I can’t resist…

…replying to at least one argument made at the Rockford site. Someone writes, in reference to my argument that pronouncing upon the best mechanisms for bringing about certain economic goals is well outside the legitimate province of the Magisterium, “I doubt that Mr. Woods would apply the same position to the ‘harder’ science of medicine. Would he make the same argument that the Church is outside her competence to make moral pronouncements (even infallible at times) regarding the morality of certain aspects of the medical science when it comes to abortion? Or end of life issues? Or stem-cell research? One would doubt it.”

The two cases are entirely dissimilar. In the case of medicine, there is a sense in which I absolutely would say that medicine is morally neutral and in which the Church has no business: in, say, describing the most effective way of treating the common cold. The Church in her official capacity has no authority there.

But if someone wanted to cure the common cold by killing children and extracting from them some kind of cold-curing substance, then certainly the Church could intervene, because now we are dealing with a question that does not involve the science per se but rather the limits to which the science may be lawfully practiced. The Church could not say that that method would be ineffective, but that that method would be immoral.
The point I am making in the paper is that I can show that wages are increased by means of an economic order that respects property rights and in which no one’s gain comes at another’s coerced expense. Since, unlike abortion, there is nothing intrinsically immoral about the voluntary wage relation — we’re not Marxists, for crying out loud — then surely I am free to recommend this morally neutral method (indeed morally preferable method, in that it involves no coercion or threats, which surely must be resorted to only as a last resort) of increasing wage rates. Has any Church pronouncement ever said that it would be immoral, indeed a mortal sin, to advocate a free labor market?

The Church herself says she wants the workingman and his family to be prosperous. But if I can recommend a method for accomplishing that end that is not inherently immoral and that will be much, much more effective than any alternative that a bishops’ conference might suggest, then I do not see anything subversive in my offering that suggestion.

The Church may certainly say that someone ought not to do this or that with his wealth, or that he should be honest in his business dealings, and so on. She may not say that the state has to be employed to bring about better working conditions, because she is incompetent to pronounce upon the best way to bring about better working conditions, just as she is incompetent to pronounce upon whether, assuming their production involves nothing immoral, I should use aspirin or ibuprofen for my headache. (The paper shows that state-enforced improvements in working conditions tend to worsen the condition of employees, and that therefore if they realized this, those recommending this position would certainly cease to advocate it.)

If things WORK a certain way, no Church pronouncement can make them WORK another way. THAT is what I am saying. This seems to me a rather obvious point. My position, therefore, in no way involves the claim that sciences per se are exempt from moral evaluation. They are, however, exempt from technical critiques on the part of the Church, since churchmen may speak only as individuals on such questions, and not for the Church as a whole.

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3:18 pm on March 24, 2004