By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — It was an all-star panel of leading national liberals come out west to Phoenix to reflect on “economic justice.”
Local liberal Lutheran clergyman Rev. Jan Flaaten noted from the stage that the day was January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany — “the coming of wise people from the East,” he said. The audience of nearly 500 people laughed appreciatively in the Great Hall at the Jesuits’ Brophy College Preparatory school.
The “Community Conversation on Economic Justice” highlighted Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, commentator and former editor of the Jesuits’ America magazine; Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS, executive director of the liberal lobbying group NETWORK and author of A Nun on the Bus, and John Carr, veteran Catholic bureaucrat who served 20 years as director of the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Like many people in the audience, these three guests had honestly gray hair — Carr’s was right-out white — not dyed to hide the years. They’d lived through some turbulent decades.
Also on stage as a panelist, and with less gray in his hair, was moderate conservative Michael Gerson, Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter and adviser to President George W. Bush.
The gathering, which charged no admission fee, lasted from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., followed by a tasteful and tasty free buffet including wine.
Behind their four comfortable chairs on stage were two easels with large photographs, one of Pope Francis and one of a local liberal monsignor who died nine years ago, Edward Ryle, a longtime director of the Arizona Catholic Conference that lobbies for bishops.
The program distributed to audience members carried one quotation from Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium:
“The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule” (from section 56).
One might have detected a tone at the panel that Pope Francis suddenly had alerted everyone to the presence of poverty and the pressing need to combat it.
The article the following morning on the first local-news page of the state’s largest daily paper, The Arizona Republic, was headlined: “Forum: Follow pope’s teachings to aid poor.” The story began: “The excluded are still waiting.”
As it happened, in 1964, 28 years after the future Pope Francis was born in Argentina, something called the federal War on Poverty was officially launched in Washington, D.C., for people in the United States.
Since then, just over a half-century ago, according to figures from the conservative Heritage Foundation, more than $22 trillion (not billion) has been spent “on anti-poverty programs.”
Whatever uncaring nation and government needs to be alerted to Pope Francis’ thoughts on undertaking necessary help to the poor, it isn’t the United States. The gray-haired liberal panelists in Phoenix should most certainly be aware of this because they’ve lived through all those years.
Rather than deeply admitting the shortcomings and demanding to know why decades of progressive nostrums have failed significantly, two of the liberals here suggested talking to low-income workers to ask what they make.
How’s that for impoverishing the search for a solution?
If, say, a well-meaning father already had spent $5 million to educate a son who failed every college course, it’s not intended to embarrass the child if the father finally decides there should be a careful examination of why so much had obtained so little.
The father would be fully justified in expressing exasperation at the suggestion he didn’t want his youngster to get ahead. Saying that the Pope finally called the negligent father’s attention to the value of an education would be a baffling assertion.
Getting to the root of the issue isn’t intended to make the failing son feel bad, much less deride him as unworthy.
In September 2014, the Washington-based Heritage Foundation released a report, The War on Poverty After 50 Years, which began with this summary:
“In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, ‘This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.’ In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution.
“Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal,” the summary continued, “and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the ‘causes’ rather than the mere ‘consequences’ of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.”
The Heritage report, written by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, said, “The static nature of poverty is especially surprising because . . . poverty fell dramatically during the period before the War on Poverty began. In 1950, the poverty rate was 32.2 percent. By 1965 (the first year during which any War on Poverty programs began to operate), the rate had been cut nearly in half, to 17.3 percent.
“The unchanging poverty rate for the past 45 years is perplexing because anti-poverty or welfare spending during that period has simply exploded,” the authors continued. “. . . [M]eans-tested welfare spending has soared since the start of the War on Poverty. In fiscal year 2013, the federal government ran over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provided cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. . . .
“The conundrum of massive anti-poverty spending and unchanging poverty rates has a simple explanation. The Census Bureau counts a family as ‘poor’ if its income falls below specific thresholds, but in counting ‘income,’ the Census omits nearly all of government means-tested spending on the poor,” the report said.
“In effect, it ignores almost the entire welfare state when it calculates poverty. This neat bureaucratic ploy ensured that welfare programs could grow infinitely while ‘poverty’ remained unchanged,” Rector and Sheffield wrote.
Whatever one may think of their analysis, there’s no doubt that huge sums of U.S. taxpayers’ money have been spent for decades, yet there identifiably still are people suffering economic inadequacy. It didn’t take Pope Francis, or Pope Benedict before him, or St. John Paul II before him, to turn America’s attention to the problem.
The Heritage report went on to say that Lyndon Johnson’s goal of self-sufficiency has been entirely reversed:
“Although President Johnson intended the War on Poverty to increase Americans’ capacity for self-support, exactly the opposite has occurred. The vast expansion of the welfare state has dramatically weakened the capacity for self-sufficiency among many Americans by eroding the work ethic and undermining family structure. . . .
“The War on Poverty crippled marriage in low-income communities,” the report said. “As means-tested benefits were expanded, welfare began to serve as a substitute for a husband in the home, eroding marriage among lower-income Americans. In addition, the welfare system actively penalized low-income couples who did marry by eliminating or substantially reducing benefits.
“As husbands left the home, the need for more welfare to support single mothers increased. The War on Poverty created a destructive feedback loop: Welfare promoted the decline of marriage, which generated the need for more welfare,” the authors wrote.
Family Breakdown
Phoenix poverty panelist Campbell, an attorney, took a different view when she was asked by commentator Reese if family breakdown isn’t a reason for poverty problems.
To the contrary, financial problems cause family breakdown, said the nun, raising the issues of a “living wage,” regulation of the market, and the distribution of resources. She said she practiced family law for 18 years and knows the greatest cause of the breakdown is financial. Calling for raising the minimum wage, she received applause.
Reese had introduced Campbell by saying he likes to think of her “as a prophet” who carries “God’s message of justice and peace.”
She told the audience that it’s good to have “candid conversations from diverse perspectives,” and commented, “In this amazing global planet, there is enough to go around if we share.”
Saying Pope Francis attacks “more tax breaks for those at the top” and trickle-down economic theory, Campbell told of meeting with six Chicago entrepreneurs with an average salary of $10 million who were looking forward to making $11 million.
Wondering if they weren’t getting by on $10 million, Campbell said she was told, “We’re highly competitive. It’s about winning.”
After mentioning some low-wage workers, Campbell said, “Jesus is all about the fact that we are one body. . . . Public policy in the richest nation on Earth has to grapple” with solving this inequality.
Panelist Carr, currently director of the Initiative of Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, followed up by saying, “The fundamental problem is not that some people have too much, but lots of people have almost nothing. . . . How can we lift people up?”
Carr said there’s a tremendous lack of confidence in institutions. “We have high aspirations and low confidence. . . . I’ll be clear. I’m a very selfish person. What Pope Francis says challenges me every day.”
While at the USCCB, Carr had been criticized by social conservatives for networking with “progressive” persons and groups.
He told the Phoenix audience that “the bishops’ conference is a great place to work” due to such qualities as its vitality. “It was a wonderful place to serve the Church.”
Pope Francis was known for resisting Marxism in Latin America, Carr said, and now he feels free to take on capitalism’s flaws.
“He is a walking, talking parable by who he reaches out to…and who he offers correction to,” Carr said.
Reese introduced panelist Gerson by saying that Time magazine in 2005 rated him as one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in the U.S.
Gerson told the audience, “I’m fully aware of the absurdity of an evangelical” commenting on Catholic social policy, but he gave his impressions of Pope Francis, including that “Francis has not changed the catechism, but he has created a zone” against legalism.
The Pope “is not explicable in terms of left and right,” he said, adding that Francis “is acting like Jesus, the image of Jesus in the Gospel.”
To “an outsider, the most distinctive thing is he seems to be” so much against clericalism, Gerson said. “He intends to be a disruptive force,” and Christianity was founded with a message to confound legalists.
Barack Obama’s “White House is anxious to emphasize the overlap” it has with Francis, Gerson said, except there’s none on issues like life and marriage.
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