A sociologist and a church historian provide a probling scholarly
critique of Economic Justice for All, the American bishops' pastoral
letter on Catholicism and the U.S. economy. McCarthy and Rhodes examine
the letter's focus on poverty, inequality, and powerlessness in American
society. They review classical concepts of social ethics and economic
justice as applied by the bishops to analyze the social, political, and
economic institutions of American. By examining reactions to the letter
from both the political left and right, Eclipse of Justice opens up the
full range of debate about the nature of social ethics. The first part
of Eclipse of Justice presents the moral dilemma created by the bishops'
critique of liberalism (they pronounced it a ""social and moral
scandal"") and explores the antecedents--papal, episcipal, and lay--that
provided the ideas and vocabulary for the bishops' letter. The second
part analyzes the pastoral letter and locates it within the larger
context of debates about economic structures in modern liberalism. The
third part examines attempts of the bishops to relate Christian social
doctrine to international political and economic issues, and probes the
contributions of liberation theology and dependency theory. ""A valuable
study of the U.S. Catholic bishops' pastoral on economic justice in the
context of the debate in the American Catholic Church, the tradition of
Catholic social teaching, and the progressive ideas of contemporary
political economy. An interesting and useful book for Christians who
love justice and for critical, secular Americans in search of an ethic
of solidarity."" -- Gregory Baum George E. McCarthy, professor of
sociology at Kenyon College, is author of Marx and the Ancients and
Classical Horizons: The Origins of Sociology in Ancient Greece. Royal W.
Rhodes, the Donald L. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon
College, is co-author of Faith of Christians: An Introduction to Basic
Beliefs.
