Some Excerpts From Catholic Bishops’ Letter, ‘Economic Justice for All’
Here are excerpts from the Roman Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,” which was approved by a 225-9 vote Thursday at the prelates’ annual meeting:
The Church and the Future of the U.S. Economy:
Every perspective on economic life that is human, moral and Christian must be shaped by three questions: What does the economy do for people? What does it do to people? And how do people participate in it? The economy is a human reality: men and women working together to develop and care for the whole world of God’s creation.
All this work must serve the material and spiritual well-being of people. It influences what people hope for themselves and their loved ones. It affects the way they act together in society. It influences their very faith in God.
. . . Serious economic choices go beyond purely technical issues to fundamental questions of value and human purpose. We believe that in facing these questions the Christian religious and moral tradition can make an important contribution.
Economic Challenge:
The task in the United States today is as demanding as that faced by our forebears. . . . There is unfinished business in the American experiment in freedom and justice for all.
The economic challenge of today has many parallels with the political challenge that confronted the founders of our nation. In order to create a new form of political democracy they were compelled to develop ways of thinking and political institutions that had never existed before. Their efforts were arduous and their goals imperfectly realized, but they launched an experiment in the protection of civil and political rights that has prospered through the efforts of those who came after them.
We believe the time has come for a similar experiment in securing economic rights: the creation of an order that guarantees the minimum conditions of human dignity in the economic sphere for every person. By drawing on the resources of the Catholic moral-religious tradition we hope to make a contribution through this letter to such a new “American Experiment”: a new venture to secure economic justice for all.
Poverty:
Harsh poverty plagues our country despite its great wealth. More than 33 million Americans are poor; by any reasonable standard another 20 to 30 million are needy. Poverty is increasing in the United States, not decreasing. For a people who believe in “progress,” this should be cause for alarm.
These burdens fall most heavily on blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. Even more disturbing is the large increase in the number of women and children living in poverty. Today children are the largest single group among the poor. This tragic fact seriously threatens the nation’s future. That so many people are poor in a nation as rich as ours is a social and moral scandal that we cannot ignore.
Distribution of Wealth:
Basic justice also calls for the establishment of a floor of material well-being on which all can stand. This is a duty of the whole of society and it creates particular obligations for those with greater resources. This duty calls into question extreme inequalities of income and consumption when so many lack basic necessities.
Catholic social teaching does not maintain that a flat, arithmetical equality of income and wealth is a demand of justice, but it does challenge economic arrangements that leave large numbers of people impoverished. Further, it sees extreme inequality as a threat to the solidarity of the human community, for great disparities lead to deep social divisions and conflict.
. . . The concentration of privilege that exists today results far more from institutional relationships that distribute power and wealth inequitably than from differences in talent or lack of desire to work.
. . . We find the disparities of income and wealth in the United States to be unacceptable.
Economic Rights:
Participation in the life of the community calls for the protection of the rights to employment, to healthful working conditions, to wages and other benefits sufficient to provide individuals and their families with a standard of living in keeping with human dignity, and to the possibility of property ownership.
These fundamental personal rights--civil and political as well as social and economic--state the minimum conditions for social institutions that respect human dignity, social solidarity and justice. . . . Any denial of these rights harms persons and wounds the human community.
Social and economic rights call for a mode of implementation different from that required to secure civil and political rights. Freedom of worship and of speech imply immunity from interference on the part of both other persons and the government.
The rights to education, employment and social security, for example, are empowerments that call for positive action by individuals and society at large. . . . Civil and political rights allow persons to participate freely in the public life of the community; for example, through free speech, assembly and the vote.
In democratic countries, these rights have been secured through a long and vigorous history of creating the institutions of constitutional government. In seeking to secure the full range of social and economic rights today, a similar effort to shape new economic arrangements will be necessary.
Employment:
Employment is a basic right, a right which protects the freedom of all to participate in the economic life of society.
. . . At present there is nominal endorsement of the full employment ideal, but no firm commitment to bringing it about. If every effort were now being made to create the jobs required, one might argue that the situation today is the best we can do. But such is not the case. The country is doing far less than it might to generate employment.
Over the last decade economists, policy-makers and the general public have shown greater willingness to tolerate unemployment levels of 6% to 7% or even more. Although we recognize the complexities and trade-offs involved in reducing unemployment, we believe that 6% to 7% unemployment is neither inevitable nor acceptable.
. . . A viable strategy for employment generation must assume that a large part of the solution will be with private firms and small businesses. At the same time it must be recognized that government has a prominent and indispensable role to play in addressing the problem of unemployment.
The market alone will not automatically produce full employment. Therefore, the government must act to ensure that this goal is achieved by coordinating general economic policies, by job-creation programs and by other appropriate policy measures.
Military:
The investment of human creativity and material resources in the production of weapons of war makes these economic problems even more difficult to solve. Defense Department expenditures in the United States are almost $300 billion per year. The rivalry and mutual fear between superpowers divert into projects that threaten death, minds and money that could better human life.
. . . Although some of these expenditures are necessary for the defense of the nation, some elements of the military budget are both wasteful and dangerous for world peace. Careful reductions should be made in these areas in order to free up funds for social and economic reforms. In the end, the question is not whether the United States can provide the necessary funds to meet our social needs but whether we have the political will to do so.
Global Economic Connections:
Half the world’s people, nearly two and a half billion, live in countries where the annual per capita income is $400 or less. . . . Nearly half a billion are chronically hungry, despite abundant harvests worldwide. Fifteen out of every 100 children born in those countries die before the age of 5, and millions of the survivors are physically or mentally stunted.
No aggregate of individual examples could portray adequately the appalling inequities within those desperately poor countries and between them and our own.
. . . Yet in recent years, U.S. policy toward development in the Third World has become increasingly one of selective assistance . . . at the expense of basic human needs and economic development. Such a view makes national security the central policy principle.
Developing countries have become largely testing grounds in the East-West struggle; they seem to have meaning or value mainly in terms of this larger geopolitical calculus. The result is that issues of human need and economic development take second place to the political-strategic argument. This tendency must be resisted.
Third World Debts:
The aggregate external debt of the developing countries now approaches $1 trillion, or about one-half of their combined GNP; this total doubled between 1979 and 1984 and continues to rise. . . . This crisis, however, goes beyond the system; it affects people. It afflicts and oppresses large numbers of people who are already severely disadvantaged.
Our commitment to the preferential option for the poor does not permit us to remain silent in these circumstances. Ways must be found to meet the immediate emergency--moratorium on payments, conversion of some dollar-denominated debt into local-currency debt, creditors’ accepting a share of the burden by partially writing down selected loans, capitalizing interest, or perhaps outright cancellation.
Farming:
The decline in the number of moderate-sized farms, the increased concentration of land ownership and the mounting evidence of poor resource conservation raise serious questions of morality and public policy. As pastors, we cannot remain silent while thousands of farm families caught in the present crisis lose their homes, their land and their way of life.
. . . The democratization of decision-making and control of the land resulting from wide distribution of farm ownership are protections against concentration of power and a consequent possible loss of responsiveness to public need in this crucial sector of the economy.
. . . Established federal farm programs, whose benefits now go disproportionately to the largest farmers, should be reassessed for their long-term effects on the structure of agriculture.
‘Option for the Poor’
The obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the single most urgent claim on the conscience of the nation. As individuals and as a nation, therefore, we are called to make a fundamental “option for the poor.” The obligation to evaluate social and economic activity from the viewpoint of the poor and the powerless arise from the radical command to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. . . . Deprivation and powerlessness of the poor wounds the whole community. The extent of their suffering is a measure of how far we are from being a true community of persons.
