Cafeteria Catholicism & the Pope’s Encyclical

On a recent “Firing Line” program, William F. Buckley Jr. hosted Michael Novak and Fr. Richard McBrien in a discussion of John Paul II’s latest bombshell, a discussion that revealed some interest­ing things about “cafeteria Catholicism.”

The bombshell was the Pope’s encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, which he wrote to commemo­rate the 20th anniversary of another papal bomb­shell, Populorum Progressio of Paul VI. The latter was newsworthy, even revolutionary, for several rea­sons: One, it expressed more clearly and forcefully than other statements the foundation stone of Judeo-Christian social teaching: “No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need when others lack necessities.” I prefix “Chris­tian” with “Judeo” because this principle of social justice goes back not only to Aquinas, the Fathers of the Church, and Jesus, but to the Prophets and sages of the Old Testament.

Two, for the first time Populorum Progressio, clearly extended this obligation from individuals to nations: “The superfluous wealth of rich countries should be placed at the service of poor nations.”

Three, for the first time in a modern papal document, the Thomistic teaching on just revolu­tion was expressed, namely, that “a revolutionary uprising” could be justified “where there is mani­fest, long-standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and danger­ous harm to the common good of the country.”

The conservative biases of Buckley and Novak are well known. Novak’s great “achievement” has been to persuade a lot of people who should know better that the contradiction contained in the words “democratic capitalism” is not a contradiction at all, but a warm, cozy reality.

(Nota bene: Capitalism is by definition a sys­tem of production and distribution in which those who own and/or control the capital [money and property] run the productive or distributive enter­prise. In political terms this would be monarchical or dictatorial where there is one owner, oligarchical where there is more than one. In a corporation, the dominant form of capitalist enterprise, voting is on the basis of one share, one vote — not one person, one vote, as in a democracy. The latter obtains in co-operatives, but these are a small minority in most capitalist countries and are, again by defini­tion, not capitalist enterprises. Control of corpora­tions usually resides in the hands of four or five men who constitute the executive committee of the board of directors and who, by use of proxies, control stockholders’ meetings and elections to the board. The only genuine democracy in capitalist corporations occurs in that minority that have, usually after bitter resistance, signed contracts with unions, contracts that partially determine working conditions. Where the unions have one-person-one­-vote procedures, these corporations then become partially democratic, but the most important deci­sions — prices, profits, products, lay-offs, and plant closings and relocations — remain firmly authori­tarian. Therefore, anyone who describes capitalism in its essential structure and practice as “democrat­ic” has automatically earned a failing grade in eco­nomics, politics, logic, and common sense.)

Not so well known as the biases of Buckley and Novak is that of Fr. McBrien, who is head of the theology department at Notre Dame, a former pres­ident of the Catholic Theological Society, and gen­erally considered to be on the “left” wing of the theological community. More about him in a mo­ment.

I used the term “bombshell” in describing John Paul’s new encyclical because, more emphat­ically than other encyclicals, it repeatedly stresses the fact that “the Church’s social doctrine adopts a critical attitude towards both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism.” So much so, in fact, that Buckley was moved to begin the program by la­menting that the Pope is guilty of a posture of “moral equivalence,” that he believes that there are no “important moral differences between the two contending blocs.”

Actually, the Pope takes a clean shot at the East bloc when he calls attention to “that special form of poverty which consists in being deprived of fundamental human rights, in particular the right to religious freedom and also the right to free­dom of economic initiative,” and again when he writes, “Other nations need to reform certain unjust structures, and in particular their political in­stitutions, in order to replace corrupt, dictatorial and authoritarian forms of government by demo­cratic and participatory ones.” One can take a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position, as the Pope does, without contending that both houses are guilty of the same sins and are therefore in that sense morally equivalent.

Actually, Buckley and Novak should be grate­ful that the Pope did not more emphatically high­light Eastern superiority in terms of guaranteed security of employment, housing, health, and edu­cation. Whatever one may say, rightly, about the inferior quality of the jobs, homes, education, and health services available in the Eastern bloc, they are more available. We don’t read about vast num­bers of unemployed and homeless in the Soviet Union — even with all its own sins, past and pres­ent — or about health insurance being unavailable unless you are very rich, very poor, or lucky enough to be covered by a plan on the job. The greater availability of these benefits would, in the Pope’s scale of moral values, indicate a certain moral su­periority of the Soviet Union over the U.S. And I think it fair to infer from the encyclical that the Pope may be sufficiently impressed with Gorbachev to justify his own appeals for a new era of “trans­formation of mutual distrust into collaboration” and “solidarity” between the two blocs in the in­terests of cutting military madness and increasing aid to the poorer countries of the South.

I can understand why Buckley and Novak re­coil with horror when they feel the Pope’s tongue-lashing of their beloved capitalism for its “all-con­suming desire for profit…at any price,” for its “structures of sin,” for its “accumulation of wealth” while millions starve and are unemployed.

So as we listen to the program it is only natu­ral that we hear Buckley and Novak keening and wailing over the encyclical as “a disaster…. The Pope is just miserably misinformed…. There is no excuse for these passages [of moral equivalence].”

But then comes a rude surprise. Given his rep­utation as a “progressive” theologian, Fr. McBrien can be expected to defend the Pope and support his progressive emphasis on social justice despite their known differences about sexual morality. Right? Wrong.

McBrien reacts to the keening and wailing, not by differing but by joining in with a wail or two of his own. He says, “I’m not here to defend those [equivalence] passages.” He agrees with Buckley and Novak that the Pope has “lapses on economics” and McBrien even describes himself as “a democratic capitalist.” It develops that he has his own agenda and sees the encyclical as more evidence of the need for “cafeteria Catholicism.” Later he protests that he himself does not endorse “cafeteria Catholicism,” but how can one believe that in light of the following statement, which I have taken down verbatim from a tape of the pro­gram? McBrien speaking: “This so-called “cafeteria Catholicism” that people have used as a shibboleth to attack liberal and progressive Catholics who can’t accept papal teaching on sex­uality and marriage, this cafeteria Cathol­icism is far more…embracing…. There are neo-conservatives in that cafeteria line. And I don’t deplore it. I say, “Fine.” That’s what it means to be an adult Catholic.”

Novak immediately protests that he doesn’t believe in “a cafeteria line,” but really, McBrien is right: they are both in that cafeteria line.

Toward the end of the program, McBrien be­gins to redeem himself and to defend the encyclical, emphasizing the Pope’s insistence that “we do not have a right to our superfluous wealth,” that con­cern for the poor is an obligation of “justice, not charity.” He might have rocked Buckley and No­vak back on their heels with this quote from the encyclical: “Those who are more influential because they have a greater share of goods and services, should feel responsible for the weaker and be ready to share with them all they possess” (emphasis added).

Still, I doubt if you could rock either Buckley or Novak with such papal statements. “The Pope is just miserably misinformed.” When McBrien quoted John Paul as calling attention to the growing gap between rich and poor, Novak responded with some heat, defying anyone to prove that the poor of the world were “less healthy” now than in the past.

Michael, row your boat ashore and pick up the encyclical again. Turn to footnote 36: “A recent United Nations publication en­titled World Economic Survey 1987 pro­vides the most recent data…. The per­centage of unemployed in the developed countries with a market economy jump­ed from 3 percent of the workforce in 1970 to 8 percent in 1986. It now amounts to 29 million people.”

And that’s just in the developed countries. In some of the undeveloped countries unemployment has risen to 50 percent. It’s not easy to stay healthy without a job. Take a look at your television screen and consider the health of those little black kids in northern Africa with the swollen bellies and dying eyes. It’s no response to that kind of suffering to say, as Novak did, “Human beings are naturally generous.” Human beings are also naturally self-centered and indifferent to suffering that does not literally hit them in the face. The Pope is clearly better informed than Novak is. Either that or the Pope brings to the information he receives a more receptive mind and heart.

At the end of the program, this question re­mained: If Fr. McBrien has been persuaded by the encyclical and his own knowledge to concede that (1) the sharing of superfluous wealth is a matter of justice, not charity, and (2) such sharing is not only not characteristic of capitalism, but has in recent years become even less characteristic, so that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, how can he sit there and say that he himself believes in capitalism? Is the cafeteria at Notre Dame serving food so rich that its theology chairman can only re­member the poor on the “Firing Line”?