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Church Social Doctrines (CSD) |
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The Church’s Social Teaching refers to the developing body of Catholic thought about political, economic, ethical, and cultural questions as these relate to the common good. The Church has no political or economic theories per se, but the Church may judge social theory and practice from the standpoint of faith and morals, especially in light of the virtue of justice. During the twentieth century, Catholic social doctrine has developed rapidly in response to questions posed by communism, socialism, totalitarianism, and democratic capitalism. The New Testament contains little direct commentary on social questions. The early Church expected Christ’s Second Coming within a short time and did not take much interest in public affairs. But as it became clear that no one really knows how far off the end time might be, the Church began a process that has distinguished her ever since: Inspired by a vision of Christ as the Lord of all of creation, including human societies, she moved from being a socially marginalized sect to functioning as a globally involved church. 5th century, the concept of two separate cities, the City of God and the city of man by St. Augustine. Approach was negative. The city of man, the state is an “unnatural institution”, unnecessary, but useful to curb personal vices and promote the common good. The city of man can never be the City of God, but it is needed to establish good order in the soul and in the state. To the Augustinian idea was added another concept by Pope Pelagius I (AD 494), the separation of the temporal powers and the spiritual powers. Approach was more positive. The Church’s role is in the spiritual realm and the state in the temporal realm (based on Jesus’ saying “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” [Mt 22:21]). Thus the beginnings of a kind of separation of Church and State. A major step in developing this insight occurred in the thirteenth century with the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas lived in a period of generally greater harmony. His approach was positive. The state was a natural institution, together with the family, for the development of the human person. The state orders and fosters smaller groupings, without usurping their functions, in the name of the common good. The state is a natural expression of human nature. Thus, Catholicism’s relatively communitarian bent, as compared with Protestantism’s individualism. What kind of state is best for fallen human beings? For Thomas Monarchy, the rule by a wise and virtuous king, was the best form of government. But monarchy might degenerate into tyranny. And so there should be a class of prominent men who can both advise and rein in the king. As many subsequent theorists have observed, these medieval notions lie at the root of modern political concepts such as democracy, checks and balances among branches of the state, freedom of conscience, and limited government. With the appearance of modern democracy, the Church found herself in a difficult situation. Modern democracy was virulently and violently anti-Catholic. During the nineteenth century, this led to deep divisions and battles in France, in Germany and elsewhere. Bitter partisan feelings had arisen on both sides during the struggles of the century. Under Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) a new era in Catholic social teaching began. Pope Leo promoted a return to the work of Thomas Aquinas and an opening to democratic thought. Leo urged French Catholics to rally for the Republic. As a result of Leo’s initiative, in the twentieth century Catholics and democrats have come to understand that there is no necessary conflict between Catholicism and modern democracy. Leo also was conscious that socialism, materialism, and a host of other modern problems needed urgent attention. His 1891 encyclical On the Social Question, Rerum Novarum, was the first of the great modern social encyclicals. In it, Leo argued that socialism, far from being the answer to the social situation of working men and women would, if implemented, claim workers as its first victims – a prophetic observation whose truth was to become evident in a matter of decades in communist nations. Leo responded to the modern problems of industrialization, urbanization, and the plight of the worker with an updated and highly articulated restatement of the old Catholic vision of a society of different ranks and functions. Unions and just (or “family”) wages seemed partial means to balancing the needs of labor and capital. These and other suggestions were aimed at preventing overcentralization and providing diverse opportunities and responsibilities for all. Modern conditions, in Leo’s view, did not negate, but rather offered fresh opportunities for, the wisdom that had been accumulated in the tradition of Catholic social teaching. Leo’s heritage was developed further by Pius XI in the encyclical On the Fortieth Year, Quadragesimo Anno. Published in 1931, this document reflects a keen awareness of the precarious condition of the democracies in the interwar years, and of the totalitarian threats presented by German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Russian communism. Pius XI first expressed a crucial concept that had begun appearing in Catholic social thinking just prior to the encyclical: subsidiarity. Briefly, subsidiarity reminds us that God has given freedom and responsibility to human persons and that it is a disorder and a grave evil for the state to usurp the responsibility of individuals, families, private associations, and other so-called intermediate institutions. World War II and the rebuilding that followed it halted further developments in social teaching for some years. But in the 1960s, the Church under Pope John XXIII began a renewal, updating (aggiornamento), and return to sources (ressourcement) that looked optimistically toward the human future. In the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), such as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, the Church embraced with new enthusiasm her role as a guide for the world. And in the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, the Council stated that religious liberty was a basic human right. In these documents and in some subsequent encyclicals such as Paul VI’s On the Progress of Peoples, Populorum Progressio, the Church began to show a more activist confidence in the powers of government for social welfare within nations, and in international justice and development. Some Marxist elements seemed to attach themselves to this analysis, such as dependency theory, which linked the poverty and dependency of Third World economies with exploitation by the First World. This attitude soon gave rise, particularly in Latin America, to a complex movement known as liberation theology. Accepting Marxist notions of class struggle, dependency theory, and capitalist oppression, many liberation theologians seemed to view Soviet-sponsored revolutions during the Cold War as a kind of religious crusade. At the 1968 meeting of the Latin American Bishops’ Conference (CELAM) in Medellín, Colombia, a new term, the “preferential option for the poor,” appeared. In some ways, this idea was merely a restatement of the old Christian principle that the weakest demand our attention. In other ways, however, it led to an opposition of a church of the poor (iglesia popular) to the traditional church. With the 1978 election of the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, this and many other currents in the Church received some new orientations. Karol Wojtyla had faced both Nazism and communism in his native Poland and was no friend of either. He had also been a workingman, a writer, and a professor of modern philosophy prior to becoming Pope, and brought a rich mix of practical human experience and modern learning to modern social questions. Recent Developments • John Paul II has given human work a special, if not entirely new, emphasis as one of the ways by which people participate in creation and reflect the image and likeness of divine intellect, will, and creativity. As a practitioner of the modern philosophical school known as phenomenology, he presented a rich description of the specifically human character of work in his 1981 encyclical On Human Work, Laborem Exercens. Traditionally, work had mostly been regarded as a curse after the Fall. In John Paul, work both repairs the consequences of the Fall and reflects our participation in God’s creation, a high and noble calling. Under his leadership, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an Instruction on Certain Aspects of Liberation Theology (1984) and an Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, Libertatis Conscientia (1986). These two documents sought to sift what was good in the liberation movement from what not only was false but had been proclaimed as such since Leo XIII’s inauguration of modern Catholic social teaching. The Church could not help but be in favor of authentic liberation, but in Latin America the idea of liberation seemed to have taken a Marxist turn that conflicted with several Catholic principles concerning property, the human person, and society. John Paul II also wrote several encyclicals during and after the decline and fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union that staked out some new principles or at least arrived at some new emphases. In the 1987 encyclical On Social Concerns, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, for example, he began to move the Church toward a greater acceptance of markets and capitalism than had been evident earlier. In part, this stemmed from empirical evidence of the greater prosperity and freedom of democratic market systems, in part from a theoretical development in Catholic social thought that placed freedom, including economic enterprise, high on the list of human attributes. John Paul did not entirely leave behind, however, the need for social solidarity. In fact, in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis he offers a definition of what he calls the virtue of solidarity: “This then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all” (38). Within solidarity, no one is to be merely passive or active; the weaker are to take initiative and the stronger are not to insist on every advantage. The whole is to be informed and guided by Christian charity. With Centesimus Annus (1991), his encyclical upon the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, John Paul went still further in spelling out how subsidiarity and solidarity have become the two central principles for modern Catholic social thought. The Pope puts the crucial point in the form of a question: “Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and is this the model that ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World?” (42). He responds by saying that the answer is complex. Certainly, we can say “yes” insofar as economic freedom and initiative are part of God’s gift to man. But these gifts can only be properly exercised, says the Pope, if certain conditions are met: “If by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework that places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and that sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.” Without spelling out the details – which must be left to the responsible peoples and governments in individual countries – John Paul recapitulates the long Catholic tradition that government must respect initiative and liberty, as well as secure justice through properly ordered and responsible institutions. The latest phase of Catholic social teaching focuses on the moral bases of democracy. Given that democratic forms and market economics at the end of the twentieth century have emerged victorious from the struggle with communism, the crises within democracies – family breakdown, illegitimacy, consumerism, drugs, moral relativism, environmental problems – present some difficult challenges. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on moral principles The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, argues that it is only by recovering the Christian view of human freedom as the power to do what is morally right, that free institutions such as democracy and market economics can be saved from their own worst excesses. See: Augustinianism; Authority; Church and State; Common Good; Family; Liberation Theology; Natural Law; Phenomenology; Politics; Preferential Option for the Poor; Religious Liberty; Socialization; Social Justice; Subsidiarity; Thomas Aquinas, Thought of; Work.
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