Do social encyclicals advance the Church’s mission?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | May 16, 2025

Although many popes have commented on social, political and economic issues of various kinds throughout history, it is only since Pope Leo XIII that the “encyclical” format has been used to offer a kind of universal Christian guidance on the organization and operation of the socio-political-economic order. This has been an interesting and often instructive development, because the broad principles of Catholic social thought are extraordinarily valuable. But social encyclicals do not primarily address absolute moral issues; typically they offer reflections, in accordance with fundamental Christian and natural law principles, on the best way to organize the political and socio-economic order under ordinary circumstances.

In other words, social encyclicals are really about the balance of goods that must be kept in mind in our organization of social, political and economic life in the world. But in terms of stating clearly and practically what needs to be done and how it is best and most effectively to be done, social encyclicals obviously leave much to be desired. As soon as Church leaders leave broad principles behind—including especially the identification of moral evils to be avoided—they stray from their true area of expertise into the realm of formulating governmental systems and rules for managing earthly affairs.

It should go without saying that many priests are bad parish managers; many bishops are bad diocesan managers; and many popes are bad managers of the whole Church. Therefore the value of social encyclicals does not lie in prescribing the best systems, mechanisms and procedures for accomplishing social, political and economic goals. Rather, their value lies in their emphasis on the key principles of the common good, such as respect for the human person, protection of marriage and the family, the right to own property, the dignity of labor, the dual principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, and the universal destination of goods.

It seems to me that we sometimes forget that the Church has no expertise to offer concerning the best and most efficient measures for promoting and balancing these essential goods through the particular mechanisms of human government. (Imagine, for example, what would happen to political efficiency if the world’s governments restructured themselves in accordance with the Church’s current operational model of synodality!)

Pitfalls

It is one thing to emphasize both solidarity and subsidiarity, but it is quite another, in any particular society, to prescribe the particular mechanisms and levels of governmental responsibility which are best-suited to securing a wholesome society. These vary greatly with what we might call the conditions on the ground; they require not only an understanding of the goods to be sought and the evils to be avoided, but a clear and prudent grasp by those with political authority (including voters) of what laws and institutions will be most effective in producing that most elusive of conditions, the common good.

Moreover, while proper values can generally be clarified by the Church, crafting the secular institutional structures, programs and laws to secure the common good will always be not only exceedingly difficult but far beyond the Church’s proper scope. Creating the perfect social order is quite simply impossible; what ought to be enacted and enforced to improve things in practice is neither easy to discern, nor always capable of being implemented—or perhaps impossible to implement without great and destructive force.

Politics, unlike the essence of personal moral virtue, always remains the art of the possible. Even in the best of situations, social principles always lose something in their translation into civil policies. And no matter how good the intentions, a perfect balance of social goods cannot be achieved in this world. Moreover, the farther away a particular culture is from embracing both Christian moral principles and a life of grace—without which social health and harmony cannot really progress beyond certain very basic points—the more dramatic will be the deviation from one social principle in the alleged service of another. For example, human liberty is very easily used as a justification for evil, which is to confuse genuine liberty with slavery to sin. Or solidarity may be imposed at the expense of subsidiarity. Moreover, to the degree in which solidarity is “imposed”, it cannot really be solidarity at all.

For all of these reasons, the Church walks a very fine line when she attempts to speak on social issues. The safety of her argument is secured primarily by emphasizing neglected virtues (or condemning common vices) and, above all, by illuminating the true nature of the human person. Insofar as popes (and bishops) stray very far from these basic moral and spiritual insights, they invite perfectly legitimate disagreements which, sadly, make it more difficult to demand adherence to the clearly-stated substance of Catholic faith and morals.

Indeed, the more Church leaders speak or write or lobby in favor of particular civic solutions to social ills, which may or may not be either wise or prudent, the less they are seen to speak authoritatively about anything at all. As a general rule, it is far better for Church leaders to demand the obedience of Catholics to the Church’s principles of faith and morals—and to draw clear lines between Catholics who accept them and “Catholics” who do not—than to spend much energy lobbying (or commenting upon) all the measures that are being proposed in the various branches of human government.

Lobbyist or teacher?

Pope St. John XXIII issued a famous encyclical entitled Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher), which speaks about “Christianity and Social Progress”. There is, of course, a very close connection historically between the two, a connection which has been gradually torn apart, especially over the past several hundred years. But I believe the main problem Catholics face today is a relatively simple one. Church leaders too often seek to be “players” in the world rather than to run a tight Catholic ship—a well-ordered barque of Peter. Obviously, the Church should always teach her social principles clearly and forcefully, but never at the expense of her proclamation of the Gospel. It is not her role to specify particular positive laws and solutions or to continually lobby for this legislation or that, or this executive order or that.

One wonders, for example, how much more good the Church could do for the poor if she dismantled the structures she uses to track and lobby for or against potential laws and policies, if she made a virtue of necessity by continuing to divest herself of federal and state contracts, and if she instead simply fostered the habit of Catholics assisting those in need—not primarily through politics but by acting directly as followers of Christ. When the Church pursues her social aims primarily through government, there is something lacking, and that something is the key to success. For the strength of the Church in influencing the larger social order cannot depend on effective lobbying if there is no significant and consistent voting bloc behind the lobbying. Conversion, we might argue, is 9 points of the law. When the Church relies heavily on government, she typically substitutes political consensus for sacrificial mission.

The Church’s primary role is not to extend particular socio-political arrangements but to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She must leave it not to her lobbies but to her members to extend their vibrant Faith into public life as effectively as they can. The Christian social consensus has long since disappeared, and the only solution to that problem is conversion and the salvation of souls. Moreover, a Church whose membership is radically divided on moral issues is in no position to have a positive influence on public policy. But a Church whose members reflect a strong and stable grasp of basic Catholic faith and morals will attract more converts and, in time, be far more likely to grow not only into an effective voting block but, more importantly, into a vibrant society both here and hereafter.

What this means is that creating a solid Catholic voting block is never a primary goal at all. Socio-political success depends on what is in fact primary—not on political lobbying but on the pre-existence of large numbers of Catholics who share a deep fidelity to Christ. And so they simply live (and vote) differently.

Conclusion

There is at least one more point here that is very much worth making. Ultimately it is the Catholic faith in the Person of Jesus Christ which engenders the life-giving love that underlies anything the Church might want to say and do politically. Perhaps the most powerful “social” encyclicals written in the past century were two that were never considered part of that genre, namely Pius XI’s Casti connubii (On Christian Marriage) in 1930 and Paul VI’s Humanae vitae (On the Regulation of Birth) in 1968. These did not drift all over the “contemporary values” map; they were strongly counter-cultural for the simple reason that the popes in question chose to emphasize the priorities of God, and not of man. But apparently it has not been a high priority for the Church to implement either one of them among those who claim the Catholic name.

The Church needs to relearn the axiom that only Christ saves. Even the best secular arguments will avail us nothing in the absence of a living Faith. If the Church cannot speak as Christ spoke, she at least ought to make observers wonder whether she is simply biding her time. As the old saw has it, it is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Therefore, when the Church speaks, let her speak as one with genuine authority—and not like a mere custodian of an earthly law (Mt 7:29).