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REFLECTION ONCATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING1

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“An authentic faith – which is never comfortable orcompletely personal – always involves a deep desireto change the world, to transmit values, to leavethe earth somehow better than we found it.”Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 1833

Introduction to CatholicSocial Doctrine“An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal– always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leavethe earth somehow better than we found it.”Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 183The call to justice and peace has always beenan essential part of the life of the Christian.Our sacred texts offer a constant reminder ofthe centrality of this call. In the Old Testamentthe prophet Micah tells us: “this is whatYahweh asks of you: only this, to act justly, tolove tenderly, and to walk humbly with yourGod” (Micah 6:8).city which is to come, we are entitled to shirkour earthly responsibilities; this is to forgetthat by our faith we are bound all the moreto fulfil these responsibilities according to thevocation of each one” (Gaudium et spes, 43).For Christians, of course, the New Testamentcontains the perfect example of God’s justiceand mercy, Jesus Christ. The life and ministryof Jesus was one of inclusion, compassion andThe writings of all the prophets provideforgiveness. Christ’s actions were counterreminders of the sort of life Yahweh wishescultural; through his words and deeds hefrom the people of the Covenant: a life ofjustice, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness. challenged prevailing attitudes and structuresthat served to exclude and oppress sections ofThe prophets denounce the hypocrisy of theirsociety. The parable about the Good Samaritansociety. To be a hypocrite is to wear a “falseillustrates that point well. Jesus is critical of aface”, to pretend to be someone or somethingsituation where religious ritual and religiousthat you are not. What the prophets lamentedideology become more important than helpingwas a society that neglected the mostvulnerable within it. For Amos, worship of God someone who is in pain. And in Matthew 22:3440 we note the double commandment to loveis meaningless unless it is also put into dailyboth God and neighbour. In other words, love ofaction. “I hate, I despise your feasts, I take noGod cannot be divorced from the working outdelight in your solemn assemblies but letjustice roll down like waters and righteousness of justice and peace in this world.like an ever-flowing stream” (Am. 5:21, 24).The earliest Christian community tookinspiration from the life and example ofThese texts show a deep concern for theChrist, and from its infancy the Christian faithmarginalised – the widow, the orphan, theembraced the world. The early Christians wentpoor and the stranger in a strange land. Theout into the world, conscious of its dangers andstrength of the Covenant relationship withits shortcomings, but with a deep convictionYahweh is witnessed through commitment tothat they could change it for the better. Theirsthe suffering of others, and not just throughwas not a private faith, one that remainedvisits to the Temple. Thousands of yearssheltered from the world. Rather, the Christianlater we hear those words of the prophetsfaith was one that was proactive, inclusive andecho through the Council Fathers when theydriven by the joy of the Gospel message. Asproclaimed that, “it is a mistake to think that,Pope Francis explains, “Reading the Scripturesbecause we have no lasting city, but seek the4

also makes it clear that the Gospel is not merelyabout our personal relationship with God TheGospel is about the Kingdom of God; it is aboutloving God who reigns in our world BothChristian preaching and life, then, are meant tohave an impact on society” (Evangelii gaudium,180).For centuries later, this social consciousnessacted as a motivation for Christians in timesof crisis. The front-line response to famines,to the sufferings of war, and to plagues,invariably came from Christian groups. Monks,priests and nuns commonly became theproviders of education and healthcare. In time,organisations such the Society of St Vincentde Paul emerged, taking on a more formal andorganised structure, but always guided by thatsame Christian calling to social justice. PádraigCorkery captures this dynamic nature of ourfaith well: “The Gospel challenges us not to beindifferent or hostile to the world we inhabitbut to take it seriously and to take responsibilityfor it. As women and men of faith, who strive toshape our lives around the Gospel, our presencein the world is meant to be a dynamic, engagingpresence that contributes to the transformationof the world.” 1What we now call the Social Teaching of theChurch is a more recent development. Thisrefers to the body of official teaching on social,political and economic affairs that has beencompiled incrementally over more than acentury. Pope Leo XIII’s great social encyclicalRerum novarum (1891) is generally taken asits starting point. That document was thefirst attempt by the Church’s Magisterium toaddress in an official way the social concerns ofthe time. From then onward a set of teachinghas emerged that deals with a large number ofsocial justice issues in all parts of the world, andis found primarily in what are called the socialencyclicals.Such is the significance of Rerum novarumthat many of the subsequent social encyclicalswere issued to mark its anniversary. Butthe Church’s social teaching also includesa Pastoral Constitution (Gaudium et spes),Declarations (such as the Declaration onReligious Freedom of Vatican II), ApostolicExhortations (Pope Paul VI’s Octogesimaadveniens for example, or Pope Francis’Evangelii gaudium), documents issued bySynods (Justice in the World, 1971), as wellas statements of Bishops’ Conferences fromaround the world (for example the IrishCatholic Bishops’ Conference PastoralReflection entitled The Cry of the Earth, 2014).A number of key events and developmentshelped shape the social teaching of theChurch. The earliest documents tended to beEuro-centric in focus, dealing with issues ofconcern primarily to the European Church: therights of workers in industrialised Europeancities for example, the crisis surroundingthe Great Depression of the late 1920s andearly 1930s, the rise of totalitarian regimes,and so forth. However, the 1960s saw achange as the teaching became more globalin outlook. International social, political andeconomic developments such as the Cold War,decolonisation, civil rights movements, andgrowth in international trade, meant that thesocial justice agenda now became global inreach. These have been joined more recentlyby questions of environmental justice andrelated issues. Thus, our understanding ofsocial relationships and, by implication, of oursocial responsibilities has taken on a muchbroader dimension than was earlier the case.The social teaching of the Church covers ahuge variety of issues; one might say thatanything that affects our social relationshipsis of concern to it. Popes have responded to the“signs of their times” by publishing documentsthat challenge the social consciousness of “allpeople of good will”, a phrase that with Materet magistra marked the start of the practiceof addressing this kind of document to anaudience beyond the Church’s boundaries.Poverty, the rights of workers, homelessness,sexual exploitation and trafficking, war,migration, displacement of peoples, sustainabledevelopment, trade, ecology, economics,business ethics, banking crises, HIV, access tohealthcare, food security, rights of prisoners,rights of ethnic minorities — all of these arenow seen to be proper subjects of individualand collective moral concern.–1 Pádraig Corkery, Companion to the Compendium of theSocial Doctrine of the Church, (Dublin: Veritas, 2007), p 18.5

The underlying insight is that everyone has theright and responsibility to live in our worldconstructively, not destructively, and to ensurethat we leave it in a better state than when weentered it.the heart of the Gospel message, and thereforecentral to the Christian mission. Evangelisationis achieved not only through proclaiming thejoy of the Gospel, but also through action forthe betterment of our world.At the core of Catholic Social Teaching are anumber of key concepts and principles. Chiefamong these are justice, human dignity, thecommon good, the principles of participation,solidarity, and subsidiarity, the universaldestination of the world’s goods, and the optionfor the poor. We shall look at these in detailin the next section, but meanwhile we mustanswer two questions that are often asked.The second of our questions is related tothe first: how much weight does the socialteaching of the Church carry? Is it as importantas other moral teachings of the CatholicChurch? The Magisterium leaves us in nodoubt. The Compendium states: “Insofaras it is part of the Church’s moral teaching,the Church’s social doctrine has the samedignity and authority as her moral teaching.It is authentic magisterium, which obligatesthe faithful to adhere to it.”2 It requires littlethought to see a direct moral significancein the themes of Catholic Social Teaching towhich we now turn.The first can be put as follows: is social concernan optional extra for the Christian, somethingthat we are free to disregard as part of what isdemanded of a follower of Jesus? The answermust be an unequivocal no. We have alreadyglanced at the basis for this answer in keybiblical texts, to which we can now add thenumerous Church documents which remind usthat a commitment to justice and peace is at62 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium ofthe Social Doctrine of the Church, (New York: ContinuumInternational Publishing Group, 2005), para. 80.