American Catholicism, Catholic Charities U.S.A., and Welfare Reform

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Coleman ◽  
S.J.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Catholic Charities ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Do So

In this article I want to give at least a thumbnail sense of the background assumptions, policy contours, and vehicles for American Catholicism in engaging in public policy discussions. To do so, I will eventually concentrate on one major recent public policy discussion in the United States: the debates on welfare reform that led up to, and continue vigorously even after, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. I do so because American Catholic institutions, including the United States Catholic Conference and Catholic Charities U.S.A., played a crucial and continuous role in these debates about welfare reform. Indeed, New York's Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, a vigorous opponent of the proposed welfare reform bill, in excoriating his fellow liberals for signing on to the bill, could lift up the example of the Catholic bishops' lobbying and exclaim: “The bishops admittedly have an easier time with matters of this sort. When principles are at stake, they simply look them up. Too many liberals, alas, make them up!” This particular debate (which is not, by any means, over) also helps to show some of the unique assumptions behind proposals found in Catholic interventions in the policy sector. In what follows, I will develop, briefly, four sections or subthemes to the paper:1. Catholilc Social Thought: Five Background Assumptions for Policy: Human Dignity; The Common Good; Solidarity; Subsidiarity; Justice2. The Move from Background Assumptions to Policy3. Catholic Policy Proposals: Their Style and Instrumentalities4. Catholicism and Welfare Policy

The Making of American Catholicism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pfeifer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Catholic

The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience argues that regional and transnational relationships have been central to the making of American Catholicism. The book traces the development of Catholic cultures in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast and their contribution to larger patterns of Catholicism in the United States. Exploring the history of Catholic cultures in New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, and New York City, the book carefully explores the history of American Catholic cultures across regions and their relation to factors such as national origin, ethnicity, race, and gender. The chapters include close analysis of the historical experiences of Latinx and African American Catholics as well as European immigrant Catholics. Eschewing a national or nationalistic focus that might elide or neglect global connections or local complexity, the book offers an interpretation of the American Catholic experience that encompasses local, national, and transnational histories by emphasizing the diverse origins of Catholics in the United States, their long-standing ties to transnational communities of Catholic believers, and the role of region in shaping the contours of American Catholic religiosity. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book argues that regional American Catholic cultures and a larger American Catholicism developed as transnational Catholic laity and clergy ecclesiastically linked to and by Rome in a hierarchical, authoritarian, and communalistic “universal Church” creatively adapted their devotional and ideological practices in particular American regional contexts that emphasized notions of republicanism, religious liberty, individualistic capitalism, race, ethnicity, and gender.

Public Schools vs. Catholic Schools and James McMaster

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas T. McAvoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
American Catholic

THE “emergence of the Catholic layman” in the United States which has been heralded sofrequently since the opening of the Second Vatican Council has tended to do a grave injustice to the American Catholic layman of earlier generations. It is true that many of the leading American Catholiclaymen of the nineteenth century were converts from Protestantism, and there were few opportunities for the first generation immigrant Catholic to achieve higher education outside the seminaries. Nevertheless, the “Generation of the Third Eye” has not produced a philosopher of the depth or comprehension of Orestes A. Brownson, nor a defender of orthodoxy of the knowledge and capacity of James A. McMaster nor has it surpassed such men as Roger B. Taney, John Scott, and William J. Read who were called in to address the first Provincial Council of Baltimore, or Richard Clarke who tried to form the first Catholic union in the United States. The number of prominent Catholic laymen and laywomen of the nineteenth century is large as can be seen in the mere listing of the galaxy that participated in the two lay Catholic Congresses in Baltimore in 1889 and Chicago in 1893. Of all these, James McMaster has no equal in his influence on the religious and theological development of American Catholicism.

U.S. Family Policy in Search of Values, 1965-1995

1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
David Fillingim ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
National Family ◽  
American Families

Since 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan has advocated a comprehensive national family policy for the United States. The ups and downs of efforts to advocate family policy initiatives over the last thirty years reveal an increasing polarization over family-related issues. Since public policy affects families, family policy is inevitable, whether purposeful or not. But the lack of public consensus over what values should guide family policy is a serious obstacle to meaningful efforts at improving conditions for American families. This essay proposes an approach to family policy drawing on the best insists of conservative and liberal advocates, based on the values of compassion and personal responsibility.

scholarly journals A Confluence of Conservative Principles: Newt Gingrich, the Republican Party, and 1990s Welfare Reform

Elements ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean McMahon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Reform Effort ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Speaker Of The House ◽  
Newt Gingrich

Welfare reform in the United States, always a contentious subject, became a prominent national issue in the 1990s, leading up to the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The reform was pushed through Congress by a resurgent Republican Party led by the fiery Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Today, PRWORA is still hailed by many conservatives as a major step forward in changing the way social welfare works in America. It is not immediately obvious, however, just how conservative Republican welfare reform really was. In fact, the reform effort and the ideologies and justifications behind it had their roots in the Elizabethan poor law of 17th century England. The concepts of paternalism and social darwinism that were so prevalent in the old English laws were major characteristics of 1990s welfare reform in the United States as well.

Writing Time in Metaphors

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Space Race ◽  
Do So

Coherence of place often exists alongside irregularities in time in cycles, and chapter three turns to cycles linked by temporal markers. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) follows a linear chronology and describes the exploration, conquest, and repopulation of Mars by humans. Conversely, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984) jumps back and forth across time to narrate the lives of interconnected families in the western United States. Bradbury’s cycle invokes a confluence of historical forces—time as value-laden, work as a calling, and travel as necessitating standardized time—and contextualizes them in relation to anxieties about the space race. Erdrich’s cycle invokes broader, oppositional conceptions of time—as recursive and arbitrary and as causal and meaningful—to depict time as implicated in an entire system of measurement that made possible the destruction and exploitation of the Chippewa people. Both volumes understand the United States to be preoccupied with imperialist impulses. Even as they critique such projects, they also point to the tenacity with which individuals encounter these systems, and they do so by creating “interstitial temporalities,” which allow them to navigate time at the crossroads of language and culture.

Progressive Catholicism in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Common ◽  
American Society

American Catholicism has long adapted to US liberal institutions. Progressive Catholicism has taken the liberal values of democratic participation and human rights and made them central to its interpretation of Catholic social teaching. This chapter explores in detail the thought of David Hollenbach, S.J., a leading representative of progressive Catholicism. Hollenbach has proposed an ethical framework for an economy aimed at the common good, ensuring that the basic needs of all are met and that all are able to participate in economic life. The chapter also looks at the US Catholic bishops’ 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, which emphasizes similar themes while also promoting collaboration between the different sectors of American society for the sake of the common good.

Time’s Up! Shorter Hours, Public Policy, and Time Flexibility as an Antidote to Youth Unemployment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Eva Maich ◽  
Jamie K. McCallum ◽  
Ari Grant-Sasson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Youth Unemployment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Employment Relationships ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Hours Of Work ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Work Scheduling

This chapter explores the relationship between hours of work and unemployment. When it comes to time spent working in the United States at present, two problems immediately come to light. First, an asymmetrical distribution of working time persists, with some people overworked and others underemployed. Second, hours are increasingly unstable; precarious on-call work scheduling and gig economy–style employment relationships are the canaries in the coal mine of a labor market that produces fewer and fewer stable jobs. It is possible that some kind of shorter hours movement, especially one that places an emphasis on young workers, has the potential to address these problems. Some policies and processes are already in place to transition into a shorter hours economy right now even if those possibilities are mediated by an anti-worker political administration.

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