective is to find and illuminate the common ground of facts and values that the audience and the author share...

...While the bishops ultimately become critical of the American system, they soften what could be perceived as antagonism by showing that their critical attitude and their ideas are based on their own American values...

...It reminds Americans that, like Catholics, they also have a history that is concerned about the oppressed...

...To make their case they emphasize that the economy has shortchanged human and moral goals, rather than emphasizing that the economy isn't fulfilling its fiscal goals...

...It influences their very faith in God...

...Centuries before Christ, the Greeks and Romans spoke of the human person as a social animal made for friendships, community, and public life...

...Yet while these authoritative statements are important, the bishops' ability to connect organically the economic world with the ecclesial, spiritual, and moral world, is probably the letter's strongest long-term contribution...

...Buried in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable passage on pages 43-44 of the pastoral is what may be their bottom line in this letter, their own standard for judging how effective they have been: ' 'There is certainly room for diversity of opinion in the church and in U.S...

...Later in the document the bishops use the examples of the women's suffrage crusade, the Civil Rights Movement, and child labor reform to show that Americans have a critical heritage that emphasizes human values and ethical concerns...

...Second, the bishops took some unpopular positions and called for some radical changes...

...Some examples: "Christian conviction and the American promise of liberty and justice for all give the poor and the vulnerable a special claim on the nation's concern...

...What the bishops have done here is to emphasize "human rights," not "the market" as the guiding principle of American economic policies...

...In our view, however, there can be no legitimate disagreement on the basic moral objectives...

...We believe," the bishops wrote, "that in facing these questions [concerning the state of the U.S...

...The letter is effective, not because their program has been adopted (it hasn't), or even because it has been widely read (it has), but because its language and ideas have become part of the broader, ongoing debate...

...This multiplication of roles allows a variety of audiences to identify with them and entertain their insights and ideas...

...This conviction has prompted positive steps to modify the operation of the market when it harms vulnerable members of society...

...The types of evidence the bishops cite to make their argument also add to the letter's persuasive and unitive potentialities...

...As the debates during the drafting process illustrated, many Catholics do not count as part of their tradition that their bishops speak on such secular matters as social policy...

...Abraham Lincoln's words at Gettysburg are a reminder that complacency today would be a betrayal of our nation's history:' 'It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work . . . they have thus far nobly advanced...

...They present themselves in a variety of ways: "as Americans," "as bishops," "as pastors," "as Catholics," as people "called to shape a constituency of conscience," and "as moral teachers, not economic technicians...

...In fact, the letter's rhetorical quality is what makes it truly pastoral...

...Weakland has noted that what the letter has accomplished is a "re-imagining of American Catholicism" that begins "to address serious discussions of the major issues of our times...

...These convictions have a biblical basis...

...First, they performed the prophetic task of looking at a familiar situation with the eyes of faith and made observations that are not always obvious to the general public...

...By necessity then, the pastoral had to address both Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and non-believers, and to persuade even many Catholics that the bishops had something to say on economic matters...

...For authority they quote from Vatican II: "the joys and hopes, the grief and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the grief and anxieties of the followers of Christ.'' They quote Paul VI as well: "Christian communities have the responsibility to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country, to shed on it the light of the Gospel's unalterable words and to draw principles of reflection, norms of judgment, and directives for action from the social teaching of the church...

...The Bible, they point out, is a source of human and ethical wisdom, as well as religious values: "We must also attend to the Bible's deeper vision of God, of the purposes of creation, and of the dignity of human life in society...

...While these examples indicate how the bishops demonstrate that their religious thought has its secular coordinates, the other major argument of association they employ shows just the reverse: that the secular world has in it elements of the sacred...

...bishops issued Economic Justice for All, they presented a document very much in keeping with the prophetic tradition...

...It influences what people hope for themselves and their loved ones...

...society on how to protect the human dignity and economic rights of all our brothers and sisters...

...The bishops have accomplished what Stanley Hauerwas says must be done in the era of postliberal theology: refuse to let the secular world set the agenda...

...The bishops write: "Human understanding and religious belief are complementary, not contradictory...

...They wanted to relate the "rich and complex tradition of Catholic life and thought" to the problems of the American economic system...

...And third, they were sensitive to the way their message was presented to their audience...

...Demonstrating that such a unity exists will help to repair the "tragic separation between faith and everyday life" that the bishops deplore...

...They cite Abraham Lincoln as a model of their concern in fighting to complete the "unfinished business in the American experiment in freedom and justice for all": The task of the United States today is as demanding as that faced by our forebears...

...This associative stance is also applied when the letter discusses American values...

...It affects the way they act together in society...

...For human beings are created in God's image and their dignity is manifest in the ability to reason and understand.'' And they show how it is feasible for the world to accept Catholic social teaching not because of its inherent religious authority, but because of its rational and practical humanistic underpinnings: "What the Bible and Christian tradition teach, human wisdom confirms...

...system for its ability to correct itself and to be open to change, not just because of financial problems, but because of human necessity: [While] the U.S...

...David Kreuger, an editor for The Christian Century, has observed another effect...

...They are also supported by a long tradition of theological and philosophical reflection and through reasoned analysis of human experience by contemporary men and women...

...They deal instead with values...

...In Kreuger's analysis, the bishops have been successful because they have achieved a common ground...

...Since they are "moral teachers, not economic technicians ," the bishops rely on more than statistics and facts...

...But it does something else, as well...

...Christian faith and the norms of justice impose distinct limits on what we consume and how we view material goods...

...First of all, they did not choose an antagonistic posture...

...Since the bishops wanted their ideas on economics to be taken seriously, they had to persuade readers, through argument, organization, and language, that their point of view and analysis were valid...

...Serious economic choices go beyond purely technical issues to fundamental questions of value and human purpose...

...But evidence of the "well-trained tongue" is found in the bishops' ability to make Catholic social teaching accessible and acceptable-even to those "outside the gates...

...That would please the bishops...

...Catholic social thought is presented, not as authoritative teaching (since that is not the case for the entire audience), but as a solution to a problem...

...The bishops cite a number of biblical and magisterial documents to argue that it is the duty of religious people to be involved in other than ecclesial and devotional matters...

...In addition, they praise the U.S...

...In offering their tradition as compatible with, not as competing against, secular values, the bishops use arguments of association, a common rhetorical vehicle, that two experts define as "schemes which bring separate elements together and allow us to establish a unity among them which aims either at organizing them or at elevating them, positively or negatively by means of one another" (Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrects-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, Notre Dame, 1969...

...The bishops show how their religious ideas and American values often share similar goals...

...Similarly, the roles the bishops adopt for themselves work as a rhetorical act of unity...

...Furthermore, Catholics are not the only, nor even the most influential, economic actors in the situations the letter describes...

...The economy," they write, "isa human reality: men and women working together to develop and care for the whole of God's creation...

...Judging the effectiveness of the letter is no easy task...

...This has been achieved not only because of the letter's strength and vision, but because the bishops have learned how to use their prophetic and "well-trained tongue...

...The pastoral letter has been transformed from a genre that could address only Catholics to one that speaks impressively to the larger secular audience...

...When the U.S...

...The letter achieves its degree of persuasiveness because the bishops have mastered the art of rhetoric...

...Archbishop Rembert Weakland, chairman of the committee that drafted the letter, admitted that many Catholics would find the pastoral to be a step beyond the traditional boundaries of religion...

...It lets the bishops be identified as religious by those who are religious...

...The bishops had to reconcile Catholic social teaching with American economic and social thought...

...Instead, they emphasized similarities and common ground...

...In bringing to mind these various roles, they have chosen to include, rather than exclude...

...value system emphasizes economic freedom, it also recognizes that the market is limited by fundamental human rights...

...Catholic social teaching, the bishops note, was created by "thinkers who synthesized the call of Christ with the philosophical learning of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Arab worlds...

...This is not to say that they have joined the ranks of pushy used-car salesmen, ambitious politicians, and emotional televangelists, or that they have surreptitiously tried to sell themselves or their ideas...

...Do these two bodies of knowledge have common points or intersections...

...Perhaps the bishops' most powerful and important statements are not the ones that deal with the preferential option for the poor or a new economic agenda, but those at the beginning of the letter which define the economic realm...

...This approach allows them to offer the principles of Catholic social teaching as a common ground for examining society...

...Something more, a well-trained tongue, is needed if people are to hear a message and act on it...

...If the bishops could not demonstrate them, their thoughts on economics would have remained peculiarly their own...

...The reason these sentences are so important is that they wrest economics from a purely autonomous, secular realm and unite it with an ethical, religious one...

...Yet, for those who can't identify with their religious charism, it allows the bishops to speak from the more general position of moral leaders...

...Rather, the bishops have constructed their discourse and chosen words that speak to a wide variety of people actively involved in the real world...