We've discussed before whether increasing income inequality, independent of the absolute level of deprivation of the poor, should be a concern of Catholic social thought. Maybe we would have more consensus on the blog that economic mobility -- the extent to which people's incomes move from one family generation to the next, both in absolute terms and relative to others -- is an important matter, especially but not solely as regards the ability of the poor to move up. Absolute mobility as a measure is consistent with the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. But as a recent report from the newly established Pew Economic Mobility Project argues, relative mobility is also important because it indicates the extent to which people's economic success or failure is determined by the income of their parents -- a factor outside of one's control and at odds with the ideals of rewarding individual merit, work, creativity, etc. The Pew report finds that the U.S. has problems on both absolute and relative measures. Men in their 30s today earn less income in real terms than the generation of 30 years ago (family incomes have risen only because of the increase in two-worker couples). And "[u]sing the relationship between parents’ and children’s incomes as an indicator of relative mobility, data show that a number of countries, including Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and [yes!] France have more relative mobility than does the United States."
Significantly, a recent article in The Atlantic adds this point about mobility for the poor:
Strikingly, the research [a collection of other studies] suggests that mobility within America’s middle-income bands is similar to that in many other countries. The stickiness is at the top and the bottom. According to one much-cited study, for instance, more than 40 percent of American boys born into the poorest fifth of the population stay there; the figure for Britain is 30 percent, for Denmark just 25 percent. In America, more than in other advanced economies, poor children stay poor.
The Atlantic piece suggests remedies: not "an all-fronts assault on income inequality," which might dampen incentives to move up, but an effort to strengthen "ladders out of poverty." Improve the worst and poorest schools (for which I expect many of us on the blog, left and right, think school choice would be one good means); expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to supplement the wages of the low-paid. And at least to keep things from getting worse, retain the estate tax: in America, of all places, "a little less tolerance of inherited privilege would not seem amiss."
Tom
UPDATE: Opinio Juris has more discussion of the report, including some interesting comments and the observation that the Pew Economic Mobility Project "is a joint effort of the The American Enterprise Institute, The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, and The Urban Institute." So this is a concern that ought to cross ideological lines and spur those remedies on which we can get sufficient consensus, even if other proposed remedies differ. (Thanks to Patrick O'Donnell of Santa Barbara City College for the pointer.)
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
These final three days of May mark the (73rd) anniversary of the meeting that produced the Barmen Declaration. In that statement, much of it written by Karl Barth, the Confessing Church wing of the German Protestant churches condemned the "German Christian" movement under which so many German Protestants embraced Nazism -- with its early appeals to discipline and national purpose as well as racial prejudice -- as a new revelation of God. (More background here.) The stirring first section of the Declaration directly attacks that claim of revelation:
Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
We reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God's revelation.
Later the Declaration rejects
the false doctrine that the Church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day[,]
and
the false doctrine that beyond its special commission [to maintain justice and peace through actual or threatened force] the State should and could become the sole and total order of human life and so fulfil the vocation of the Church as well.
Although the Barmen Declaration is a Protestant document, I expect that Catholics would embrace much of it as part of our great shared tradition about the proper roles of the church and the state -- just as Protestants, for example, should embrace the Declaration on Religious Freedom of the Second Vatican Council. But are there aspects of the Barmen Declaration toward which Catholics should maintain reservations or make critiques? I imagine one common Catholic reaction reaction might be that Jesus, the only Word of God, is attested to in the authoritative teaching of the Church as well as in Scripture. Indeed, one can argue -- as I think Rick suggested here (with my rejoinder here) -- that only a strong institutional Church can successfully counter the pretensions of the nation-state. I readily agree that Protestants, who tend to lack such an empirical form of authority and unity, historically have had a bad tendency to simply mirror the attitudes of the local or national community even when those were un-Christian. (See, e.g., not only the German Christians, but also Southern segregation, which was challenged locally much more by Catholic clergy than by Protestants.) On the other hand, it seems to me that the historic temptation in Catholicism is to identify too simply or easily the institutional Church's interests with the living of the Gospel -- see, e.g., bishops' mishandling of sexual abuse by priests -- and that this tendency can lead to compromises with the state on issues of justice so long as the state defers to the Church on matters affecting it as an institution. See, e.g., concordats with fascist Italy, Germany, and Spain.
At any rate, the Barmen Declaration is worth including in anyone's canon of great Christian statements on church and state.
Tom
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Scientists, philosophers, and theologians, help us: How should Catholic legal/social/moral thought respond to this research? (Registration may be required to view the link.)
The results [of a NIH survey] were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good. . . .
The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry -- rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and propagate.
Can one dispel those worries, and be comfortable with the results of this research, if one gives a natural-law account of morality, e.g.: (1) Fundamental morality consists in certain natural-law principles "written on the heart"; (2) the evolution of brain chemistry is the mechanism by which the Creator inscribed the principles in us; and (3) the principles are teleological in the sense of promoting human flourishing? That answer tries to affirm the natural, material element in morality while insisting that it's logically fallacious to reduce morality therefore to the material.
One obvious difficulty with this reconciliation is that the goal of survival/propagation and the goal of "human flourishing" typically described in moral theory seem very different, even if they sometimes coincide. Plus we seem to be hard-wired for selfishness in various ways as well, so the mere fact of hard-wiring won't necessarily tell us much about the distinctive moral sense. I'm sure there are other challenges and answers as well, but I'd be interested in hearing from others who know more about these matters than I.
Tom
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Theologian Gary Dorrien of Columbia and Union Seminary (NYC) talks to the Times' Peter Steinfels about Reinhold Niebuhr's "Christian realism" and its insights for Iraq and other foreign-policy dilemmas of today. According to Dorrien, most relevant today are Niebuhr's
sense that elements of self-interest and pride lurk even in the best of human actions. His recognition that a special synergy of selfishness operates in collectivities like nations. His critique of Americans’ belief in their country’s innocence and exceptionalism — the idea that we are a redeemer nation going abroad never to conquer, only to liberate.
Of course, the same realism also made Niebuhr assert the need to stand up militarily to those whose projects are far worse than America's -- first the Nazis (againet the great weight of mainline clergy opinion before Pearl Harbor) and later the Soviets. But the willingness to use force even for a relatively just cause will prove disastrous if it's not sobered by the recognitions above. All of which has so much to do with why the Iraq war was dubious in the first place -- why, for example, it was unlikely to be received and acted on by others as a model action of liberation -- and why the administration officials who pushed hard for it were prone to be cavalier in handling its aftermath.
Tom
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Amy,
It struck me that your thoughts on why "integration" is better than "balance" parallel some of Anthony Kronman's argument in The Lost Lawyer. I.e. his argument that lawyers must identify some virtues and satisfactions in the practice of lawyering itself, because the profession is too demanding and pervasive in its effect on one's life to be simply the means that one uses to support other satisfying or virtuous activities. The professional virtues that Kronman emphasizes, the combination of empathy and detachment, are procedural and not, as Christian-influenced professional virtues are in part, substantive. But still, some of what he says might be helpful in the direction you're pursuing.
Tom
The new issue of First Things contains a review by Michael Uhlmann, online only for subscribers for now, of Villanova law prof Joseph Dellapenna's encyclopedic book challenging the very flawed account of abortion history adopted in Roe v. Wade. I haven't read the 1,300-page book (!), but in articles Dellapenna and others have already presented copious evidence that, contra Roe, abortion was not viewed as a common-law liberty and that 19th-century abortion bans rested in significant part on a concern for fetal life and not simply on concerns about the dangerousness of then-existing procedures to women. The review comments that despite his surname, "Dellapenna is neither a Catholic nor a pro-life activist. He describes himself as 'a lapsed Unitarian' who supports 'unrestricted choice early in pregnancy' and 'carefully tailored' restrictions thereafter." Seeting aside any jokes about "lapsed Unitarians" ... I too had assumed that Prof. Dellapenna was Catholic and pro-life and that one would just have to argue that often the effort involved in balancing a historical record requires someone with a substantive motivation (cf. the adversary system). But although the book will ultimately stand on its merits (and any flaws), greater knowledge about the author's personal position should increase the book's credibility.
Tom
