The Bishops’ Folly

The long-awaited pastoral letter on “Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy” is a document remarkable for its Christian compassion for the poor and disadvantaged who exist at the margins of our affluent society. It calls us to a renewed commitment, in the name of Christ, to lifting up and healing those who are in need. But the letter is also remarkable for the gigantic leap it makes from the time-honored social teaching of the Church to the conclusion that our American economic system is in conflict with what the bishops believe to be morally acceptable. This leap is all the more remarkable in the light of human experience, which shows that economies dedicated to freedom, individual opportunity, and non-inflationary economic growth do far more to alleviate poverty and suffering than all the schemes of the social engineers and commissars of history.

Whether the five bishops who participated in the drafting process consciously intended to embrace the economic program of the Left, one cannot say. What one can say is that the background of these five draftsmen is not the sort of background that would cause one to expect from them a high level of understanding of matters economic. The five have graduate degrees, respectively, in canon law, modern languages, philosophy, divinity, and piano. They have served the Church as parish priest, missionary, prison chaplain, philosophy teacher, and monk. The record shows that none has had any experience whatever in the workings of a modern economy. Throughout their adult lives their needs have been provided for, and their careers planned by, the Church.

WE

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William E. Simon

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The long-awaited pastoral letter on “Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy” is a document remarkable for its Christian compassion for the poor and disadvantaged who exist at the margins of our affluent society. It calls us to a renewed commitment, in the name of Christ, to lifting up and healing those who are in need. But the letter is also remarkable for the gigantic leap it makes from the time-honored social teaching of the Church to the conclusion that our American economic system is in conflict with what the bishops believe to be morally acceptable. This leap is all the more remarkable in the light of human experience, which shows that economies dedicated to freedom, individual opportunity, and non-inflationary economic growth do far more to alleviate poverty and suffering than all the schemes of the social engineers and commissars of history.

Whether the five bishops who participated in the drafting process consciously intended to embrace the economic program of the Left, one cannot say. What one can say is that the background of these five draftsmen is not the sort of background that would cause one to expect from them a high level of understanding of matters economic. The five have graduate degrees, respectively, in canon law, modern languages, philosophy, divinity, and piano. They have served the Church as parish priest, missionary, prison chaplain, philosophy teacher, and monk. The record shows that none has had any experience whatever in the workings of a modern economy. Throughout their adult lives their needs have been provided for, and their careers planned by, the Church.