On Politicizing the Social Encyclicals

By Msgr. George G. Higgins

November, 1997

Cardinal Jan Schotte, secretary of the permanent synod council at the Vatican, speaking at a press conference in Rome the day before the mid-November opening of the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops, said he hoped the synod would not turn into a debate on the merits of capitalism vs. socialism. I shared the cardinal's hope.

The debate in the United States over capitalism and socialism is going nowhere fast. When John Paul II issued his 1982 encyclical, "Laborem Exercens," both left and the right claimed it. The left found it sympathetic to democratic socialism; the right claimed that it strongly supported (almost canonized) democratic capitalism.

This either-or debate came to life again 10 years later when John Paul II issued his encyclical "Centesimus Annus" commemorating the 100th anniversary of "Rerum Novarum." It is regrettable that the debate over the pope's most recent social encyclicals took such an ideological turn. Democratic capitalism and democratic socialism carry so much partisan baggage and are fraught with so much ambiguity that they have become, at least in North America, little more than shibboleths. Shibbloeths may be fun to argue about, but don't take us far in the real world.

Johathan Kwitny, in his recent biography of John Paul II, "Man of the Century," sides with those who think, as I do, that some conservative and neo-conservative commentators on "Centesimus Annus" muddied the debate by quoting the encyclical selectively and out of context. Kwitny quotes from an interview with Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee: "Archbishop Weakland says that when he saw John Paul II after the encyclical came out, the pope was irritated over distortions in the press and even departed from his usual calm demeanor to complain about suggestions that he had become purely pro-capitalist."

My own notes show that the pope has gone to some lengths to set the record straight in this regard. He did so first in a major address in Latvia in September 1992 and later in an extraordinarily frank interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa. Unfortunately, neither the commercial media in the United States nor the conservative and neo-conservative monthlies and quarterlies gave these newsworthy statements the attention they deserved. I had to turn to a democratic socialist weekly, In These Times, to locate the La Stampa interview.

The pope, while criticizing socialism's "negative results" in Eastern Europe, added that the transition in Eastern Europe from one system to another is very difficult and the costs very high: a rise in unemployment, poverty and human misery. Of course, he said, it was necessary to fight the unjust totalitarian system that defined itself as socialist or communist. But, he added, there is truth also in what Leo XIII says -- that there are some "seeds of truth" even in the socialist program. It is obvious, he added, that "these seeds should not be destroyed.... The proponents of capitalism in its extreme forms tend to overlook the good things achieved by communism: the efforts to overcome unemployment, concern for the poor."

The pope made substantially the same point a month later in his address at the University of Latvia, once a Marxist academic community. While condemning socialism, he stressed that Catholic social teaching "is not a surrogate for capitalism." He repeated that there was "a kernel of truth" in Marxism and called for a balanced concept of the state, a state based on law ``together with a social state which offers everyone the legal guarantees of an orderly existence and assures the most vulnerable the support they need in order not to succumb to the arrogance and indifference of the powerful."

Kwitny pointed out that some commentaries on "Centesimus Annus" have been too simplistic in their assessment of capitalism and socialism, and even more simplistic in their understanding of the state's role. These commentaries need to be revised in light of the La Stampa interview and the pope's speech in Latvia.