Market Economies and the Catholic Conception of the State

One of fascinating papers delivered yesterday at the Villanova CST symposium was that of Robert Pecorella, a political science professor at St. John's University in New York.  Pecorella believes, as my earlier post suggests I do, that to be consistent with CST, market economies require careful balancing of the social values of efficiency and equity. But he also suggests that although Catholic thought includes a set of individual economci rights that may well require state-enforced redistribution, that such a state approach is not the preferred response to inequity.  Rather, he argues in favor of other remedies that take into account the principle of subsidiarity in service of solidarity.

In the portion of his paper in which he outlines "other remedies" to market inequalities, he suggests a path to an institutional form of commutative and contributive justice.  Because it already has an active commitment to commutative and contributive justice and because it has a workable diocesan structure arranged within the existing structure of state boundaries, he looks to the Church in the United States as the institution promoting change.  Pecorella suggets that it may be time for the US Church to move from making general statements about social justice to making "operationally clear assertions" of what is expected within the Catholic community.  He argues in favor of defining both economic floors beneath which no one should be allowed to fall and economic ceilings which define the point at which people of good faith "simply have enough."  He acknowledges the complexity (not to mention controversial nature) of such a proposal, and suggests that in order to secure voluntary compliance by economically well off Catholics, the ceilings on economic outcomes likely will need to be initially set artifically high.  He calls for organizational eforts within the dioceses to implement a floor and ceiling economic transfer program.

Leaving aside the complexity of picking an amount, the need to take into account regional differences, and whatever questions people may have about using the diocesan structure to effect change, the proposal is an intriquing one.  Perhaps my own reaction is affected by my views about executive compensation and the gap in pay between executives and rank and file workers, a subject about which I have written in the past.  But the idea that, not only that everyone deserves to have enough to flourish as a human person, but that there is a point at the upper end that is enough and beyond which is simply too much for a person of faith, is one worth thinking about.