Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Theory

...This analysis is seriously at odds with the failure to eliminate poverty and social distress and with the resiliency of radical social theory in the third world...

...to engender colonial dependence in the third world...

...Hobgood begins with Rerum novarum (Leo XIII, 1891), goes through the encyclicals of Pius XI, John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, as well as statements of Latin American bishops in the 1960s and '70s, and of Canadian and U.S...

...But they fail to break from the traditional support of private property—Hobgood argues that this is a misplaced extension of Aquinas's support for private ownership of land to private ownership of the means of production, which has quite different implications— and from the support of traditional social elites and hierarchical institutions...

...The bishops of Latin America and Canada have espoused more radical approaches...

...The U.S...

...bishops were able to sustain the compatibility of radical diagnosis and liberal prescriptions because, like John Paul II, they would not agree that economic systems are also systems of social relations that specify certain relationships between persons and groups and preclude others...

...For example, Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis (1983), attributed Canada's economic decline to a "structural crisis in the international system of capitalism," and advocated grassroots involvement "to acquire communal control over the necessary means of production...

...Before it appeared, the church had applied natural law philosophy and organic social theory in support of the status quo...

...In Hobgood's analysis, Catholic social teaching points inexorably to the conclusion that capitalism is essentially flawed, yet it continues to support a reformist, even conservative political agenda...

...In a careful and sometimes brilliant review of offncial Catholic teaching on the economy and the social order, Hobgood argues that there are conflicting theories in these documents that Catholic scholars fail to acknowledge...

...I think Hobgood is correct in the view that the commitment of the church to an organic social theory that justifies hierarchy, supports the patriarchal family, and tolerates a racist and sexist social order is a major impediment to a critical analysis of capitalism...

...She further argues that the hierarchy embraces this agenda because of an institutional pragmatism, sustained by a "relatively affluent, mostly white, and wholly male clerical perspective" which is threatened by the socioeconomic ramifications of the more radical criticisms running through the documents...

...Reformists in the orthodox strand see a failure in distribution as the fundamental problem with capitalism and understand the church's role to be that of a moral leader convincing elites to work for the common good...

...bishops in the '80s...

...Nancy S. Barrett Mary Hobgood's analysis of Catholic social teaching will hearten those who see fundamental flaws in capitalist society, who question the viability of market-oriented solutions for the Eastern European and Soviet economies, and who regard North-South, rather than East-West, tensions as the appropriate focus for critical analysis...

...Her book is a "good read" for those who have been involved in the many recent discussions of papal encyclicals and pastoral letters on the economy and social justice...

...Hobgood's original and valuable contribution is this recognition of the church's failure to take account of the existence of two competing paradigms within the same body of teaching as well as to acknowledge that the language of its teachings and the policies it supports have cultural and ideological contexts themselves...

...Yet there are no signs that the conservative tide of Catholic social teaching has shifted in any fundamental way...

...Thus she concludes: "as a consequence of both a need to preserve a social order in which an organic notion of justice could function, and the need to maintain institutional stability in times of rapid socioeconomic change, the Catholic church was afraid of the conclusions to which its own principles and analysis led...

...The differing class interests within capitalist dynamics creates incentives to enforce hierarchies based on sex, race, and class...

...It is clear, as Hobgood moves through various papal encyclicals, that they all embrace some of the radical analysis of capitalism in attacking enormous concentrations of wealth and the "greed of unconstrained consumption" existing amid the "poverty of the masses...

...bishops "had to contend with the organized voice of neoconservative American Catholics...

...But there is also a failure of the church to acknowledge "that ethical norms and values have different meanings depending on the social theory that informs them...

...Although they began to move away from the organic and hierarchical models of social organization, urging grassroots struggles and indigenous liberation movements, these encyclicals continued to support private ownership of the means of production...

...40: 31 January 1992 Commonweal...

...It is also instructive to see the conservative policy prescriptions that continually emerge from what appears to be a critical analysis of capitalism...

...The second and radical strand focuses 38: 31 January 1992 Commonweal on the fundamental contradictions in capitalism's dynamics in which labor becomes a commodity and a privileged few who own the means of production continually force down wages in the pursuit of profits...

...Rerum novarum was the first major church document to respond to the social upheaval associated with industrial capitalism...

...What she calls the orthodox strand treats the economy as autonomous from the social and political spheres, justifies hierarchies in society, and sees the market, individual self-determination, and the profit motive as ideal arrangements for efficient resource allocation and production...

...However, in its ministry to the poor and marginalized, the church confronted a range of social problems that clearly needed attention and that also raised questions about the morality of a society in which such inequality was allowed to persist...

...While the latter assertion signals Hobgood's own radical perspective and comes across as accusatory rather than analytical, her thesis of the juxtaposition of two essentially inconsistent paradigms within official church teaching is sound and original...

...Hobgood argues, perhaps too optimistically, that the internal dynamic of capitalism ultimately will force the church to take up the radical strand as the model for shaping its social teaching...

...Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S...

...and to encourage military buildups that support both neocolonial strategies and the military-industrial complex...

...The Latin American and Canadian bishops, on the other hand, were operating in political environments with a wider spectrum of opinion...

...Since private ownership of the means of production is the source of economic misery for millions and of North-South problems, as well as the social oppression of women and minorities, there is in the radical strand no reform within capitalism that can deal with these problems in any but the most superfncial way...

...In particular, the encyclicals of John XXIII and Paul VI dwell on North-South relations, and in some ways represent the most radical teachings on social reform...

...Hobgood writes, "The U.S...

...Economy (1986) contained a radical diagnosis, but offered orthodox solutions such as redistribution strategies...

...Commonweal 31 January 1992: 39 Later teachings deal with international issues in addition, emphasizing poverty in nations that had lived under a colonial yoke...

...John Paul II's Centesimus annus (May 1991) explicitly repudiates Marxist analysis and celebrates East-West rapprochement while advocating reformist solutions to North-South problems...