0 OPINION 0_. A Page 4 Friday, September 8, 1981 The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan On the pope's encyclical Vol. XCII, No. 8 420 Moynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Edtorials represent a majority opinion of the Doily's Editorial Board Resposibe budget cutin T HIRTY-FIVE billion dolldrs was not enough. The Reagan admini- stration has decided that it's time to strip a few more billion from the federal budget-and what better place to cut than the coffers of those greedy social programs. Wednesday, President Reagan said he has considered making cuts in such federal benefit programs as Social Security, food stamps, and gover- nment pensions. One of the most popular targets in the White House seems to be the Social Security program. The president has proposed postponing a three-month cost-of- living increase in the program. This' would provide a net savings of about $2.8 billion, the administration has maintained. ' Apparently it hasn't occurred to the administration or the Republicans in Congress that there may be a little more waste in the $188.8-billion defense department budget besides the paltry $2 billion that the administration has proposed cutting., If the administration is so bent on eliminating additional federal waste, it should look to the defense department. President Reagan has instead, however, chosen a much different route for cutting the budget. He cuts from areas-specifically social programs-that he doesn't like. It's certainly no secret that the president doesn't approve of the present Social Security system and would like to see it, drastically altered. He uses the excuse of eliminating the federal deficit by* cutting from this important program. By offering insignificant cuts in the military, he has simply thrown a bone to the liberals who have assailed the over-inflated defense budget- A much more responsible move by the president would be to double or triple the defense department cut. While this would hardly dent the enor- mous military budget, it could ease the pain of cutting some needed, and already weakened, social programs. If President Reagan is as intent on -paring waste from the federal budget as he says, he should not only look at social '.programs. He should take a realistic and responsible look at eliminating waste in the military budget. By John Schall Pope John Paul II issued his third encyclical on Tuesday, and although the document represen- ts a significant statement by the Catholic Church on several areas of human activity, the press has already reduced the encyclical to little more than an essay on labor unions. But this encyclical is a great deal more than that. An en- cyclical, or circular letter to Roman Catholic bishops, represents the official position of the Catholic Church on a given matter. And this particular en- cyclical, entitled "Of Human Work," is extremely important precisely because it deals with so many aspects of human activity besides labor unions. IN FACT, the Sheer ambition of the pontificate of John Paul II is rapidly heightening the intellec- tual dislogue from the Vatican to levels reminiscent of the years of the Second Vatican Council. John Paul II has achieved a perhaps unprecedented com- bination: an active schedule which had taken him to dozens of countries before the attempt on his life, and a kerygmatic agenda that has produced three papal encyclicals in as many years. Thursday's encyclical is by far the most carefully developed of the pope's statements yet. Whereas John Paul's first two encyclicals, "The Redeemer of, Man" and "Riches of Mercy," seem by virtue of their subject matter somewhat more asser- tions than carefully detailed arguments, "Of Human Work" operates within a sophisticated tradition of theoretical develop- ment. AN ASSASSINATION attempt delayed the pope's intentions to deliver "Of Human Work" ("Laborem Exercens" is its Latin title) on May 15, the 90th anniversary of- Pope Leo XIi's encyclical "Rerum Novarum" ("Of New Things"). John Paul's encyclical is in every way the successor to "Rerum Novarum" and to Pope Pius XI's '1931 social encyclical "Quadragesimo Anno" ("In the Fourtieth Year"). In this tradition, "Of Human Work" constitutes nothing so much as a treatise on human "In this consists its social power: the power to build a community," John Paul says. To work is to be human, that is, to be social. This explains the pope's conden- nation of "rigid" capitalism. Communism is likewise rejected because by presuming initial common ownership it leaves.the individual nothing left to give to the community-to act Christlike. The media will undoubtedly-: continue to focus its attention on the comments about women and the labor unions. THIS IS unfortunate since it detracts from the major conten- tion of work as the basic thread in the communal fabric. But it is also unfortunate because the pope's comments about women are barely germane and in any case are not exceedingly useful other than to underscore the primary importance of the family. Focusing attention on the operation of unions will give rise to far more questions that it at- tempts to answer. Why does the pope specifically insist ' on separation of unions from political parties? Is there an im- plication that labor unions ought to be literally reactionary in- stitutions waiting in the wings as defenders of social justice? Regardless of the questions it raises, "Of Human Work" must be looked upon as consistent with the best traditions of Catholicism, especially with the communism of early church, the. social gospel of St. Francis, and Christian socialism of the nineteenth century. John Paul defines the work in man's mission of the world's recreation; 'Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus worc bears a particular mark ofman and humanity, the mark of a per- son operating within a con- munity of persons. And this mark decides its interior charac- teristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature." Schall is an LSA senior majoring in political science. AR Photo Pope John Paul II Integration threatened T HE SENATE TOOK a big step on Wednesday toward placing severe restrictions on busing school children for the. purpose of achieving racially integrated schools. While some of the specific criticisms of busing that prompted the vote are valid, the vote reflects a very distressing attitude among the nation's lawmakers. The Senate ended a filibuster on amendments that would bar courts from ordering the busing of students more than 15 minutes or five miles from their homes. Although the amendments on which the Senate voted' this week will assuredly face long fights before they become law, the margin (61-37) by which the filibuster was ended in- dicates that they have very strong support in the halls of Congress. What is so disappointing about the new mood in Congress is not so much that the old program for racial- in- tegration might be abandoned, but that no new alternatives have been proposed. It would be an entirely dif- ferent situation if the southern conser- vatives in Congress tossed this program out while offering a brilliant, more workable new plan waiting in the wings, but they simply don't. In fact, what appears to be the case; is that the conservatives in Congress are quite content to let the racial segregation; in this nation's schools continue.- Their actions make them appear to be oblivious both to the problems racial, segregation has caused in the nation and to the blatant injustice that accompanies "separate but unequal" schools. Perhaps what they don't realize is that, much as they would like to ignore the problem, it will not go away. As history has shown, time and continued indifference toward the plight of racial minorities in America can only make the problem grow worse. America cannot tolerate continued segregation in its schools. Faulted as the old plan may have been, it was at least an attempt to solve a problem. The conservatives seem to be well on the way toward gutting one program for integration. They owe it to the nation to come up with another. nature. It is fundamentally a political treatise. Lest this should confuse some members of the political science faculty who have grown accustomed to forsaking "normative" to "empirical" concerns, let me say more ac- curately this encyclical is a treatise on political theory. John Paul is as astute in definition as a John Locke or a' Karl Marx and argues with the care of a Thomas Hobbes. MEDIA REPORTS have reduced the encyclical merely to a defense of labor unions in an in- dustrialized world. Of course, John Paul does indeed call unions "indispensable" even in a moral sense'; and, of course, the en- cyclicaldoes have direct bearing on the events'in Poland of the last year., To reduce the document to this, however, is to ignore the larger theoretical context and general assumptions which comprise the true beauty "Of Human Work." John Paul rejects the Marxian emphasis on the common owner- ship of property and, importan- tly, this extends even to the modes of production. The Church recognizes the right to property in a somewhat Lockean sense: property is viewed as almost an extension of life itself. But the church's viewpoint does not end here. MORAL BEHAVIOR sub- jugates the right to property to the right of common usage. Moral Christian behavior is the result of giving of self. In John Paul's view, then, property as an extension of self canrbe the object of Christian action. This-is where labor comes into the argument. Labor in the Christian understanding is social. ti Weasel po c.Es f 60 AOuEr By Robert Lence A~ BUSIt N~S$ MAsog/ W 0S~ z DoNf c RE t s oNass si Wat paPEiz)N6 YWP, 3ICOM WMA MONEY S STILL- TAc.V-y 1 s a ' *2q i. AU . ,i ,i And now for SACRAMENTO, CALIF.-OPEC. Three Mile Island. Fast Breeders. The Alaska Pipeline. These are the watchwords of anxiety that havedominated the national debate on how to beat the ever-threatening energy crisis. Yet while most of the country worries, a group of California businessmen is plunging ahead with a little-noticed but imaginptive plan for installing solar water-heating systems in the often foggy valleys of San Francisco. The solar collectors work. The water is hot. And they're not perched atop the homes of rich movie stars. They produce hot water for city dwellers of all sorts. MOST SURPRISING, the new systems rely on no public subsidies and public utility rate hikes, but instead draw on ideas embraced by politicians as disparate as Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown-an anomaly which could turn it into a prototype for one of the nation's largest industries by the year 2000. Key to the system is a bill before the California state legislature authorizing an -L±tt'ri .iier nlA .J L Q-C1-. -A Lwi..Y By Jam solar notes or bills th market rates. The proceeds from finances the entire co stalling solar water-h our group or any of th in the Bay Area. TI $15,000 and $40,000 a points below the mark But Barnes and Dod beginning when they d create a mechanism funding. Modeled a Federal National Mo Government Nationale the statewide Solar an Mortgage Corp.-orS up loans made for savings and loan ass ding institutions.. AND IT WOULD get the loans by sellingi ticipation certificates: 'Sunny Mac, es Ridgeway sa r energy conservation loans. es RigewayTHE WHOLE scheme relies on private capital. It does not require any taxpayer o , at are pegged.to money ratepayer subsidies. The stock of Sunny Mac would be owned by private California finan- sale of these securities cial institutions who chose to become mem- st of purchasing and in- bers. heating systems sold by An initial start of $500,000 would be e other solar companies provided from the state treasury at market 'he loans run between rates and would be repaid in two years. nd are pegged at two Sunny Mac represents- the-latest and most et rate." progressive twist in the yet young solar in ison saw that as only the dustry, which, while currently sluggish, drafted the legislation to seems certain to flourish in the coming for much wider scale decades. long the lines of the THE LARGE corporations, some of them rtgage Association and oil companies, which had toyed at the edges of Mortgage Association, the industry, have in recent months left the ad Energy Conservation solar collector side of the business, concen- Sunny Mac-would buy trating their interest on research aid solar installations by development in the photovoltaic area. ociations and other len- Further, instead of building any mass utility-based solar systems, the utilities are t the money to purchase paying apartment building owners a per-unit . its own bonds or par- rebate over a 36-month period if they install in the capital markets. solar water heaters. A similar rebate was of-m ~U ~ ~ I~ ~ III ~ ~2 ~ I' ~