COMMENTS: The Bishops Confront Capitalism
Cort, John C.
The Catholic bishops hadn't even produced any part of a first draft of their pastoral letter on "Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy," when Business Week and Fortune...
...Japan, Inc., needs to be met with U.S.A., Inc...
...She gave a nod to worker participation ("cooperation") at the workplace, and favored more "profit-sharing in the compensation package...
...Elmer Johnson, genial GM vice-president in charge of public affairs: "The ultimate goals of economic policy are an adequate level of material well-being for all persons and meaningful work for all persons able and willing to work...
...A few minutes later, Archbishop Weakland asked for the floor and said, "First of all, I think Bob Ashmore's question is more serious than we took it to be...
...1:1...
...Peterson wants to cut Social Security and Medicare for those who don't need it and eliminate cost-of-living raises...
...The beatitude is: Blessed are the poor, not blessed is poverty...
...Don't remove the safety net for the truly needy, but cut down the padded hammock for the middle and upper-middle class...
...Finn: "If Elmer Johnson's 'ultimate goals' mean `most basic' and not 'far off and utopian,' then critics of planning should provide concrete suggestions for transforming the plight of the 36 million poor and the 10 million unemployed workers in the nation...
...Economy," when Business Week and Fortune started whimpering...
...Business Week (12/19/83) quoted such authorities as Van P Smith, Catholic businessman of Muncie, Indiana: "I would be exceedingly disappointed if the Church took a position that was critical [of capitalism...
...We have what it takes to provide a decent life for all members of our society...
...If the bishops are going to be critical of capitalism, it will certainly be on the best evidence...
...He scored in emphasizing Greyhound's insistence that its bus drivers were earning too much, while its chief executive was taking a raise from $400,000 to $500,000...
...Graciela Olivarez, Hispanic attorney, former director of Community Services under Carter: In the lamentable absence of any black advocate on the formal program, Ms...
...Less consumption and more saving for investment...
...Anticipating that the bishops would come out with something as subversive as their Canadian colleagues' statement, Fortune charged: "The bishops gravitate toward such formulations because socialism gives them a role to play, while capitalism— reliance on impersonal market forces—leaves them out in the cold...
...The teaching is grounded in the Gospel, and how can you read it except that it's the poor who are blessed, that perfection requires the reduction of material desires, and the wealthy are by definition on the way to hell...
...Capitalism and John Paul II agree "that there should be a national commitment to full employment...
...THE FOLLOWING is not so much a summary of the proceedings as a sampling of quotes or ideas that caught the eye while reading the "experts' " papers (averaging 40 pages each) or the ear while listening to their summaries and the discussions that followed...
...Major investment decisions have become too important to be left to the private market alone, but a way must be found to incorporate private corporate planning into this process in a nonadversary way...
...All this because Notre Dame's College of Business Administration hosted a public conference, December 12-14,1983, to advise the bishops' fiveman committee that is preparing the pastoral letter...
...both have had substantial experience as missionaries in Latin America...
...This is prima facie nonsense...
...Let's take him at his word...
...Fortune (12/26/83) tried the strategy of direct insult...
...THE FIRST DRAFT won't be released until after the election, to avoid the appearance of partisanship, the second in May 1985, and the final pastoral letter probably in November 1985...
...Certainly, Jesus did everything he could to heal the sick and feed the poor...
...Peterson did favor defense cuts...
...He reminded the Church that it should set a good example in its hospitals, schools, and colleges on such matters as discrimination and "the right of collective bargaining...
...Oswald was the only union representative on the formal program, but several others (Sol Chaikin, Ladies Garment Workers' president, and Bob Harbrandt, Food & Commercial Workers' vice-president) participated in discussions and were after-dinner speakers...
...By now some 15 sessions have been held, and scores of witnesses and "experts" have been invited, including our own Michael Harrington...
...Joseph Pichler, president of the Dillon Companies: "We're born with the right to liberty, not with the right to work...
...Peter Peterson, Lehman Brothers, secretary of commerce in Nixon's cabinet: "More planning would create more problems...
...Where did Pichler get that reading of capitalism...
...In 144 other words, what would happen to the American economy if everybody obeyed the Gospel...
...Dennis McCann, theologian, DePaul University: Took off from Socrates' City of Pigs, the "feverish, luxurious city" in Plato's Republic, proceeded to an interesting comparison of John Rawls's theories of justice with those of the "Right Reverend New Dealer," John A. Ryan, and he concluded that "Full employment, once again, must become a national priority...
...2) "The Gospel seems to treat riches and poverty as irrelevant...
...Bishop George Speltz of St...
...Speakers are listed in order of appearance...
...Faulty programming by Notre Dame...
...Advocated "not socialism" but "a mixed economy model giving labor, management, and the several levels of government some say in the structure of the production and distribution of jobs...
...Marina von Neumann Whitman, glamorous GM vice-president and chief economist: "I rather like our chaotic, decentralized decision-making...
...Made a strong case, basing it on Catholic social teaching, that work is both a right and a privilege...
...The first day featured two vicepresidents of General Motors and the chairman of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb...
...John's University, Minnesota: Quoted Thomas Aquinas ("Whatever can be rectified by reason is a matter of moral virtue"), Michael Harrington, Barry Bluestone, Lester Thurow ("To compete, we need the national equivalent of a corporate investment committee...
...For many years the international head of the Benedictine Order, he has traveled all over the world and seen, like Weigand and Rosazza, more of the terrible poverty of people of various races, nations, and classes than the white, middle-class American males who were so prominent at that conference at Notre Dame...
...Father David Hollenbach, S.J., theologian, Weston School of Theology, Cambridge: Took issue with Marcuse quoting C. B. Chisholm, "The necessity to work is a neurotic symptom...
...Rudy Oswald, AFL—CIO research director: Was invited to the program too late to prepare a paper, but this gave him a chance to improvise effectively in challenging Pichler's more unreasonable statements...
...The guest list was not exactly a roll call of revolutionaries...
...This was a most significant difference of opinion...
...He also, in a refreshing display of intracorporate disagreement, seemed to favor "an Industrial Cooperation Act, legislation that would establish a commission composed of top representatives from labor, management, and government, [and] assigned responsibility for identifying the sources of these adversary tensions and proposing new mechanisms of cooperation...
...Their "commitment to the poor" was outspoken and obvious...
...Gar Alperovitz, National Center for Economic Alternatives: "We are told that we must curtail social programs, that we cannot assist the poor, that we cannot assist other nations...
...Good point...
...All of them had something to say at one time or another...
...How do you square the theological and philosophical advocacy of higher values with an American economic philosophy that encourages pursuit of material objectives, measures the success of an economic enterprise in terms of stimulating consumer demand...
...She made an able case for the poor and, like several other speakers, argued strongly for putting the unemployed to work at repairing and improving the nation's infrastructure: roads, mass transit, bridges, pollution control, health and detention facilities...
...At that point my tape ran out, but that was enough for me...
...this is in welcome contrast to GM's horror when Walter Reuther proposed more of both back in the '50s...
...Justice as participation...
...The two younger members of the committee, Bishop William Weigand of Salt Lake City and Bishop Peter Rosazza, a bearded auxiliary from Hartford (and who was the last bearded Catholic bishop in America...
...Alperovitz quoted John Paul's encyclical Laborem Exercens to underline the fact that the responsibility for the "overall planning" necessary for full employment "weighs on the shoulders of the state" but should be implemented without "one-sided centralization" and with democratic forms of decision-making...
...Another vote for planning, full employment, and economic democracy...
...Olivarez was the only minority representative...
...It is time we started emphasizing demand-side economics...
...But when was it ever a national priority...
...The swing man then is the committee's chairman, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee...
...BUT WHAT OF THE BISHOPS in all this...
...Ms...
...Still, it was nice of him to say it...
...Cloud, Minnesota, also came across somewhat on the conservative side, but genuinely concerned about the plight of family farmers, who can use a little genuine concern...
...Earlier, he has written: (1) "Church authorities have only a very weak authority, indeed, for their pronouncements in the area of economics and Christianity and their proper relation...
...The bishops were kinder in their reception of Novak than one member of the congregation who pointed out that, in view of the hard sayings that Jesus directed repeatedly at rich people and his closing the gates of heaven to those who don't treat the poor with justice and generosity, it followed that Novak knew little about Christianity...
...Archbishop Thomas Donellan of Atlanta had told Business Week, "If you want a token conservative, I'm it...
...Daniel Finn, economist and theologian from St...
...The moderator ignored these questions and went on to other questioners...
...Robert Ashmore, a professor of philosophy at Marquette University, Milwaukee, led off with some basic questions: "Isn't there a radical opposition between Catholic social teaching and the American economy...
...Novak spoke on "The Poor and the Disadvantaged" and said nothing very memorable, but one might conclude that, contrary to his stated belief, poverty is relevant to a Christian...
...One could not help thinking, Do you really believe that, Elmer...
...Alperovitz was not as effective as he might have been in challenging this unqualified put-down of consumption...
...But he 143 distinguished between negative rights: legal immunities from coercion, such as freedom of religion, speech, assembly, due process, on the one hand, and positive rights, on the other: the rights to work, food, housing, health care, social security, which demand action rather than restraint on the part of society and the state...
...Alperovitz noted that right now our Gross National Product averages out to $60,000 per family of four...
...Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute: Novak has gone from speechwriter for George McGovern in 1972 to Reagan's house theologian in 1980, which is fast traveling, considering the distance...
...If you want a clue as to how the first draft will read, I can suggest nothing better than the following from the discussion period during the session on "The Poor and the Disadvantaged...
...I could detect nothing weak about Weakland...
...Ray Marshall, secretary of labor in Carter's cabinet: Defended the CETA programs (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973) against all critics and advocated planning with force and intelligence...
...142 He cited the examples of France, Germany, Japan, and Sweden over the years 1959-76 to show that more intelligent planning could have kept millions of idle Americans working without excessive inflation, adding as much as $3.8 trillion to our GNP and $750 billion to federal revenue...
...Whitman opposed such a commission, obviously seeing it as the labor-camel's nose under the tent of participation in national economic planning: "The inevitable result would be greater politicization of economic processes and more rather than less adversarial relationships...
Vol. 31 • April 1984 • No. 2
