Re-typed by Mary Margaret Pignone

Bread-Sharers:

The Just Demands of the Poor

Marie Augusta Neal, SND

A Talk presented at

NETWORK Legislative Seminar XVI

June, 1987

NETWORK

Bread-Sharers: The Just Demands of the Poor

Background: Catholic Social Action in the Early 20th Century

In the early part of the 20th century, we Catholics confined our religious commitment within a particular cultural assumption: namely, that the political and economic order of our society is a given that establishes the parameters of our social action. In so doing, we did a relatively good job of assisting the Catholic ethnic groups of old Europe to adapt to the American way of work and politics. We preserved an ancient faith. We socialized poor peasant and urban ghetto folk to an American tradition that many thought, due to its emphasis on individualism and independence, was not amenable to the communal style of our European ancestors. But Not Catholic tradition has taken a new practical and pastoral turn toward third world liberation and offers a new challenge to our faithful action. (1)

The year 1960 marked the transition of the Catholic European immigrant to full Americanization with the election of John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic president of the United States. This was accomplished with only a few fearing that a supposed agent of foreign power -- the Vatican -- was taking over the country from its WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) heritage. Only a few students of the social sciences today are aware of how lively that fear of takeover still was at the opening of World War II. We know only from careful research how much Catholic effort between the two world wars went into the Americanization of immigrants, and the extent to which Catholics were taught, by their Church to be patriotic, to ensure a place for them in the American way of life (MacCarthy).

In this historical setting, it is understandable that in World War II there were only 135 Catholic conscientious objectors (Zahn). Furthermore, though Catholics were well represented in the civil rights activities of the fifties, they did not take the lead in defining its principles and values. We may suspect this happened because they were still too near their own minority status and struggle to do so.

In the early sixties, however, the ecumenical movement was well on its way, and Vatican II was bringing closure to some of the unresolved issues of the Protestant Reformation. Thus, by the late sixties, Catholics were once more communal enough to reflect on the quality of their life in modern society, and, in the light of gospel reflection, to assess the justice quality of modern society as wanting (Herzog, Dorr, Avila).

Reading Signs of the Times: Catholic Social Action Now

This assessment -- that the justice quality of modern society is wanting -- was rooted in the reality of the times. The critical aspects of this reality are the conditions of poverty of whole peoples in rich societies and of poor nations in relationship to abundant global resources (World Resources, 1987). The biblical questions about good news to the poor can now be asked again within the context of two salient facts:

These two facts come to us from data recalculated through the use of computers from variables too complex to manage without the technological equipment newly available. What we know now -- that we did not know in 1950 -- is that the world population will probably level off at about 10.2 billion near the year 2110. We also know now that the world resources can handle a population of that size if materials are not wasted and if waste materials are rendered nontoxic (See Murphy, Brown, Sivard, World Resources, 1987).

Faith-filled Catholics, living with this reality, raise basic questions about our lifestyles and public rules. Why? Because what we have also learned since 1950 is that it is far harder than we once thought to energize ourselves as a world community to want to redistribute goods and services so that all can live well. Many of us who have the leisure to reflect would far prefer to ground our economic thinking in the false assumption of scarcity -- despite the evidence of abundance -- and to ground out political philosophy in a principle of natural self-interest -- despite evidence of lived altruism. We would rather do this than face new restructuring of our economic and political theories to fit the realities of our times.

In effect, we have preferred to blame nature and our genes for what is actually caused by our lack of political will and our too-narrow and entrenched cultural definition of the situation regarding moral virtue. Social conditions that we fear to change, lest we lose our wealth and power advantages, prevent technical solutions of problems we could solve (cf., U.S. Catholic Bishops' Pastoral on the Economy, #77, 254). Yet, despite our fear and our desire not to be "involved", we know we do not want unnecessary world poverty, weapons escalation, environmental destruction, and growing health hazards which are the direct outcomes of current economic and political arrangements. All of us, then, should welcome a new "moral corset" that helps us to channel our committed energies to creative and effective societal transformation.

Gospel Mandate and Church Documents

Since we begin our task as informed believers, we do not have to start from zero. The bishops' earlier pastoral on race (1979), ethnicity (1981), peace (1983) and now on the economy (1986) are direct outcomes of the Call to Action Conference of 1976. This conference, in turn, was stimulated by people's initiatives following the encyclical of the same name in 1971,and its sequel, the Justice in the World Synod of the same year (2).

That event, the Synod of 1971, stemmed directly from the Development of Peoples encyclical of 1967 which sought to implement the documents of the Second Vatican Council. I noted earlier that Vatican II was working through agenda left over from the Protestant Reformation. Its further content was prompted by earlier social encyclicals beginning with Rerum Novarum in 1891, and, particularly, to Karl Marx's challenge to the Church as an opiate.

Marx argued that the church, in sermon and liturgy, led the worshippers to ignore the solvable problems of their human condition. In so doing, he argued, they ignored the biblical mandates to help the poor in the person of the oppressed workers, whose conditions were caused by the industrial revolution. Further, he contended, the church, by preaching the patient waiting for eternal bliss (accepted unwittingly by the poor workers), helped to keep the wealth and power securely in the hands of owners of the means of production.

It was not easy for church people to raise their consciousness to perceive the relationship of sermon to class oppression, just as today it is equally difficult for church personnel to see the link of sexist liturgical language to the oppression of women in the church, and of genetic assumptions to racism in global perspective.

The U.S. bishops' pastoral message and letter, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, recalls the history of social conditions in the modern world and the link of analysis with cosmologies. It sets out in a forthright way to state values and to establish principles regarding economic production, trade, finance and work. The gospel mandates committed Christians to live these values and principles on the way to the kingdom. The pastoral concludes that whatever we do in the economic or political order should be done in global perspective. Why? Because the economy -- local, regional, national and international -- is now so linked that market decisions affect whole communities on different continents in ways that deprive them of the resources they need to stay alive and to develop. As the bishops state, we must "increase the level of commitment to the common good and to the virtues of citizenship" (#321).

That directive sounds like a naïve, abstract generalization. Yet this is indeed the challenge that brings us together at NETWORK. We find ourselves discarding cherished theories of human nature embodied in ways of believing that we can no longer accept. We do not naturally do good things or evil things. We are capable of doing both, as well as doing what is neutral. If the gospel in our times mandates a special option for the poor, and we, in faith, respond to that mandate, we can develop a public will. That does not mean we will do so. It does, however, mean we should do so. What we add to that faith is the development of the skills needed to do what needs to be done. The analysis calls for a high level of technical and analytic competence.

It is good to know that the bishops included this insight. They recognize that good will is not enough to accomplish the task before us (#318). The rich references at the beginning and at the end of the letter to biblical mandates and guidelines for action provide abundant meditative material to stimulate us to go on when the going is difficult and to do so as a people of faith (Smith).

Some of us are greatly surprised at the fact that the bishops wrote this letter. As we look at the social history of the letter, however, we see that it is a logical and ethical outcome of earlier church statements on social involvement. It rightly assumes that faith builds on nature; that without faith, there is no commitment to consistent good, no control over personal willfulness and no social will -- although there may be admirable acts of personal holiness. I am sure the bishops themselves read this document with wonder at their own temerity and perhaps even wish at times that they had not so burdened themselves and us. But here it is, a most welcome invitation for justice and peace action in the late 80's, with little time to waste prior to its implementation.

Why Political Action?

This NETWORK Seminar is well named: THE ECONOMIC PASTORAL IS POLITICAL -- because it is. What the pastoral dies is to announce that the Church, reflecting on the signs of the times (i.e., population and resources), has concluded that God's Word calls all of us today to adopt a special option for the poor (#186, 260). The reason for this conclusion is simply this: the outcome of such a special option, if we have sufficient socialization to work at its realization, is the elimination of the main causes of local, regional, national and international poverty. And, today, this poverty has reached "an unacceptable level", given the resources with which God has gifted us to eliminate it (#185).

The poor know that addressing the elimination of poverty is a gospel mandate. We have developed a theology to direct it, liberation theology. The non-poor, who are not directly invited to action by this theology, do not so easily see the religious character of this mandate. They are seeking something more spiritual, less material. So are the poor. But human survival for the poor is the problem that the letter addresses and, in so doing, responds to the new signs of the times regarding population and resources (#260). The special option for the poor is the priamry principle of action.

The bishops state a second principle: the priority of human dignity. This principle expands the category of the deprived to include all those so disabled that special arrangements are required for them to be able to participate in productive work. According to current structural arrangements, this is not possible (#259). From this, then, springs a third principle: the right to work and, through work, to share in the resources of food, clothing, shelter, health, security in old age, and education for life and all its transitions.

Reflecting on the way work gets done and where the resources of wealth and power are located, the bishops affirm a fourth principle: the right of all human beings to participate in the decisions that affect their lives and to share in the resources produced by human work for human survival. These rights challenge limited civil arrangement embedded in current systems of law and government policies regarding who shares power and who has authority.

Once these principles are stated, the bishops proceed to question the use of resources for the production of weapons for human destruction in a global community. They condemn the excessive investment in arms production and recommend instead the substitution of the production of resources for human needs -- a fifth principle of action.

Why the Economics Pastoral is Political

So far the content is biblical, theological, and ethical. Where, then, is the pastoral political (#313)? In every statement of values that the bishops make to indicate

These statements set limits on economic freedom; they provide parameters within which
those who manage and plan the economy are expected to operate as they determine what is to be produced, how and for whom.

If these limits are to be implemented, who is to see that this happens? Some might expect that the moral mandate will go directly from the bishops' statement to the conscience of the hearer, to the shaping of his or her behavior to conform to that mandate. The bishops did not expect this route. They said that they wanted to influence the conscience of the believers and to take part in the public debate around how the economy should take part in the public debate around how the economy should operate (#27). In a democracy, what is discussed in public debate becomes operative only if a majority of concerned people can move it to law or public policy. Several recommendations in the pastoral are of the type that call for change in public policy:

Government should assume a positive role in generating employment, building roads, bridges, harbors, public communication and transportation, regulation of trade and commerce in the interest of the poor (#124).

Government should provide for job preparation through apprentice programs, illiteracy elimination, job retraining, bringing the marginalized into labor force (#159, 162).

Government should establish public policies for health, medicare, social security, minimum wage, as well as for the reform of these programs (#190,191, 197).

Government should remove barriers to employment of women and minorities (#199).

Government should reassess the federal farm program, including amount of food produced, ceiling on price support and make rules that benefit primarily small and medium sized farms (#245).

Government should work for global food security (#240, 282).

There should be government regulation to preserve the environment (#118).

Government should reduce and eliminate production of weapons (#94).

To some people, even this brief listing of recommendations for government action
regarding the economy is too much government "interference". The same people would not mind the bishops saying that these things need to be done, but they will question who should do them. Their concern rests in a fear of political control over their live, the loss of their "freedom"; that is, the freedom of the more advantaged, the more secure. The assumption is that government should work for us. The assumption is correct. The error lies in to whom the "us" refers. How the "us" gets broadened to take all the people seriously is a function of our cultural framework, our cultural consensus. This, in turn, is a function of social structure.

The Structure and Roles of Society

Consider for a moment the structure of society. It is made up of people acting in many different groupings: in families, local communities, business firms, schools, hospitals, recreation centers, churches, stores, prisons, government units and other groupings. This is no arbitrary list. It is possible to complete it and, in so doing, to incorporate every set of role relations in which humans are involved. But, even with this short listing, we can make a point.

Consider each of the groupings listed above. We can name the related roles people play in each: parents, children, husbands, wives and other relatives in the family; neighbors and friends in community; managers and workers in the business firm, students, teachers, staff and administrators in schools; medical personnel and patients in hospitals; players and audience in recreation; clergy and laity in churches; managers, customers and clerks in stores; guards and inmates in prisons; elected officers, appointees, and citizens in governing units. These are not different people in each case, but the same people in different roles in each set of relationships. So one individual on a given day is parent, clerk, citizen, patient, administrator, neighbor, etc.

If he or she wants to help in the implementation of the policies recommended in the pastoral, then the role of citizen becomes primary, while the practice of the other roles is drawn on for the experience that leads to a deeper understanding of the need for some common action.

As citizens -- that is, in our political roles -- we can all look critically at the economy which is institutionalized to provide for the production of goods and services for human need. That is the function of an economy: to provide goods and services for human need. We now have the wherewithal, the resources and the people, to do this. But, in fact, there is no economy in the world that does provide goods and services for human need. Therefore, all the institutionalized economies in the world need to be called to account by the citizens.

In the course of history, we invented specific ways with related ideologies for carrying out the functions of the economy. The familiar ones for us are capitalism and communism. These two ways are ideologically distinct. Both require specific functions of the political system in which they are attached. Each is rooted in assumptions about human nature that are not necessarily valid today. Capitalism allows the individual, as worker, to be manipulated by the demands of the market, but assumes that the market is guided by the hidden hand of God. Communism requires that the market be controlled by the political system, but assumes that the latter will be inherently just once the class struggle ends.

Neither belief factor has brought world poverty under control, although both systems have provided some solutions to the problems of high infant mortality and low life expectancy (the basic measures of poverty). The former has done so as a direct function of the increase in gross national production; the latter, as a function of planned change. We often forget that the Soviet Union and Cuba have done a remarkable job of helping people to stay alive and to live longer. We have to remember that in 1960, Cuba and Haiti had similar life expectancy and infant mortality rates. Look at them now: Cuba's is exactly like the United States; Haiti is where Cuba was in 1960.

The competitive conflict between the two systems has militarized the whole world and dis-established national trust. This distrust and competitive conflict have disturbed the political will in democracies which must necessarily look beyond the political and economic systems for inspiration in the realization of values and commitment to principles. Both systems have violated human rights of members of the state and members of other states over which they have sought control. Consider, for example, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Angola.

The Priority of Human Rights

In their religious groups, people take up the challenge inspired by their Scriptures, liturgies, traditions, and ministers to create communities that support human rights. To speak of human rights is to speak of what we know we must both accord to the other and expect for ourselves because of our membership in the human race -- love of neighbor. They include political rights to freedom of speech, of religion, of trial by a jury of peers; freedom to organize and to vote; and economic rights to food, clothing, shelter, health, education and social security. These are rights, not privileges.

It is only in the twentieth century that the world knows that depriving others of these rights cannot be justified in the judgment of our fellow human beings. In fact, forty centuries of reflection are just now bringing us to the full realization that class, race, sex, age, and health have been factors for negative discrimination. Those of us who controlled the wealth and power lacked a commitment to altruism and the political will to set human rights as a priority. We chose, rather, to produce and distribute needed goods and services in our own interests. It has taken us 40 centuries to discover that we don't have a right to do that. We have realized that our reasons for doing it -- we are "naturally better"; our genes are better; we "got here first"; we have to "take care of our own" -- are all false. "Our own" are the 5 billion people who inhabit the planet. To "take care of our own" means to are for all the people of the earth.

The bishops' pastoral is grounded in the affirmation of all of these rights for everyone, and in the realization that, the level of poverty in the world at the present time is, therefore, unacceptable because it is unnecessary (#185). To implement the current economic system, for example, we have to generate scarcity of food production to make it work, even though the basic global need is for food (#250, 287).

Look at the number of pieces of legislation that pay farmers to cut back on food production because it "doesn't go" on the world market. The world market is the economy. If the food "doesn't go" on the world market, and the people are hungry and need food, the problem is with the market. We don't cut down on food to fit the market: we create a market that will allow for the distribution of food.

The bishops invite experimentation toward a restructured economy. At the same time, they recognize the need to set limits on the direction this experimentation takes. The challenge to faith-filled Catholics, in our role as citizens, is to initiate this experimentation.

But where do we begin? The needs of our world are great. Just look at the issues two weeks of current (1987) news reporting place before us as needing immediate political action:

And, on a national and global level:

Treasury now favors creating huge banks to enhance U.S. competitive advantage with Japan and Europe (NYT, June 7, p. 1) Alan Greenspan, newly appointed head of the World Bank, with a philosophy of free market, notes: "I do not have a fear of undue concentration of banking powers." (NYT, June 7, p.28)

Rev. Leon Sullivan withdraws Sullivan principles and recommends sanctions as the only route for large corporations to take in South Africa to dismantle Apartheid
(NYT, June 7, p. 2).

Senate vote to continue support to rebels in Angola even though South Africa
and the U.S. are the only two countries that do not recognize the present government of Angola as legitimate (NYT, June 11, p.9).

The Third World debt crisis and IMF policy for debt payment and Zambia's abandonment of the austerity measures it imposes (NYT, June 8, pA12). Vatican criticism of the way the debt crisis is being handled. Brazil's inability to pay and the decade of grace (The Guardian, Feb. 25, p 14).

Margaret Thatcher's Capitalist revolution (NYT magazine, May 31, p. 87). France's "Popular Capitalism" (NYT, June 8, p. D10).

These issues do not even scratch the surface of the many complicated problems that now become our responsibility as concerned citizens, invited to take a special option for the poor as a religious commitment.

Recommendations

Altruism as a public virtue

In the past, we have considered altruism, the disinterested love of the other, as a utopian
private virtue. We felt a few saints could express this virtue, as Jesus did, by laying down their lives for a friend or even for a stranger. Public policy, on the other hand, was planned within the context of national self-interest as a good.

Today, something else appears to be more practical: namely, the institutionalization of altruism as a public virtue (Neal, 1982). This would mean that public policy would be established on the basis of its service to the most needy throughout the world. Citizens would be socialized to the global good rather than to the national common good. They would find this orientation reflected in both public debate and private economic planning and defended as practical virtue. The option is viable because we have a manageable supply of potential resources and a population we can afford to foster

Educational methods

How would this option be implemented? Through the educational process. Already
conscientization is practiced to help the poor get command of their own lives. Literacy is found to increase rapidly as the poor raise to consciousness the political, economic and cultural oppressions of their live and take action to change those conditions (Freire). For centuries, states have neglected relevant education for the poor on the false assumption that they are not ready for it, not quite human enough for it. By this, the states meant the poor were not yet willing or able to fit into the operating economy and governmental system -- which were, in fact, not organized to include their interests as peers.

The stumbling block for conscientization is the response of the non-poor, who see the liberation of the poor from their slave, servant and proletariat roles as threatening to the advantage of those related roles of manager, administrator, teacher, healer, minister, etc. In reality, what is actually happening, slowly but effectively, is the creation of a world society of peers with common skills in literacy and calculation, sufficient for making informed choices in groups where each is to be taken seriously by all.

Years of acting in our own class interest make resistance to this newly emerging relationship strong and subtle. People will say they do not mind helping the poor but they do not want to live with "them." The poor, however, in ever-growing numbers experience themselves as "we", not "they", and make effective demands for proper rules of the game.
Pedagogies for the non-poor are being developed so that when the poor reach out to claim what is rightfully theirs, the non-poor will realize this is not a threat to their existence. What it does challenges is their lifestyles. South Africa's Afrikaaner society is realizing this now, as are El Salvador's fourteen families. America's super-rich are still holding out for nobless oblige but the gospel is no longer on their side. Justice takes precedence over charity when charity means giving of one's largesse to the docile and appreciative poor, and justice means collaborating in full partnership toward the integration of peoples into a developing human community (#76).

Social Action

Justice and Peace offices in dioceses, religious congregations, and entire nations are
learning now to provide the resources and skills for effective citizen response. We need these skills because we all have experienced the too-big daily mail with twenty alerts, rallies, call-ins, telegrams needed. All of them are good. The task of responding is exciting but also tedious. Hundreds of pieces of legislation need to be written, lobbied, watched, reviewed, resubmitted. Legislative watchers, court watchers, community organizers, voter registration getters and voter educators are needed.

Then, suddenly, the opposition comes along with the same style petition, argument and appeal (3). How does one distinguish who is telling it as it is? One has to be as wise as the serpent and simple as the dove -- a good biblical directive. Our criterion for determining who is "telling it as it is" is to ask "who is speaking from the point of view of the poor?" For us, "as it is" means from the point of view of the poor.

Once we have decided what needs to be done, how do all our tasks get effectively institutionalized? Through the Justice and Peace office, the sabbatical, and the file. The Justice and Peace office needs staff experienced in critical social analysis. We divide up the labor among volunteers, family members, civics classes, religious communities, etc. We go out two by two, like the apostles, to every center of action. We come home and write the briefest of reports, after reflecting with our peers as to what action is best. We sent out our reports and then file them.

The file, as C.W. Mills has rightly noted, makes continuous planning and action possible. Today, in many cases, the file is in the computer and is updated there and printed out on request. The file is indexed so that anyone can come in and find the topic by number, theme, or name to study it in preparation for a hearing, testimony, rally, class, meeting, an action. It stores the evidence for reflective review in preparation for development of strategies for action and the data for evidence of current realities. No one's work is wasted or duplicated. We learn as we go.

But who does all this work and when? We all do, when we are students, in early retirement, or on sabbatical. These are the people who will do the court-watching, the legislation-watching, the social analysis.

We all get a sabbatical, by the way, once every seven years. The purpose of our sabbatical is to review the work of the previous six years and to ask ourselves the question: "Given what we have been doing, are we on the road to salvation?" If the answer is no, then at the end of the sabbatical, we change our job, our lifestyle and begin again.

In time, we build this work into our life plan and train for it in school. Just as the good Buddhist spends anywhere from three months of one year to a lifetime in vowed contemplation, so the Call to Action recruits every committed Christian to a lifetime of service. But we take turns. Only a few must promise forever.

Like Socrates, we become gadflies, never resting until heard. But like Jesus, we go apart and rest awhile to be refreshed for the action. We do not go apart and rest forever. We learn from each other; we lean on each other. We cannot go on without each other, so we do not destroy each other with invective. Invective is character attack, an effective tool of resisters to change. It works. We are all vulnerable to it. Rather than submit to it, we analyze it and address the oppressive conditions that are at its roots with the intention of changing them.

Conclusion: The Challenge in Biblical Perspective

Respect for human rights becomes our moral guide, our "moral corset". Basic to these is the right of self-determination, that is, a people's right to the resources of the land on which they sit, whether it be an inner-city project, a tenement, a country, a nation within a nation. This right was not even formalized at the time of the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It was not until 1967 that we recognized self-determination as a basic human right. It appears now in both United Nations documents as, "the right of all peoples to self-determination and to enjoy and utilize fully and freely their natural wealth and resources."

Once this right was articulated, peoples of the Third World nations, organized inner-city dwellers in affluent, industrialized countries, and other minorities everywhere have come to know that this right is theirs. Its truth is too evident to the oppressed to have it undone by any denial or rationalization or formal economics or political science course on the part of those controlling communication.

In modern society, the mandate to possess the land is new, but in biblical language it is recorded in Leviticus 25. The people cannot be dispossessed of the land. All must be returned in the Jubilee year, if not before then.

The challenge in biblical perspective -- our challenge today -- is to stand with the dispossessed as they reach out to take what is rightfully theirs. We stand with programs, policies and laws that protect the parameters of a feasible economy structured to provide the abundance that is needed. We stand within a community that includes five billion people, organized in states with laws and policies containing and restraining a creative economy, fashioned by the people to provide for human need.

Notes

Within the Church the dynamic of liberation theology is kept alive through occasional reports in Origins. For evidence of the wider impact of that theology, see NACLA, Report on the Americas, Volume XIX, No. 5, September/October, 1985.

The social encyclicals dating from 1891 develop the Church's position on social justice in a series of anniversary letters. See Donal Dorr's A Hundred Years of Vatican Teaching.

As the media has moved into place to provide socialization to issues of political action, words such as "radical", "justice", "global concern", and "option for the poor" have been adopted in scripts with quite different meanings. One has to examine what economic and political stand people are presenting vis-a-vis helping the poor rather than just listening for cue words.

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January 14, 2010