Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

Volume 77, 2003

Philosophy and Intercultural Understanding

“Political, Not Metaphysical”
Reading the Bishops’ Letter as a Form of Public Reason

Is it permissible for a citizen or political official to exercise coercive political power on the basis of a political justification associated with a religiously motivated conception of justice? In this paper I accept John Rawls’s general approach to this question, but attempt to show how the Rawlsian approach is more inclusive of religious reasoning than many have supposed. My paper focuses specifically on the 1986 Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter on the U.S. economy. The bishops’ letter is certainly part of what Rawls calls a “comprehensive doctrine.” But, as I argue in the paper, the letter is also consistent with political liberalism’s core idea of reasonableness, supports a reasonable political conception of justice and satisfies the Rawlsian “proviso” concerning the public-political use of religious argument. From the standpoint of political liberalism, the bishops’ letter may be interpreted as a form of public reason.