Doing Well and Doing Good: The Challenge of the Christian Capitalist

Commonweal, Nov 6, 1992 by Rembert G. Weakland

DOING WELL AND DOING GOOD

The Challenge of the Christian Capitalist

Richard John Neuhaus

Doubleday, $22, 331 pp.

On May 2, 1991, the day after the publication of Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Centesimus annus, Richard John Neuhaus wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal with the intriguing title, "The Pope Affirms the 'New Capitalism."' In that piece Neuhaus argued that in this encyclical the pope strongly endorsed capitalism, not the old ruthless system, but the new humanized or modified approach, and had finally come around to the same position as the neoconservatives in the United States.

Two statements in that article caused raised eyebrows and strong rebuttals. The first was: "Capitalism is the economic corollary of the Christian understanding of man's nature and destiny ." Was that asserting more than the pope intended? The second was: "The present encyclical must surely prompt a careful, and perhaps painful, rethinking of conventional wisdoms about Catholic social teaching. It may be, for instance, that the controlling assumptions of the American bishops' 1986 pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, must now be recognized as unrepresentative of the church's authoritative teaching." Were the American bishops so ill-informed? In the book the first statement is somewhat qualified by other more moderate passages like the following: "It would be a great mistake for the church to say that 'capitalism is the economics of which Christianity is the religion,"' even though the passage from the op-ed piece is repeated verbatim later on in chapter 6. To my knowledge the passage about Economic Justice for All is not repeated, probably because that document, in light of Neuhaus's total thesis, could now be ignored.

The present book takes the main thesis articulated briefly in the op-ed piece and develops it at greater length. The results are much more nuanced and the book contains many helpful and striking passages. Neuhaus sees Centesimus annus as a kind of new beginning for Catholic social teaching, in discontinuity with what went before. For this reason he labels the kind of capitalism that Pope John Paul II accepts as "new capitalism," even though this is not the terminology used by the pope himself. He is cautious, however, to call his study only "an" interpretation and not "the" interpretation of the new encyclical. Because of the newness in the encyclical, he does not find in previous papal encyclicals, even of this pontificate, the source for his own approach. Thus Centesimus annus is not interpreted in the light of Laborem exercens nor Sollicitudo rei socialis. Neuhaus asserts that the kind of market economy that the pope accepts comes closest to Michael Novak's concept of democratic capitalism. In fact, the author hints that Novak may have been the source of insights that caused the new perspectives.

Because of this avowed discontinuity, Neuhaus is forced to devote much space to the nature of papal teaching and to its authoritative character. These passages are most interesting and the concepts well-expressed. They form a kind of new apologetic in our day. It is unfortunate, however, that the concept of the college of bishops forms no part of Neuhaus's explanation of ordinary authoritative teaching.

One would have to admit in all honesty that there are passages in Centesimus annus that seem contradictory and lend credence to the Neuhaus thesis. So, for example, early in the document the pope seems to imply a strong governmental intervention when all is not functioning well: "The more that individuals are defenceless within a given society, the more they require the care and concern of others, and in particular the intervention of governmental authority" (#10). But then the pope seems to modify that concept when he talks of the "welfare state": "By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies..." (#48). By selective reading one can build several interpretations of the encyclical, especially if one accepts Neuhaus's principle of discontinuity from previous papal teaching.

However, such a discontinuous and selective reading is bound to bump into difficulties. Neuhaus states, for example, that the concept of equality is not found in the encyclical. Acting a la Sherlock Holmes, he asserts that equality is the decisive clue; it is the name of the dog that does not bark. Such a selective reading ignores #15 where the pope states that one of the roles of the state is to safeguard the prerequisites of a free economy, "which presumes a certain equality between the parties." But, as in previous papal documents on social justice, the key is inequality. It is the theme of Sollicitudo rei socialis and the sections of #33 and #52 in Centesimus annus that deal with development.

The perils of this kind of discontinuous interpretation are seen most clearly when Neuhaus deals with the pope's exhortation to make important changes in established lifestyles. Since this sentence contradicts the thesis of the ever-expanding and limitless market that will solve all poverty problems and thus that there is no need for the rich to divest themselves of any of their wealth, Neuhaus states: "As much as we are inclined to be generous, however, honesty requires our saying that the sentence about changing 'established lifestyles' is most likely a vestigial rhetorical fragment that somehow wandered into the text and is notable chiefly for its incongruity with the argument that the pope is otherwise making." He calls this sentence "a throwaway line." To believe that Pope John Paul II was guilty of throwaway lines that are "vestigial rhetorical fragments" takes faith, indeed! Excellent sections of the book deal with participation and especially with subsidiarity. It is unfortunate, however, that there is no clear exposition of the common good, or of such typically John Paul terms as solidarity. The section on poverty is mixed. The solution is indeed participation, but the vastness of the problem on a national and international scale seems to escape the author, because it demands more of capitalism than any form of it, even the "new capitalism," is able to deliver. Given Father Neuhaus's background, I had also expected more of the biblical section. As an appendix to the book Father Neuhaus has printed a "condensation" (his word) of Centesimus annus that first appeared in First Things, August-September 1991. I admire the attempt to put such difficult prose into simple declarative sentences without losing the sense. It is indeed a noble attempt. Naturally one is more interested in what the condensation omitted than in what it chose to synthesize. I was not surprised to find that the sentence of John Paul II in #52 on changing the established lifestyles was omitted. For an interpretation of the treatment of capitalism in Centesimus annus that is more continuous with previous papal teaching and probably more "authoritative," I refer the reader to "Il Capitalismo nell 'enciclica Centesimus annus" in La Civilta Cattolica (1991, 11,417-430).