Fr. William Ryan sj.
I have been invited to talk
to you about Catholic Social Teaching—What is it?
Where did it come from? How did it develop? And does it make any difference?
I enjoy this challenge,
since most of my adult life as a Jesuit has been given to teaching Catholic
social teaching, trying to apply it practically in concrete circumstances, and
to helping the Canadian Bishops, Roman Synods, and the Jesuits to produce relevant
social statements and valid interpretations of it for particular circumstances
in Canada or elsewhere in the world.
We do well to ask these
questions because most Catholics know very little about Catholic social
teaching. Non-Catholics, once they discover this teaching, often ask us why we
keep this teaching a deep secret from ordinary Catholics as well as from the
general public. In fact, there are among us many good Catholics who believe
that Catholicism is about savings souls—not about social justice or attempts to
build a more human and just local community or world. In my own research I
found that before Vatican II it was difficult to find in modern Catholic
spirituality a strong case for caring for the world at all! After all, it was
just a weary waiting room opening on heaven!
I suppose we could save a
lot of time were we simply to accept the summary of Catholic social teaching
given by my Jesuit friend, John Kavanaugh. For him it
is all summed up in the teaching, "If you have a party, invite the
poor!"
Even today there are strong
conflicting views on the value and influence of this teaching. For example,
when Pope John Paul II published Centesimus
Annus in 1991 to celebrate the 100th anniversary
of the first formal social encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, Rerum
Novarum, on the troubling conditions of work
after the industrial revolution, he wrote triumphantly as follows: "The
encyclical [Rerum Novarum]
and the related social teaching of the Church had far-reaching influence in the
years bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This influence is
evident in the numerous reforms which were introduced in the areas of social
security, pensions, health insurance and compensation in the case of accidents,
within the framework of greater respect for the rights of workers." Harvey
Cox, a popular Baptist minister, dismissed Pope John Paul's views scornfully in
the
"My hope," he
concludes, "is that Centesimus Annus marks not only the 100th anniversary of papal
social teaching but the end of that chapter in Christian history." I
believe that Cox's vexation stems more from his impatience with the triumphal
Latin style of social encyclicals than from their messages. However, his
question of whether one can have a universally valid social teaching without it
appearing bland in any particular context, still
stands, as we shall see later.
What is Catholic Social
Teaching? It is a formula or a set of principles for reflection to evaluate the
framework of society and to provide criteria for prudential judgment and
direction for current policy and action. I believe there are three foundational
principles involved-a view confirmed by the recent InterAmerican
Synod:
Among other primary
derivative principles are the following: Respect and protection for human life
at every stage of development and decline. The right to association: we are
social beings, and we achieve our fulfillment in
families and social institutions. Participation. We
have a right to be included in those institutions, including work,
that are necessary for human fulfillment. Preferential protection for the poor and vulnerable. The
neediest among us have a special claim on our care and compassion. Stewardship. Our personal talents and property, as well as
the environment that surrounds us, are meant to be used with a sense of
responsibility for the common good. Human equality.
This is the principle of fairness, rendering to each person what is his or her
due. [Some Christians think that this principle of
fairness is the whole of social justice and social teaching—but we see here
that it is only one important part of it.] And finally, the common good: This
refers to the social conditions that allow people to reach their full human potential
and to realize their human dignity [cf. Bill Byron sj,
Pope John Paul II summed up
the urgent task of Catholic teaching in a recent talk to the staff of Civilta Cattolica,
April/96, "Social, economic and financial problems are becoming more
important for the destiny of humanity. On the one hand, they can provoke
economic wars no less deadly and cruel than those fought with weapons, and, on
the other hand, they aggravate social injustice in a world that is beset by
poverty and underdevelopment in so many places. This is the dramatic choice of
humanity today. The church's task is to warn people about dangers to which they
are exposed, while pointing out the paths to happiness and peace."
The core of Catholic social
teaching is found in several papal encylicals and in
the more than 1,500 contextualized social statements made by bishops'
conferences round the world since Vatican II. I might mention that, at last
count, the Canadian Bishops' Conference was producing about 8% of these 1,500
statements. And their Commission on Social Affairs' statement on "Ethical
Reflections on the Economy," in 1983, received more media and public
attention than any other statement their conference has made.
The Core Message and Its
Sources
The core message of social teaching is found in the Roman Synod on Justice in
the World in 1971, at which Canadian bishops were very active. There the synod
fathers state, "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the
transformation of the world appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the
preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the church's mission for the
redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive
situation." Their teaching is clear. The gospel is not really preached if
justice is not done and if Christians do not participate in building up a more
just and loving society.
The basic source of such
teaching is, of course, the Old and New Testaments. In them, with Walter Burghardt sj, I hold, with him, that their central teaching
is biblical justice. He defines it as "fidelity to the demands of convenant—not contractual—relationships, that is, right
order relationships with God, and all brothers and sisters—and with the
earth." Such social justice inevitably implies building up or restoring
community at every level of human existence. In the Gospels and tradition we discover
God as a Trinity of persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In other words, God's
whole being is faithful enduring relationships of love. Created, as we are, in
the image of God, we humans are commanded to image God's fidelity in all our
relationships. Sin is always not only an offense
against God but also the breaking of community. Mathew 25 says it all and makes
it a matter of eternal salvation: "Whatever you do unto the least of your
needy brothers or sisters—good or evil—you do unto Me!"
And remember that fidelity
in relationships extends also to our caring for our "mother" earth.
As
How did Social Teaching
Develop?
Rather than list and discuss all the great social encyclicals issued by popes
over the last century, beginning with Rerum
Novarum in 1891 and ending with Centesimus Annus in
1991, I would like to give you a sense of how social teaching has developed in
the Church. You will see that it is not a fixed body of teaching and that it
does not provide an infallible or ready answer or solution to any of today's
great social, economic, political or ecological problems. Rather it suggests a
framework within which to reflect on these issues and it opens directions or
ways of proceeding in making concrete decisions or choices among proposed
solutions.
In the Church's early
tradition we find that the rich were believed to have been given wealth or
power or property so that they could perform ministry to the poor, for the love
of Christ. Christ was always seen as identifying himself with the poor. St.
John Chrysostom is fairly representative of the early
Church Fathers in this matter when he urges his people to cover the naked
Christ [that is, the poor woman at the door] before they ornament Christ's
table [the altar]. He forbids them to make a golden cup for Christ when they
are refusing Him a cup of cold water in the poor! In the 17th century we find Bossuet, the renowned preacher at Notre Dame Cathedral in
I should note in passing
that in the mayhem of the industrial revolution Protestants in
Turning to formal Catholic
social teaching: Pope Leo XIII, in 1891, heeded the suggestions of both bishops
and Catholic lay groups that he address the subhuman conditions brought about
for millions of people by industrialism and economic liberalism. He condemned
the abuses and illusions of both liberal capitalism and socialism, especially
Marxian class struggle. He defended the church's moral authority to promote
justice in public life and the right of private property. He claimed that the
state had an obligation to protect workers and their right to join trade unions
through legislation. This teaching came as a shock, even a scandal, to many good Catholics, including some bishops, who
themselves believing in the iron laws of the market, refused to share this
novel teaching with their people until many years later. Later, however, popes
and bishops gradually continued to fill out what is today known as Catholic
social teaching. I will mention only a few highlights along the journey so that
you may get the flavour of this type of Catholic teaching, which, today,
finally finds its proper place in the new Catholic Catechism mostly under the
Seventh Commandment.
Until Vatican II this
teaching drew largely on natural law rather than on scripture to make spiritual
sense of current socioeconomic situations. Pius XI, writing his Quadragesimo Anno
in 1931, forty years after Leo's Rerum Novarum, and in deep economic depression, confirms and
deepens the earlier teaching. He is harsher than Pope Leo on the abuses of
corporate capitalism, even foreseeing the possibility of opening a new
"third way" between capitalism and socialism, in order to rid society
of bitter class struggle between capital and labour. He talks of replacing
corporate capitalism with professional or vocational groupings that cut across
class lines, as in medieval times.
During the Second World
War, in his Radio Messages, Pope Pius XII restated clearly the social
obligations of property owners and advocated the need for a new international
order and a new international authority to ensure peace—thus anticipating the
United Nations. With Pope John XXIII, the social question became global. In Mater
et Magistra [Mother and
Teacher] in 1961, he shifted the traditional focus from European social
questions to extremes of poverty in the world and the widening gap between rich
and poor countries. In 1963, he addressed Pacem
in Terris [Peace on Earth] not only to Catholics
but to all people of good will, emphasizing not only legal and political rights
but also economic rights such as the right to work and the right to a just
wage.
In addressing all peoples
Pope John implies that one need not have Catholic faith to accept this social
teaching.
At Vatican II [1962-65],
the 2500 Catholic bishops of the world in union with the pope solemnly
recognized that the church by virtue of the mission entrusted to it by Christ
has a unique responsibility for shaping values and institutions in the modern
world, by proposing not specific models or blueprints but rather principles,
values and directions that must guide just solutions. They also recognized that
they must do this in today's pluralistic world not by coercion but through
dialogue respecting the religious convictions of those who disagree with them.
I personally believe that Vatican II's statement on
Freedom of Religion was perhaps its most significant
and influential statement in today's world.
Paul VI was the first to
devote an entire encyclical, Populorum Progressio [Progress of Peoples] in 1967, to the
international development issue. In a less optimistic mood than Vatican II,
probably influenced by Latin American experience and liberation theology, he
dwelt on the downside of development and the growing struggle between rich and
poor nations. More important perhaps, in a follow-up encyclical Octagesimo Anno [Call
to Action], in 1971, 80 years after Rerum Novarum, Paul made a dramatic shift to greater reliance
on inductive methodology and political action to achieve economic goals in a
decentralized church community. He even wondered aloud whether it was really
possible in this new pluralist world to address a single, relevant universal
message in social teaching to all Catholics. Some have asked the question
whether John Paul II later misread the situation of
In 1987, in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [Social Concerns], John Paul II returns to
Pope Leo's critique of liberal capitalism and the destructiveness of
collectivist socialism. He talks of "structures of sin" that must be
transformed, as well as individual hearts that must be converted to a
preferential option for the poor, if we are to have justice in the world.
Finally, in Centesimus Annus,
John Paul uses the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Catholic social
teaching, in 1991, primarily to draw lessons from the sudden and unexpected
collapse of Communism in
Perhaps by looking briefly
at some of the more dramatic shifts that have taken place in Catholic social
teaching over the century we may get a clearer idea of its nature and also of
where it may go in the future.
Is it Catholic doctrine or
teaching? We saw how with Pope John the basis of this teaching shifted
substantially away from a rather rigid interpretation of natural law to "a
reading of the sign of the times" in the light of the Gospel. It now
becomes an essential dimension of preaching the Gospel, and yet, because its
applications involve inductive reasoning and prudential judgments, it is open
to error. That is why some prefer to call it Catholic social teaching rather
than social doctrine. But Pope John Paul calls it doctrine, probably to insist
that it is an essential dimension of evangelization, and there is now talk
today in the
Over time, there has also
been a shift in the understanding of the right of private property. Leo
insisted on this right in order to ground human dignity and to stimulate
personal initiative in opposition to socialism. Pius XI insisted on the social
responsibility of private property and of business corporations. Pius XII
returned to an earlier tradition, stating that the only justification for
private property is as a means to implement the more general human right of all
people to have access to the goods of the earth. Finally, John Paul II includes
personal skills and know-how as a new type of private property, thus blurring
the earlier sharp division between capital and labour. Bill Gates does not need
extensive real estate to be rich!
Again, Pius XI dabbles in
the possibility of having the Church propose a "third way" between
capitalism and socialism. This smelled too much of dictatorial corporatist
models of the 30's, and so later popes quietly dropped this initiative. In
saying "no" to a market economy that is not ordered to the common
good in a particular situation today, John Paul II does not propose any alternative—any
so-called "third way." There are, of course, Catholics who still
believe in the feasibility or at least possibility of a utopian socialist
community-based economy, which would be more in harmony with Gospel teachings.
Perhaps the most significant
shift in Catholic teaching over the years has been to move from rejection of
class conflict to confrontation within solidarity, and to see the poor
themselves as agents of change. Earlier popes did not see how one could have
economic change without revolution or violence between capital and labour. In
their fear of violent solutions, they were wary of "change from
below" and so too of liberal democracy. Even legal strikes were allowed
only as a last resort. They allowed unions for the workers, but still instinctively
looked to the benevolence of the state and of the powerful and wealthy of the
times to bring about justice for the poor. Implicitly, they accepted the
trickle-down theory of economics until Liberation Theology showed its head in
Latin America and the themes of structural sin and preferential option for the
poor were soon cautiously canonized by the Roman Synod on Justice in the World
in 1971, and in Paul VI's encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi
[Preaching the Good News] in 1974. The church now teaches that ours is a Gospel
that does justice. Christians must have a preferential option for the poor, and
this option requires that they work for changes in unjust political, economic,
and social structures, a task in which the poor themselves are the first agents
of change.
But how could the Church be
sure that this was not the way to violent revolution? John Paul II discovered a
new synthesis from his personal experience of fostering the Solidarity movement
in
It is evident in Centesimus Annus
that John Paul believes that with the demise of Communism he now has proof that
class struggle is neither a valid nor an effective means of achieving social
justice, and that Catholic social teaching has in fact shown the right way. He
holds up the experience of
Other shifts in Catholic
social teaching are just underway. For example, visible response to the
challenge given the Church itself by the Roman Synod on Justice in World in
1971, to give a prophetic witness to justice and love of the poor in its own
administration and use of goods, is still weak and often not credible. And
there are burning major issues that still have not received adequate treatment
in Catholic social teaching, such as ecology, the population issue, and a more
central role for the laity, and especially women in decision making in both the
church and civil society. All these issues have been discussed positively at
length by the present pope—but have still not merited authoritative treatment
in a social encyclical and are seldom heard in the local pulpit.
Finally, on some very
difficult political questions at the present time, how should the Church
address or challenge such phenomena as secessionist movements in formerly
unitary or federalist states, or humanitarian intervention in places where ethnic
violence descends to the level of barbarism, or even the civilizational
conflict on a grand scale between the West and Islam or
An Untidy Process
Many people have difficulty understanding what they
see as contradictions in the social teachings of the church. One document seems
to praise capitalism, the next to condemn it. One document seems to bless
liberation theology, the next to condemn it. Class conflict is condemned, yet
labour confrontation is praised.
Gregory Baum attributes
much of what seems to be contradictory in social teaching as church leaders'
attempts to balance the maintenance needs of the church with those of its
prophetic mission. What priority should they place on safeguarding unity in the
church while preaching the prophetic preferential option for the poor?
I don't disagree with
Baum's explanation. However, I also believe that the evolution of social
teaching is itself inevitably an untidy process in its attempt, in one universal
document, to discern where in complex situations the Spirit is leading the
church at any given time. And this discernment process it is likely to become
even more untidy as more Episcopal conferences learn with their people how
better to "read the signs of the times" and engage Christian
communities in believing, preaching and acting on a preferential option for the
poor, in a world that we now see more clearly as structured sinfully in so many
ways. I believe that Catholic social teaching should gradually become more
statements or teachings of the whole Catholic community [rather] than
authoritative declarations of the pope.
Be that as it may, Pope
John Paul can still rightly rejoice and thank God that the church has been
faithful to the heritage of Leo XIII. As the church struggles to understand
what the processes of globalization of knowledge, culture, economics and
politics mean for the swelling numbers of Catholics in poorer regions of the
world—as well as for the stagnant, if not diminishing numbers of Catholics in
the Western world—a case can be made, I believe, that the church presently has
a social teaching more attuned to our tumultuous present times than was its
social teaching attuned to the needs and aspirations of our proletarian brothers
and sisters during the Industrial Revolution in Europe in nineteenth century.
Catholic Social Teaching
Beautiful words! But does it really matter in the real world? Lack of time
prevents me from developing my favorite thesis on the
real but ambiguous influence of religion on shaping society in today's world.
Suffice to point out that religion and spirituality are exploding in every
country in the world, often in reaction to the dehumanizing forces of
globalization. A hopeful sign of the times is the growing inter-religious
solidarity and dialogue with other NGOs. Witness, for example, the recent
ongoing dialogue between religious and World Bank leaders [World Faith Dialogue
on Development] on improving the lot of the poor; and, more concretely, the
joint conference organized by the Islamic Movement for a Just World and the
Christian Peace Movement [Pax Christi] in Malaysia in
1997, at the time of the Asian financial meltdown, to examine the impact of
globalization on religious traditions and cultural communities. Similarly, the
recent huge Millennium Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders hosted by the
Secretary General, Kofi Amman, in the United National
grand Assembly Hall in New York in late August, to discuss peace, the
eradication of poverty, and the saving of the environment, was a hopeful symbol
of the interest and potential of religious collaboration in tackling present
day global crises.
These are likewise striking
examples of the more significant recent development of a widespread process of
de-privatizing religions and churches to give them a more active role in the
public forum. This process is well documented and argued by sociologist Jose
Casanova of the
Catholic social teaching is
part of this vital movement that refuses to accept the incessant media
message—the materialist secular dogma of today—that "the market is
God." Numerous Catholic bishops, priests, and laity have been martyred in
recent years for standing by and for the world's poor. We Jesuits have had more
than 40 murdered for identifying with the poor in the last two decades. Last
year, in