Bishops Again Take U.S. to Task Over Aid to Poor

In a rebuke of the Clinton administration and Congress, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops Tuesday called on the U.S. government to halt its retrenchment of aid to the poor at home and abroad.

The twin declarations on the role of government in foreign and domestic economic affairs came almost 10 years to the day after the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its landmark and controversial pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All,” which called for changes in the U.S. economy to guarantee “minimum conditions of human dignity in the economic sphere for every person.”

As the nation’s bishops gathered here a decade later, their declarations sounded strikingly similar to the statement that rankled the Ronald Reagan administration and caused alarm among some Catholic social conservatives. Back then, the bishops assailed what they called a “concentration of privilege” and the “social and moral scandal” over poverty in the midst of America.

This time, it was a Democratic administration that drew their fire.

“Increasingly, our foreign policy lacks any hint of the preferential option for the poor and the promotion of human dignity,” Bishop John H. Ricard told the 275 bishops. “Compassion is going out of fashion as an element of our foreign aid concerns. It seems to us to have lost its vision for and commitment to making the world a better place for all of God’s children.”

Ricard, chairman of Catholic Relief Services and an auxiliary bishop in Baltimore, said U.S. government food aid has been cut 67% in the past four years and development aid 30%. Because of the cuts, he said, Catholic Relief Services--an arm of the bishops conference and a recipient of government funds--will serve 2 million fewer people next year.

The Clinton administration offered only a mild rejoinder Tuesday.

“Our government has not lost its vision for aiding the poor,” said J. Brian Atwood, administrator for the Agency for International Development. “Unfortunately, the richest nation in the world has concluded it can’t be as generous as it once was. The bishops’ statement is sad but true. We need more resources, not only to reflect our compassion, but to protect our interests abroad as well.”

On domestic programs, the bishops chose not to directly take on the Clinton administration or the Republican majority in Congress. Instead, they issued a “non-ideological” 10-point Catholic “framework for economic life” that outlined moral principles they said should guide Catholic thinking and, they hoped, influence public policy.

“This framework is not about political platforms or secular economic theories. This is about children with names and faces, with hopes and fears,” said Bishop William Skylstad, chairman of the domestic policy committee that drafted the program. “This is about the women who are cleaning our hotel room this morning for a minimum wage. This is about immigrants who will bus our dishes this afternoon . . . and about [the homeless] who live in cardboard boxes under a bridge.”

During congressional debate earlier this year, the bishops backed welfare reform in principle and agreed that able-bodied individuals should work, a principle restated Tuesday. But they opposed Congress’ cuts in spending on such programs as Aid to Families With Dependent Children.

In the face of a widespread demand for welfare reform and budget constraints, the bishops acknowledged that their pleas may be difficult to implement.

But the bishops said they hope that the 10-point program, to be printed on pocket-size cards, will become the basis of an education program among the nation’s 60 million Catholics and spark legislation and initiatives to address the nation’s most economically vulnerable residents.

Among the 10 points are:

* The economy exists for the person, not the other way around.

* Economic choices and institutions must be judged by how they protect or undermine the life and dignity of the human person, support the family and serve the common good.

* A fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring.

* All people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages, to decent working conditions as well as to organize and join unions and other associations.

* All people, to the extent they are able, have a corresponding duty to work, a responsibility to provide for their families and contribute to society.

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington.