| ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION: A ROMAN CATHOLIC VIEW |
| Charles K. Wilber |
| University of Notre Dame |
| THE TRADITION OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT |
| The social encyclicals and pastoral letters-- from Pope LeoXIII's Rerum Novarum in 1891 through the U.S. Bishops'
Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social
Teaching and the U.S. Economy to Pope John Paul II's Centesimus
Annus-- that form the foundation of Catholic Social Thought
(CST), are fundamentally moral documents not economic treatises.
The tradition of CST is rooted in a commitment to certain fundamental
values-- the right to human dignity, the need for human freedom
and participation, the importance of community, and the nature
of the common good. These values are drawn from the belief that
each person is called to be a co-creator with God, participating
in the redemption of the world and the furthering of the Kingdom.
This requires social and human development where the religious
and temporal aspects of life are not seperated and opposed to
each other. . |
| As a result of these fundamental values two principles permeate Catholic Social Thought. The first is a special concern for the
poor and powerless which leads to a criticism of political and
economic structures that oppress them. The second is a concern
for certain human rights against both the collectivist tendencies
of the state and the neglect of the free market. . |
| Ever since Rerum Novarum, Catholic Social Thought has taught that both state socialism and free market capitalism violate
these principles. State socialism denies the right of private
property, excites the envy of the poor against the rich leading
to class struggle instead of cooperation, and violates the proper
order of society by the state usurping the role of individuals
and intermediate social groups. [RN, para. 7-8; CA,
para. 13-14] Free market capitalism denies the concept of the
common good and the "social and public character of the right
of property" [Quadragesimo Anno, para. 46], including
the principle of the universal destination of the earth's goods
[RN, para. 14; CA, para. 6]; and violates human
dignity by treating labor merely as a commodity to be bought and
sold in the marketplace. [RN, para. 31; QA, para.
83; CA, para. 33-35] Pope John Paul II summarizes the thrust
of Catholic Social Thought when he says: "The individual
today is often suffocated between two poles represented by the
State and the marketplace. At times it seems as though he [she]
exists only as a producer and consumer of goods, or as an object
of State administration. People lose sight of the fact that life
in society has neither the market nor the State as its final purpose,
since life itself has a unique value which the State and the market
must serve." [CA, para. 49]
. |
| CST repudiates the position that the level of unemployment, the degree of poverty, the quantity of environmental destruction,
and other such outcomes should be left to the dictates of the
market. Emphasis on the common good means that the community has
an obligation to ensure the right of employment to all persons
[CA, para. 15], to help the disadvantaged overcome their
poverty [CA, para. 19, 40], and to safeguard the environment.
[CA, 37] . |
| Since the primary "signs of the times" that Pope John Paul II focuses on in Centesimus Annus (the latest
statement of CST) is the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe,
he emphasizes the limits to the role of the state and the utility
of markets in providing incentives for production. However, this
is a highly qualified endorsement as when he says the efficiency
of markets in fulfilling human needs is true only for those needs
which are "'solvent', insofar as they are endowed with purchasing
power, and for those resources which are 'marketable', insofar
as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there
are many human needs which find no place on the market."
[CA, para. 34] Thus, markets do not adequately fulfill
the needs of those who have little income or provide for non-marketable
goods such as a clean environment and participation in the workplace.
He also registers his fears that unrestrained markets result in
environmental destruction [CA, para. 37], promote a soulless
consumerism [CA, para. 36], and destroy the human environment
needed by a community of persons. [CA, para. 38] . |
| This brief review of CST shows that its focus from the beginning has been on the problem of poverty and marginalization of the
disadvantaged, first in the industrial countries and then of the
Third World. It is only in the last 25 years that concern about
too much consumption by the rich rather than too little consumption
by the poor has played a role in CST. . |
| THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION |
| While there are a number reasons to be concerned with the ethics of consumption, there are three that have become prominent
in CST. First, while it is recognized that consumption spending
helps people by creating jobs, excessive consumption by some individuals
and nations while at the same time other individuals and nations
suffer from want is considered morally unacceptable. Income spent
on luxuries could have been made available to others for their
necessities. Typical is Pope Paul VI's statement: "...the
superfluous wealth of rich countries should be placed at the service
of poor nations...Otherwise their continued greed will certainly
call down upon them the judgment of God and the wrath of the poor..."
[Populorum Progressio, para. 49] The problem of consumption
spending to buy products produced under sweatshop conditions is
recognized but usually treated under the heading of the rights
of workers and the obligations of employers. |
| Second, excessive consumption which threatens the earth's environment is also considered morally unacceptable. Pope John
Paul II recently stated: "Equally worrying is the ecological
question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which
is closely connected to it. In his [or her] desire to have and
to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man [or woman] consumes
the resources of the earth and his [or her] own life in an excessive
and distorted way." [CA, para. 37] |
| Third, treating consumption as the primary goal of life--
that is, focusing on having instead of being-- is
seen as detrimental to human dignity. It is this third concern
that I will focus on in this paper. But first I want to compare
CST to the mainstream economic theory that is dominant in our
society. |
| In contrast to CST, economic theory is rooted in an individualist conception of society. Society is seen as a collection of individuals
who have chosen to associate because it is mutually beneficial.
The common good is simply the aggregate of the welfare of each
individual. Individual liberty is the highest good, and, if individuals
are left free to pursue their self-interest, the result will be
the maximum material welfare. |
| Economic theory focuses on people as hedonists who want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. It assumes that pleasure
comes primarily from the consumption of goods and services; and
that pain comes primarily from work and from parting with your
income. Thus, given resource constraints, the goal of the economy
should be to maximize the production of goods and services. In
short, more is better. |
| In modern industrial economies such as ours, it is perfectly rational for people to accept a philosophy of consumerism. People
have little opportunity to choose meaningful work because the
nature of jobs is determined by competitive pressures. The demand
for labor mobility disrupts a satisfying sense of community. And
the enjoyment of nature is attenuated by urbanization and the
degradation of nature resulting from industrial and consumption
practices. Thus, the only thing left under the individual's control
is consumption. And it is true that consumption can substitute,
however inadequately, for the loss of meaningful work, community,
and a decent environment. With enough income people can buy bottled
water, place their children in private schools, buy a mountain
cabin, and obtain the education necessary to get a more interesting
job. |
| However, when people are surveyed about their views on what the economy should do, some surprising results emerge. For example,
a study by Scitovsky found that the simple increase in the amount
of consumption in the U.S. has not increased peoples' happiness.
Richard Easterlin discovered that a crucial component of such
an evaluation was the perception of one's relative situation.
Thus it would seem to be exceptionally difficult for an economy
to improve its performance, for every relative gain would imply
a relative loss, or no net gain! This reality and the confusion
in our society between growth, which we place as a preeminent
goal, and affluence, which by all standards we have clearly obtained,
suggests that one of the problems of our society is to deal with
"the poverty of affluence." |
| The Catholic tradition condemns the materialist view of human welfare. In his 1968 encyclical, Populorum Progressio,
Pope Paul VI wrote: |
| Increased possession is not the ultimate goal of nations
or of individuals. All growth is ambivalent. It is essential if
man [or woman] is to develop as a man [or woman], but in a way
it imprisons man [or woman] if he [or she] considers it the supreme
good, and it restricts his [or her] vision. Then we see hearts
harden and minds close, and men [and women] no longer gather together
in friendship but out of self-interest, which soon leads to oppositions
and disunity. The exclusive pursuit of possessions thus becomes
an obstacle to individual fulfillment and to man's [or woman's]
true greatness. Both for nations and for individual men [or women],
avarice is the most evident form of moral underdevelopment. [para.
19] |
| On the twentieth anniversary (1987) of Populorum Progressio, Pope John Paul II wrote in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: "All
of us experience first hand the sad effects of this blind submission
to pure consumerism: in the first place a crass materialism, and
at the same time a radical dissatisfaction because one quickly
learns...that the more one possesses the more one wants, while
deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled."
[Para. 28] In his latest encyclical-- Centesimus Annus--
marking the one hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum,
Pope John Paul II writes: "It is not wrong to want to live
better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to
be better when it is directed toward `having' rather than `being,'
and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order
to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself." [para. 36] |
| CONSUMPTION AND HUMAN WELFARE: AN ALTERNATIVE |
| It is not sufficient to simply reject the neo-classical economics position that satisfying individual preferences, as expressed
in the market, is the only measure of economic welfare. Alternatives
must be proposed and developed. Let me sketch out one possible
alternative. |
| Many working within the Roman Catholic tradition would argue that we must broaden our view of human welfare from that of a
simple consumer of goods and services with consumer sovereignty
as the goal. Instead, drawing upon cross-cultural studies which
have attempted to find absolute needs or needs that are expressed
in a variety of societies, three components of human welfare can
be specified for an economy. |
| The first is what Denis Goulet calls "lifesustenance,"which corresponds generally to physiological needs or basic material goods.People need the basic goods that are necessary for life
adequate food, water, housing, clothing, education, and health
care-- and an economy is successful if it can provide them. |
| How can basic material goods be specified? One manner is to differentiate among three types of goods. The first are necessities
such as food and water. Within some limits these needs can be
specified. The second type of goods are "enhancement goods,"
which make life more vital, more interesting, more worth living.
Examples might be music, various forms of entertainment, some
household goods, and so on. The third level of goods involves
what are commonly known as luxury goods. Driving a Cadillac instead
of a Chevrolet, buying a marbletopped table instead of a wooden
one, and walking on a llama rug instead of polyester are all instances
of consuming luxury goods. |
| We can all agree that basic needs must be met. Most believe that enhancement goods are worthy of pursuit. There is less accord
on luxury goods. Traditional economics in the U.S. has claimed
that individual wants are unlimited and that luxury goods satisfy
wants, as do basic goods. If individuals want Cadillacs and llama
rugs, and if the economy can produce such luxuries, it ought to.
A second component of human welfare is esteem and fellowship.
An economy should provide a sense of worth, of dignity to its
citizens. One's goods can be a measure of societal esteem, but
surely there are other important elements. The institutions in
which citizens work should support them physically and give them
a sense of belonging and of contributing to an important undertaking.
Society should have clubs, churches, or other entities which
support the individual. If the family is the basic social and
economic unit, as is the case in the U.S., the economy should
provide support and encourage in families a sense of selfesteem
that can help sustain them. Another term for this is fellowship;
the economy should promote right relations among its participants,
and to the extent it can, should keep life from being "nasty
and brutish," while providing basic material goods to lengthen
it. |
| For no society can function smoothly, without disruptive tensions, if there is no fellowship among its members. If people are alienated
from one another and society is fractured into myriad selfinterested
and selfcentered individuals or groups, society will not long
survive. If no genuine concern for one's neighbors exists and
if empathy for others disappears, then each small selfreliant
entity (whether this be family, occupational group, or individual)
will eventually withdraw unto itself and live at odds with others.
No social system can prevail which endorses or engenders such
selfcenteredness. Even if material economic wellbeing were at
the heart of social success, surely fellowship would be the life
blood that sustains the community, the cohesion that makes one
individual feel a closeness and a unity of purpose with all others
in that society, whether known personally or not. Consequently,
a key component of human welfare, in addition to the satisfaction
of people's material needs, is the growth of widely shared
esteem that yields a lifegiving and lifesustaining fellowship. |
| This implies an element of equity among citizens. No modern society could provide esteem or fellowship which gave minimal
income to most of the population, but fabulous wealth to a few
families. Equity, of course, does not necessarily mean equality,
but it does mean that there be some consensus regarding the justness
of the distribution of wealth and income. |
| The third component of human welfare is freedom. However freedom is a difficult goal to specify clearly. It obviously
does not mean that all individuals may do whatever they wish,
for that would be anarchy and the death of society. At its weakest,
an increase in freedom means that the range of options open to
the individual or the group has increased, that there are more
choices available. This has its physical side in choice of goods,
but it can also operate in other spheres such as the political
or religious. |
| There are three component parts to the goal of freedom. The first, and the one which is usually at the center of much economic
theorizing in the United States, is the provision of consumer
sovereignty. Individuals should be able to choose the goods that
they wish to consume. |
| The second part is worker sovereignty. People must have a choice of jobs, jobs they find meaningful and that enhance their
human capacities. There must be mechanisms for finding peoples'
preferences on work and creating the types of jobs required.
A variety of mechanisms could satisfy this need: labor mobility
among jobs of widely different character, control by workers over
their job situations, or provision of capital resources to laborers
to allow them to establish their own undertakings. Whatever the
mechanisms, this characteristic is important because work plays
an important part in human development.[See LE |
| Third, a society must provide citizen sovereignty, a mechanism to aggregate peoples' preferences for community. What kind of
community do people want? What kind of environment do they want?
The concept of citizen sovereignty implies that a way to express
preferences and to control communities is provided to the citizen.
A number of mechanisms may be found which satisfy this requirement,
in addition to the democratic voting procedures used in the U.S.
One way of enhancing citizen sovereignty could be through strengthening
local groups for citizen participation in decision making, e.g.,
parent-teacher organizations, zoning boards, and citizen review
boards of police departments and other public agencies. Or perhaps
local residents might participate in the operation of local industries
in their areas, by electing representatives to firms' boards of
directors to minimize the negative aspects of industrial production
such as noise and pollution. The absence of real citizen sovereignty
generates conflicts among groups in society. The reality of such
conflict has been denied over the recent past, but is becoming
a central element in local political debate. It can be either
a destructive or a constructive force in charting the course of
the economy. |
| In the light of traditional economists' claims about the importance of incentives for the operation of markets, is the treatment of
human welfare in CST viable. It could be argued that this broadening
of the concept of human welfare may be impossible because of:
a) the way markets create a bifurcation of people as consumers/workers,
coupled with the competitive pressures that force business firms
to become ever more efficient; and b) the consumerism which is
rooted in human greed and the workings of the business
system. |
| Let me take the provision of meaningful work as an example. Because of competition one firm cannot improve working conditions,
raise wages, or democratize the workplace if the result is
an increase in production costs(The easy case is where improved
working conditions are also more efficient and thus both workers
and employers have an incentive to make the changes). Competition
from other firms will keep the costs from being passed on in higher
prices and, thus, profits will decline. The bifurcation of people
into consumers/workers means that what they prefer as consumers--
lower prices-- makes what they prefer as workers-- better working
conditions and wages, more meaningful work-- less obtainable.
Reliance on the market as the primary decision making mechanism
bifurcates the decision into separate areas. What people want
as workers will not be ratified by those same people as consumers.
Since competition is now worldwide, even a whole country faces
difficulties in mandating workplace improvements that raise costs. |
| The problem is reinforced, first by the fact that millions
of Americans live in poverty and consume too little not too much,
and second by both human greed and the constant effort of business
to promote consumption as the ultimate end of life. This creates
constant pressure to reduce prices by reducing labor costs, undercutting
attempts to improve the quality of work life. |
| Why do we accept this? The process, usually implicit, of teaching people that true happiness comes from consumption permeates our
entire culture and begins at a very early age. Gintis and Weaver
provide a vivid example from an old Sears Roebuck Christmas catalogue. |
| Sears advertised...a new doll named Shopping Sheryl. Sheryl comes equipped with a supermarket which has a rotating checkout
counter, a ringing cash register, a motorized check-out stand,
shelves, cart, and groceries. Sheryl is a vinyl doll which picks
things up with her magnetized right hand and grasps with her left
hand. We can visualize Sheryl in her supermarket, picking and
grasping, picking and grasping. |
| This is really the final result of the evolutionary process. People have emerged from the muck and the ooze, overcome the hardships
imposed by nature, built dwellings, invented agriculture, etc.--
so that our children can have Shopping Sheryl and learn early
in life that the true purpose of life is consumption. |
| WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? |
| Can anything be done to reduce the emphasis on consumption
and to increase the possibilities for meaningful work and the
restoration of community? I am not optimistic but as a Christian
and as an economist I would focus on two possibilities-- the inculcation
of more appropriate moral values and the judicious use of financial
incentives. |
| Moral Values. First, We need to develop habits of morally constrained behavior, reinforced by cultural practices,
so that short-run rewards become less important. We need values
that transcend the narrow self-interest of the economic model
as the guide for individual behavior. Is it possible to rebuild
a moral consensus wherein we re-learn habits of morally constrained
behavior? Yes, this is a major point of CST, but economists must
re-think their view of people as simply self-interested maximizers.
They have made a major mistake in treating love, benevolence,
and particularly public spirit as scarce resources that must be
economized lest they be depleted. This is a faulty analogy because,
unlike material factors of production, the supply of love, benevolence,
and public spirit is not fixed or limited. As Hirschman says:
"first of all, these are resources whose supply may well
increase rather than decrease through use; second, these resources
do not remain intact if they stay unused." These moral resources
respond positively to practice, in a learning-by-doing manner,
and negatively to non-practice. Obviously there are limits, if
overused they become ineffective. |
| A good example is a comparison of the system of blood collection for medical purposes in the United States and in Great Britain.
In the U.S. we gradually replaced donated blood with purchased
blood. As the campaigns for donated blood declined, because purchased
blood was sufficient, the amount of blood donated declined. In
effect, our internalized benevolence towards those unknown to
us, who need blood, began to atrophy from nonuse. In contrast,
blood donations remained high in England where each citizen's
obligation to others was constantly emphasized. |
| In his book, The Gift Relationship, Richard Titmuss questions the efficiency of market relationships based on purely
monetary self-interest principles. Instead he hypothesizes that
in some instances, such as blood giving, relying on internalized
moral values (in this case, altruistic behavior) results in a
more efficient supply and better quality of blood. |
| Titmus argues that the commercialization of blood giving produces a system with many shortcomings. A few of these shortcomings are
the repression of expressions of altruism, increases in the danger
of unethical behavior in certain areas of medicine, worsened relationships
between doctor and patient, and shifts in the supply of blood
from the rich to the poor. Furthermore, the commercialized blood
market is bad even in terms of nonethical criteria. |
| In terms of economic efficiency it is highly wasteful of
blood; shortages, chronic and acute, characterize the demand-and-supply
position and make illusory the concept of equilibrium. It is
administratively inefficient and results in more bureaucratization
and much greater administrative, accounting, and computer overheads.
In terms of price per unit of blood to the patient (or consumer),
it is a system which is five to fifteen times more costly than
voluntary systems in Britain. And, finally, in terms of quality,
commercial markets are much more likely to distribute contaminated
blood; the risks for the patient of disease and death are substantially
greater. Freedom from disability is inseparable from altruism. |
| It is noteworthy that since the AIDS crisis started in the
United States, physicians regularly recommend that patients scheduled
for non-emergency surgery donate their own blood in advance. |
| The commercialization of certain activities that historically were perceived to be within the realm of altruism results in a
conceptual transformation that inhibits the expression of this
altruistic behavior. Contrary to the commonly held opinion that
the creation of a market increases the area of individual choice,
Titmuss argues that the creation of a market may inhibit the freedom
to give or not to give. |
| The supply of blood provides a clear illustration of the problem. A person is not born with a set of ready-made values, rather the
individual's values are socially constructed through his being
a part of a family, a church, a school and a particular society.
If these groups expect and urge people to give their blood as
an obligation of being members of the group that obligation becomes
internalized as a moral value. Blood drives held in schools, churches,
and in Red Cross facilities reinforce that sense of obligation.
As commercial blood increases, the need for blood drives declines.
Thus, the traditional reinforcement of that sense of obligation
declines with the result that the embodied moral value atrophies.
In addition, the fact that you can sell your blood creates an
opportunity cost of donating it free. Finally, there is an information
problem. As blood drives decline it is rational for an individual
to assume that there is no need for donated blood. The final outcome
is that a typical person must overcome imperfect information,
opportunity costs, and a lack of social approbation to be able
to choose to donate blood. |
| This suggests that the type of policy recommended will have implications for the type of society that will develop. Inherent
in the type of policy suggested is a preference as to the motivational
attitudes that are appropriate and should be encouraged. The motivations
on which the results are based are also important, that is, how
we achieve these results needs to be addressed. |
| That the distribution of beliefs and behaviors at time tinfluences individual beliefs and behaviors at time t+1
is the single most basic finding of the voluminous research within
sociology on the behavior of groups. |
| Beliefs and preference structures are important because they are the basis for individual motivation. An understanding of these
also gives us a notion as to what are and what will encourage
the continuation of certain valued feelings. When economists look
to self-interest to solve social problems they are placing a higher
value on and promoting their own beliefs about what is proper
motivation. |
| Even though neo-classical economists are seldom interested in why people behave the way they do, society usually places a
high value on motivations. This is readily evident if one looks
at the legal system. Consider a situation in which a person shoots
and kills someone else. The end result is the same but depending
on the motivation the act may be judged to be murder,self-defense,
or even just an accident. |
| In short, three conclusions can be derived from the issues raised by Titmuss. First, economic policies have a direct effect
on both market outcomes and individual values. Second, economists
should drop their narrow approach to human behavior and join the
rest of society in giving attention to the effect that policies
have upon values. How we achieve results is important.
Finally, economists must recognize that the policy impact upon
values exerts its own influence on future market activity. Thus,
over time the type of values promoted by public action has significance
even within the `efficiency' realm of traditional economic analysis |
| I don't want to leave the impression that ethically
based behavior and self-interest are always mutually exclusive.
Proximity to self-interest alone does not defile morality. Moral
values are often necessary counterparts in a system based on self-interest.
Not only is there a `vast amount of irregular and informal help
given in times of need'; there is also a consistent dependence
on moral values upon which market mechanisms rely. Without a basic
trust and socialized morality the economy would be much more inefficient. |
| It is easy to forget one of Adam Smith's key insights. It
is true he claimed that selfinterest leads to the common good
if there is sufficient competition; but also, and more importantly,
he claimed that this is true only if most people in society have
internalized a general moral law as a guide for their behavior. |
| Peter Berger reminds us that `No society, modern or otherwise, can survive without what Durkheim called a `collective conscience,'
that is without moral values that have general authority.' Fred
Hirsch reintroduces the idea of moral law into economic analysis:
|
| truth, trust, acceptance, restraint, obligation these are
among the social virtues grounded in religious belief which...play
a central role in the functioning of an individualistic, contractual
economy....The point is that conventional, mutual standards of
honesty and trust are public goods that are necessary inputs
for much of economic output. |
| The point of this rather long section is that people are capable of changing their values. In fact a principal objective of publicly
proclaimed laws and regulations is to stigmatize certain types
of behavior and to reward others, thereby influencing individual
values and behavior codes. While families, churches and schools
play the most important role in shaping behavior and inculcating
values, public laws have a role to play. For example, while law
cannot make someone stop holding racist beliefs, it can punish
certain types of racist behavior. With time that behavior,
say refusing service in a restaurant, becomes delegitimized in
public opinion. |
| Financial Incentives. The use of financial incentives to guide people's behavior is dear to an economist's heart. These
range from the most general, such as a value-added tax on consumer
goods, to highly targeted ones, such as excise taxes on luxury
consumer goods or on the carbon content of goods. |
| However, extensive use of financial incentives will be very difficult if not impossible. Economic growth in the U.S. has
been based on the value of individual consumption. The awesome
power of modern advertising has spread the free market gospel
the good life comes from increases in consumption of individually
marketable goods and services. People are urged to believe they
must have individual washers and dryers instead of laundromats,
and private automobiles instead of public transportation. This
phenomenon is particularly important when viewed in a worldwide
context. |
| Large corporations have compounded the problem by competing through product innovation and differentiation resulting in an
emphasis on stylistic and physical obsolescence. When goods are
designed to be "thrownaway" after use, or to be used
less than their physical capacity because of style changes, or
constructed to fall apart sooner than necessary; the result is
increased wastage of energy and natural resources and a
need for people to continually buy more. |
| However, I am not completely without hope. Rising prices in the face of raw material shortages will force a reduction in some
of these wasteful practices and coping with a worsening environment
will leave fewer resources available for wasteful consumption.
However, they will also create unemployment and a crisis in economic
growth, not only in the U.S. but around the world, if we do not
plan ahead. If we wait and do nothing until the crisis is upon
us the adjustment will be painful indeed. Doing something in advance
requires political action and, here, the record is not hopeful.
President Carter tried to get a small tax increase on gasoline
and was soundly defeated. His talk of limits was denounced as
defeatist. President Clinton's idea of a carbon tax was
a non-starter. Political courage has always been a rare commodity
but appears to be in particularly short supply today. |
| This then is the challenge we face: how do we move from a consumption based economy to one that is also concerned about
the quality of work and the importance of community without creating
havoc in the world economy? The conservative majority pushes the idea of smaller government, tax cuts, and let people spend their money the way they want. This philosophy must be challenged with something other than the slightly milder
version pushed by political liberals. |
| CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT DOCUMENTS |
| National Conference of Catholic Bishops, |
| Washington, D.C. |
| Pope Leo XIII. Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Workers),
May 15, 1891. |
| Pope Pius XI. Quadraesimo Anno (On Reconstructing the
Social Order), May 15, 1931. |
| Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution
on the Church in the Modern World), December 7, 1965. |
| Pope Paul VI. Populorum Progressio (On Promoting the
Development of Peoples), March 26, 1967. |
| Pope John Paul II. Laborem Exercens (On Human Work),
September 14, 1981. |
| _________________. Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social
Concerns), December 30, 1987. |
| _________________. Centesimus Annus (100 Years After),
May 1, 1991. |
| U.S. Catholic Bishops. Economic Justice for All: Pastoral
Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,
November 18, 1986. |