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Ten years have passed since the National Council of Catholic Bishops presented their pastoral letter Economic Justice for All. For a democratic society to succeed, it must cultivate moral attachments. The following three questions are asked of all Americans regarding social ethics: 1. How do one's economic choices contribute to a sensitivity to those in need? 2. With what care, human kindness and justice does one conduct oneself at work? 3. How does one strike a balance between labor and leisure that enlarges one's capacity for friendships, for family life, for community? The importance of a sense of shared humanity is discussed, and recommendations are made regarding emotions as strategies in the process of moral decision making. The task of sensitizing both the intellectual convictions and the emotional feelings of Americans towards a more compassionate stance vis-a-vis the disinherited in their midst is presented.

Introduction

Sometimes it is in reflecting, discussing and ruminating on the printed word that the various layers of meaning become clearer and practical applications become easier. Over a decade has passed since the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States presented their pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All." One of the main concerns underlying the letter was the task of examining in light of moral values the growing societal problems plaguing the nation.

Their letter on the economy cannot be understood apart from the insight that the economy is in jeopardy not only for economic reasons as such, but the economy is in jeopardy because the American ethos, which undergirds the economy, is in crisis. This crisis has to do with the fundamental purposes of society and is, ultimately, a crisis of moral meaning and solidarity.

Many may argue that the American economy is not an economy in jeopardy. Unemployment rates are the lowest in decades, the stock market is setting new records, and growing numbers of individuals are now leaving public assistance to participate in the job market. To sense the kind of economic jeopardy Americans are threatened with today, one has to look beyond these numbers to the increasing sense of insecurity that many Americans feel. While more people have work, growing numbers of workers feel insecure about their future. A poll conducted by Business News (Oct., 1996) revealed that only 40 percent of the work force would describe their jobs as very secure. At times, unnecessary corporate downsizing undertaken to boost stock market prices uproots local companies without adequate concern for employees or their communities. Indeed the massive productivity of the American economy appears to be leading to three nations living side by side - one growing daily more prosperous and powerful - one squeezed by stagnant incomes and rising economic pressures - and one utterly left behind. This growing inequity of income and opportunity bears many risks of its own.

Contrary to the conviction of Karl Marx, capitalist society is founded not simply upon the material substrate of relations of production and means of production; rather it may be posited that it also rests on a spiritual foundation. The pursuit of profit goes hand in hand with a mentality generated by a certain form of thought that is properly religious (in the broad sense of this term). What religious underpinnings ground capitalism? In and through our daily occupations of life we have an avenue for the expression of our communitarian commitments to one another. While self-reliance and personal achievement are essential to the capitalist ethos, so too is a strong sense of shared values.

It is the perspective of the Catholic bishops of the United States that for a democratic society to succeed, it must cultivate moral attachments. That is one of the primary and essential purposes of a `good society.' In recent decades structural changes in the global economy have resulted in asserting 'capital' as the dominant organizing principle of economic life over labor. This situation has raised many questions for all of us concerning the meaning and dignity of the human person and the unique value we have assigned to work. What kind of moral attachments to one another are necessary in our day to secure that technology and capital are harnessed by society to serve basic human needs? In other words, since the economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy, `what kind of actions support the position that economic choices should be measured by whether they enhance or threaten human life, human dignity and human rights? These questions are all too infrequently raised in American public discourse.

Homo-economicus is not a rationalistic, isolated, utility-maximizing individual completely pre-occupied with self-interest. Homoeconomicus is also a creature whose emotions and strivings for community guide one's understanding of what values economic life must serve. In this essay we will highlight the irreplaceable role that affectivity and a sense of shared humanity play in the moral framework guiding economic life. As Amitai Etzioni has observed:

As we grew familiar with the modern, reasondominated person, the cardinal significance of moral commitments and the positive role of affect has been rediscovered. Unfettered reason now scares us; it evokes the images of Frankenstein, if not of Dr. Strangelove. We reject the notion that emotions are irrational, animal instincts that a mature, reasonable person sublimates and, if necessary represses. The positive role of affect, such as to love and be loved, even when it sways reason, is increasingly acknowledged. Moreover, means are again assessed not only in terms of their instrumental contributions - how efficient they are - but also in terms of their normative standing. 'Normative' refers to the deontological prescriptive aspect of behavior, to ought-to statements, as distinct from positive, 'are' statements. (Etzioni 1988, p. 90)

In a corrective swing of the pendulum, the decade of the 1980s brought forth a lessening of the attitude that emotions are morally suspect and a strengthening of the notion that the "ideal goal is to come to an ethical decision through a personal equilibrium in which emotion and reason are both activated and in accord." (Callahan 1988, p. 9) In the bishops placing before the American people the concept of the `preferential option for the poor' they clearly appealed to both emotion and reason in advancing this moral option. The bishops give us insight into what is meant by this term when they posit that a preferential option for the poor `demands a compassionate vision that enables the Church to see things from the side of the poor and powerless, and to assess lifestyle, policies and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor. (par. 52)

Michael Novak, the 1994 recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, has suggested:

. . . humane free economy requires a sound judicial system rooted in the consent of the governed, and also requires the guidance of disciplined, compassionate, and realistic cultural institutions. (Novak, 1993, p. 107)

The political economy does not function in a vacuum. It operates within a specific set of circumstances, values, and common assumptions. Novak rightly judges that `humane free economy' is, at least partially dependent upon, the forging of compassionate cultural institutions. This article examines the role of affectivity, especially the role of compassion and solidarity with one another in building the good society.

Personal, affective conversion

After a decade of reflection and discussion by scholars, parish study groups and others, the words of "Economic Justice for All" have taken on new meanings. The American bishops, rather than rooting the `preferential option for the poor' in any kind of personal commitment to radical social change, situate this moral option instead in a personal, affective conversion to gospel values and to the person of Jesus Christ. A persuasive case in favor of such an interpretation of the economic pastoral's utilization of the phrase `preferential option for the poor' has been ably advanced by Professor Michael Schuck of Loyola University, Chicago. What is truly original in "Economic Justice for All," he postulates, is that, for the first time ever in an episcopal social document, the drafters of the economic pastoral have opted for a moral foundation in affective conversion. Schuck writes:

By emphasizing affective conversion first and reinterpreting the context of such conversion, the bishops attenuate the Latin American `preferential option for the poor.' For the North Americans, this 'option' essentially refers to a deeply felt emotional regard for the poor flowing from an affective religious conversion and displayed in charitable acts, encouragement of empowerment programs for the poor, and support for social reforms in view of the poor. (Schuck, 1988, p. 61)

Schuck notes that it is not, first, to new tasks that the bishops rouse Americans as they advocate a `preferential option for the poor.' Rather, what is distinctly new here is the prominence which the roles of personal experience and feeling are afforded within the document. At the core of the North American `preferential option for the poor' as articulated by "Economic Justice for All," we find the belief that "Changes in our hearts lead naturally to a desire to change how we act." (par. 23)

Vital questions

In "Economic Justice for All" the bishops asked Americans to consider:

How do my economic choices contribute . . . to a sensitivity to those in need?

With what care, human kindness and justice do I conduct myself at work?

How do I strike a balance between labor and leisure that enlarges my capacity for friendships, for family life, for community? (par. 23)

Through such questions, and in various other places throughout their exposition of the central themes contained within the economic pastoral, the bishops present themselves as regarding more favorably than in the past the proposition that there is a foundational role for affectivity in Christian social ethics. The pastoral letter contains a well-reasoned, logical analysis of a number of the pressing socio-economic issues facing Americans today, with a special emphasis given to a reasoned analysis of the plight of the poor at home and abroad. "The soundness of our prudential judgments," the bishops recognize, "depends not only on the moral force of our principles, but also on the accuracy of our information and the validity of our assumptions." (par. 134) Still, the reader of "Economic Justice for All" finds in this document ample appreciation by its authors of the basic tenet that one learns in many ways other than rational deduction, including from one's emotions.

The parable of The Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37) is invoked in paragraph 43 of the document to highlight the feeling of compassion as the "bridge between mere seeing and action." (par. 43) In this parable where love is made concrete through action on behalf of a person who is encountered as having deep and unmet human needs, the bishops identify compassion as "the specific feeling sparked by the affective conversion [that is] allied to an `option for the poor."' (Schuck, 1988, p. 64)

As the Flemish social ethicist Johan Verstraeten has noted:

The parable of the good Samaritan is not an abstract exposition of love, but rather a narrative set within a concrete context. The easily recognizable character of its message grants the listener the possibility of gaining insight into what he or she should do within his or her own decisionmaking context. The parenetic (exhortative) character of the narrative plays an important role in this function: the confrontation with the story cannot remain noncommittal. The listener is offered a choice, he or she is held responsible, even for what does not strictly belong to the domain of professional deontology. (Verstraeten, 1996, p. 41)

Throughout the decade of the 1980s, there was an increasing interest in the role of affectivity and emotions in the process of ethical decisionmaking. Perhaps the chief chronicler of this phenomenon has been Professor Amitai Etzioni at George Washington University. Etzioni's synthetic "I-we" paradigm anchors the self-interested "I" within a moral community to which the "I" cannot not belong. Etzioni believes that real freedom and sustained liberty in society today requires individuals that are not socially isolated, but rather bonded to one another in community and capable of sustaining a lively interest in each other's well-being. Etzioni's research has led him to the conviction that individuals typically make decisions as a consumer, manager, and citizen largely on the basis of emotion and values. These values are ultimately rooted in a sense of our shared humanity. (Etzioni, 1988.)

Sense of shared humanity

In reading "Economic Justice for All" one can rather readily grasp the bishops' intent of instilling a sense of shared humanity within their readers and within all those who look to them for moral guidance. In so doing, they sought to fashion that kind of virtuous disposition that is an essential prerequisite within individuals and society for effectively advancing the "preferential option for the poor." Certain key emotions, foremost among them compassion, come into play in forming that virtuous disposition. Indeed, "emotions energize the ethical quest." A person must be emotionally interested enough and care enough about discerning the truth to persevere despite distractions. (Callahan, 1988, p. 10)

The Harvard University economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has spent most of his professional life seeking creative solutions to the colossal scourge of hunger and malnutrition in our world. Why? Amartya Sen simply cannot forget. He cannot forget the look in the eyes of emaciated refugees during the Bengal famine of 1943. He was 10 years old at that time and was accustomed to handing out a cigarette tins worth of rice to hollow-eyed refugees seeking to fight off starvation. This foundational experience and the emotions it elicits have never been far from Amartya Sen.

Today Professor Sen is widely regarded as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in economics for his ground-breaking work influencing the way governments deal with famine. In his book Poverty and Famine (Sen, 1981) Sen argued persuasively that famine is not just a consequence of nature but also an avoidable economic and political catastrophe. The ethical appeal coming to him through the face of the other, the look of hunger, has energized his quest and given him a sense of solidarity with the world's hungry, especially in his homeland of India.

In a study of compassion published at the beginning of the 1980s, Lawrence Blum defined in the following way this central feeling upon which the `compassionate vision' pleaded for in "Economic Justice for All" is based.

Compassion is not a simple feeling state but a complex emotional attitude toward another, characteristically involving imaginative dwelling on the condition of the other person, an active regard for his good, a view of him as a fellow human being, and emotional responses of a certain degree of intensity. (Blum, 1980, p. 509)

"Economic Justice for All" lifts up the moral force of compassion as that transforming energy which bears within it the greatest possibility of refashioning societal and individual character. The bishops propose in their economic pastoral both the suitability and desirability of this refashioning being undertaken along the lines of the preferential option for the poor.

The bishops teach that compassion involves regarding the 'disinherited' in a certain way. They write: "We ask everyone to refrain from actions, words or attitudes that stigmatize the poor, that exaggerate the benefits received by the poor and that inflate the amount of fraud in welfare payments." (par. 194) Compassion dictates that the impoverishment of others ought properly to be looked upon as that kind of thing which could happen to anyone, including one's own self. The bishops make a point to accentuate this fact when they cite that "The loss of a job, illness or the breakup of a marriage may be all it takes to push people into poverty." (par. 17) Appeals here are to both the mind and the heart

Throughout much of 1995 and 1996 the Congress of the United States struggled to fix the nation's dysfunctional welfare system. However, reform is never easy. An article in The Economist (1995, p. 18) states:

By its nature, any income-support system is at war with itself: for it subsidizes forms of behavior that often go with poverty, notably non-work and the formation of single-parent families. The attainable goal for government, then, is not to end poverty and social pathology. It is to improve the mix of policies, so as to combine more compassion with fewer perverse side-effects.

Intellectually, the argument is put forth in the pastoral letter that poverty is as much, or even more, the result of the failure of economic or socially structured determinates or other forces beyond individual control than it is the consequence of any personal deficiency or vice in the impoverished persons themselves. Emotionally, the feeling of compassion and the expression of positive, altruistic regard for others is viewed in "Economic Justice for All" as, in and of itself, an important human good. There is truth value in both the dictates of reason and the emotional impulses to act upon that knowledge that lend support to the enterprise of crafting a preferential option for the poor. As Spohn (1991) suggests:

Stating a general moral principle always involves a commendation of the same norm. Principles are meant to engage their audience and motivate appropriate action. They also have truth value, a point that emotivism misses when it reduces all moral discourse to motivational appeal. (Spohn, 1991, p. 76)

The North American version of the preferential option for the poor as articulated in "Economic Justice for All" builds on an alliance between the intellectual perception of the causes of poverty and the affective energy that compassion provides to seek to eliminate them. This is only natural for it is through both reason and emotion that human persons come to a realistic understanding of others and of the social world they inhabit.

The preferential option for the poor in "Economic Justice for All" is premised on the belief that there is a deeper understanding of poverty than reason alone can articulate. Why? Nicolai Hartmann observed that without compassion, that essential ingredient to the possession of a "living sense of another's worth" (Hartmann, 1932, p. 273), one cannot ever hope to truly grasp what it means for a person to be poor. All relationships between people, including those who are in any way impoverished, are filled with meanings that logic and intellect alone cannot comprehend. An alliance of compassion and understanding gives unique insights into the human condition that are vital to any action plan to implement a preferential option for the poor. As Blum has underscored:

True compassion must be allied with knowledge and understanding if it is to serve adequately as a guide to action: there is nothing inherent in the character of compassion that would prevent - and much that would encourage - its alliance with rational calculation. Because compassion involves an active and objective interest in another person's welfare, it is characteristically a spur to a deeper understanding of a situation than rationality alone could ensure. A person who is compassionate by character is in principle committed to as rational and as intelligent a course of action as possible. (Blum, 1980, p. 516)

Emotions as strategies

Because the authors of "Economic Justice for All" have called Americans to make a preferential option for the poor rooted in an affective conversion to gospel values and the person of Jesus Christ, there is the need to cultivate systematically those kinds of processes wherein compassionate understanding of the plight of the poor can meet directly with reasoned insights into its remedy.

The human person is subject to a full and wide-ranging set of emotions. Because these emotions - gratitude, compassion, envy, guilt, altruistic feelings of love, indifference, hate, etc. - constitute the very source of human interests and purposes they necessarily have a major role to play in the shaping and structuring of our world. Indeed, Solomon (1983) maintains that "every emotion is a strategy, a purposive attempt to structure our world in such a way as to maximize our sense of personal dignity and selfesteem. And, as strategies, our emotions can be more or less successful, more or less direct, well or ill conceived, effective or self-defeating." (Solomon, 1976, p. xx)

Appreciating the contribution of well-ordered affectivity to the process of moral decisionmaking is certainly not to be misconstrued as an opening to moral relativism, as some might suggest. Not all emotions are equally acceptable. It is only in the light of reason that we can come to distinguish those feelings which rise up within the human person which enhance and those which frustrate the quest towards self-fulfillment, the achievement of harmony between people, and the fashioning of a moral community.

The American bishops insist in "Economic Justice for All" that the strategy of the preferential option for the poor is intelligible to those who do not ascribe to a biblically grounded faith. Nevertheless, a very distinctive contribution is offered by the biblical narratives to the moral imagination of American society. The sociologist John Coleman, S. J. (1982), in calling for a larger role for biblical religion and its accompanying scriptural imagery and narrative within the framework of American public ethics, writes:

It is my reading of the American record, however, that the strongest American voices for a compassionate just community always appealed in public to religious imagery and sentiments, from Winthrop and Sam Adams, Melville and the Lincoln of the second inaugural address, to Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr and Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King. (Coleman, 1982, p. 193)

The bishops in "Economic Justice for All" followed in this long-standing tradition by inviting the American citizenry to allow the biblical narratives on justice and compassion to penetrate their perception of the situation of the poor and marginalized today.

Alasdair MacIntyre (1981), in his seminal work After Virtue, has made a persuasive case for the importance of viewing human action in general as enacted narratives and the human person in particular as essentially a story-telling animal. Barbara Hardy, as quoted in MacIntyre, amplifies this insight when she posits:

. we dream in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate, and love by narrative. (McIntyre, 1981, p. 211)

The economic pastoral letter reflects, in its more extended use of the biblical narratives than was customary in such episcopal social documents in the past, a confirmation of MacIntyre's critical assertion that "the telling of stories has a key part to play in educating us into the virtues."

Conclusion

In "Economic Justice for All" the bishops called Americans in their moral decision making in the economic and social spheres to be open to the insights of biblical theology more than ever before and to be attentive to the gospel summons of building a compassionate and just community. It is always timely to be reminded that the measure of an economy is not only what it produces, but also how it touches human life. To build a truly strong and vibrant economy at the service of all we must never lose sight of the fact that economic decisions have human consequences and moral content. Since a fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring, Americans today must ask: How do my economic choices contribute to a sensitivity to those in need? How do I strike a balance between labor and leisure that enlarges my capacity for friendships, for family life, for community?

Pope John Paul II has made solidarity a recurring and dominant theme in his preaching and writing from the very beginning of his pontificate. In his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1988) John Paul defines social solidarity as "a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all." (John Paul, 1988, par. 38)

This sense of human solidarity must keep before us the realization that economic decisions help or hurt people, strengthen or weaken family life, advance or diminish the quality of justice in our communities. There is no truly just economy unless the poor are participants. This essay, therefore, has sought to sensitize both our intellectual convictions and the stirrings of our hearts towards a more compassionate stance vis-a-vis the poor in our midst.