To the Editor:
In “The Politics of John Paul II” [December 1979], Michael Novak expresses “major disappointment” with the Pope’s address to the United Nations, “the intellectual centerpiece” of his American visit. While commending papal concern expressed therein for human rights and “injustice in the field of the spirit,” Mr. Novak reacts strongly against John Paul’s use of “the special jargon . . . of recent official [papal] statements on ‘peace and justice.’”
Through much of his article Mr. Novak utilizes my book, The Gospel of Peace and Justice (Orbis, 1976), to document his plaint that the Polish Pope inherits this regretted “rhetoric” and “theology of politics and economics” from Vatican Council II and Paul VI, who chaired the Church from 1963 to 1978. For this reason alone I presume to comment; but there are others.
Mr. Novak specifically indicts the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, established by Pope Paul under Vatican II legislation as part of his cabinet “to continue the work of the Vatican Council on secular matters,” with similar commissions formed by “dioceses throughout the world.” Many of “the priests and nuns” who staff this global network, Mr. Novak reports, although “trained neither in political nor in economic nor in cultural systems, gather materials on all complaints, resentments, tendencies, and dissensions that arise from worldly concerns.”
I directed this Vatican Department and its transnational relations from its founding in 1967 until 1974, with the title of Secretary, named by and responsible to Paul VI. I traveled all continents under papal mandate, working with the Vatican’s diplomatic corps and the local churches to develop our global network of “peace-and-justice” bodies, now officially authorized by Catholic bishops’ conferences in seventy-five nations and by a thousand smaller Church bodies, over a hundred in United States dioceses alone.
Mr. Novak is correct: we do listen to “complaints, resentments, tendencies, and dissensions,” providing grass-roots antennae for our ecclesial and secular leaders to hear the cries of the earth’s poor and oppressed. For too long these hundreds of millions have remained voiceless, or have found specious spokesmen mainly among Marxists. For too long our Church hierarchy listened too readily and exclusively to an elite of established “solid citizens.” A year ago, in their decennial assembly at Puebla, Mexico, the bishops of Latin America, with John Paul present, declared their “preferential option for the poor,” to promote more just economic and political structures, human rights, and development. In short, they reaffirmed their evangelical ministry of lobbying for and with the weak and oppressed, promoting their cause as did Christ, Isaiah, Micah, and other Hebrew prophets. Certainly such lobbying is also gloriously in the tradition of the United States, and well understood by the American Enterprise Institute which Mr. Novak serves and, I hazard, also appreciated by the publishers of COMMENTARY, the American Jewish Committee.
Indeed, as Mr. Novak reports, this theology and ministry of “peace and justice,” with its planetary vox populi, has deeply influenced the Universal Church since Vatican II, from Popes to slum, suburban, and village pastor. With his lifelong knowledge of the Church, Mr. Novak should show no surprise that the Polish Pope, with his own experience in confronting unjust economic and political power, evokes his predecessor’s “Gospel of Peace and Justice” in his first solemn “State of the World” address to its 157 nations in their only official forum. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, after all, participated actively in evolving this updated Church policy in Vatican II’s four sessions, 1962-65; in the Bishops’ Synod of 1971 on “Justice in the World”; and in scores of other visits to Rome. Several times annually I attended meetings with him, and on occasion he honored and enlightened me by personal visits to my secretariat.
Consequently, I strongly challenge Mr. Novak’s studied effort to dissociate John Paul II from the social teaching and ministry of his recent predecessors and fellow bishops, even from the Vatican Council itself. Mr. Novak’s article makes the astonishing allegation that the Pope provided so little personal input in the writing of his UN address that in large measure it does not present his own social principles and political policies. In Mr. Novak’s words: “It seems to be a staff document through and through, couched in the special jargon . . . of recent official statements on ‘peace and justice’ . . . the rhetoric mined for the address at the UN.” What other clue does this top American intellectual offer that the true mind of this philosopher Pope is not really expressed in “the intellectual centerpiece” of his American visit, an event of “utmost intellectual importance”? Well, the Pope’s address to the 157 national governments of the globe “reads not at all like his first encyclical,” on Christ the Redeemer of Humankind (an obviously theological and pastoral document), “which he wrote himself.”
I will not try to rebut Mr. Novak’s reading of this evidence. I would only urge that the “politics” of John Paul II be taken for what he publicly and formally proclaims this to be, including, above all, the “peace-and-justice” theology which Mr. Novak would delete. Otherwise, serious discussion of this dominant world leader’s political views, commendably launched by COMMENTARY, might peter out into what Mr. Novak wishes them to be.
Neither will I speculate in this space on Mr. Novak’s motives, nor respond in kind to his cool, reasoned charges against me and my cited book on Catholic social teaching since Pope John. But the latter do deserve notice. He avers that “Father Gremillion, American-born as he is, . . . appears to loathe the American system.” Then after 61 more lines blasting my summary of the papal documents from 1961 to 1975, Mr. Novak announces that “Father Gremillion—like virtually all other workers in ‘peace and justice,’ in America and in Rome—has blinded himself to the American experience. . . . The bias against democratic capitalism is thick and tangible; it is, at times, irrational.”
As a seventh-generation American, descendant of Louisiana’s first settlers on the Mississippi, my nationalism is so rooted in my being that I feel no fever to defend my country’s every system and ideology, as some first- and second-generation Americans may tend to do. I began my social ministry in 1949 as a pastor here in Shreveport concerned with the American economic system of sharecropping and migrant workers and the American socio-political system of segregation. Thirty years of far-reaching structural reforms have generated much greater justice and well-being all over the South through our American economic and political process. In this I rejoice.
However, as Mr. Novak reports, I, with thousands of “peace-and-justice” co-workers generally, from Roman popes to Rio bishops, Calcutta sisters to Chicago slum activists, believe that the American and West European experience can neither be everywhere duplicated nor anywhere imposed. We foresee a plurality of economic and political systems, with diverse mixtures of market and planning mechanisms in the differing religio-cultural and socio-political regions of the globe. Paul VI stressed the “wide diversity among the situations in which Christians—willingly or unwillingly—find themselves according to regions, socio-political systems, and cultures.” In such widely varying situations, Paul continues, “It is up to the Christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation proper to their own country, . . . and [with] all men of good will, to discern options and commitments which are called for in order to bring about the social, political, and economic changes seen in many cases to be urgently needed” (The Gospel of Peace and Justice, pp. 486-87).
On the whole, Church leaders of the Third World are suspicious of operations by multinational corporations and the consumerist culture these foster in their societies. Mr. Novak should know these business enterprises better than I from his post inside the American Enterprise Institute. He does show pointed concern for “economic determinism” which would limit the market system and private ownership of productive property. We of “peace and justice” are equally concerned about the economic determinism of the “bottom line” and windfall profits, of a world order in which we Americans, 5 per cent of the human family, consume 30 per cent of the world’s goods, of the enormous gap between haves and have-nots within and among nations.
John Paul shows the same concern. Mr. Novak reports him telling the UN: “In the modern world there are two main threats. . . . The first of these systematic threats against human rights is linked in an overall sense with the distribution of material goods. This distribution is frequently unjust, both within individual societies and on the planet as a whole.” The second systematic threat is against “the objective rights of the spirit, of human conscience, and of human creativity including man’s relationship with God.” Mr. Novak judges, correctly I believe, that possibly “John Paul intended to direct the argument on material abuses against the Western world, and the argument on spiritual abuses against the Communist world.” However, Mr. Novak blithely blacks out the Pope’s concern for economic rights with the tarbrush of “peace-and-justice” theology, then he rejoices that John Paul “is no Grand Inquisitor who says ‘First bread, then liberty.’”
My reading of the Polish Pope’s message is: “Just social structures for bread and liberty.” This is the clear mainstream of the “Gospel of Peace and Justice,” from John XXIII through Vatican II to Paul VI, flowing direct from Isaiah: “He [the Lord] has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives . . . to set the downtrodden free” (Isaiah 8:23). With these words in the Nazareth synagogue, the rabbi Jesus began his public ministry (Luke 4:18).
I will let Mr. Novak argue with the Grand Inquisitor whether bread is first. But I do wish to listen with him to Jesus’ words when our planet’s economic and political systems shut down on the Day of Judgment, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat” (Matthew 25:35).
[Monsignor] Joseph Gremillion
Diocesan Office for Social Ministry
Shreveport, Louisiana
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Michael Novak writes:
Years ago, Monsignor Gremillion was an inspiration to many of us for his work in civil rights. His work for “peace and justice” has been legendary. His long letter does, however, confirm the main point of my essay, viz., that in his address to the United Nations, Pope John Paul II depended heavily on “peace-and-justice” theology. Much of that development was directed during critical years by Monsignor Gremillion. I am sorry to find it inadequate. I had hoped both of them would do better.
The stated goals of Monsignor Gremillion’s secretariat are to “hear the cries of the earth’s poor and oppressed” and “to promote more just economic and political structures, human rights, and development.” These are exactly the goals in whose light I criticized both the record laid out in Monsignor Gremillion’s book and in Pope John Paul IIs address. It is not their goals which are at fault. Their understanding of methods, means, techniques, and institutions is not persuasive. On these matters, reasonable men, equally faithful to humane and specifically Catholic principles, must submit to open argument.
Further, Monsignor Gremillion has launched a lobbying effort. This is to go far beyond the role of, for example, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, about which Monsignor Gremillion attempts to make some ad hominem points. The AEI is a research institution as independent as any graduate school in the world. AEI neither takes nor endorses public-policy positions and we certainly do not lobby. Monsignor Gremillion might profitably come to learn the virtues of research and teaching without lobbying. As a lobbyist, Monsignor Gremillion is obliged to commit his commission to practical politics. He thus loses his independence; he becomes partisan. The whole “peace-and-justice” apparatus deserves to be heard—and debated. All practical wisdom does not belong to it. On balance, it may well be becoming a contributor to tyranny and universal stagnation.
It is true that I tried to give Pope John Paul II the benefit of the doubt in his UN address, knowing how Vatican documents (and U.S. government documents, for that matter) are commonly prepared. If, as Monsignor Gremillion writes, Pope John Paul II is uniquely exempt from a further development of his own thinking on the vital issues he addressed, he is, sadly, committed to the weakness of “peace-and-justice” theology. I tried to spare him that.
As to specifics:
The American South which the young Father Gremillion so nobly served was for a long time agrarian and its plantation system was modeled on pre-capitalist feudalism. The South was until the 1950’s the part of the country least affected by democratic capitalism. As C. Vann Woodward has noted, the pro-slavery philosophers of the ante-bellum period argued that the destruction of slavery meant the imposition on the South of Northern capitalism. They were anti-capitalist to the core. Their fears were borne out in the event. The advance of democratic capitalism into the South after World War II did more to bring about the end of segregation and the feudal system of sharecropping, and to extend civil rights to all citizens, than any “peace-and-justice” theology of that or earlier periods. Churchmen played a role but the change of social structure from feudalism to democratic capitalism was decisive.
It seems that “first- and second-generation” Americans are rather more critical of our “country’s every system and ideology” than many who had become much more comfortable here generations earlier. The force for progressive politics in America has come disproportionately from the relatively recent Jewish and Catholic immigrants to Northern cities. They have been for decades the basic constituency of liberal Congressmen and of such political leaders as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson; and they almost prevailed—without much help from elsewhere—with Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Monsignor Gremillion need not patronize us.
Democratic capitalism is a threefold system: a political system (democratic), an economic system (market, incentives, personal decisions), and a cultural system (pluralistic, liberal, Judeo-Christian). It is difficult to transplant its political system or its economic system into cultures that are not at least analogous in their capacity to inspire democratic habits and the disciplines of a free economy. Still, democratic capitalism does thrive among quite diverse cultures, as in Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and other places. The American and Western European experience have much to teach the world—although one would never guess this from Monsignor Gremillion’s commission—but they do not exhaust the possibilities or the varieties of democratic capitalism.
“It is up to the Christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation proper to their own country. . . ,” Pope Paul VI declared and Monsignor Gremillion quotes. (The normal practice of the Vatican and other governments suggests that Monsignor Gremillion’s commission wrote or approved of preliminary drafts of such statements. For a time, Monsignor Gremillion may even have been the chief original author of such sentences; I do not know this, but it would be normal enough.) The Pope speaks of objectivity. No evidence exists in “peace-and-justice” documents that consideration has been given to objective methods of economic analysis. There is a tendency in papal social theory—clearest in Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno (1931)—toward corporatist statist economic arrangements. This is to impose the Latin experience of social structure on the world. And it blends rather more closely into contemporary forms of statism, leaving free systems out of account.
It is a shame that Monsignor Gremillion should know as little as he confesses about business enterprises, since they are so central to his vision. Objectivity would require that he learn more before pronouncing. A free society that permits individuals to spend their money as they will may be called “consumerist,” and it certainly will reflect all the vices (and virtues) of the human heart. Free human beings are not always virtuous. So, of course, there are ugly features in any free society which “Church leaders of the Third World” or we ourselves might be “suspicious of” (to say the least). This is a cost of human freedom.
The “bottom line” is a fact of life in any economy that is not stagnant; development necessarily means that the economic system must be producing more than it puts in; otherwise, it is spinning its wheels. Democratic-capitalist societies call the return “profits”; statist systems call it “capital accumulation.” Democratic capitalism distributes the profits to individual shareholders, workers (through unparalleled high wages), pension plans, and other means. (The large corporations tend to be the most unionized, and to pay the highest benefits.) Statist economies keep wages pitifully low and restrict everyone’s economic liberties; they squeeze their populations; they make far more limited advances in productivity.
It is a rare wind that blows only good. “Windfall profits” in one industry (oil) are usually matched by “windfall losses” in another (automobiles). In statist economies, windfall losses seem to predominate and the losses are made up by sacrifices demanded of the citizens, who pay for the system. By the way, who gets the surplus profits from Soviet oil?
Although statists regularly cite loosely figures like “5 per cent of the human family [usually they say 6] consume 30 per cent [usually they say 40] per cent of the world’s goods,” it is difficult to see where they get their figures. They seldom note who produces the overwhelming majority of the world’s goods. Perhaps it is true, e.g., that 5 per cent of the world’s population produces 50 per cent of the world’s goods but consumes only 30 per cent. Empirical studies of invention, production, and consumption should be consulted by theologians.
Since 1945, the population of the world has doubled. The problem now is to produce enough new goods (in schools, clinics, housing, food) for all these new populations living so much longer than populations in the past. This new life expectancy is almost entirely due to medical discoveries made under democratic capitalism and now almost universally distributed. The key to “the wealth of nations” (all nations) is well known. It is now our task to unlock economic imagination, economic incentives, and economic inventiveness so as to produce the greatest era of material growth the world has ever seen. Without such growth, billions of persons are doomed to poverty. No “economic determinism” makes this necessary. Those concerned to heed Jesus’ command, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat,” must sooner or later come to understand the role of liberty in the production of food.
I am no expert, but it does seem empirically plain that the statist nations have trouble feeding their own populations. The USSR is an enormous drag upon the world’s food resources. The free sector in the Soviet economy—about 1 per cent—produces 40 per cent of that nation’s foodstuffs. While I was at the Rockefeller Foundation, I heard Norman Borlaug say, time and again, that the world food problem does not arise from deficiencies in the earth, or seed, or fertilizer, or agricultural science; it’s a problem of politics. The systems which produce food in abundance have a different political system from those which do not. Will this fact not be relevant on Judgment Day?
To produce and to transport the massive supplies of goods needed by the massively enlarged human family is going to require multinational organizations. The Vatican Commission on Peace and Justice may believe that free corporations composed of free persons pooling their resources for unprecedented worldwide tasks are an abomination. But they will have to consider the evidence in clearer detail than they have, examine the empirical record as they as yet have not, and seek to match practical methods to their lofty goals. They will need more objectivity than has yet been in evidence.
Finally, “economic rights” depend upon substance. When there are no foodstuffs to distribute, no jobs to parcel out, platitudes about “rights” are empty. The first moral task of economic systems is to produce, Then “economic rights” have bite. The failure to consider the ethics of productivity makes an ethic of distribution empty. Catholic theology on this subject, regrettably, remains pre-modern. To give people food to eat one must first create systems that produce. It is not moral to ignore the history of productivity.
Monsignor Gremillion’s letter demonstrates better than the brief 61 lines in my essay the weaknesses in “peace-and-justice” theology. For this—as for his many past accomplishments—I am grateful.
