A woman in a friendly poker game is dealt a lousy hand. Nonetheless, she leans in with a sparkle in her eye. She bets with confidence. On her turn to draw cards, she requests zero. Her bluff or gamesmanship is part of poker. It’s normal, expected and ethical. Her roommate, who is not playing, circles the table, replenishing drinks. Her roommate gives the woman a small cue about the prospects for the other players. This is cheating. Anyone who plays... Read more
Clothes were once made in the U.S. Yes, labor abuses occurred in our domestic production–in cotton plantations, mills and factories. Conditions greatly improved, however, with the labor laws and reforms introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) and his Labor Secretary Frances Perkins (1880-1965). Through the post-World War II years, New York City’s Garment District “had more apparel factories than anywhere else in the world,” Dana Thomas, a fashion expert based in Paris, writes in Fashionapolis (Penguin, 2019). From there production... Read more
Will your shopping for gifts this holy season include buying apparel? Be warned: It will be difficult to find clean clothes. Some are hopelessly stained with child labor, even slavery. Most have flaws like sweatshop wages, dangerous working conditions, wage theft, harassment and more. In recent years some consumers have shown interest in healthier food. The slow food movement has even reached the menus within the biggest fast food chains. Now a slow fashion movement is budding. For example, you... Read more
Lobbying the alderman for a stop sign at the end of the block is a moral activity. An organization opposing hydraulic fracturing is taking a moral stance. The county budget is a moral document. On the other hand… There’s a crucial “difference between moralism and morality,” writes Greg Weiner in National Affairs (Fall 2019). To understand that difference “is the first step toward reclaiming a politics of moral ends.” Can the neighbors admit that good reasons could exist for not... Read more
The Working Catholic: Strikes by Bill Droel Strikes are in the news: auto workers, janitors, teachers, hotel workers and more. Catholicism has a well-developed doctrine on labor relations that includes moral considerations regarding strikes. Most Catholics, I suspect, know nothing about this doctrine. Some who know about it don’t accept it. Catholicism says that a wholesome, holy society must have bargaining associations for workers. This teaching is part of the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. It also fits with Catholicism’s... Read more
Good intentions are not enough. Indeed, good intentions can be harmful. Tarence Ray provides a case study of wasteful, ineffective and disabling social improvement programs in “Hollowed Out: Against the Sham Revitalization of Appalachia” for The Baffler (https://thebaffler.com/; 10/19). He assessed 15 organizations in his region that received money from Appalachian Regional Commission plus he looked at other economic development projects. ARC is a federal agency with state cooperation. It began in 1965 and is targeted to West Virginia and... Read more
In April 1994 CBS and N.Y. Times sponsored a survey on U.S. religious beliefs. Specifically, Catholics were asked about the Eucharist: Is it a “symbolic reminder of Christ” or “changed into Christ.” Over 65% of Catholics back then said “symbolic.” Among all Catholics, 51% of those who were weekly worshipers said “symbolic.” The survey results led to articles in Catholic magazines and newspapers. Adult education efforts increased in some places. In 1997 one New York diocese conducted a discussion... Read more
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) devoted a chapter to “Associations in Civil Life” in his percipient Democracy in America (Doubleday, 1835 & 1840). “Americans of all ages, all stations in life and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations,” he writes. They are “of a thousand different types—religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited… Americans combine to give fetes, found seminaries, build churches, and distribute books… Finally if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling…they... Read more
Economic indicators ebb and flow, though not with high predictability. In the years after World War II the U.S. economy was growing and its benefits were enjoyed by most middle-class families. Sputtering began in the late-1960s and by the mid-1970s U.S. companies were losing their competitive edge, details Steven Pearlstein in Can American Capitalism Survive? (St. Martin’s Press, 2018). U.S. consumers judged all types of imports to be of better quality and/or of a better price that the U.S.-made counterpart.... Read more
There are prophets of peace and builders of peace. There are protesters and institutional reformers. There are outsiders and insiders. The distinction is fluid. A person might be a prophetic outsider on one topic and an expert insider on another. Newspapers and textbooks often present the outsider as a model for social justice. The outsider is concerned with social change but not overly concerned with how to implement reform. The insider gets less attention. They are the ones who... Read more
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