Some people (the MSM, John Kerry) think ordinary citizens just won't get complicated issues. Then there's the Pope, who invites ordinary Catholics to reflect with him on the issues covered in the encyclical, promoting the encyclical and asking questions about it in an ordinary magazine.
And, um, I say this as respectfully as I can, some folks really need to read the encyclical. Especially the part where the Pope writes:
The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State
not to mention:
the formation of just structures is not directly the duty of the Church, but belongs to the world of politics, the sphere of the autonomous use of reason. The Church has an indirect duty here, in that she is called to contribute to the purification of reason and to the reawakening of those moral forces without which just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long run.
The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful.
And especially:
The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility.
All emphases mine. Say, something just occured to me. The reining in of the national bishops' conferences that orthodox Catholics have hoped for from Benedict: maybe DCE is the shot across the bow? Because I don't see how a fair reading of the encyclical can square with the letter linked above for all sorts of reasons: subsidiarity, clericalism, proper role of laity. . . .
This USCCB letter is a perfect illustration of my claim contra Jody Bottum that the bishops, far from withdrawing from the public square, are in it too much, to the dissolution of their authority. If you read their letter, for example, it's a fair question to ask who it represents. Does it speak for all the bishops? A majority of them? Or just the bishops who agree with it? And if the latter, should it be written on USCCB letterhead?
No matter who it represents, did all the people it represents read the several-hundred page appropriations bill? Do they have the technical expertise to know what is essential, and which items are compromises ennabling more important matters? (I'm not even going to touch the question of whether the policies advocated here have any necessary relationship to Catholic doctrine.) Let's just assume for a minute that they have and they do: they still don't have that economic expertise qua bishop. There is no charism of economy imparted at ordination. And where they have no special insight or authority, they mustn't speak in the name of the Church. It impinges on the rightful role of people who do have expertise, which is an injustice on several levels. And it squanders the bishops' own voice on matters where Catholic teaching is authoritative.
