1. “The Church and Capitalism,” Business Week, 12 November 1984, 105; “Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,” Origins 14, nos. 22/23 (15 November 1984): 32; clipping, “Archbishop Says Wall Street Meeting was Emotional Moment for Pastoral,” 9 January 1987, Catholic News Service Clipping File (Communications Department Library, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C.). The only historical study of the Pastoral Letter is Gregory J. Fairbanks, “The History of the Development of the 1986 United States Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on the Economy: Economic Justice for All” (Ph.D. diss., Pontifical Gregorian University, 2005).

2. John Greenwald, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” Time, 26 November 1984, 80; Cable News Network Evening News, transcript, 13 November 1984, Radio and T.V. Reports File (Communications Department Library, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C.); Bob Zyskowski, “Economy Pastoral Ready Tool for Adult Education, says USCC Official,” clipping, 2 December 1986, Catholic News Service Clipping File; Joint Congressional Economic Committee, “The Catholic Church Speaks Out on Poverty: Ethics and Economics,” Hearing Before the Joint Economic Committee, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 22 December 1986; Rodgers, Daniel T., Age of Fracture (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), 205.Google Scholar

3. Lay Commission on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, Toward the Future: Catholic Social Thought and the U.S. Economy—A Lay Letter (New York, 1984), 2.

4. Lawrence J. McAndrews, What They Wished For: American Catholics and American Presidents, 1960–2004 (Athens, 2014), 211–17.

For the rise of support of conservatism by American Catholics, see Allitt, Patrick, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950–1985 (Ithaca, 1993)Google Scholar; Fisher, James T., Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America (New York, 2000), 162Google Scholar; McGirr, Lisa, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001), 107, 232–33Google Scholar; Critchlow, Donald T., Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Women’s Crusade (Princeton, 2005), 42, 67–68, 89, 104, 291Google Scholar; Dochuk, Darren, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York, 2011), 204, 353Google Scholar; Schrecker, Ellen, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (New York, 1998), 75, 145, 214, 228Google Scholar.

On the social and cultural issues and American Catholics in the 1960s and 1970s, see Massa, Mark S., The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever (New York, 2010)Google Scholar; Sugrue, Thomas J., “The Catholic Encounter with the 1960s,” in Catholicism in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History, ed. R. Scott Appleby and Kathleen Sprows Cummings (Ithaca, 2012), 61–79Google Scholar; Tentler, Leslie Woodcock, Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Ithaca, 2009)Google Scholar; Williams, Daniel K., “Richard Nixon’s Religious Right: Catholics, Evangelicals, and the Creation of an Antisecular Alliance,” in The Right Side of the Sixties: Reexamining Conservatism’s Decade of Transformation, ed. Gifford, Laura Jane and Williams, Daniel K. (New York, 2012), 141–59Google Scholar; McGreevy, John T., Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Chicago, 1998)Google Scholar; Formisano, Ronald T., Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill, 1991)Google Scholar; Reider, Jonathan, Carnarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1985)Google Scholar; Zeitz, Joshua M., White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (Chapel Hill, 2007).Google Scholar

5. McCarraher, Eugene D., “The Saint in the Grey Flannel Suit: The Professional-Managerial Class, ‘The Layman,’ and American-Catholic-Religious Culture, 1945–1965,” U.S. Catholic Historian 15, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 114;Google Scholar Komonchak, Joseph A, “Interpreting the Council: Catholic Attitudes toward Vatican II,” in Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America, ed. Weaver, Mary Jo and Appleby, R. Scott (Bloomington, 1995), 22–34.Google Scholar

6. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (“On Capital and Labor”), 15 May 1891, sec. 3. For the central role of the Catholic Church in U.S. social and labor history, see Thomas Massaro and Thomas Shannon, eds., American Catholic Social Teaching (Collegeville, Minn., 2002); McShane, Joseph M., Sufficiently Radical: Catholicism, Progressivism, and the Bishops’ Program of 1919 (Washington, D.C., 1986)Google Scholar; Piehl, Mel, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America (Philadelphia, 1984)Google Scholar; Rosswurm, Steve, “The Catholic Church and the Left-Led Unions: Labor Priests, Labor Schools, and the ACTU,” in The CIO’s Left-Led Unions, ed. Rosswurm (New Brunswick, 1992), 119–37.Google Scholar

7. O’Brien, David J., “The Economic Thought of the American Hierarchy,” in The Catholic Challenge to the American Economy: Reflections on the U.S. Bishops’ “Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,” ed. Gannon, Thomas M. (New York, 1987), 37–38Google Scholar; Greenwald, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” 81; Steinfels, Peter, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church (New York, 2004), 85–86.Google Scholar

8. William Simon to Michael Novak, 8 March 1984, folder: January–September 1984, box 76, Michael Novak Papers (Archives and Historical Collections, Stonehill College, Easton, Mass.); Teles, Steven M., The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton, 2008), 186–87, 273Google Scholar; Friedman, Murray, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (New York, 2005), 133Google Scholar; Wolfgang Saxton, “Michael S. Joyce, Research Patron, Dies at 63,” New York Times, 3 March 2006, C14; Patricia Sullivan, “Michael Joyce, Leader in Rise of Conservative Movement,” Washington Post, 3 March 2006, B6.

9. Simon, William, A Time for Truth (New York, 1978), 4–5, 22Google Scholar; Simon, A Time for Action (New York, 1980), 11, 13, 133; Richard W. Stevenson, “William E. Simon, Ex-Treasury Secretary and High-Profile Investor, Is Dead at 72,” New York Times, 5 June 2000, A27; Phillips-Fein, Kim, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York, 2009), 245–46Google Scholar; O’Connor, Alice, “Financing the Counterrevolution,” in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Schulman, Bruce J. and Zelizer, Julian E. (Cambridge, Mass., 2008), 158–59, 164–65.Google Scholar

10. Michael Novak, Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age (Nashville, 1983), 75–76; Lay Commission Meeting, New York, transcript, 13 June 1984, folder: 13 June 1984, box 79, Novak Papers; Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals, 244–74.

11. Novak, Michal, Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative (New York, 2013), 150Google Scholar; Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (New York, 1982), 26–27; Novak, “A Closet Capitalist Confesses,” Washington Post, 14 March 1976, A12.

12. Novak, Democratic Capitalism, 14, 21, 57–58, 91–91; R. Scott Appleby, “The Triumph of Americanism: Common Good for U.S. Catholics in the Twentieth Century,” in Being Right, ed. Weaver and Appleby, 37–62.

13. Novak, Michael, “The Achievement of Jacques Maritain,” in On Cultivating Liberty: Reflections on Moral Ecology, ed. Novak, Michael and Anderson, Bruce C. (Lanham, Md., 1999), 183–200Google Scholar; Novak, The Guns of Lattimer (New York, 1978); Novak, Democratic Capitalism, 91–92.

14. Kenneth A. Briggs, “Lay Catholic Group Offers Report Praising Capitalism,” New York Times, 7 November 1984, A16; Fairbanks, “The History of the 1986 Pastoral,” 86; Michael Joyce to Michael Novak, 30 March 1984, folder: January–September 1984, box 76, Novak Papers; William Simon to John Gainesway, 24 October 1984, folder: January–August 1984, box 2, Novak Papers; Michael Novak to Joseph Haggar, 24 October 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 76, Novak Papers; William Simon to Steven Rothmeier, 24 October 1984, folder: 1984, box 2, Novak Papers.

Thomas Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization’s (AFL-CIO), refused outright, characterizing their efforts as “presumptuous and inappropriate at this point.” (Thomas Donahue to William Simon, 26 March 1984, folder: January–August 1984, box 22, Novak Papers).

15. Lay Commission Meeting, New York, transcript, 13 June 1984, folder: 13 June 1984, box 79, Novak Papers; Novak, Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age, 27–28; William Simon, “Talking Points on Interview on Bishops’ Letter,” typescript, n.d. (November 1984), folder: 1984, box 2, Novak Papers; William Simon to Eugene Clark, 18 January 1985, folder: 1985–86, box 2, Novak Papers.

16. Michael Novak, “Theology and Economics,” National Review, 10 January 1984, 40; Lay Commission Meeting, transcript, 13 June 1984, folder: 13 June 1984, box 9, Novak Papers; William Bordreaux to Michael Novak, 26 July 1984, folder: January–September 1984, box 76, Novak Papers; Jerome Hastrick to William Johnson, 20 July 1984, ibid.; William Wilson to William Simon, 30 November 1984, folder: 1984, box 2, Novak Papers.

17. Michael Novak to Pio Laghi, 15 December 1983, 9 March 1984, and 27 November 1984, folder: Apostolic Folder, box 76. On U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO, see “Text of Statement by U.S. on Its Withdrawal from UNESCO,” New York Times, 20 December 1984, A10. (The United States did leave, charging the organization with “extraneous politicization . . . [and] endemic hostility toward the institutions of a free society”).

18. “The American Debate: Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter,” 21, Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., transcript, n.d. (1984), folder: October–December 1984, box 76; Michael Joyce, “Meeting with Archbishop Rembert Weakland,” transcript, 13 July 1984, folder: 1984, box 2; Fairbanks, “The History of the 1986 Pastoral,” 160; William Simon to Lay Commission Members, 7 July 1986, folder: January–August 1986 box 2, all located in the Novak Papers.

19. Elaine Sciolino, “Applying Roman Catholic Tradition to U.S. Economy,” New York Times, 13 November 1984, A23; Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004), sec. 182–84; Peter Grace to William Simon, 23 July 1986, folder: January–August 1986, box 2, Novak Papers. Peter Grace was a controversial figure. In the early 1950s his company employed a German chemist convicted in the Nuremburg war-crimes tribunal, and in 1982 he told a Dallas audience that the federal food stamp program was a subsidy for Puerto Ricans, a comment for which he later apologized. (Kenneth N. Gilpin, “J. Peter Grace, Ex-Company Chief, Dies at 81,” New York Times, 21 April 1995, B6).

20. Colman McCarthy, “Getting the Bishops,” Dallas Times Herald, clipping, 24 November 1984, folder: 1984–86, box 2; “The American Debate: Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter,” 18, Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., transcript, n.d. (1984), folder: October–December 1984, box 76; Monika Hellwig, Letter to Editor, Washington Post, clipping, 26 November 1984, folder: 1984–86, box 2, all located in the Novak Papers.

21. Kenneth Giddens to Michael Novak, 26 November 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 6; Arla Tracz to Michael Novak, 25 November 1984, ibid.; J. J. Mahoney to Michael Novak, 9 June 1984, folder: January–September 1984, box 76; Mrs. Orben to Michael Novak, 12 November 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 76; Edward Johnson to William Simon, 4 October 1984, folder: 1984, box 2; Daniel Maria to Dear Sirs, 15 December 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 76; Charles Bergedick to William Simon, 6 December 1984, ibid.; Seymour Cain, Letter to Editor, San Diego Union, clipping, 15 November 1984, folder: 1984–86, box 2, all located in the Novak Papers.

22. Mrs. Ceplecha to Dear Sirs, 14 November 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 76; Maurice Hannan to Michael Novak, 4 June 1984, folder: January–September 1984, box 76; Michael Doherty to Michael Novak, 27 June 1984, ibid.; clipping, Federick W. Dow, Letter to Editor, San Diego Union, 25 November 1984, folder: 1984–86, box 2; Typescript, George Pawlanta, “A Catholic Businessman Comments,” 17 November 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 76; Frank Meinem to Michael Novak, 16 November 1984, ibid., all located in Novak Papers.

23. “Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,” 342; Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, sec. 27.

24. Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (“On Reconstruction of the Social Order”), 15 May 1931, sec. 79–80; John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), 11 April 1963, sec. 112 and 118.

25. “Catholic Social Teaching and the Economy,” 128; Bryan Hehir, J., “Church and State: Basic Concepts for Analysis,” Origins 8, no. 24 (November 1978): 381;Google Scholar Mich, Marvin L., “Commentary on Mater et Magistra (‘Christianity and Social Progress’),” in Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations, ed. Himes, Kenneth R. (Washington, D.C., 2004), 207Google Scholar. The bishops’ drafting committee was leaning toward endorsing economic planning until Marina von Neuman Whitman, a chief economist for General Motors, testified before them, and argued against it. See Greenwald, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” 82.

26. Toward the Future, 2–3, 29, 32–34; clipping, Jerry Filteau, “Novak Sees Push Toward Statism in Economic Pastoral,” 1 January 1985, Catholic News Service File; Douglas Martin, “James McFadden, Labor Chief, Dies at 83,” New York Times, 31 July 2003, B9.

27. “The American Debate: Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter,” 6, Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., transcript, n.d. (1984), folder: October–December 1984, box 76, Novak Papers; Toward the Future, 36–37; clipping, “Simon-Novak Letter Praised for Section on Unions,” Chicago Catholic, 7 December 1984, p. 27, folder: 1984–86, box 2, Novak Papers; Transcript, Lay Commission Meeting, New York City, 27 September 1984, folder: 27 September 1984, box 79, Novak Papers.

28. Transcript, Lay Commission Meeting, New York City, 27 September 1984, folder: 27 September 1984, box 79, Novak Papers; Toward the Future, 69, 71.

On plant closings, see Candee S. Harris, “The Magnitude of Job Losses from Plant Closings and the Generation of Replacement Jobs: Some Recent Evidence,” Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science 475 (September 1984): 15–27; Bluestone, Barry and Harrison, Bennett, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

29. Toward the Future, 56, 60; Transcript, Lay Commission Meeting, New York, 27 September 1984, folder: 27 September 1984, box 79, Novak Papers. On comparable worth and sexual harassment in the 1980s, see Cobble, Dorothy Sue, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton, 2004), 219–221Google Scholar; and Baker, Carrie N., The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment (New York, 2007), 135–61.Google Scholar

30. Toward the Future, 65, 69; William Simon, “Talking Points for Interview on Bishops’ Letter,” n.d. (November 1984), folder: 1984, box 2; “The American Debate: Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter,” 11, Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., transcript, n.d. (1984), folder: October–December 1984, box 76, both in Novak Papers.

31. Toward the Future, 5, 28; Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, sec. 80; John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”), sec. 14, 17.

When, for example, Pope John Paul in his 1981 Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”) discussed “intermediate bodies” as new forms of industrial ownership to serve as an alternative to capitalist enterprises, the Lay Commission repurposed the pope’s consideration of the common good to an endorsement of the free-market economy, claiming that “only an open, free market allows such intermediate bodies economic breathing space.” Novak argued that the pope, in his 1991 Centesimus Annus (“One Hundred Year”), “now envisages a tripartite social structure, composed of a free political system, a free economy, and a culture of liberty.” See Michael Novak, “Capitalism Rightly Understood: The View of Christian Humanism,” Faith and Reason (Winter 1991): 58–59. Although offering his most positive statement on capitalism to date, John Paul II insisted that markets “be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state, so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied” (Centesimus annus, sec. 35).

32. Toward the Future, 34, 77; William Simon, “Talking Points for Interview on Bishops’ Letter,” typescript, n.d. (November 1984), folder: 1984, box 2, Novak Papers; clipping, “Abandon ‘Economic Rights’ View, Simon Tells U.S. Bishops,” 15 October 1985, Catholic News Service File.

33. Leonard Silk, “Celebrating Capitalism,” New York Times, 7 November 1984, A16; Editorial, “The Bishops and the Economy,” Washington Post, 13 November 1984, A14; Clipping, Editorial, “The Pastoral,” Pittsburgh Catholic, 23 November 1984, folder: 1984–86, box 2, Novak Papers; Milton Friedman, “Good Ends, Bad Means,” in Catholic Challenge to the American Economy, ed. Gannon, 99; Norman Podhoretz, “A Plan for Spreading Misery, Not Wealth,” New York Times, 18 November 1984, F2; Billy Graham, “Foreword,” in Novak, Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age, 8.

34. Philip F. Lawler, “At Issue Is the Prophet Motive,” Wall Street Journal, 13 November 1984, 32; Clipping, Phyllis Schlafly, “Lay Catholics Upstage Bishops as Thinkers about Capitalism,” (St. Louis) Globe-Democrat, 23 November 1984, folder: 1984–86, box 2, Novak Papers; William Buckley, “An Intellectual Muddle,” (Newburgh, N.Y.) Evening News, 3 January 1985, ibid.; McAndrews, 226.

35. William Simon to John Gaines, 12 December 1984, folder: January–August 1986, box 2, Novak Papers.

36. Typescript, Caesar Arredondo, “Program to Implement Lay Letter in Local Parishes,” December 1984, folder: 1985, box 2, Novak Papers; “Lay Commission Meeting,” typescript, 1 October 1986, folder: September–December 1986, box 2, ibid.; Michael Novak to Michael Joyce, 9 November 1984, box 76, Novak Papers; William Simon to Eugene Clark, 27 January 1986, folder: January–August 1986, box 2; James McFadden to William Simon, n.d. (July 1986), ibid.; Michael Novak to James McFadden, 15 July 1986, ibid.; Stevenson, “William E. Simon Is Dead at 72,” A27.

37. Lew Daly, God’s Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State (Chicago, 2009), 96, 113–14, 270 fn. 90; Liz Armstrong, “Reagan Names Novak to Presidential Task Force on Economic Justice,” clipping, 9 December 1985, Catholic News Service File; Templeton Foundation, “About the Prize,” http://www.templetonprize.org/abouttheprize.html.

38. A Decade after “Economic Justice for All”: Continuing Principles, Changing Context, New Challenges (Washington, D.C., 1996); Liz Schevtchuk, “Dioceses Use Various Means to Follow Up on Economy Pastoral,” clipping, 22 December 1986, Catholic News Service File; Tracy Early, “Bishops Urged to Make Pastoral on U.S. Economy More Radical,” clipping, 25 March 1985, Catholic News Service File; Charles E. Curran, “The Reception of Catholic Social and Economic Teaching in the United States,” in Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations, ed. Kenneth R. Himes (Washington, D.C., 2004), 484–85.

In addition to publicity from individual dioceses and vowed religious orders of men and women, the U.S. bishops spent $525,000. See clipping, Tracy Early, “Apply Teachings of Economy Pastoral to Diocese, Bishop Urges,” 11 December 1986, Catholic News Service File.

39. Robert Kapusta to Peter Rosazza, 20 November 1984, folder: October–December 1984, box 76, Novak Papers; Juan Williams, “Catholic Bishops Pastoral Draft Jolts Community,” Washington Post, 19 November 1984, A8; Peter Grace to William Simon, 23 July 1986, folder: January–August, 1986, box 2, Novak Papers.

40. James Finn, “Introduction,” in Private Virtue and Public Policy: Catholic Social Thought and National Life, ed. Finn (New Brunswick, 1990), vii; Weigel, George, “American and Catholic,” City Journal 24, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 123;Google Scholar Dan Morris-Young, “Napa Institute Gathers U.S. Church’s Well-Heeled and High-Ranking Devout,” National Catholic Reporter, 19 December 2014–1 January 2015, 15–16; The Acton Institute, www.acton.org/index/about; Novak, Writing from Left to Right, 192.

41. Gerson, Michael, Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace American Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don’t) (New York, 2007), 164Google Scholar; Marvin Olasky, “Subsidiarity: The Thinking Behind Catholic Compassionate Conservatism,” World, November 9, 2002, www.worldmag.com/2002/11/subsidiarity.

42. Daniel Burke, “A Catholic in the White House,” Washington Post, 13 April 2008, B2; Jerry Filteau, “Deal Hudson Resigns from Crisis Magazine, Stays with Publishing House,” Catholic News Service, 23 September 2004, http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0405221.htm; DiIulio, John D. Jr., Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America’s Faith-Based Future (Berkeley, 2007), 217–18, 222Google Scholar; Daly, God’s Economy, 113.

43. Ryan Lizza, “Fussbudget: How Paul Ryan Captured the G.O.P.,” New Yorker, 6 August 2012, 27; Paul Ryan, “Republicans Must Return to Free-Market Principals,” Financial Times, 19 July 2012, 3; Ryan, Whittington Lecture, transcript, 26 April 2012, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., http://mspp.georgetown.edu/events/whittington-lecture/; “‘Catholic Subsidiarity’ Rejects Big Government,” Washington Post, 10 April 2012, A12.

Other high-profile Republicans offered the same definition of subsidiarity as Ryan. See, for example, Santorum, Rich, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good (Wilmington, Del., 2005), 68, 71.Google Scholar

44. Vincent J. Miller, “Saving Subsidiarity,” America, 30 July 2012, 19.