Polarizing Catholics?

This Chicago Tribune headline topped the others: bishops press FIGHT AGAINST REAGANOMICS. Itisasif Bruce Buursma, the Tribune’s partisan religion writer, wished to divide the Catholic bishops from the Catholic people, who voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan’s economics in 1984. In fact, that is neither the intention nor the core message of the second draft of the pastoral letter on the U.S. economy.

The second draft is far better than the first. It incorporates many of the changes its critics, left and right, have proposed. Last March, writing in Catholicism in Crisis, I myself proposed a score of concrete revisions, of which many were either accepted in the second draft or rendered moot by omissions and other changes. Astute analysts saw that the bishops had absorbed a good many of the points made by the Lay Commission chaired by William E. Simon in its letter, Toward the Future.

About the Author

Michael Novak

Michael Novak was a Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat.

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This Chicago Tribune headline topped the others: bishops press FIGHT AGAINST REAGANOMICS. Itisasif Bruce Buursma, the Tribune’s partisan religion writer, wished to divide the Catholic bishops from the Catholic people, who voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan’s economics in 1984. In fact, that is neither the intention nor the core message of the second draft of the pastoral letter on the U.S. economy.

The second draft is far better than the first. It incorporates many of the changes its critics, left and right, have proposed. Last March, writing in Catholicism in Crisis, I myself proposed a score of concrete revisions, of which many were either accepted in the second draft or rendered moot by omissions and other changes. Astute analysts saw that the bishops had absorbed a good many of the points made by the Lay Commission chaired by William E. Simon in its letter, Toward the Future.