The Basic Ideas of the Catholic Social Tradition
One hundred and ten years ago, Pope Leo XIII released his most influential encyclical, Rerum novarum, a discussion of the principles that underlie a just and humane economy and society. Though the Catholic Church has been concerned about social issues from apostolic times, Leo's encyclical is generally taken to be the modern starting point from which Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has developed.
Some people are fond of saying that CST is the Church's best kept secret, but this can hardly be true. The contemporary emphasis given to social justice in education and by officials in the Church at many levels is unprecedented. What may be true, though, is that CST is not well understood and that many people grasp it only in bits and pieces.
That this is so should not be surprising. CST is nothing less than the Catholic understanding of what a human society should be and of the relationship of individual persons to that society. No single encyclical or Church document attempts to explain CST comprehensively. Instead, papal encyclicals and other official statements over the last century or so have tried to address specific challenges to the Catholic vision of society and the person, challenges like socialism, statism or capitalism. Popes and bishops have identified key principles and ideas and invited Catholics in all walks of life to reflect on how these principles might be applied in concrete situations. The result is a rich, complex, and developing vision of human life in society and the requirements of justice.
In the vision of the Second Vatican Council, it is the special task of the laity to bring the Gospel to the secular world. The clergy are responsible for governing the Church itself, but the laity are responsible for applying Christian moral principles to the concrete problems of the neighborhood, the workplace, the nation, and the global community. What the laity really require from bishops and other teachers is clarity about the en during insights of Christian faith, not detailed plans of action. In other words, the laity need principles, not prescriptions. If the principles are clear, the laity can, and will, devise a variety of applications to real-world problems.
The attempt to master the whole of CST, though, is an intimidating task. We can cut it down to size by focusing on six foundational ideas.
1. The foundation of the entire social tradition is the reality of God's merciful love. The love that God has for us–who are utterly undeserving of that love–is the model of the love that we ought to have for one another. This contrasts starkly with the wisdom of the world which tells us that we are all in competition with one another and that to receive our friendship and help people must first be deserving of it.
The reality of God's love also reminds us that everything we possess–our property, our talents, our skills, our resources–is a gift from God. These gifts are conditional and the condition attached to them is that they be used for God's purposes. One of these purposes is that we ourselves be brought to a share in his life through the use of these gifts. This ordinarily means that our use of the gifts may be (and should be) personally rewarding, both spiritually and materially, but it also means more. While we have the right, and indeed the duty, to care for ourselves and our families, we have a more fundamental duty to discover what God wishes us to do with what we have been given. In other words, each person must discern his vocation and pursue it courageously and whole-heartedly.
2. The second key idea concerns the nature of the human person. Pope John Paul II has said in Centesimus annus that "the guiding principle of . . . all of the Church's social doctrine is a correct view of the human person." This correct view is rooted in the first chapter of Genesis, which insists that human persons alone are made in the "image and likeness" of the Creator. The Second Vatican Council took up this theme when it insisted that human beings are the only creatures that God made for their own sake, and not to serve some further purpose in the created order. Three things follow from this.
The first is that every human person, no matter what his age or condition, possesses an irreducible value, or worth, or dignity that absolutely must be respected. This dignity can never be deliberately stripped away to serve another purpose, no matter how important.
The second implication is that human persons most properly image the Creator in possessing the God-like capacities to reason and to choose freely. All human activities and structures must respect the ability of the individual to think (and not, for example, merely manipulate people through their emotions) and to exercise his freedom (and not dominate people by a misuse of power).
The third implication is that human persons, in their very nature, also reflect the reality of God as a community, as a Trinity. In other words, just as God exists in the intimate communion of Father, Son, and Spirit, so too are human persons social at the core. Men and women form communities and societies of all sorts, not merely because it is efficient to do so (though this may also be true) but because life in community is one of the deepest expressions of their likeness to the Creator.
Each of these implications profoundly shapes the Catholic vision of human life and human communities.
3. The third basic idea has to do with Justice and Property. Justice is the broader concept. The possession and use of property must always be judged in the light of the principles of justice, but justice concerns more than property. Justice at its most fundamental concerns what each person, as an image and likeness of the Creator, deserves to have. It characterizes our relationships with others when we live with them in peace and harmony and when we have done what we can and should do to ensure that they have everything they need and deserve, as human persons. It characterizes each of us as persons–we possess it as a virtue–when we are deeply and firmly committed to give others what they deserve.
The Catholic moral tradition has long distinguished three dimensions of justice. What is commonly called commutative, or exchange, justice concerns the relationships of individuals or groups to one another. A sale, for example, is just if each party receives something of roughly equal value from the exchange. Or, someone who has damaged another's property has a duty of commutative justice to repair that damage.
A second dimension is distributive justice, which concerns fairly parceling out benefits and responsibilities with respect to common possessions. This requires that persons who are alike be treated in the same way, but permits (or even requires) that persons who are different in relevant ways be treated differently.
For example, in distributing dessert after dinner, parents in a family ordinarily have a duty to give each child an equal share, since there are usually no relevant differences between the children. On the other hand, the same parents rightly give a dose of medicine only to the children who are ill. On the level of the society, it may be quite fair for the government to extend greater benefits to persons who are disabled and to require higher taxes from persons with greater wealth.
The third dimension of justice is what the tradition has often called general justice. This refers to the general obligations that individual members of a community have to the common good of that community. Thus, for example, children have a duty in justice to help with household chores, adults have a duty to pay taxes, and everyone has a duty in his own way to contribute to the common good of each community to which he belongs.
In his famous 1931 encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, Pope Pius XI referred to social justice and so introduced the term to Catholic discussions. The term is ambiguous and we may understand it in two ways. First, it is sometimes used substantively to refer to a condition of a society. We will have achieved social justice, for instance, when burdens and benefits are fairly distributed and the dignity of each individual is properly respected. On the other hand, social justice can be considered a virtue. In this case, it generally means a commitment on the part of the individual to work in every way possible to support the common good. More recently, following Pope john Paul II, we have come to call this solidarity.
What role does property play in all this? Well, one of the things that each person deserves to have, and indeed requires for his fulfillment, is property. CST vigorously defends the right of individuals to own property of all sorts, but insists that this right is not absolute. No one has a right to excess food, regardless of how legitimately he acquired it, when others around him are starving. On the other hand, charity obligates us to use our resources to meet the real needs of our families and neighbors before we address the needs of others far more remote.
Property can take many forms: land, physical objects, money and capital, ideas. Whatever its form, it is ultimately a gift from God and an instrument intended to promote genuine human fulfillment. At its best, property in all its forms would be one component sustaining the richest and most fulfilling life for every human person. CST is not committed to a dreary, subsistence view of human life, but rather to a life of abundance, where property never becomes an end in itself but always serves authentic human fulfillment.
The rightful possession and use of property is governed by the principles of justice, in all three of its forms. Individuals and groups must always be fair in their transactions with others. Where common resources or common responsibilities are concerned, persons must be treated in the same way unless there are relevant differences. And finally, individuals must always be prepared to use their property to support the common good. In the twentieth century, concerns and questions about the right use of property have tended to crowd out other issues within the Catholic social tradition.
4. The fourth basic idea centers on the Common Good and Solidarity. Every community, whether a family, a bowling club, a business, or a nation, has its own common good. The Catholic social tradition, however, has focused almost exclusively on the common good of the society. The classic definition was given by Pope John XXIII in his 1961 encyclical Mater et magistra: "[The common good] embraces the sum total of those conditions of social living whereby men are enabled more fully and more readily to achieve their own perfection." In other words, the common good of a society is the set of conditions–peace, harmony, justice, and so on–that makes it possible for the members of the society to flourish.
CST attaches overarching value to the common good because it is the measure of health for any society. Where the common good is respected and sustained, the members of a society have the greatest chance to achieve the fulfillment that God intends. But where the common good is undermined–through corruption and unjust practices, or a failure to protect life and human dignity, or the abuse of power–human fulfillment is impeded or even made impossible. The first duty of government is to establish and sustain the common good. Today, given the nature of transportation and communication, we can no longer speak merely of the common good of this or that nation, but must instead focus on the entire human community.
In 1987, in his encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis, Pope John Paul II took up the theme of the common good and emphasized the virtue of solidarity. He defined this virtue as "a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good." By this he meant that individuals ought to be actively concerned with the well-being of everyone in the human community, to the extent that their resources, talents, and vocation make this possible. At the very least, we can never be indifferent to the welfare of others, whether in our local community or around the globe. He went on to say that charity and solidarity should be the two virtues that most distinguish the Christian in the modern world.
5. The fifth basic idea has to do with Authority and Subsidiarity. Authority is a necessary component of any healthy human community because it is required to protect human goods, even the good of individual freedom. It is possessed by an individual (or a group, for that matter) when the judgment about what is to be done by members of the community is accepted and obeyed even in the absence of complete and compelling reasons. For example, a son accepts his father's authority to set a curfew when he obeys even though he disagrees with the hour chosen. The father has no authority if the son only accepts the curfew after being fully persuaded of its reasonableness. Authority, then, is an alternative to argument and persuasion, but only because argument and persuasion are not always possible or appropriate. When properly exercised it is not an enemy of human dignity and freedom.
CST commonly recognizes two kinds of practical authority, which we might call nurturing authority and common good authority. Nurturing authority is exercised for the benefit of an individual (or group) when that individual (or group) is not fully capable of making practical decisions independently. An example would be the authority of a parent over young children or the authority of an adult child exercised for an elderly parent. In most cases, nurturing authority is temporary and gradually ceases to be legitimate as the individual gains the ability to make sound decisions on his own.
Common-good authority, on the other hand, is always exercised in and for a community, whether large or small. While discussion, persuasion, and collaboration are desirable in making decisions, they are not always practical. For the sake of its own health and harmony, every community requires an authority when spontaneous consensus fails to emerge. This authority must decide, in the face of honest disagreement and not-so-noble self-interest, what courses of action will be taken, how resources will be shared and burdens distributed. I must seek to protect individual freedom but at the same time to ensure that the exercise of these freedoms does not harm the common good. The pope, the president, the head of a business, and the parents of a family all need to exercise common-good authority for the sake of their communities.
A necessary companion to the idea of authority is the principle of Subsidiarity. The idea is simpler than the name. It begins with the recognition that in human societies smaller communities exist within larger ones. For example, a family, as a community, is part of a city, which in turn is part of a county, a state, a nation, and so on. Subsidiarity insists that the authority to make decisions lies most properly with those closest to the decision. (The Church has always insisted that the responsibility for educating children, and so the authority to make decisions about education, belongs primarily to parents.) A higher authority should never intrude on the decision-making of a lower authority unless the lower authority cannot make sound decisions. Rather than siphoning decisions up to a central authority, subsidiarity requires that decisions be driven down to the lowest competent level.
When authority is exercised well and properly, it requires and makes good use of power. Power, of course, may also be used by those who lack authority to achieve their own ends at the expense of the common good. CST prefers a number of checks and balances at the practical level to ensure the protection of both individual freedoms and the common good.
6. The sixth basic idea, Culture, is one that has generally not received the attention it deserves in the Catholic tradition. The emphasis in CST has largely been on the economic and political spheres, but in recent years Pope John Paul II, following on the Second Vatican Council, has repeatedly called attention to the importance of the cultural sphere.
A community is not defined merely by its political or economic structures, but perhaps more deeply by its culture. Culture includes the language, the set of beliefs, rituals, structures, artistic expressions, and so forth, that are held in common by the members of a community, and by which they are shaped and given an identity. The relationship between a culture and the members of the community is reciprocal. Not only are the individuals shaped by the culture, but the culture is, and must be, shaped gradually by individuals.
Cultures may take form in quite a variety of ways, some of which are healthy and some unhealthy. Healthy cultures are always dynamic, but they also have deep elements of stability that help to protect fundamental human values. Cultures become unhealthy when they stagnate and refuse to accept the contributions of living members. They also become wickedly unhealthy when they abandon a commitment to respect human dignity and cease to protect their most vulnerable members.
The Church does not prefer one culture to another, but recognizes that some cultures embrace life and authentic human fulfillment, while others do not. The Christian contribution to the cultural sphere is critical because it calls attention to the values that cultures must protect and encourage, and celebrates their wonderful variety. In his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae, Pope John Paul II spoke of the modern conflict between cultures. The Christian vision of the elements of a healthy culture he called the "Gospel of Life," while its opposite is a "Culture of Death." This culture of death is so named because it promotes a set of false values that has the effect of smothering true life and genuine human fulfillment.
John Paul has also been concerned about the homogenization of culture brought about by the global marketplace and the consequent loss of healthy local cultures. In his trips around the world he has frequently called upon Catholics to embrace their culture, to recover the deep and enduring values it represents, and to preserve and renew the Christian influences.
These six ideas or themes represent the foundation stones of the Catholic social tradition, but because they are so fundamental they are also abstract and remote from the lives people lead and the practical challenges they face. They do, however, have an impact on a variety of everyday issues, as the following will illustrate. The concern for human dignity in principle naturally becomes a defense of human life in practice. No social concern is more important than the challenge of respecting human life at all stages of development. Every attack on the sacredness of life begins with a denial of the dignity of that life, whether it be the life of an enemy, an embryo, a criminal, or an elderly person. A society that chooses not to protect life seriously undermines the common good and promotes a variety of injustices.
The persistent concern for the poor flows directly from the commitment to distributive justice in society. The poor are often, though perhaps not always, the victims of injustices that they are powerless to correct. Everyone deserves what is minimally necessary to live a decent life in the community, and this includes more than what is merely required to prevent death. Each individual deserves food, clothing, and shelter to be sure, but also education, health care, and opportunities to participate in the activities of the economic, political and cultural spheres. What this means concretely will vary from one community to another, and a number of different plans may achieve it. Moreover, solidarity requires that we never be indifferent to the poor and that we always be prepared to use our property well in this regard.
Catholics are also rightly concerned about the cultures in which they live. In much of the world, people are encouraged to believe that faith must be a private matter, that it has nothing to offer to popular culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Individuals all live within a culture and cannot help but be shaped by it. This is especially true for adolescents and young adults. So, while religion should not dominate culture, religious values that respect human dignity and promote genuine human flourishing quite properly help to shape culture.
Still another issue that remains prominent is international conflict. The Church teaches that as long as no common-good authority exists that can effectively resolve international disputes and protect weak nations from strong ones, defensive wars may still be morally legitimate. Offensive wars, however, never are, nor are weapons that cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians, nor tactics that deliberately target civilians. Furthermore, solidarity requires not only individuals but nations as well to relieve the suffering of others and to meet their urgent needs. This is not fundamentally a matter of charity, but a requirement of justice.
Many other examples could be offered but in no case is there likely to be only one possible solution that follows directly from CST. In bringing these ideas to bear on the world in which people really live, agreement on the principles does not necessarily mean agreement on applications. Indeed, we may find a great deal of debate and disagreement about practical ways to improve our lives.
This is why the Church has been careful to remind its members that no private individual is entitled to claim that his judgment about, say, how to achieve economic justice, is the position of the Church. The Church has no detailed positions on particular issues, though from time to time the pope or a group of bishops will make certain concrete recommendations. Such recommendations should be considered with respect, but they are not morally binding on Catholics, who remain free to form their own judgments and, while agreeing on principles, to disagree at times with their bishops on matters of public policy. What matters is not the means as much as fidelity to the principles and success in achieving the goals.
In the end, the application of Catholic social teaching to the real problems of the real world remains the task of the laity, not the clergy. It is the laity who live in the world and who, by their witness and their actions, bring the Gospel to the world. It is they who must make this tradition their own and find practical ways to continue Christ's mission of building the kingdom. And it is they who need to understand the principles that ought to direct and animate this work.
Dr. Robert G. Kennedy teaches at the University of St Thomas, in Minnesota.
© The Catholic Faith, Ignatius Press
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