Economic Justice For All
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Economic Justice For All
"Economic Justice for All" is the pastoral letter promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1986. It deals with the U.S. economy and with Catholic social teaching in the U.S. context. It is a part of the tradition of Catholic social teaching. The letter was written at a time when the Reagan administration was implementing libertarian policies of laissez-faire capitalism, and it may be interpreted as a reaction to what was seen as hostility towards the Catholic Church's teachings on social justice, subsidiarity, corporatism and distributism. Archbishop Rembert Weakland Rembert George Samuel Weakland (April 2, 1927 – August 22, 2022) was an American Benedictine monk who served as Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 to 2002. Shortly before his mandatory retirement at the age of 75, it was revealed in the pre ... was asked to chair the U.S. bishops’ committee responsible for drafting the pastoral letter. He terms the experience “one of the most impo ...
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Pastoral Letter
A pastoral letter, often simply called a pastoral, is an open letter addressed by a bishop to the clergy or laity of a diocese or to both, containing general admonition, instruction or consolation, or directions for behaviour in particular circumstances. In most episcopal church bodies, clerics are often required to read out pastoral letters of superior bishops to their congregations. In the Catholic Church, such letters are also sent out regularly at particular ecclesiastical seasons, particularly at the beginning of fasts. In the non- episcopal Protestant churches a pastoral letter is any open letter addressed by a pastor to his congregation, more especially to one customarily issued at certain seasons, for example, by the moderator of a Presbyterian assembly or the chairman of a Congregational or Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. B ...
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United States Conference Of Catholic Bishops
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is the episcopal conference of the Catholic Church in the United States. Founded in 1966 as the joint National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and United States Catholic Conference (USCC), it is composed of all active and Archbishop emeritus, retired members of the Catholic Catholic Church hierarchy, hierarchy (i.e., diocesan bishop, diocesan, coadjutor bishop, coadjutor, and auxiliary bishop, auxiliary bishop (Catholic Church), bishops and the ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter) in the United States and the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the bishops in the six dioceses form their own episcopal conference, the Puerto Rican Episcopal Conference. The bishops in U.S. insular areas in the Pacific Ocean the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the territory of American Samoa, and the territory of Guam are members of the Episcopal conference#Oc ...
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Catholic Social Teaching
Catholic social teaching, commonly abbreviated CST, is an area of Catholic doctrine concerning matters of human dignity and the common good in society. The ideas address oppression, the role of the state (polity), state, subsidiarity, social organization, concern for social justice, and issues of wealth distribution. Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, encyclical letter ''Rerum novarum'', which advocated economic distributism. Its roots can be traced to the writings of Catholic theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo. It is also derived from concepts present in the Bible and cultures of the ancient Near East. According to Pope John Paul II, the foundation of social justice "rests on the threefold cornerstones of human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity". According to Pope Benedict XVI, its purpose "is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainm ...
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Reagan Administration
Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over Democratic incumbent President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1984 election, he defeated Democrat former vice president Walter Mondale to win re-election in a larger landslide. Reagan was succeeded by his vice president, George H. W. Bush. Reagan's 1980 election resulted from a dramatic conservative shift to the right in American politics, including a loss of confidence in liberal, New Deal, and Great Society programs and priorities that had dominated the national agenda since the 1930s. Domestically, the Reagan administration enacted a major tax cut, sought to cut non-military spending, and eliminated federal regulations. The administration's economic policies, known as "Reaganomics", were insp ...
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Libertarianism
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's encroachment on and violations of individual liberties; emphasizing the rule of law, pluralism, cosmopolitanism, cooperation, civil and political rights, bodily autonomy, free association, free trade, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, individualism and voluntary association. Libertarians are often skeptical of or opposed to authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of Libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categori ...
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Laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' rests on the following axioms: "the individual is the basic unit in society, i.e. the standard of measurement in social calculus; the individual has a natural right to freedom; and the physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system." Another basic principle of ''laissez-faire'' holds that markets should naturally be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' always emphasized. With the aims of maximizing freedom by allowing markets to self-regulate, early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' proposed a ''impôt unique'', a tax on land rent (similar to Georgism) to replace all taxes that they saw as damaging welfare by penalizing production. Proponents of ''l ...
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Social Justice
Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity. Interpretations that relate justice to a reciprocal relationship to society are mediated by differences in cultural traditions, some of which emphasize t ...
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Subsidiarity
Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines subsidiarity as "the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level". The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, neuropsychology, cybernetics, management and in military command (mission command). The OED adds that the term "subsidiarity" in English follows the early German usage of ''"Subsidiarität"''. More distantly, it is derived from the Latin verb ''subsidio'' (to aid or help), and the related noun ''subsidium'' (aid or assistance). The development of the concept of subsidiarity has roots in the natural law philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and was mediated by the social scientific theories of Luigi Taparelli, SJ, in ...
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Corporatism
Corporatism is a collectivist political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin ''corpus'', or "body". As originally conceived, and as enacted in fascist states in mid-20th century Europe, corporatism was meant to be an alternative to both free market economies and socialist economies. The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory. Corporatism does not refer to a political system dominated by large business interests, even though the latter are commonly referred to as "corporations" in modern American vernacular and legal parlance; instead, the correct term for thi ...
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Distributism
Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially Pope Leo XIII's teachings in his encyclical ''Rerum novarum'' (1891) and Pope Pius XI in '' Quadragesimo anno'' (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy. Distributism views ''laissez-faire'' capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, favouring instead small independent craftsmen and producers, or if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations as well as small to medium enterprises and large-scale competition law reform such as antitrust regulations. Christian democratic political parties such as the American Solidarity Party have advocate ...
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Rembert Weakland
Rembert George Samuel Weakland (April 2, 1927 – August 22, 2022) was an American Benedictine monk who served as Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 to 2002. Shortly before his mandatory retirement at the age of 75, it was revealed in the press that Weakland had conducted a sexual relationship with a seminarian, Paul Marcoux, several decades before, and that the diocese had paid $450,000 to Marcoux to settle litigation stemming from Marcoux's characterization of the affair as date rape. Early life He was born George Samuel Weakland in Patton, Pennsylvania, to Basil Weakland (1897–1932) and Mary Kane (1898–1978). He had four sisters, Leora, Elizabeth, Barbara, and Marian; and one brother, William. He attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Patton, and then enrolled at the minor seminary run by the Benedictine monks of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe. Monastic life and priesthood Following graduation in 1945, Weakland entered the novitiate of the archabbey, takin ...
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Documents Of The Catholic Social Teaching Tradition
A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or "lesson": the verb ''doceō'' denotes "to teach". In the past, the word was usually used to denote written proof useful as evidence of a truth or fact. In the computer age, "document" usually denotes a primarily textual computer file, including its structure and format, e.g. fonts, colors, and images. Contemporarily, "document" is not defined by its transmission medium, e.g., paper, given the existence of electronic documents. "Documentation" is distinct because it has more denotations than "document". Documents are also distinguished from " realia", which are three-dimensional objects that would otherwise satisfy the definition of "document" because they memorialize or represent thought; documents are considered more as 2-dimensional repre ...
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