OUR UNFINISHED BUSINESS
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Descripción editorial
What human ends are served by our economic policies? To whom is what “owed” in our country today? Is there an acceptable argument for just wars – or for the proliferation of nuclear weapons? In the final years of the Reagan era, The U.S. Catholic bishops emerged as articulate sources of dissenting wisdom, publicly testing our foreign and domestic policies against the principles of morality and humanity. With the same succinct style of Liberation Theology, Phillip Berryman analyzes two recent and widely circulated texts: the 1982 Challenge of Peace (on nuclear arms) and the 1986 Economic Justice For All.
Drawing on debate in and beyond church circles over these letters, Berryman argues that as we search for acceptable answers to urgent political questions we must use ethical and moral traditions if we are to confront them squarely. Only then can we promote peace and prosperity for all.
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In 1983, U.S. Catholic bishops published The Challenge of Peace , a treatise on nuclear arms; in 1986, they brought out Economic Justice for All . Based on Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s prediction that the 1990s will be an era of social activism and reform, Berryman ( Liberation Theology ) believes that the time is ripe to ``explicate'' these pastoral letters and ``their import for the United States.'' Writing with clarity and precision, he summarizes the documents and places them in a Catholic and American context. The book illuminates the bishops' forceful ideas on religious morality, the nuclear arms race (`` `May a nation threaten what it may never do?' '') and economic justice but is flawed by Berryman's predictably partisan commentary and by digressive discussions (e.g., a detailed critique of the bishops' relativism on nuclear deterrence in contrast to their absolutism on abortion).
