Doing Well and Doing Good: The Challenge to the Christian Capitalist.

ONE OF MY favorite cartoons is a sketch by Skelly depicting two Catholic bishops delivering a homily on "economic salvation." One intones from a "Pastoral Letter" while the other squints at an economics textbook held upside down. Between them a large chart shows nonsensical zigzagging lines and the word "Taxes," on either side of which are "The Poor" and "the Very, Very Rich." A kneeling parishioner prays: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are talking about."

In my work with several Catholic lay organizations, and especially when I collaborated with a group of Catholic businessmen in responding to the American Bishops' Pastoral Letter on "Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy," I often felt like that parishioner. My invocation, however, was more along the lines of, "Father, teach them, for they know not what they are talking about." Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus ("The Hundredth Year") goes a long way toward answering that prayer. The title refers to the centenary of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical on economics, Rerum Novarum ("The New Things"), which was strongly critical of the capitalist system. In Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul explicitly condemns socialism, and explains that capitalism, when understood as an appreciation of "the positive role of business, the market, private property, and... free human creativity" within "a strong juridical framework," is the economic philosophy best suited to the Church's understanding of "the inherent dignity of the individual."

Predictably, the liberal interest groups and their friends in the media wasted no time in putting a spin on the Pope's words. Largely ignoring John Paul's praise for the virtues of capitalism and his critique of the welfare state, they highlighted his warnings that the openness and opportunities of the free market are susceptible to abuse. Of course, it is no surprise-- nor should it disappoint conservatives-that the Pope sees capitalism as imperfect. Like any human system, capitalism is only as good as the people who make it work. But only those who look for salvation in economic or political institutions equate the recognition of flaws with an admission of failure.

So it is refreshing to read a forceful and lucid clarification of this whole matter, as Father Richard John Neuhaus provides in this first booklength treatment of Centesimus Annus. Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of the journal First Things and religion editor of NR, has long been a keen observer of the sometimes bewildering relationships among theology, economics, politics, and culture. Moreover, Neuhaus is no abstract analyst. For 17 years he was the Lutheran pastor of a poor, black and Hispanic parish in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant area. Drawing from these experiences, and from his broad understanding of the history of Catholic social thought, Neuhaus succeeds in clarifying this large and often confusing subject.

Doing Well and Doing Good primarily discusses the Catholic contribution to the ongoing debate on the American experiment in freedom and democracy. Nevertheless, that debate is of such universal importance that Neuhaus's thoughts on the Catholic part of it should concern everyone. John Paul's forthright endorsement of the free market and entrepreneurship in Centesimus Annus reverses a traditional political alignment. While, in the past, socialists have often invoked Church teachings, it is now we conservatives who can invoke the authority of the Catholic social gospel. Some will reply that the Church should confine its activities to spiritual matters and leave public policy to secular experts (a position to which I am sympathetic). In fact, neither the Pope nor Father Neuhaus advocates any specific policies, but they focus rather on broad moral questions as these pertain to economics and economic institutions. The Pope, in Neuhaus's view, does not wish to offer "a theology of economics," but rather "to think Christianly about economics." What John Paul does is endorse private property, the free exchange of capital and goods, and open participation in the "circle of productivity" as the fundamental conditions for the moral life of individuals and societies, and for the Christian aims of justice and the common good. He is happy to leave the details for laymen to work out.

Centesimus Annus, according to Neuhaus, comes closest to making specific recommendations regarding the alleviation of poverty. The poor (individuals and nations alike), John Paul says, have a claim on all Catholics and, indeed, on all people of goodwill. But, unlike enthusiasts for the welfare state, John Paul does not call for the redistribution of income as the way to aid the poor, but rather urges that we intensify our efforts to bring the poor into the "circle of productivity and exchange'' so that they can participate as full members of the free-enterprise system. The success of the American experiment itself offers powerful testimony to the rightness of the Pope's vision, since over the past two centuries millions of people from all over the globe have come streaming to our shores seeking only the opportunity to work and prosper, and to enjoy the blessings of freedom. The Pope's message, like our history, is one of freedom and empowerment through participation in the private-enterprise system.

The Pope thus sees capitalism as the solution, not as the problem. Centesimus Annus, explains Neuhaus, challenges us "to think about poverty not in terms of exploitation by the free market of work and capital, but as exclusion from that market." Neuhaus identifies the key to John Paul's vision in this discussion of how to aid the poor. Capitalism, in contrast to socialism and the welfare state, is a system of free individuals, rather than a faceless bureaucracy administering the fate of large classes of people. Free men and women find a way to express their God-given dignity in the opportunity to make good choices--good for themselves and their communities. As Neuhaus explains, the free market, like the free society, though not itself moral, is certainly desirable because its openness provides the opportunity for moral action. In his words, "John Paul is not pitting the market and morality against one another. His attention fixes on the acting person. The same creativity, initiative, and enterprise that make the market work can help direct the working of the market to worthy ends." It is thus the task of the Church, and of other religious institutions, to elevate our free society by directing people toward virtuous pursuits.

The Pope especially challenges those who have been blessed by economic freedom to use their wealth in a constructive way to assist those in need and to strengthen the bonds of society generally. The Pope does not attack wealth itself or the wealthy, because, plainly, to do is to jeopardize the precious freedom that makes wealth possible in the first place. Here the Pope's thinking has much in common with that of Andrew Carnegie, who wrote in his Gospel of Wealth that "the duty of the man of wealth is to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent on him, and to consider all surplus revenues trust funds to administer for the most beneficial results to the community."

Many will disagree with the moral and economic teachings of Centesimus Annus. Those who still cling to outworn ideas of socialism and collectivism will object to the idea that, as Neuhaus puts it, "the answer to abuses of the free market is not always to be found in the economic system... but is finally moral and spiritual." The great contribution of John Paul's historic encyclical, and of Father Neuhaus's compelling interpretation, is in the understanding that the moral guidance of the kind provided by Centesimus Annus will always be needed and will never be made obsolete by secular reforms.