"America's Greatest Social Philosopher"
On
his death in 1985, Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. was eulogized as “the
second founder” of his religious order, the Society of Mary. Father Andrew F. Morlion, O.P., Ph.D.,
Belgian philosopher and founder and first president of the International University
of Social Studies in Rome, referred to Father Ferree as “America’s greatest
social philosopher.” But who was he?
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| Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. |
Born
in Dayton, Ohio in 1905, Father Ferree was ordained a priest in the Society of
Mary (“the Marianists”) in 1937.
Following studies at the University of Dayton and University of Fribourg
in Switzerland, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy at
Catholic University of America.
A number of moral
philosophers consider Father Ferree’s book, The
Act of Social Justice (1943), derived from his 1942 doctoral dissertation,
a classic in the field of social ethics.
He taught philosophy at Dayton University but left teaching, much to his
regret, to become an administrator.
Father Ferree’s
appointment as Assistant World General for the Offices of Education and
Apostolic Action of the Society of Mary (1956-66) took him to over thirty
countries. He served as Rector of
Catholic University of Puerto Rico (1953-56) and President of Chaminade College
in Hawaii (1966-68).
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| Pope John XXIII |
From 1968 to his official
retirement in 1973, during the turbulent years of student activism, he served
as Provincial Superior of the Cincinnati Province of the Marianists and
Chairman of the Board of the University of Dayton. He then founded and directed the Second Career
Project, which allowed him to spend his leisure years lecturing and adding to
his many writings, including drafting the outline of a treatise that links
modern management theory to social ethics.
Pope John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, 1881-1963, elected 1958) appointed Father Ferree one of the consultants of the
Pontifical Commission on the Apostolate of the Laity in Preparation for Vatican
II. He was also a member and Chaplain
General of Pax Romana, a federation
of Catholic intellectual and student groups and movements.
In 1982, through his
longtime admirer William “Bill” Schirra, Father Ferree found in the writings of
Louis O. Kelso the answer to his lifelong search for an economic theory and
methodology that would complement Catholic teachings as found in the social
doctrine of Pius XI. As a result, in
1984 he became a co-founder of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social
Justice. CESJ was intended to promote this
new approach to global economic development and provide a “preferential option
for the poor” through the application of modern techniques of corporate finance
consistent with advanced theories of economic and social justice.
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| Louis O. Kelso |
In this new mission,
Father Ferree contributed new writings and lobbied in Catholic circles for
CESJ’s “Just Third Way,” a paradigm that challenges both so-called democratic
capitalism of the right and the socialistic wage and income redistribution
systems of the left. He also helped
strengthen support for CESJ’s successful initiative to establish the Presidential
Task Force on Project Economic Justice, to apply the Kelso development model
(“Make every worker an owner”) as an effective counter-strategy to Marxist
Leninism in Central America and the Caribbean.
With the fall of the
Soviet Union, the victory of capitalism seemed assured. Communist China’s adoption of limited free
market reforms seemed to herald the end of socialism. Project Economic Justice was shelved.
Father Ferree’s importance
as a social philosopher does not, however, rely on a proposal that applied his
ideas as part of an overall program. It
is, rather, in the ideas themselves, in his discernment of the breakthrough made
by Pope Pius XI (Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, 1857-1939; elected
1922) in moral philosophy. This was the realization that there is a type
of virtue, “social virtue,” by means of which people can gain direct access to
the common good.
