Social justice: taking stock.

The first article in this series appeared in the combined January-February issue of this year, pages 10,11, and 34. It explained the goal of Catholic social teaching (protect the dignity of every human being) and explained some of its main principles. In this second article the author attempts to evaluate the social justice teaching of the Canadian Catholic Bishops' Conference, which is always presented as self-evident proof of the magisterial social teaching, yet has seldom, if ever, been examined in the light of that teaching's principles. The author finds a number of contradictions.

As I noted in the opening article of this series Catholic social teaching recognizes families, not individuals, as the basic cells of society. Canada's bishops have repeatedly endorsed this fundamental principle to the point of insisting that every feasible measure be taken to strengthen families.

This is laudable. Not so laudable is it that the bishops and their advisors seem unable to distinguish measures that strengthen families from those that weaken them. Over the years, in fact, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has consistently approved or tolerated policies and practices that tend to undermine families, partly by treating individuals as the basic units of society.

Consider the following:

* the CCCB is a staunch supporter of the welfare state, which creates incentives for individuals to transfer their dependence on families to outside agencies;

* the CCCB is committed to a publicly funded system of universally accessible daycare, which can put the youngest family members at serious risk for emotional and intellectual harm;

* the CCCB tolerates permissive annulment, which ratifies divorce and the break-up of families;

* the CCCB fails to mobilize the faithful against contraceptive marital sex, thereby undermining the total mutual self-giving that characterizes spousal love and helps to sustain both marriages and families.

State intervention

As early as 1961, the bishops contended that just economic and social policies require "an ever-increasing intervention on the part of public authority." [1] Five years later, they spoke favourably about the so-called war on poverty undertaken by governments at all levels. [2]

The bishops have long supported such government initiatives as comprehensive health care, old age security, the Canada and Quebec pension plans, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, social assistance, minimum wage laws, affirmative action, equal pay for work of equal value, and job creation policies aimed at full employment. They have also advocated a guaranteed annual income and, as mentioned, a fully funded system of universally accessible child care. The bishops regard universality of entitlement to social programs as a basic right of citizenship.

Families in Sweden and Canada

Sweden has long been regarded as the world's leading welfare state. In 1993, the Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice cited Sweden as a nation that has succeeded in achieving low rates of poverty and high levels of employment. [3] It has also experienced low rates of birth and high levels of cohabitation, illegitimacy, divorce, and single parenthood.

Following a major study, sociologist David Poponoe said it is very likely that the family has grown weaker in Sweden than anywhere else. [4] Writing in the winter, 1991, issue of Public Interest, Popenoe declared: "What happened to the family in Sweden over the past few decades lends strong support to the proposition that as the welfare state advances, the family declines. If unchecked, this decline could eventually undermine the very welfare that the state seeks to promote."

It wasn't supposed to be that way. The idea was to help families function better as decentralized welfare agencies. The state sought to strengthen families, not weaken them. But over time, Popenoe says, "welfare states have tended not so much to assist families as to replace them; people's dependence on the state has grown while their reliance on families has weakened." He describes the gradual loss of the family's ability and will to care for itself as a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences.

We don't need to consult sociological research to know that families in Canada have declined under the welfare state. The evidence is all around us, ranging from birth rates so low they have failed to reach replacement level in more than a quarter century to tax rates so high they have made it increasingly difficult for families to cope financially, especially those with single incomes.

Despite the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars through burgeoning social programs, the (relatively) poor are still with us in significant numbers. We have failed to win the war against poverty and in the process have shell-shocked our families. Sweden, more overburdened by government than we are, is experiencing between 8.5 and 11 percent unemployment. Its per capita income has dropped to 16th place among industrialized nations, behind such countries as Ireland, Italy, and Iceland. [5] In view of the failed objectives and the tragic casualties, one cannot help wondering whether the war against poverty has been a just war.

What happened to subsidiarity?

I don't mean to minimize the importance of government initiatives. Governments, after all, are responsible for the common good. Nor do I mean to suggest that social programs, even universal ones, have no place in society. What I mean is that in taking initiatives and in implementing and operating social programs, governments should respect the principle of subsidiarity. When, for example, they do for individuals, families, or other associations what these ought to be able to do for themselves, but for one reason or another cannot or will not, governments must regard their interventions as exceptional and temporary, even if circumstances require that they be routine and protracted. Otherwise, our leaders may come to believe that it is normal and acceptable to displace initiative in areas that are not properly theirs.

Historically, one of Christianity's principal contributions to the Western political tradition has been to restrict secular power. The CCCB's largely uncritical acceptance of intrusive government is a stunning departure and suggests a left-of-centre bias. The CCCB should subject the welfare state and all its workers and pomps to more searching scrutiny, keeping in mind the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity and the good of families. The bishops could begin by calling to account a tax system that pressures mothers to leave their children to the care of outsiders and a proposed daycare system that puts children at risk.

Equality and the income tax

In 1986, the CCCB's Social Affairs Commission defended the rights to "quality care" and of women to enter the work force "with opportunities equal to those of men." At the same time, the bishops recommended that the publicly funded system they favour be noncompulsory. Mothers, the commission said, should be able to stay home with their children. [6]

Because of the income tax system, this is a difficult choice to make. For one thing, single-income families are taxed more heavily than double-income households earning the same amount. This is because our progressive tax system is based on individual rather than family incomes. For another thing, $7,000 in tax deductions for each child under seven is available to families who use daycare, compared with $213 per child in additional Child Tax Benefits for those who raise their children at home.

Clearly, we have a tax system that creates incentives for parents to farm out their children and both go to work. The welfare state, in fact, cannot function unless nearly everyone is working and paying taxes.

More serious than these financial aberrations is the bishops' assumption that "quality" surrogate care has no adverse consequences for families. But forty years of world-wide data suggest that it can have. In 1997, for example, the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development released a long-term study which reported that placement in daycare provided a "significant prediction" of poorer mother-child interaction and reduced cognitive and linguistic development. [7]

Other research indicates that if young children receive more than twenty hours of daycare a week, beginning in the first year of life, as many as half of them could develop insecure maternal attachment (bonding). There are convincing data that the emotional quality of mother-infant bonding influences the ability to form other human relationships later on. [8] Perhaps this is one reason why in Gaudium et spes the Second Vatican Council said children, "especially the younger among them, need the care of their mother at home." [9]

It is curious that our bishops should endorse universal daycare when out-of-family child rearing on a mass scale is unprecedented. In every society we know of, close bond relations have been responsible for this crucial task. Prudence, philosopher Michael Levin says, demands that we place on the advocates of large-scale child rearing by strangers "the onus of proving, overwhelming and in detail, that it does no harm." [10]

Annulments

Prudence also demands that we strive mightily to keep families intact. Where children are involved, divorce is child abuse. Children from broken homes are disproportionately represented in the statistics for murder, rape, suicide, and learning disabilities. Many who grow up in single-parent or step-parent families have a harder time than those from intact households in keeping a steady job or forming a stable marriage of their own.

In a landmark longitudinal study, psychologist Judith Wallerstein found that children can be "quite content" when a marriage is profoundly unhappy for one or both parents. [11] If the children had a say, the vast majority would vote against letting their parents separate.

By ratifying divorce, permissive annulment cannot help but weaken the resolve of committed Catholics to keep less than perfect marriages together. In his book on the annulment crisis in America, Robert Vasoli cited Vatican statistics showing that Canadian tribunals rival those in the United States for permissiveness. [12] For the sake of the children, if for no other reason, our bishops should do something about this.

Perhaps they could begin by taking a critical look at the widespread use of alleged grounds for annulment. Vasoli claims that much of what passes for the psychological analysis of consent is not based on meticulous research. With respect to psychological grounds, Pope John P II has made it clear that only severe mental disorders render us incapable of consenting validly to marriage. [13]

Contraception

The CCCB's failure to mobilize the faithful against contraceptive sex in marriage is, in my view, scandalous. Its timidity in matters sexual began with an inadequate response to Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae and, with few exceptions, has persisted to this day.

In a March 22, 1931, editorial the American daily paper Washington Post predicted that the legalization of birth control would "sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution...[and] encourage indiscriminate immorality." In 1968, in Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI issued a similar warning about the dangers of contraceptive sex, adding that governments could be expected to favour and even impose the use of artificial birth control to solve social problems.

These prophecies have come true. Supported by governments at all levels, contraception appears to be as common among Catholics as in the general community. By compromising the mutual self-giving of spouses, it has weakened the marriage bond and contributed to the plague of divorce. Divorce and illegitimacy, one of the results of "indiscriminate immorality," have interlaced our society with fragmented families and grieving children.

Single parents

Particularly tragic has been the formation, and sometimes the celebration, of single-parent families. In January, 1998, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson recognized that single parenthood has implications for social justice. On balance, he noted, single parents are poorer than couples. The best research seems to show that "the greater the number of single-parents families in a society, the greater the inequalities among families and individuals." What's more, "the increase in the number of single-parent families has been a major--we might even say the major--reason for income inequalities in Canada." [14]

The injustice of economic inequality, "which keeps so many poor," has been a major theme in CCCB teaching. The 1972 Labour Day message called this persistent inequality a social sin. [15] It is built into the economic structure, in other words. But if the research Simpson consulted is anywhere near the truth, not just social sin but personal sin is responsible for unacceptable levels of inequality.

Simpson doesn't think the state can do much to influence the individual behaviour that leads to single-parent families. But personal sin, including sexual sin, is in the bishops' domain. They should devote at least as much attention to that as they do to economic policies and programs.

By enabling couples to physically express their love at will, artificial birth control was supposed to strengthen marriages. However, the divorce rate rose as contraception gained wide acceptance. Many couples are convinced that Natural Family Planning strengthens marriages, in particular their own, and there is evidence to suggest that they may be right.

John Kippley, president of the Couple to Couple League, estimates that Americans using NFP have a divorce rate of only two to five percent. He bases the estimate on the experiences of more than 900 NFP teachers who worked with the league for over 20 years. [16]

In my next article, I will deal with what I feel are inadequacies in the CCCB's approach to the preferential option for the poor, capitalism, and structural versus personal responsibility for economic and social deficiencies.

Joseph Campbell, a contributing editor of Catholic Insight, has had a long career in the media and writes from Saskatoon, SK.

Footnotes:

(1.) The Canadian Catholic Conference, "Labour Day Message, 1961," in E.F. Sheridan, S.J., ed., Do Justice! The Social Teaching of the Canadian Catholic Bishops (Sherbrooke and Toronto: Editions Paulines and the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice, 1987), p. 90.

(2.) The Canadian Bishops, "Labour Day Message, 1966," in E.F. Sheridan, S. J., ed., Do Justice!, p. 120.

(3.) Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice, Reweaving Canada's Social Programs: From Shredded Safety Net to Social Solidarity (Toronto: Our Times, 1993) pp. 12, 55.

(4.) David Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, Inc., 1988).

(5.) Carl Honore, "The tarnished halo of the Swedish miracle," National Post, April 9, 1999.

(6.) See Social Affairs Commission, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Love, Kindness! The Social Teaching of the Canadian Catholic Bishops (Sherbrooke and Toronto: Editions Paulines and the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice, 1991) pp. 113, 118.

(7.) Andrew Peyton Thomas, "The time bomb of day care," National Post, January 17, 1998.

(8.) Barbara Hattemer, "New Light on Daycare Research," in Phyllis Schlafly, ed., Who Will Rock the Cradle? (Washington: Eagle Forum & Legal Defense Fund, 1989), pp. 747.

(9.) Gaudium et spes, No. 52.

(10.) Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1987) p. 283.

(11.) Judith S. Wallerstein & Sandra Blakeslee, Second Chances: Men, Women & Children A Decade After Divorce (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989). p. 11.

(12.) Robert H. Vasoli, What God Has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) P. 228, footnote 8.

(13.) Vasoli, p. 78.

(14.) Jeffery Simpson, "The state can do only so much for single-parent families," Globe and Mail, January 29, 1998.

(15.) Do Justice! p. 235.

(16.) Fidelity, December, 1992, p. 47.