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Maranatha
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Speakers debate U.S. Catholic bishops’ role in addressing social policy
WASHINGTON (CNS) – A discussion of the U.S. bishops’ 1986 economic pastoral at The Catholic University of America Feb. 9 led to a debate over the role of the bishops in addressing U.S. social policy.
Father J. Bryan Hehir, who headed the bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace when the bishops adopted the economic pastoral and, three years earlier, their landmark peace pastoral, defended both documents as legitimate efforts to bring the principles of Catholic social teaching to bear on important public policy issues.
He noted that the bishops themselves acknowledged in both letters that the moral authority of what they said was weaker and less binding as they got further into specifics about economic or defense policy.
Joseph Capizzi, a theology professor at Catholic University, said that when he introduces the economic pastoral in moral theology classes, it is the one document seminarians uniformly dislike. He said the pastoral’s biblical perspectives are its strength, but it is “enervated” by its focus on concrete proposals, which work to the detriment of the moral framework the bishops set out.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) – A discussion of the U.S. bishops’ 1986 economic pastoral at The Catholic University of America Feb. 9 led to a debate over the role of the bishops in addressing U.S. social policy.
Father J. Bryan Hehir, who headed the bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace when the bishops adopted the economic pastoral and, three years earlier, their landmark peace pastoral, defended both documents as legitimate efforts to bring the principles of Catholic social teaching to bear on important public policy issues.
He noted that the bishops themselves acknowledged in both letters that the moral authority of what they said was weaker and less binding as they got further into specifics about economic or defense policy.
Joseph Capizzi, a theology professor at Catholic University, said that when he introduces the economic pastoral in moral theology classes, it is the one document seminarians uniformly dislike. He said the pastoral’s biblical perspectives are its strength, but it is “enervated” by its focus on concrete proposals, which work to the detriment of the moral framework the bishops set out.
more