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Boston College’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice last week marked the 25th anniversary of the US Catholic Bishops’ landmark letter on economic justice — even as a continuing national debate on inequality and poverty pointed up the elusiveness of economic justice.
The Nov. 8 retrospective on the bishops’ letter “Economic Justice for All,” held in the Yawkey Center’s Murray Room, featured theologian and former America magazine columnist John Donahue, SJ, and Mary Jo Bane, Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. The two analyzed “Economic Justice for All” from theological, political, social and economic standpoints, and in the context of recent events such as the rise of the “Occupy” movement and newly released studies on poverty in America.
Introducing the event, University Professor in Human Rights and International Justice David Hollenbach, SJ, the center’s director, called the 1986 document “one of the Catholic Church’s most significant statements about economic justice.” A consultant to the committee that drafted the letter, Fr. Hollenbach noted that with the current rate of unemployment and numbers of people living in poverty both higher now than 25 years ago, “many of the issues addressed in the letter continue to be relevant today.”
Fr. Donahue, who also consulted on the letter, reviewed earlier initiatives by the Church to speak on economic and social justice, including the Second Vatican Council, which he noted called for “the Church to listen to, and learn from, those concerned with human dignity.”
One hallmark of the letter was its cogent description of the “plastic, often elusive term ‘social justice,’” said Fr. Donahue, citing such phrases as “active, productive participation” in society, a “duty to organize economic and social institutions so people can participate with dignity,” and perhaps most of all, “an obligation to the poor and powerless.”
While in recent months there has been a growing realization among Americans of “the chasm between the obscenely rich and the rest of the country,” Fr. Donahue said the poor “have fallen out of the dialogue” about inequality and poverty: “’Poor’ is a four-letter word in politics,” he said.
Bane, assistant secretary in the US Department of Health and Human Services during the first Clinton administration, said the US must view the letter’s advocacy for social and economic justice on global, not just national, terms.
“This means an openness to a world economy where we are not dominant, or where we share technology and research innovations,” she said. “The US cannot, and should not, protect ourselves from global competition to the detriment of those elsewhere who have a chance for better lives.”
Bane lamented that the bishops’ call for “dialogue, civility and a commitment to the social contract” has been lost amidst a corrosive political atmosphere. Historically, she said, the US has shown itself able to overcome disagreements and differences of opinions to achieve national goals. But this trait has been submerged by “a lack of civility, discourse and the ability to compromise.”