Eclipse of Justice

by McCarthy, George E.; Rhodes, Royal W.

• ISBN13: 9780883448069
• ISBN10: 0883448068
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-02-01
• Publisher: Orbis Books

Summary

A sociologist and a church historian provide a probing scholarly critique of Economic Justice for All, the American bishops' pastoral letter on Catholicism and the U.S. economy.
McCarthy and Rhodes examine the letter's focus on poverty, inequality, and powerlessness in American society. They review classical concepts of social ethics and economic justice as applied by the bishops to analyze the social, political, and economic institutions of America. By examining reactions to the letter from both the political left and right, Eclipse of Justice opens up the full range of debate about the nature of social ethics.
The first part of Eclipse of Justice presents the moral dilemma created by the bishops' critique of liberalism (they pronounced it a "social and moral scandal") and explores the antecedents--papal, episcopal, and lay--that provided the ideas and vocabulary for the bishops' letter. The second part analyzes the pastoral letter and locates it within the larger context of debates about economic structures in modern liberalism. The third part examines attempts of the bishops to relate Christian social doctrine to international political and economic issues, and probes the contributions of liberation theology and dependency theory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
Social Justice and the Catholic Bishops' Letter on the U. S. Economy	p. 11
Introduction	p. 11
Principles and Outline of the Letter	p. 13
Tradition of the U.S. Bishops on Economics	p. 18
Hidden Traditions and Lost Critical Voices	p. 29
Characteristics: A New American Experiment	p. 32
Conclusion	p. 40
Conservative Critique of the Bishops' Letter: Assault on the Welfare State	p. 42
Introduction	p. 42
Conservative Redefinition of Social Justice	p. 44
Two Views on Democracy and Capitalism	p. 51
The Lay Commission Report on Economics and the Welfare State	p. 56
Conservative Political Economy: Anderson and Murray	p. 61
Critique of the Bishops' New American Experiment in Economic Democracy	p. 66
The Creed of Conservative Ethics: Capitalist Theology and the Metaphysics of Economics	p. 72
Introduction	p. 72
Moral Foundations of Novak's Democratic Capitalism	p. 73
Moral Self-Development and Economic Inequality in Liberalism	p. 75
Social Ideals and Market Rationality	p. 80
Fetishism of Human Rights: Reduction of Rights to Market Liberties	p. 82
Rationalization of Individual Rights	p. 85
Benne's Use of Rawls's Principles of Justice	p. 87
Rationalization of Democracy: Technocratic Liberalism from Weber to Benne	p. 94
Contradictions between Ethics and Political Economy	p. 99
Toward a Critical Theory of Political Economy	p. 104
Introduction	p. 104
Critique of the Bishops' Letter from the Left: The Domestication of Social Ethics	p. 105
The Politics of Poverty and Inequality in the Welfare State	p. 111
Inequality, Ethics, and Human Potential	p. 122
Economic Crises and Corporate Restructuring	p. 125
Productivity, Scientific Management, and the Dual Labor Market	p. 132
Class Functions of the Welfare State: Economic Accumulation and Political Legitimation	p. 135
Spending Priorities of the State: Socialization of the Private Costs of Production	p. 138
The Reagan Legacy: Leveraging of a Deindustrialized America	p. 146
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Catholic Social Critique: The Popes Speak	p. 151
Introduction	p. 151
Leo XIII (1878-1903): Natural Law over Natural Rights	p. 156
Pius XI (1922-1939): Liberal Heresies	p. 162
Pius XII (1939-1958)-John XXIII (1958-1963): Modernizing the Tradition	p. 167
Paul VI (1963-1978): Third-World Struggle	p. 171
John Paul II(1978- ): Toward the Millennium	p. 174
Questions of Authority	p. 182
Liberation of the Bible: Advocates and Critics	p. 188
Introduction	p. 188
Depoliticizing Scripture	p. 191
The Praxis of Piety vs. Voodoo Theology	p. 199
The Authority of the Word	p. 205
Beyond the Eclipse: Liberation Theology and Moral Restructuring	p. 206
Conservative Critics: Catholicism in Crisis	p. 209
Liberation Theology and Dependency Theory in Latin America	p. 213
Introduction	p. 213
Bishops' Statement on the Third World and Its Conservative Critics	p. 214
Modernization Theory and the Stages of Economic Development	p. 219
Types of Underdevelopment and Dependency Theory	p. 230
Underdevelopment in Spite of Industrialization	p. 233
The Missing Theory of Political Economy	p. 239
Title Abbreviations Used in Notes	p. 241
Notes	p. 243
Index	p. 283
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