THE BISHOPS AND THEIR CRITICS
Steinfels, Peter
"Modern capitalism," wrote John Maynard Keynes, "is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and...
...Tawney's observations could have been written yesterday—which makes them both exhilarating and discouraging...
...economy while putting demands on it that, cumulatively, would be crippling...
...We urge mutual respect among different groups as they carry on this dialogue...
...The first subsection speaks in a distinctly Christian voice...
...And so, step by step, we are forced back from the second part of the bishops' draft, which has stirred all the controversy, to the first part...
...Will considers a "flight from complexity" or the refusal to admit intellectual difficulties or "entertain [ing] a doubt about government programs...
...The bishops did their best to be accommodating...
...It is divided into two parts...
...A columnist in the National Review called the draft "economically illiterate" and "an appeal to envy" while comparing the bishops to Lenin and declaring them "spiritually impoverished...
...institutions that enhance social solidarity...
...The bishops are unrealistic: they slight the strengths of the U.S...
...Religious thought is no longer content to dismiss the transactions of business and the institutions of society as matters irrelevant to the life of the spirit...
...MESSAGE TO FOLLOW...
...And dripping sarcasm he continued, "But, then, in the mental world to which the bishops, in their flight from complexity, have immigrated, there are no intellectual difficulties, no insoluble problems...
...If the bishops condemn an aspect of the American economy as "morally unacceptable," then, supposedly, they have cursed it root and branch...
...Amid all these criticisms, there are of course some valid points as well as a number of contradictory ones...
...Everyone agrees on these principles, they suggest...
...an opportunity for self-realization and commu178 nity contribution through work...
...The bishops are determined to avoid leaving their teaching at the high level of generality that invites every interpretation—and hence the charge of being platitudinous...
...Pastoral letters, it seems, are unlike loans: it is never the principle that earns the interest—but the distinction between the two parts of the letter is essential for understanding the bishops' work...
...The contrast between its economic philosophy and that of an Administration that five days earlier had won a massive vote of confidence was front-page news...
...each assumes a separate and independent vitality and obeys the laws of its Alexander Erlich (1912-1985) \Ale mourn the death, in January, of Alexander Erlich, a former editor of Dissent and an activist in the socialist movement all his life, notably in the Jewish Bund...
...Modern society has become so complex and fragmented that people have difficulty sensing the relationship among the different dimensions of their lives, such as the economic, the moral, and the religious...
...His book The Soviet Industrialization Debate: 1924-1928, published in 1960, received high praise...
...it led them to two other controversial judgments...
...But the same is true—with a vengeance—of the Simon/Novak letter...
...In remembering Alex, we remember as well the assassination of his father, Henryk, and of his father's comrade, Victor Alter, by Stalin in 1941...
...they never entertain "a doubt about government programs...
...It presents this division of the social system into a separate political system, economic system, and moral-cultural system as a uniquely American innovation, in effect linking capitalism to our pride in America's political freedoms and institutions...
...Nonetheless, the disparity between the bishops' text and its critics' reports is dramatic enough to cry out for some explanation...
...This period saw — the abdication of the Christian Churches from departments of economic conduct and social theory long claimed as their province [and] the general acceptance by thinkers of a scale of ethical values, which turned the desire for pecuniary gain from a perilous, if natural, frailty into the idol of philosophers and the mainspring of society...
...This, presumably, is the arrogance and "tone of magisterial righteousness" that Mr...
...But readers of the letter ought to consider another possibility...
...In an introduction to the second part, they are utterly clear about the difference between their policy applications and what went before: The movement from principle to practice is a complex and sometimes difficult task...
...Now I don't think that it would be unfair to say that the bishops' letter points more or less in the direction of such mixed capitalist regimes, while the Simon/Novak letter points in the direction of distinctly capitalist ones...
...Modern capitalism," wrote John Maynard Keynes, "is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and pursuers...
...the second tries to address all citizens in a rationally defensible manner as accessible to the nonbeliever as the believer...
...These nations still see capitalism as legitimate, but its legitimacy is accepted grudgingly by many in government...
...Assume that they actually listened to the approximately 125 individuals who appeared before them over several years of hearings and that these hearings, if nothing else, exposed them to multiple viewpoints and multiple complexities...
...is shifting...
...I would argue, on the contrary, that the bishops' specific applications, though debatable, are relatively modest and open-ended...
...one group of preachers defending turf against a rival group...
...Adam Smith was concerned about the wellbeing of the poor as well as that of the average person...
...The effectiveness of our prudential judgments in this area will depend not only on the moral force of our principles, but also on the empirical accuracy of our information...
...In certain cases, the same principles interpreted differently or combined with other assumptions may lead to different conclusions...
...Michael Novak called the draft "whiney and ungenerous...
...It might be more tedious yet to note all the further acknowledgments of complexity and uncertainty to be found throughout the second part of the draft...
...the bishops were "off-the-wall utopians" engaged in "the evisceration of their own moral and intellectual authority" and inflicting "severe wounds on the credibility of their Church...
...By common consent the treaty of partition has lapsed and the boundaries are once more in motion...
...they met once with representatives of the Simon/Novak group and with Novak himself on several other occasions...
...The same tone marked the criticism by the neoconservative Charles Krauthammer, an editor at the nominally liberal New Republic...
...It may be consoling to some of the letter's critics to suppose that if the final product reached conclusions they don't favor this was so because of a "routine acceptance of liberal assumptions" or "childlike innocence...
...As in the analogous problem of relations between Church and State, issues which were thought to have been buried . . . have shown in our own day that they were not dead, but sleeping...
...Novak wrote, for the federal government to "have new and sweeping powers" to set limits on everyone's income and wealth...
...It excludes the possibility that the bishops knew very well what they were doing and, whether with ultimate wisdom or not, adopted a number of liberal positions on the basis of informed and considered judgments...
...Second, the bishops called for an "experiment in economic democracy": an acceptance of economic rights —rights to minimum economic provision, to a worthwhile job, to an active role in directing one's work—parallet to the founding fathers' innovations in political democracy...
...177 Given the economic failings of Catholicism in the past, the bishops "might proceed with a touch of humility...
...In discussing the difficulties of achieving a national commitment to full employment, for instance, the draft explicitly states that the problem derives not only from our shortage of good will but "is also a consequence of conflicting interpretations of what causes unemployment...
...Once the nuclear pastoral, which had been given priority, turned out to directly challenge current armaments policy— and in view of run-ins between national Catholic agencies and the Reagan administration over budget cutbacks affecting the poor— business circles grew uneasy about what might be ticking away in the bishops' work on the economy...
...separate and parallel compartments, between which a due balance should be maintained, but which have no vital connection with each other...
...This emphasis on social solidarity led the bishops not only to endorse affirmative action and comparable worth as concepts relevant to correcting the effects of racial and sexual discrimination...
...Neither Mr...
...Do we really agree that an economy is to be evaluated not simply by the aggregate or average wealth it produces but by the way that wealth is distributed so that none experience exclusion...
...separate and parallel compartments, between which a due balance should be maintained, but which have no vital connection with each other...
...Where the Administration prescribed inegalitarian tax measures and the acceptance of the discipline of unemployment as necessary steps toward prosperity, the bishops judged the existing level of socioeconomic inequality in America as "morally unacceptable...
...The decision to write such a letter was made at the same 1980 meeting of the bishops that also voted to prepare a pastoral letter addressing nuclear war...
...There were undoubtedly alternative positions they did not sufficiently explore, as many on their left, it should be noted, as on their right...
...They are not so much economists but, in their spheres, a species of aspiring bishops...
...they called for a new national commitment to full employment as the leading domestic priority...
...Like other stereotypes, this one is based on some bit of reality...
...For this process of reflection and dialogue will be most constructive if it is characterized not only by conviction and commitment, but also by civility and charity...
...The bishops' awareness of the difficulties of their task is reflected in the very structure of the letter, which its critics generally ignore...
...The bishops then repeat something that they said in their pastoral letter on nuclear weaponry: We do not intend that our treatment of each of these [specific] issues carry the same moral authority as our statement of universal moral principles and formal Church teaching...
...This is surely an improvement over the monolithic social system of a theocratic or totalitarian society...
...In its support the Simon/Novak letter includes a lengthy "Table of Comparative Economic Measures" listing over 160 of the world's nations, and categorizing them as either capitalist, mixed capitalist, capitaliststatist, mixed socialist, or socialist...
...One was emphasized in the press coverage—the bishops' outspoken insistence on the needs of the poor...
...That is why it is noteworthy that the very table reproduced in the Simon/Novak letter shows the mixed capitalist economies equaling the capitalist ones in freedom and excelling them in physical quality of life and in per capita Gross National Product...
...Respect for human dignity, in this participatory, communitarian sense, requires three things: a minimum level of material security...
...each assumes a separate and independent vitality and obeys the laws of its own being...
...Ethical values in themselves do not dictate specific kinds of programs or provide the blueprints for action...
...Erlich was a professor of economics at Columbia University and a member of the executive committee of the W. Averill Harriman Institute for the Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia...
...on the primacy of justice and solidarity with the poor in the biblical vision...
...One was the conclusion that while they saw numerous justifications for inequalities of reward, the degree of gross inequality in income and wealth in America— quite independent of the absolute amount of well-being afforded those at lower levels—was itself "morally unacceptable...
...Again and again the bishops acknowledge that people of good will, Catholics among them, will disagree about particular economic policies...
...These critics' complaints can be summed up in a handful of propositions...
...But the bishops do not assume naively that they can return to a premodern worldview dominated by religious faith alone...
...There are three things to be noted about this first part of the letter...
...The bishops know that their words must be understandable and persuasive, at least in part, to those outside their religious tradition as well as to those within it...
...Perhaps what we are seeing here is simply the territorial imperative...
...it was the second part, on specific applications...
...A group of Catholics, headed by William Simon and Michael Novak and heavily weighted with conservatives and neoconservatives linked to the Nixon and Reagan administrations, began preparing an alternative "lay" statement— an exercise, as one admirer described it, in "preemptive damage control...
...While the letter is definite and perhaps even radical in setting forth the standards by which an economy such as America's should be evaluated, it is simultaneously modest and even reticent—far too reticent, some would say—in plumping for any particular diagnosis of the economy's problems: "There is no clear consensus about the nature of the problems facing the country or about the best ways to address these problems effectively...
...Rightly or wrongly, with wisdom or with its opposite, not only in England but on the Continent and in America, not only in one denomination but among Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Nonconformists, an attempt is being made to restate the practical implications of the social ethics of the Christian faith, in a form sufficiently comprehensive to provide a standard by which to judge the collective actions and institutions of mankind, in the sphere both of international politics and social organization...
...Why do the bishops' critics so regularly up the ante in order to make their work of demolition that much easier...
...This is followed by an elaboration of "Ethical Norms for Economic Life," which do not rely explicitly on the language or authority of Scripture— a response to the realities of secularization and pluralism that Tawney explored in their origins...
...One wonders, in fact, how many of the critics did so...
...If one returns to the source from which this table came (a study published by Freedom House), one finds the following description of the "mixed capitalist" category: "Mixed capitalist systems . . . provide social services on a large scale through governmental or other nonprofit institutions, with the result that private control over property is sacrificed to egalitarian purposes...
...They want to avoid the stratagem of the 18th-century divines whom Tawney wrote about and who, confronted with the vigor of an independent science of economics, began to "formulate the ethical principles of Christianity in terms of a comfortable ambiguity, and rarely indicate with any precision their application to commerce, finance, and the ownership of property...
...Each nation is rated according to its degree of political and economic freedom plus its per capita Gross National Product as of 1978 and a measure of material well-being called the Physical Quality of Life Index...
...The journal's editors labeled the letter "ecclesiastical Mondaleism...
...But does everyone really agree...
...Or by the way the work that produces this wealth is organized, so that the everyday activity of all is imbued with meaning...
...By and large, it was not this first part of the bishops' draft, on ethical norms, that attracted most attention...
...Jerry Falwell saw the letter as pointing the way to communism...
...Since he wrote, efforts to overcome the modern division between economics and morality have repeatedly grown dormant and then stirred from slumber...
...there are only shortages of good will...
...The line of division between the spheres of religion and secular business...
...They don't pretend the church has all the answers, but they do think it can "make an important contribution to finding the right path...
...Less speculative, I believe, is the role a deepseated stereotype may have played not only in the critics' characterization of the draft letter but in their very reading of it...
...The bishops' focus was not on material deprivation per se but on whatever—material deprivation included, of course—kept people from being active participants in their communities...
...Has functional illiteracy really made such inroads among my fellow journalists and editorial writers...
...Again and again the bishops note the complexity of these issues...
...One observer, looking back at this double-barreled decision, remarked that 176 the bishops may be fiercely opposed to abortion and euthanasia but seem rather favorably inclined toward suicide...
...Andrew M. Greeley, having duly distanced himself from the "nervous neighings" of Novak, concluded that the letter was "inept and inadequate...
...182...
...I f one discards these mentioned stereotypes of the bishops, the lines of criticisms advanced against their letter by no means dissolve entirely, but they do appear in a new perspective...
...This is especially so when the bishops' draft is compared with the rival document from the Simon/Novak commission...
...So, in effect, did Norman Podhoretz...
...The bishops are uninformed: all these questions are terribly complex...
...Unfortunately, the Simon/Novak schema provides little guidance for determining when, short of theocracy or totalitarianism, the "separate and parallel compartments," to use Tawney's words, are no longer in "due balance...
...The bishops are behind the times: their proposals date from Great Society days or derive from the mixed economies of Western Europe and, even when successful, both these economic models have now reached the limits of their possibilities...
...There is certainly room for pluralism within the Church on these matters...
...and they declared that the litmus test of any society's economy was the way it treated the poor and powerless...
...But what a surprise to turn from these strictures to the text of the draft itself...
...Berger nor Mr...
...But that well-being he defined largely in terms of material subsistence and consumption, and he saw it as precisely the product of the transformation whose description by Tawney began these observations: the division of lifeinto its elements—politics, business, and spiritual exercises...
...A few people did more than start worrying...
...This is particularly so since the Simon/Novak letter did not risk, as the bishops did, going into particulars in detail...
...In this "secularization of social and economic philosophy," a synthesis of values, presided over by religion, was — resolved into its elements—politics, business, and spiritual exercises...
...others are welcome to reach different conclusions—provided they make the moral connections in a similarly serious and scrupulous fashion...
...Over 60 years ago, R. H. Tawney, who cited those lines from the young Keynes, set out to explore how this condition had come about...
...The bishops, he began, had "discovered that God subscribes to the liberal agenda...
...Here, evidently, is what Mr...
...The list of individuals with whom the bishops held formal consultations is heavy with business executives...
...First comes a rich reflection on biblical themes of creation, covenant, and community...
...I don't want to pretend that there are no real problems with the bishops' letter or that nothing stands between them and their critics that is more substantial than the fog of condescension and polemic...
...Citing a text from the Second Vatican Council, they agree that social and economic affairs "enjoy their own laws and values, which must be gradually deciphered, put to use and regulated by human beings...
...It is noteworthy that what Tawney saw as a key problem of the modern world, this division, the Simon/Novak committee simply proposes as its solution...
...The point is not to argue the superiority of the bishops' letter to the Simon/Novak one—although I don't think that argument would be hard to make—but to note that as soon as moral teach180 ers try at all to touch base with the real world, in our day they cannot avoid some alignment in the battles of social science, even as they strive to withhold canonization from Lord Keynes or Milton Friedman or Karl Marx...
...Business Week concluded that the letter's "comments on the workings of the economy in four areas—unemployment, poverty, economic relations with developing nations, and economic planning—amount to a wide-ranging critique of Reagan's less-is-more brand of governance...
...If the bishops decry inequality, then, supposedly, they are calling, as Mr...
...it is only how we put them into operation that is at issue...
...179 I t is, I admit, tedious to cite chapter and verse of the bishops' letter to refute the fatuousness of Krauthammer or the bluster of Berger...
...George F. Will outdid Buckley in disdain...
...That document argues the case for an entrepreneurial capitalism relatively free of government regulation or efforts to redistribute income...
...The topics they address "are illustrative topics intended to exemplify the interaction of moral values and economic issues in our day...
...In this case, it was his belief that — the philosophy which would keep economic interests and ethical idealism safely locked up in their separate compartments finds that each of the prisoners is increasingly restive...
...The bishops "expect and welcome debate...
...And at the close of letter: None of us can afford to live a spiritually schizophrenic existence in which our private lives are oriented toward Christian discipleship while our economic activities are devoid of these same values...
...And the reception afforded the latest effort—the vigorous first draft of a pastoral letter on the economy by America's Catholic bishops— shows how deep-seated are the opposing tendencies that Tawney studied six decades ago...
...For all the genius and subtlety of the mind of Adam Smith—often as rashly caricatured by 181 modern liberals as the bishops have been by their critics—it seems obvious to me that he did not accept the criteria the bishops set forth...
...We do not seek to foreclose discussion...
...Buckley nor Mr...
...The bishops' starting point for evaluating the economy is human dignity, and human dignity is "realized in community with others...
...Krauthammer nor Mr...
...Krauthammer (no stranger to either) finds so insufferable in the letter...
...The first part is entitled "Biblical and Theological Foundations...
...The bishops are platitudinous: who is against the poor anyhow...
...Where the Administration minimized—even derided—the economic role of government, the bishops endorsed government efforts to guide the economy and provide social welfare...
...That the bishops' letter has proved controversial is said to stem not from its premises, which are unexceptionable, but from its concrete suggestions, which are said to be impractical and radical...
...The bishops are partisan: as spiritual leaders they should stick to announcing broad norms rather than acting like the Democratic party at prayer...
...By and large, the letter's critics avoid confronting the bishops on this section...
...Novak are known for any contribution to the discipline of economics...
...Their letter, he continued, springs from minds "marinated in conventional wisdom...
...Consider that the committee drafting this letter was constituted of intelligent individuals, most of whom must even meet a large payroll and supervise a sizable network of activities and organizations...
...They have turned to experts out of their "conviction that earthly affairs have a rightful independence which the Church and we as bishops must respect...
...It is the stereotype of the clergyman as an unworldly, moralistic, and at least pretentious, if not hypocritical, do-gooder...
...When the bishops extend themselves to specific applications, they recognize the unavoidable danger of casting their lot with a particular school of economic thought—especially at a time when the disarray of contending schools is as great as it is today...
...Its references to economic literature are far more ideologically "bunched" than those of the bishops...
...This supposition is somewhat arrogant...
...In sum, this is their best attempt to show how the general norms drawn from Scripture and the social demands of human dignity apply to specific issues...
...Not so widely understood was how this insistence was part of an intensely social and communitarian vision...
...In the end, it is their very premises that sharply challenge the deeply rooted assumptions of the present moment...
...Even a few of the president's supporters welcomed the letter...
...No single all-purpose cure is available...
...When the draft appeared last November 11, it did not disappoint...
...Will nor Mr...
...It is true, for example, that there are lacunae in the bishops' considerations and references...
...Like other politically committed scholars, Tawney saw his historical investigations as intimately linked to contemporary concerns...
...And so the bishops conclude: We expect that on complex economic questions a diversity of opinions on specific policy applications will exist, even among those who hold the same moral principles...
...It is in turn subdivided into two sections...
...David Gergen, former director of communications at the Reagan White House, wrote: "The bishops have spoken up at exactly the right time and in the right way: at a moment when the nation is about to make crucial economic decisions, the bishops have said we must focus again on the rising tide of poverty in America...
...This, no doubt, is the basis for the peroration of the article in Commentary by Peter Berger who, after writing a rather fine-grained critique of what is by his own account no radical document, suddenly declaims: Human lives are at stake: by what right, then, do these men appear before us, wrapped in the mantle of authority of prophets and popes stretching back to ancient Israel, and dare to tell us that one set of highly precarious policy choices represents the will of God in our time...
...THE EDITORS own being...
...Or by the way institutions foster participation and solidarity rather than passivity and isolation...
...Rather, our principles must interact with empirical data, with historical, social and political realities, and with competing demands for limited resources...
...Where the Administration exalted American individualism, the bishops emphasized "communal solidarity...
...Once again it is interesting to turn to the Simon/Novak alternative...
...That quality is difficult to find" in the letter...
...This document," they insist, "is not a technical blueprint for economic reform, but rather an attempt to foster a serious moral analysis of economic justice...
...Government job programs have been marked by both "successes and failures," from which we can learn...
...The bishops seemed to be acting out the text of the classic Jewish telegram: "START WORRYING...
...In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, he examined the great "intellectual and moral conversion" of the 16th and 17th centuries...
...The bishops, on the other hand, have tried to propose what Tawney would call a "vital connection" between these separate compartments by their uncompromising moral stand on human solidarity and on the rights of the vulnerable and the excluded, and by their somewhat more tentative proposal for "economic democracy...
...The bishops' text is bracketed by reflections on precisely the problem that Tawney addressed: We are well aware of the difficulties involved in relating moral and religious values to economic life [the bishops say at the beginning...
...Their strategy, therefore, is to cast this part of the letter in the form of a pedagogical stimulus...
...These different systems are to serve as checks and balances, supports and correctives for one another...
...Most conservatives were not so generous...
...Where the Administration celebrated the successes of the American economy, the bishops contrasted them with its persistent shortcomings...
...This defense of the bishops' procedure assumes, of course, that the general approach taken in their policy recommendations is at least a highly plausible one—and this many of their critics obviously deny...
...William F Buckley, Jr., was restrained by comparison, merely dismissing the bishops' draft as "an accumulation of lumpen clichés" and "a purée of . . . vapidity...
Vol. 32 • April 1985 • No. 2
