Economic Justice for All at 40: ‘The economy must serve all of us equally’

By Barb Arland-Fye
For The Catholic Messenger

Forty years ago, in the midst of economic instability and witnessing “the struggles of ordinary families to make ends meet and provide a better future for their children,” the U.S. bishops published a pastoral letter on “Economic Justice for All.”

Mind-boggling change has taken place since that pastoral letter’s publication, but the bishops’ successors and other Catholic leaders, including in the Diocese of Davenport, say the document’s message remains relevant but unfulfilled and it is time to move it forward.

“I think the Pastoral Letter is essential now, more than ever,” said Bishop Dennis Walsh. “More and more people are excluded from so much of the economic growth that is taking place in the economy. While politicians and economists point to the growth of the U.S. economy, not everyone participates to the same degree.”

Wage growth is stagnant, the bishop said, “and inflation makes it difficult for families to make ends meet. At the same time there are billionaires and millionaires that seem to be doing well. It is significant because it shows that wealth is being accumulated in the hands of a few. The basic thrust of Economic Justice for All is that the economy exists for people and not people for the economy. The economy must serve all of us equally.”

Among the pastoral letter’s “basic moral principles” is one addressed in question form: “What does the economy do for people? What does it do to people? And how do people participate in it? The economy is a human reality: men and women working together to develop and care for the whole of God’s creation” (No. 1).

Human flourishing

“Those are profoundly Christian questions because they begin with the dignity of the human person rather than with the market,” says Ken Novak, adjunct professor in the philosophy department of St. Ambrose University, Davenport.

“Nearly 40 years later, we live in an economy transformed by globalization, technology, automation, artificial intelligence, remote work, and new forms of contingent employment. Yet the basic moral question remains the same,” Novak said. “Does our economic life allow people, families, and communities to flourish? The pastoral letter is important because it refuses to separate economic questions from moral ones. It reminds us that an economy is not simply a system of markets, labor, capital, and production. It is a human system, and its success must ultimately be measured by what happens to people within it, especially those with the least power.”

“The Greek roots of the word economy refer to household management, and that is a useful place to begin. Decisions that seem abstract at the national or corporate level eventually find their way into someone’s household: whether a parent can be home for dinner, whether a family can afford child care or health care, whether someone can care for an aging parent, whether a young person can pursue an education without overwhelming debt, or whether work provides dignity and stability. In that sense, Economic Justice for All remains remarkably contemporary,” Novak said.

“Those in power have increasingly emphasized economic development, business flexibility, and workforce supply without giving equal weight to worker power, economic security, and participation in the decisions that shape people’s lives,” said Samantha Groark, the University of Iowa Labor Center’s labor educator.

“The bishops’ 1986 pastoral letter challenges us to recognize that workers are not simply inputs in an economic system. They are human beings with families, aspirations, talents, and inherent dignity. We should continue to ask whether we are building an economy that works for people, or simply asking people to work for the economy. This is as important as ever with the rapid integration of artificial intelligence and other technologies into our lives,” said Groark, who became more familiar with the bishops’ pastoral letter as a college student at a Catholic university.

The Labor Center, said Groark, an attorney, connects “the resources of the University of Iowa with working people across the state — educating workers about their rights, developing labor leaders, researching challenges facing families, and building partnerships that expand economic opportunity. As technology, artificial intelligence, and economic change reshape the workplace, workers need knowledge and opportunities to connect more than ever.”

 A full and just life

In his encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas,” released earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV described Church doctrine as “not an inert set of concepts, but a living corpus of truth that safeguards and interprets humanity’s vocation to a full and just life.”

Addressing the parallels between “Magnifica Humanitas” and “Economic Justice for All,” Bishop Walsh identified five points of convergence: “1) The human person comes first in economics and in technology; 2) Both of them express the concern for the common good. We should not build structures that concentrate economic power or technological power in the hands of a few powerful people and corporations. 3) Both documents remind us of our need to care for the most vulnerable among us. 4) Both of them reject individualism as an adequate social ethic and seeks humanity to embrace solidarity and subsidiarity and the common good. 5) Human dignity is at the center of both documents.”

Catholic Social Teaching “must be applied to the actual circumstances of human life,” Novak said. “We might ask whether wages allow families to live with dignity, whether workers have adequate time for family life, whether affordable housing and child care are accessible, whether health care can be obtained without financial crisis, and whether rural communities have meaningful access to employment and education.” The challenge is to translate the principles of Catholic Social Teaching “into decisions about wages, scheduling, benefits, housing, education, child care, health care, immigration, and community investment.”

“Catholic Social Teaching is not frozen in 1986 — or in any particular economic or technological era,” Groark said. “The principles remain, but their application must evolve as circumstances change. In 1986, the bishops challenged us to stop treating the economy as an independent force and start recognizing it as something created by human beings, for human beings. In 2026, Pope Leo is challenging us to do the same with technology.”

People’s right to participate in economic life, a principle of Catholic Social Teaching, means “more than having a job or receiving a paycheck,” Groark said. “It means having a meaningful opportunity to contribute to society and exercise a voice in decisions affecting their economic future. Pope Leo takes this principle into the technological age. If artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies are going to fundamentally reshape our economy, who gets to decide how those technologies are developed, deployed, and regulated?”

Progress and backsliding

Groark and Novak believe some progress in economic justice for all has occurred over the past 40 years. For example, Novak cites “growth in corporate social responsibility, impact investing, employee ownership models, workforce-development partnerships, and nonprofit-business collaboration. These developments should not be overlooked,” he said. “They suggest that many businesses and institutions understand that economic success cannot be defined solely in financial terms.”

Groark said Americans have better access to health care, safer workplaces, stronger civil rights protections and greater economic security than they did in 1986 because “people organized, advocated, built coalitions, changed laws, and held decision-makers accountable.”

“The question is whether participation and human flourishing have expanded alongside (economic) growth,” Novak said. “On that measure, the record is more mixed. Some communities and individuals have benefited enormously from economic transformation, while others have experienced greater insecurity, community decline, or limited opportunity.”

Groark sees backsliding in Iowa’s 2017 collective bargaining law, which “sharply restricted public-sector unions’ ability to negotiate over benefits and working. Why this matters in the context of Economic Justice for All: The bishops explicitly stated that workers must have the ability to organize and bargain collectively because individual employees frequently lack the power to protect their interests.”

“Equally concerning,” Groark said, “is Iowa’s lack of meaningful enforcement of existing worker protections. Wage theft affects an estimated 250,000 Iowa workers annually, costing them more than $900 million. … Concerns about inadequate workplace safety enforcement further undermines workers’ ability to earn a living without risking their health and safety.”

‘Seeing’ the human person

“More people than ever are excluded from full participation in the economy,” Bishop Walsh said. “The Church has a completely different vision of economics than what we live here in America. While everyone would agree that, as a Church, we reject communism; that does not necessarily mean that we bless capitalism. We have a tendency to think in binary terms — Red versus Blue, Socialism versus Capitalism, Democrats versus Republicans, Liberals versus Conservatives. It is not a very Catholic way of thinking. A Catholic way of thinking looks to distribute wealth among all people rather than concentrated in the hands of a few. Catholicism has more of distributivist mentality regarding the distribution of capital. We have a very long way to go.”

“The Church gives us a moral map, but each generation must walk the territory,” Novak said. “Scripture and tradition give us a way of seeing the human person that is deeper than productivity or efficiency. Perhaps that is where the work begins: learning to see the person again.”