The
key Principles of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, Part I
By John Keenan, O.P.(Lay)
The
foundation of Catholic Church’s rich social doctrine is expressed in the Holy
Bible, in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, in the Church’s historical
and saintly texts, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Augustine, and in its more
“recent” A.D. 1537 papal encyclical entitled Sublimus
Dei on respecting the liberty and property of the American
Indians. The body of the Church’s modern
social doctrine starts with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum which
marked “the beginning of a new path.”
In the 19th Century, “events of an economic nature produced a
dramatic social, political, and culture impact.”
The
Industrial Revolution changed centuries-old social structures which raised
profoundly new questions about labor and capital. The Church responded with the first social
encyclical Rerum Novarum intervening
in the social affairs of the world in a new way. The Church prayed for and sought Wisdom
“capable of finding appropriate solutions to unfamiliar and unexplored
problems.” The purpose was to explore
the labor question in response to industrial laborers “who languished in
inhumane misery.” The Encyclical
considers these issues based on principles found on revelation and on natural
law and morality.
Diligently,
Pope Leo lists in his Encyclical the many errors that give rise to social ills.
The Pope excludes socialism as a remedy.
He affirms in modern terms, “the Catholic doctrine on work, the right to
own private property, the principle of collaboration instead of [the Marxist
model of] class struggle as the fundamental means for social change, the rights
of the weak, the dignity of the poor and the obligations of the rich, the
perfecting of justice through charity, on the right to form professional
associations.” The key theme of the
encyclical Rerum Novarum is—as every
good Dominican would love—the “just ordering of society.” Pope Leo XIII affirmed that modern social
problems could only be dealt with by cooperative action between all social
forces.
With
the grave economic upheaval of the Great Depression, Pope Pius XI published the
Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno
which commemorated the 40th Anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The Pope
expanded on Pope Leo XIII early work, and “reread the past in light of the
economic and social situation which the expansion of the influence of financial
groups, both nationally and internationally, was added to the effects of
industrialization.” It was written in
the post-World War I period where totalitarian regimes were imposed on Europe
while the propaganda of “class struggle [that found its intellectual (so to
speak) beginnings in Karl Marx] was becoming more bitter.”
Importantly,
Quadragesimo Anno “warns about the
failure to respect the freedom to form associations and stresses the principles
of solidarity and cooperation in order to overcome social contradictions. The relationship between capital and labor
must be characterized by cooperation.”
The
Encyclical also confirmed that wages and/or salaries should be proportionate to
the worker and to the worker’s family.
Another critical but overarching principle of the Encyclical is the idea
that the State or government, in its relationship with the private sector and
private action, should apply the principle of “subsidiarity,” which is the
concept that is “fixed and unchangeable” that the government should not take
from persons “what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and
give it to the” government or to the community; “so also it is an injustice and
at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a
greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can
do.” Pope Pius XI rejected the principle
of “unlimited competition between economic forces,” confirmed the value of
private property and recalled its social function. The Pope promoted a concept of free
association, an urgent application of moral principles to govern human
relationships, “with the intent of overcoming the conflict between classes and
arriving at a new social order based on justice and charity.”
At
the same time, two European totalitarian regimes came to power in Italy and in
Germany. Pope Pius XI protested against
the abuses of power and of people by these fascist socialist regimes in his
Encyclicals Non Abbiamo Bisogno
relating to Italy and Mit Brennender Sorge
relating to Germany. In 1938, with the
spreading of anti-Jewish sentiment and repression, Pope Pius XI affirmed,
“Spiritually we are all Semites.”
In
his 1937 encyclical, Divini Redemptoris,
Pius XI tackled the issue of the Church’s social doctrine and atheistic
communism, describing communism as “intrinsically perverse.” As he noted, in reflection on Scriptural,
saintly, and prior papal writings, the best way for correcting the perversity
and evils of communism “could be found in the renewal of Christian life, the
practice of evangelical charity, the fulfillment of the duties at both the
interpersonal and social levels in relation to the common good, and the
institutionalization of professional and interprofessional groups.”
During
the reign of Pope Pius XII in World War II, the Pope used radio messages and
other media, to teach and reflect on a new social order guided by “morality and
law, focusing on justice and peace[.]” During that period of devastating war
that ravished the world, “for millions of believers and nonbelievers, the
social teaching of Pope Pius XII represented the voice of universal
conscience.”
“One
of the characteristics of Pope Pius XII’s interventions is the importance he
gave to the relationship between morality and law.” The Pope asserted that the natural law is at
the soul of any system both at the national and international levels. Pope Pius XII’s teachings on social doctrine
are considered as an immediate precursor of the Second Vatican Council.
Twenty
years later, Blessed John Paul XXIII read the “signs of the times.” He noted that the social question was
becoming universal and involved all countries; together with the problems of
the Industrial Revolution, there were problems with agriculture, in developing
countries, and the need for “global economic cooperation.” The Pope connected economic growth to not
only satisfying humankind’s needs but to promote its dignity. In his encyclical Pacem in
Terris, Pope John XXIII addressed it to “all men of good will.” He called for all humanity to “tackle and
solve problems of an economic, social, political or cultural character which
are posed by the universal common good.”
The
Vatican Council II’s pastoral constitution Gaudium
et Spes recognizes the Church’s solidarity with the human community and
carefully examines the subjects of culture, of economic and social life, of
marriage and family, of political life, and of peace and the community of
people. It notes among all of creation,
that the human person “is
the only creature on earth which God willed for itself” and that all
structures in human life and development must focus on “the progress of the
human person.”
Another
Vatican II document of pinnacle import was the declaration entitled Dignitatis
Humanae where the right to religious freedom is proclaimed grounded on
the dignity of the human person and that such “must be sanctioned as [a] civil
right in the legal order of society.”
Pope
Paul VI noted that the term “development” is a new name for peace and noted in
his encyclical, Populorum Progressio
of the integral development of man and the development of solidarity with all
humanity. Development, as the Pope
asserts, is the “transition from less humane conditions to those which are more
humane.” This transition implies for
each person a form of culture, respect for the dignity of each person, and that
of the “highest good, the recognition of God Himself, the author and end of
these blessings.”
In
the year the above encyclical was published, 1967, Pope Paul VI created the
Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace.
The purpose thereof was to promote justice and peace in the world and to
advance the Church’s cause. In 1971,
Pope Paul VI raised the social doctrine of the Church as grounded on Pope Leo
XII to higher levels, in his apostolic letter entitled Octogesima
Adveniens. He touched on the
post industrial age and the inadequacy of ideologies in responding to modern
social problems. This is no subtle point.
Many of the political ideologies formulated in the 19th
Century came to fruit in the atheistic communism and national socialism of the
20th Century that resulted in the death of countless millions of
human beings in the raw form of devastating war, revolution, oppression,
tyranny, and abortion.
Another
hallmark of Pope Paul VI’s record is the encyclical Humanae
Vitae (1968) where he foresaw the world we live in today. He noted that the consequences of artificial
birth control will create a “wide and easy road” to deteriorating social
structures, the danger to young people, and the declining morality. He noted that men, “growing used to the
employment of anti-conceptive practices, may final[ly] lose respect” for
women. He posed the question, that
without regard to the moral law, “[w]ho will stop rulers from favoring, from
even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider if necessary, the
method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious?” Without
observing the divine law that imposes limits on persons as well as governments,
the social situation could “reach the point of placing at the mercy of the
intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector
of conjugal intimacy.”
Pope Paul VI noted that
people must live in accord with God’s law in governance over “his [or her] own
body and its functions; limits which no man [or woman], whether a private
individual or one invested with authority, may licitly pass.” In the world today, from the legal
commission of abortion, to the violence against women and children, and to the
communist Chinese government’s harshly imposed one-child-per-couple policy
(just to name a few) Pope Paul VI was prophetic. Indeed, after Humane Vitae was promulgated, many clerics and religious and
educational institutions within the Church rebelled against its teachings and
principles—a rebellion sustained in our society today.
John
Paul II’s encyclical entitled Laborem
Exercens was devoted to work, “the fundamental good of the human
person, the primary element of economic activity and the key to the entire
social question.” Pope Paul II noted
that human work must be understood noted not only for his objective and
material sense, but as an expression of the person and its fulfillment. The
Pope also noted the “growing awareness of every individual as a human being
without any distinction of race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or
social class[;]” but the modern irony is that this growing awareness cannot be
reconciled “with the widespread attacks on human life and the refusal to accept
those who are weak, needy, elderly, or just conceived? These attacks go directly against respect for
life[.]”
In
his next encyclical, Sollicitudo
Rei Socialis, Pope John Paul II noted that true development is more
than the multiplication of, or the possession of, goods and services, “but must
contribute to the fullness of the ‘being’ of man. In this way the moral nature of real
development is meant to be shown clearly.”
In
the next article, the remaining Encyclicals on the Church’s social doctrine
will be discussed and summarized including John Paul II’s Centesimus
Annus, and Benedict’s XVI’s Caritas
et Veritas. The next article
will also review the key principles of this social doctrine and how it is
applicable to the modern world.
John
Keenan, O.P.(Lay)
john@keenan.org
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