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Catholics, Dissent, and the Minimum Wage: Part 2

In a preceding post, I discussed the theological requirement that faithful Catholics assent to the Church’s Magisterium, that Catholics are obliged to defer to authoritative Church teaching on issues of faith and morals. This week, we turn to a specific application of that duty; namely, the minimum wage. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops recently urged Congress to raise the minimum wage, explaining that:

“The United States bishops’ Conference has supported the minimum wage since its inception as a just means to protect the human rights and dignity of workers.”

A number of prominent conservative Catholics have spoken out against raising the minimum wage, in response to which they have been accused of being “cafeteria Catholics,” an epithet more commonly hurled at liberal Catholics who actively support abortion rights.

There’s no question that the magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church obliges its members, whether they are Senators from Massachusetts or not, to oppose abortion. In his encyclical Evangelium vitae, the late Pope John Paul II made clear that:

“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.’”

Catholic politicians who vote in favor of abortion or euthanasia rights thus demonstrably are violating their religious obligations.

Is the same true of Catholic politicians who vote against raising the minimum wage? No.

Recall that Catholics are only obliged to give religious assent to authoritative church teaching on faith and morals. When it comes to exercising prudential judgments or making empirical analyses of the state of the world, however, statements by Catholic bishops or even the Pope are entitled to respect but are not binding on the faithful.

Some elements of Catholic social teaching on work clearly rise to the level of authoritative church teaching on morals, to which Catholics are obliged to give religious assent. The Catechism teaches, for example, that:

“A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or withhold it can be a grave injustice. In determining fair pay both the needs and the contributions of each person must be taken into account. ‘Remuneration for work should guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for himself and his family on the material, social, cultural, and spiritual level, taking into account the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business, and the common good.’ Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages. (2434)”

A Catholic employer is morally obliged to give religious assent to this teaching and, accordingly, to pay his or her workers a just wage.

It is a long way, however, from the clear teaching on an employer’s moral duty to pay just wages to support for an increase in the minimum wage imposed by the state. The former is clearly a matter of faith and morals. The latter, however, is merely one of many policy prescriptions available for pursuing the goal of a just society and for responding to the Church’s special concern for the poor.

Law professor and blogger Eduardo Peñalver suggests that the Bishops’ statement on the minimum wage is supported by “the many, many magisterial statements over the years on history’s lessons about the apparent insufficiency of the unregulated market and the responsibility of the state to work for economic justice in light of that insufficiency.” But none of the general statements he cites directly support the claim that the minimum wage is a part of Catholic social teaching to which faithful Catholics must give religious assent. They merely reconfirm that Catholic social teaching is hardly a fan of the libertarian ideal of a night watchman state.

With one exception, I have been unable to find any magisterial teaching on the subject of the minimum wage. The sole exception is that cited by Professor Peñalver; namely, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, which opines that “justice, not charity, demands certain minimum wage guarantees.”

There are several problems with relying on the Bishops’ pastoral letter, however. First, as Father Richard John Neuhaus contends, Pope John Paul II’s subsequent encyclical Centesimus Annus called into question “the controlling assumptions” of Economic Justice for All and even provides a basis for rejecting the pastoral letter “as unrepresentative of the Church’s authoritative teaching.” (See Richard J. Neuhaus, An Argument About Human Nature, in A New Worldly Order: John Paul II and Human Freedom 123, 124 (George Weigel ed., 1992).)

Second, as Charles Rice observes, specific policy statements, such as those found in the Bishops’ pastoral letter, are properly viewed as prudential judgments about how Catholic social teaching applies to the question at hand. Faithful Catholics are free to question such judgments, because the “bishops, as bishops, have no greater insight into policy matters than anyone else.” (Charles E. Rice, 50 Questions on the Natural Law 227 (1993).) Indeed, in their pastoral letter, the Bishops themselves acknowledged that their “prudential judgments” about specific policy recommendations were not made “with the same kind of authority that marks our declarations of principle.”

In sum, the US Catholic Bishops’ support for the minimum wage is not a matter magisterial teaching on faith or morals to which Catholics are obliged to assent. Instead, unlike abortion or euthanasia, raising the minimum wage is a prudential matter as to which faithful Catholics are free to exercise their own judgment.

Note, by the way, that the same would be true even if the existence of a minimum wage was part of the Magisterium. Deciding whether the minimum wage should raised is a matter of prudential judgment about an empirical matter, not a matter of faith or morals.

There probably are issues on which some conservatives are just as much cafeteria Catholics as are some liberals. Raising the minimum wage, however, isn’t one of them.

This post is taken from my TCS column Law, Morality and a Just Wage.