Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching
and the US Economy
Pastoral Letter of the US Bishops, 1986
Every perspective on economic life that is human, moral, and Christian
must be shaped by three questions: What does the economy do for people?
What does it do to people? And how do people participate in it? (#1)
The road to holiness for most of us lies in our secular vocations. We need a
spirituality that calls forth and supports lay initiative and witness not just in
our churches but also in business, in the labor movement, in the professions,
in education, and in public life.
Our faith is not just a weekend obligation, a mystery to be celebrated around
the altar on Sunday. It is a pervasive reality to be practiced every day in
homes, offices, factories, schools, and businesses across our land.
We cannot separate what we believe from how we act in the marketplace and
the broader community, for this is where we make our primary contribution to
the pursuit of economic justice. (#25)
"The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of
workers over the maximization of profits; the preservation of the environment
over uncontrolled industrial expansion; the production to meet social needs
over production for military purposes". (#94)
As individuals and as a nation, therefore, we are called to make a
fundamental "option for the poor". The obligation to evaluate social and
economic activity from the viewpoint of the poor and the powerless arises
from the radical command to love one's neighbor as one's self. Those who
are marginalized and whose rights are denied have privileged claims if society
is to provide justice for all. This obligation is deeply rooted in Christian belief.
(#87)
Every citizen also has the responsibility to work to secure justice and
human rights through an organized social response. In the words of Pius XI,
"Charity will never be true charity unless it takes justice into account ...
Let no one attempt with small gifts of charity to exempt himself from the
great duties imposed by justice" [71]. The guaranteeing of basic justice for
all is not an optional expression of largesse but an inescapable duty for the
whole of society. (#120)
The obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the single
most urgent economic claim on the conscience of the nation. Poverty can
take many forms, spiritual as well as material. (#86)
The common good may sometimes demand that the right to own be limited
by public involvement in the planning or ownership of certain sectors of
the economy. Support of private ownership does not mean that anyone has
the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth. "Private property does not
constitute for anyone an absolute or unconditional right. No one is justified
in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack
necessities" (#115)
The obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the
single most urgent economic claim on the conscience of the nation.
Poverty can take many forms, spiritual as well as material. (#16)
Every economic decision and institution must be judged in light of
whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person. (#13)
More than 33 million Americans -- about one in every seven people in
our nation -- are poor by the government's official definition. The norms
of human dignity and the preferential option for the poor compel us to
confront this issue with a sense of urgency. Dealing with poverty is not
a luxury to which our nation can attend when it finds the time and resources.
Rather, it is a moral imperative of the highest priority. (#170)
Decisions must be judged in light of what they do for the poor, what they
do to the poor, and what they enable the poor to do for themselves.
The fundamental moral criterion for all economic decisions, policies,
and institutions is this: They must be at the service of all people, especially
the poor. (#24)
The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other
associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions.
This is a specific application of the more general right to associate. In the
words of Pope John Paul II, "The experience of history teaches that
organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life,
especially in modern industrial societies" (#104)
Human rights are the minimum conditions for life in community. In
Catholic teaching, human rights include not only civil and political rights
but also economic rights. As Pope Pope John XXIII declared, "all people
have a right to life, food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, education,
and employment."
This means that when people are without a chance to earn a living, and
must go hungry and homeless, they are being denied basic rights.
Society must ensure that these rights are protected.
(Pastoral Message #17)
We have to move from our devotion to independence, through an
understanding of interdependence, to a commitment to human solidarity.
That challenge must find its realization in the kind of community we
build among us. Love implies concern for all - especially the poor -
and a continued search for those social and economic structures that
permit everyone to share in a community that is a part of a redeemed
creation (Rom 8:21-23). (#365)
Followers of Christ must avoid a tragic separation between faith and
everyday life. (#5)
Holiness is not limited to the sanctuary or to moments of private prayer;
it is a call to direct our whole heart and life toward God and according to
God's plan for this world. For the laity holiness is achieved in the midst
of the world, in family, in community, in friendships, in work, in leisure,
in citizenship.
Through their competency and by their activity, lay men and women
have the vocation to bring the fight of the Gospel to economic affairs,
"so that the world may be filled with the Spirit of Christ and may more
effectively attain its destiny in justice, in love, and in peace." (#332)
Unions may also legitimately resort to strikes where this is the only
available means to the justice owed to workers. No one may deny the
right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. Therefore,
we firmly oppose organized efforts, such as those regrettably now
seen in this country, to break existing unions and prevent workers from
organizing. (#104)
All the moral principles that govern the just operation of any
economic endeavor apply to the Church and its agencies and
institutions; indeed the Church should be exemplary. (#347)
The primer purpose of this special commitment to the poor is to enable
them to become active participants in the life of society. It is to enable
all persons to share in and contribute to the common good .
The "option for the poor," therefore, is not an adversarial slogan that
pits one group or class against another. Rather it states that the
deprivation and powerlessness of the poor wounds the whole community.
The extent of their suffering is a measure of how far we are from being
a true community of persons. These wounds will be healed only by
greater solidarity with the poor and among the poor themselves. (#88)
Basic justice demands the establishment of minimum levels of
participation in the life of the human community for all persons.
The ultimate injustice is for a person or group to be treated actively
or abandoned passively as if they were nonmembers of the human
race. To treat people this way is effectively to say they simply do
not count as human beings. (#77)
Basic justice calls for the establishment of a floor of material well-being
on which all can stand. This is a duty of the whole of society and it
creates particular obligations for those with greater resources. This
duty calls into question extreme inequalities of income and consumption
when so many lack basic necessities.
Catholic social teaching does not maintain that a flat, arithmetical
equality of income and wealth is a demand of justice, but it does
challenge economic arrangements that leave large numbers of people
impoverished. Further, it sees extreme inequality as a threat to the
solidarity of the human community, for great disparities lead to deep
social divisions and conflict (#74)
As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a fundamental
"option for the poor" -- to speak for the voiceless, to defend the
defenseless, to assess life styles, policies, and social institutions in
terms of their impact on the poor. (Pastoral Message, #16)
Where the effects of past discrimination persist, society has an
obligation to take positive steps to overcome the legacy of injustice.
Judiciously administered affirmative action programs in education
and employment can be important expressions of the drive for solidarity
and participation that is at the heart of true justice. Social harm calls
for social relief. (#73)
The basis for all that the Church believes about the moral dimensions
of economic life is its vision of the transcendent worth -- the sacredness --
of human beings. The dignity of the human person, realized in community
with others, is the criterion against which all aspects of economic life
must be measured .
All human beings, therefore, are ends to be served by the institutions
that make up the economy, not means to be exploited for more narrowly
defined goals. Human personhood must be respected with a reverence
that is religious. When we deal with each other, we should do so with
the sense of awe that arises in the presence of something holy and sacred.
(#28)
These fundamental personal rights -- civil and political as well as
social and economic -- state the minimum conditions for social institutions
that respect human dignity, social solidarity, and justice. They are all
essential to human dignity and to the integral development of both
individuals and society, and are thus moral issues [40]. Any denial of
these rights harms persons and wounds the human community. Their
serious and sustained denial violates individuals and destroys solidarity
among persons. (#80)
Society as a whole, acting through public and private institutions, has
the moral responsibility to enhance human dignity and protect human
rights. In addition to the clear responsibility of private institutions,
government has an essential responsibility in this area.
This does not mean that government has the primary or exclusive role,
but it does have a positive moral responsibility in safeguarding human
rights and ensuring that the minimum conditions of human dignity are
met for all.
In a democracy, government is a means by which we can act together
to protect what is important to us and to promote our common values.
(Pastoral Message, #18)
The obligation to "love our neighbor" has an individual dimension, but it
also requires a broader social commitment to the common good.
We have many partial ways to measure and debate the health of our
economy: Gross National Product, per capita income, stock market
prices, and so forth. The Christian vision of economic life looks beyond
them all and asks, Does economic life enhance or threaten our life together
as a community? (Pastoral Message, #14)
All of us must examine our way of living in the light of the needs of the
poor. Christian faith and the norms of justice impose distinct limits on
what we consume and how we view material goods.
The great wealth of the United States can easily blind us to the poverty
that exists in this nation and the destitution of hundreds of millions of
people in other parts of the world. Americans are challenged today as
never before to develop the inner freedom to resist the temptation
constantly to seek more. Only in this way will the nation avoid what
Paul VI called "the most evident form of moral underdevelopment,"
namely greed. (#75)