338 - Eclipse of Justice: Ethics, Economics, and the Lost Traditions of American Catholicism

Eclipse of Justice: Ethics, Economics, and the Lost Traditions of American Catholicism
By George E. McCarthy and Royal W. Rhodes
Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 1992. 298 pp. $24.95.

This is a remarkable book, complete in its coverage from the last century of social encyclicals to the pronouncements of the U.S. bishops from 1919 to their Economic Justice for All (1986). That latter document provides the focus for the study, a quarter of which exposes the fatal ambiguities in Robert Benne's and Michael Novak's quite different critiques of it. The centerpiece of the work, however, is a sketch of a "critical theory of political economy," which allows the authors to confront neo-conservative enthusiasm for "the market" with the disastrous results of the eighties. But, if an uncritical espousal of "democratic capitalism" deprives the bishops' detractors of any critical purchase on political economy, so does the bishops' acceptance of "the principles of liberalism without careful scrutiny," for "liberal institutions are incapable of realizing liberal values." A fuller use of biblical resources, as well as those of liberation theology, could underscore other features of the 1986 US bishops' letter, which this book shows deserves a second critical read.

David B. Burrell, C.S.C.
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN.