Conflicting with Catholic teachings
Todd David Whitmore
The Common Good
In recent weeks the PSA (Progressive Student Alliance) has been urging the University Task Force on Anti-Sweatshop Initiatives and President Malloy to accept two proposals or demands. The first is to join the Workers' Rights Consortium; the second is to withdraw from the Fair Labor Association.
A March 7th letter signed by nine members of the PSA invoked "Catholic Social Teaching" to put the message in no uncertain terms. "If the University of Notre Dame does not leave the FLA and join the WRC by March 27, 2000, we will take this as a message that the University prefers to protect the interests of its corporate funders rather than following Catholic Social Teaching by acting in solidarity with the working poor." Other PSA documents and statements refer to Catholic social teaching in a similar way.
This invocation of Catholic social teaching — both the fact of it and the manner in which it is done — raises a number of points for reflection. My own sense is that there is a fair amount of affinity between the general aims of the PSA and the concerns of Catholic social teaching. Both seek to address the needs of the poor. The official church statement that comes to mind when I think of the PSA at its best comes from the introduction to the 1971 Synod of Bishops' "Justice in the World": "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation."
If we take the statements by the PSA as they are written, however, there are some difficulties when we move from general affinities with Catholic teaching to specific claims. The first is that some of the PSA statements appear to view corporations and the market economy within which they function to be intrinsically evil. I know that this is the view of a significant number of persons who are active in and supportive of the development of the Workers' Rights Consortium. The above-quoted PSA letter also refers to "the corporate-contaminated FLA." While Catholic social teaching may be drawn upon to condemn the practices of particular corporations, it does not condemn the market economy itself as fundamentally evil. Important here is the distinction, made clearest in John Paul II's "Laborem exercens" and "Centesimus annus" between the free economy — a market economy with moral and juridical limits — and capitalism — an economy where the market logic overruns all other considerations. For the Pope, this is a distinction with a difference; for many persons backing the WRC, it is a distinction without a difference. The PSA is at best unclear on the matter.
What is clear is the implication in the PSA's statement that any policy proposal that does not match up verbatim with it own is necessarily at odds with Catholic social teaching. This is the second difficulty in their claim of representing that teaching. Absent here is the distinction, central in Church teaching, between general principles and specific applications. Paragraphs 8 through 12 of the American Catholic bishops' "The Challenge of Peace" are apropos here. "At times we reassert universally binding moral principles ... at other times we apply moral principles to specific cases. When making applications of these principles we realize — and we wish our readers to recognize — that prudential judgments are involved based on specific circumstances which can change or which can be interpreted differently by people of good will." This does not mean that all judgments are equal or that none are out of bounds, only that the application of principles to specific circumstances is not as univocal as the PSA letter implies.
The bishops' reference to "people of good will" points to the third difficulty with the PSA statement. The suggestion that the Task Force and President Malloy, if they do not support the PSA's specific policy proposal, necessarily "prefer to protect the interests of corporate funders" over the obligation to protect the well-being of the working poor is a charge of bad will.
I am on the Task Force. By now my columns have made clear that I do not "prefer to protect the interests of corporate funders." To say that I — or any other member of the Task Force or President Malloy — are such corporate lackeys simply because we support remaining in the FLA would be like the countercharge that if Aaron Kreider and the PSA disagree with our specific proposals then they are necessarily radical wannabes trying to keep up with the Wisconsins and the Penns. Both depictions are inaccurate and unfair.
The fourth difficulty is that the PSA proposal focuses more on who Notre Dame associates with than the substance of the recommendations of the Task Force — thus far unanimously supported in the Task Force and adopted by President Malloy. Concerns about association are important, particularly when the act or entity associated with is intrinsically evil, as it is, for instance, in debates on Catholic health agencies in relation to abortion. Perhaps the PSA's accent on disassociation with the FLA does arise out of a conviction that corporations are intrinsically evil.
If we focus on the substance of the proposals, what is illuminated is the degree of agreement between the Task Force recommendations and the concerns of the PSA. In fact, a recent South Bend Tribune article on Mr. Kreider and the PSA cites them as claiming significant credit for the Task Force's recommendations. If we focus on the question of association, it is not clear that Catholic social teaching cashes out the way the PSA wants it to. Many persons who are active in developing the WRC are Marxist, communist, and atheist. Mr. Kreider describes himself as a Marxist. There are many more condemnations in Catholic teaching of these latter sets of belief as fundamentally evil than there are of the market economy as such.
Paul VI, who is sympathetic with much that socialism attempts to achieve for workers, writes in "Octogesima adveniens," that "the Christian who wishes to live his faith in a political activity which he thinks of as service cannot without contradicting himself adhere to ideological systems which radically or substantially go against his faith and his concept of man. He cannot adhere to the Marxist ideology, to its atheistic materialism." We can debate the meaning of "Marxism" and whether it necessarily involves atheistic materialism, but the point is clear: the question of association cuts both ways.
The final difficulty with the PSA's invocation of Catholic social teaching is that it remains on that level. There is no argument from concepts to proposals, no citation of texts (not even selective and tendentious proof-texting). There is only reference to "Catholic Social Teaching" and no more.
This raises the question of whether the PSA is serious about the teaching or rather is using it simply because the phrase "Catholic Social Teaching" has rhetorical leverage in the present context. The PSA should either draw deeply and fairly from the sources (there are texts that would back much of what the PSA supports) or drop any pretext — if it is that — of commitment to the tradition.
If I at any point think that the response of the university to the issue of sweatshops is at odds with Catholic teaching, I will say so, and so will the other members of the Task Force. That is why we were formed as a Task Force by President Malloy in the first place: to re-examine and correct where necessary the existing code of conduct for our licensees in light of Catholic teaching and other insights. If I do feel compelled to speak, I will do so through argument, drawing from the texts and with as much fairness as I am capable of manifesting.
Todd David Whitmore is an assistant professor of Theology. His column appears in the Observer every other Thursday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, March 23, 2000
