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SOCIAL
DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH “Social
doctrine,” or the social teaching of the Church, refers to the
developing body of Catholic thought about political, economic, ethical,
and cultural questions as these relate to the common good. The Church has
no political or economic theories per se, since these belong to the realm
of human reason and experience, and remain the responsibility of
laypeople. But the Church may judge social theory and practice from the
standpoint of faith and morals, especially in light of the virtue of
justice. During the twentieth century in particular, Catholic social
doctrine has developed rapidly in response to questions posed by
communism, socialism, totalitarianism, and democratic capitalism. Historical
Survey • The New Testament contains little direct commentary on social
questions, though many Gospel principles can be extended to help shape a
Christian framework for thinking about them. The early Church expected
Christ’s Second Coming within a short time and did not take much
interest in public affairs. As it became clear that no one really knows
how far off the end time might be, the Church began a process that has
distinguished her ever since: Inspired by a vision of Christ as the Lord
of all of creation, including human societies, she moved from being a
socially marginalized sect to functioning as a globally involved church. The first
major step in developing a comprehensive social teaching came in the fifth
century with the publication of St. Augustine’s City of God (De Civitate
Dei). Augustine had to reply to charges that Christian otherworldliness
had led to the decline of Rome, both in personal morals and in military
power. His argument was twofold. First, he pointed to defects within
paganism itself as the real cause of the decline. The classical
philosophers were good reasoners, but they could not correct the faults of
human nature that they saw quite clearly; only God’s grace, said
Augustine, could do that. Next, Augustine showed how the Christian story
of the Fall, redemption, and restoration could explain historical events
and the proper response to them. Augustine thought the state an
“unnatural” institution in that, if the human race had never fallen,
the state would not have been necessary. But the Fall
had occurred, and that meant the state was necessary to curb personal
vices and promote public virtues, especially the common good. States were
limited in what they could achieve in this realm. The state was primarily
an imperfect remedy: The Church alone could provide mankind with the
fullness of truth and salvation. Yet even in the limited sphere of the
state, justice was indispensable to the state’s functions. Otherwise,
the state reflected the sinful desire to dominate others (libido dominandi)
and was nothing more than “a large gang of bandits” (magnum
latrocinium). Thus,
Augustine established two principles that have remained central to
subsequent Catholic social teaching: the importance of personal virtue to
public life and the need to judge states and policies from a standpoint
outside practical politics and economics. In other words, the city of man,
though it can never be the City of God, requires good order in the soul
and in the state. In the Middle
Ages, several things were added to the basic Augustinian heritage. One of
the most important was the recognition of a difference not only between
the two cities but between the temporal and spiritual powers. Pope
Gelasius I, writing in Duo Quippe Sunt to the Byzantine emperor Anastasius
I in the year 494, first formulated the idea. God himself had ordained
distinct roles for the Church in the spiritual realm and for the state in
the temporal realm (a development of Jesus’ saying “Render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”
[Mt 22:21]). Catholic scholars have long disagreed about the implications
of this doctrine. But it is clear both from the statement and subsequent
medieval history that the beginnings of a kind of separation of Church and
State had emerged in the Christian West. Gelasius’
teaching was probably meant to secure the autonomy of the Church. But it
also gave the state a more positive role than it had in the thinking of
St. Augustine. A major step in developing this insight occurred in the
thirteenth century with the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. While St.
Augustine had written in a time of troubled relations between Church and
State, Aquinas lived in a period of generally greater harmony. He
emphasized the work of the Greek philosopher Aristotle as a guide to the
positive functions the state can exercise. The State As
Natural Institution • St. Thomas thought the state was a natural
institution for several reasons. Human beings, though the most intelligent
of earthly creatures, require the longest and most complicated nurturing
among all the animals. They can only reach full development through
communities and can only do certain things within properly constituted
political systems. First among
these natural communities was the family, which provided an indispensable
basis for both private and public good. But the state, too, is necessary,
among other reasons, to make sure that families did not become merely
feuding tribes. The state orders and fosters smaller groupings, without
usurping their functions, in the name of the common good. In St. Thomas,
then, the state is more than merely a remedy for the Fall; it is a natural
expression of human nature. Catholicism’s relatively communitarian bent,
as compared with Protestantism’s individualism, finds its deepest
sources in these medieval developments. What kind of state, though, is the best for fallen human
beings? Aquinas believed that even though the Fall had corrupted the will
and weakened human intellect, with grace it is still possible, if arduous,
for us to know and follow the natural law. Monarchy, the rule by a wise
and virtuous king, was the best form of government, but monarchy was
inclined to degenerate into tyranny. And this led St. Thomas to qualify
his vision. Kings rule by the consent of their subjects, he taught. It is
best if they govern a mixed regime that includes a class of prominent men
who can both advise and rein in the king. Such regimes
have the achievable earthly task of promoting justice, but their action
and scope are limited and subordinated to the ultimate destiny of all
human beings in God. As many subsequent theorists have observed, these
medieval notions lie at the root of modern political concepts such as
democracy, checks and balances among branches of the state, freedom of
conscience, and limited government. It would take
several centuries, however, for these concepts to achieve the form in
which they exist today. Some of the later Scholastic philosophers, such as
Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1483-1546) and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617),
developed the earliest notions of international law and universal human
rights. But Augustine and Aquinas continued to dominate Catholic social
teaching (as well as being recognized by secular historians of political
theory) as it began to deal with the great changes produced by the modern
democratic impulse of the American and French revolutions. Modern
Catholic Social Thought • With the appearance of modern democracy, the
Church found herself in a difficult situation. Though Catholic social
doctrine contained elements of ancient and medieval democratic thought,
modern democracy – especially as it came to be practiced on the model of
the French Revolution (the American Revolution produced far less
Church-State tension) – was virulently and violently anti-Catholic.
During the nineteenth century, this led to deep divisions and battles in
France, in Germany (Bismarck’s famous Kulturkampf, or “culture war”
against Catholicism), and elsewhere. The Church had lived with many forms
of government before and could have coexisted reasonably well with
democracy, except for the bitter partisan feelings that had arisen on both
sides during the struggles of the century. Under the
papacy of Leo XIII (1878-1903), however, a new era in Catholic social
teaching began. Pope Leo promoted both a return to the work of Thomas
Aquinas and an opening, based on long-standing Catholic principles, to
democratic thought. Leo urged French Catholics, for example, who had often
remained monarchist or opposed to republican forms, to a rallying (ralliement)
for the Republic. As a result of Leo’s initiative, in the twentieth
century Catholics and democrats have come to understand that there is no
necessary conflict between Catholicism and modern democracy. Leo also was
conscious that socialism, materialism, and a host of other modern problems
needed urgent attention. His 1891 encyclical On the Social Question, Rerum
Novarum, was the first of the great modern social encyclicals. In it, Leo
argued that socialism, far from being the answer to the social situation
of working men and women would, if implemented, claim workers as its first
victims – a prophetic observation whose truth was to become evident in a
matter of decades in communist nations. Leo responded
to the modern problems of industrialization, urbanization, and the plight
of the worker with an updated and highly articulated restatement of the
old Catholic vision of a society of different ranks and functions. Unions
and just (or “family”) wages seemed partial means to balancing the
needs of labor and capital. These and other suggestions were aimed at
preventing overcentralization and providing diverse opportunities and
responsibilities for all. Modern conditions, in Leo’s view, did not
negate, but rather offered fresh opportunities for, the wisdom that had
been accumulated in the tradition of Catholic social teaching. Leo’s
heritage was developed further by Pius XI in the encyclical On the
Fortieth Year, Quadragesimo Anno. Published in 1931, this document
reflects a keen awareness of the precarious condition of the democracies
in the interwar years, and of the totalitarian threats presented by German
Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Russian communism. Pius XI first expressed a
crucial concept that had begun appearing in Catholic social thinking just
prior to the encyclical: subsidiarity. Briefly, subsidiarity reminds us
that God has given freedom and responsibility to human persons and that it
is a disorder and a grave evil for the state to usurp the responsibility
of individuals, families, private associations, and other so-called
intermediate institutions. World War II
and the rebuilding that followed it halted further developments in social
teaching for some years. But in the 1960s, the Church under Pope John
XXIII began a renewal, updating (aggiornamento), and return to sources (ressourcement)
that looked optimistically toward the human future. In the documents of
the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), such as the Dogmatic Constitution
on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, the Church embraced with new
enthusiasm her role as a guide for the world. And in the Declaration on
Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, the Council stated that religious
liberty was a basic human right. In these
documents and in some subsequent encyclicals such as Paul VI’s On the
Progress of Peoples, Populorum Progressio, the Church began to show a more
activist confidence in the powers of government for social welfare within
nations, and in international justice and development. Some Marxist
elements seemed to attach themselves to this analysis, such as dependency
theory, which linked the poverty and dependency of Third World economies
with exploitation by the First World. This attitude
soon gave rise, particularly in Latin America, to a complex movement known
as liberation theology. Accepting Marxist notions of class struggle,
dependency theory, and capitalist oppression, many liberation theologians
seemed to view Soviet-sponsored revolutions during the Cold War as a kind
of religious crusade. At the 1968 meeting of the Latin American Bishops’
Conference (CELAM) in Medellín, Colombia, a new term, the “preferential
option for the poor,” appeared. In some ways, this idea was merely a
restatement of the old Christian principle that the weakest demand our
attention. In other ways, however, it led to an opposition of a church of
the poor (iglesia popular) to the traditional church. With the 1978
election of the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, this and many other
currents in the Church received some new orientations. Karol Wojtyla had
faced both Nazism and communism in his native Poland and was no friend of
either. He had also been a workingman, a writer, and a professor of modern
philosophy prior to becoming Pope, and brought a rich mix of practical
human experience and modern learning to modern social questions. Recent
Developments • John Paul II has given human work a special, if not
entirely new, emphasis as one of the ways by which people participate in
creation and reflect the image and likeness of divine intellect, will, and
creativity. As a practitioner of the modern philosophical school known as
phenomenology, he presented a rich description of the specifically human
character of work in his 1981 encyclical On Human Work, Laborem Exercens.
Traditionally, work had mostly been regarded as a curse after the Fall. In
John Paul, work both repairs the consequences of the Fall and reflects our
participation in God’s creation, a high and noble calling. Under his
leadership, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued
an Instruction on Certain Aspects of Liberation Theology (1984) and an
Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, Libertatis Conscientia
(1986). These two documents sought to sift what was good in the liberation
movement from what not only was false but had been proclaimed as such
since Leo XIII’s inauguration of modern Catholic social teaching. The
Church could not help but be in favor of authentic liberation, but in
Latin America the idea of liberation seemed to have taken a Marxist turn
that conflicted with several Catholic principles concerning property, the
human person, and society. John Paul II
also wrote several encyclicals during and after the decline and fall of
communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union that staked out
some new principles or at least arrived at some new emphases. In the 1987
encyclical On Social Concerns, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, for example, he
began to move the Church toward a greater acceptance of markets and
capitalism than had been evident earlier. In part, this stemmed from
empirical evidence of the greater prosperity and freedom of democratic
market systems, in part from a theoretical development in Catholic social
thought that placed freedom, including economic enterprise, high on the
list of human attributes. John Paul did
not entirely leave behind, however, the need for social solidarity. In
fact, in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis he offers a definition of what he calls
the virtue of solidarity: “This then is not a feeling of vague
compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both
near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination
to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all
and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all”
(38). Within solidarity, no one is to be merely passive or active; the
weaker are to take initiative and the stronger are not to insist on every
advantage. The whole is to be informed and guided by Christian charity. With
Centesimus Annus (1991), his encyclical upon the hundredth anniversary of
Rerum Novarum, John Paul went still further in spelling out how
subsidiarity and solidarity have become the two central principles for
modern Catholic social thought. The Pope puts the crucial point in the
form of a question: “Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of
Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism
should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their
economy and is this the model that ought to be proposed to the countries
of the Third World?” (42). He responds
by saying that the answer is complex. Certainly, we can say “yes”
insofar as economic freedom and initiative are part of God’s gift to
man. But these gifts can only be properly exercised, says the Pope, if
certain conditions are met: “If by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in
which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong
juridical framework that places it at the service of human freedom in its
totality, and that sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the
core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly
negative.” Without spelling out the details – which must be left to
the responsible peoples and governments in individual countries – John
Paul recapitulates the long Catholic tradition that government must
respect initiative and liberty, as well as secure justice through properly
ordered and responsible institutions. The latest
phase of Catholic social teaching focuses on the moral bases of democracy.
Given that democratic forms and market economics at the end of the
twentieth century have emerged victorious from the struggle with
communism, the crises within democracies – family breakdown,
illegitimacy, consumerism, drugs, moral relativism, environmental problems
– present some difficult challenges. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on
moral principles The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, argues that it
is only by recovering the Christian view of human freedom as the power to
do what is morally right, that free institutions such as democracy and
market economics can be saved from their own worst excesses.
See:
Augustinianism; Authority; Church and State; Common Good; Family;
Liberation Theology; Natural Law; Phenomenology; Politics; Preferential
Option for the Poor; Religious Liberty; Socialization; Social Justice;
Subsidiarity; Thomas Aquinas, Thought of; Work. Suggested
Readings: CCC 2401-2463. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church, Lumen Gentium; Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, Gaudium et Spes; Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis
Humanae. Leo XIII, On the Social Question, Rerum Novarum. Pius XI, On the
Fortieth Year, Quadragesimo Anno. Paul VI, On the Progress of Peoples,
Populorum Progressio. John Paul II, On Social Concerns, Sollicitudo Rei
Socialis; The Hundredth Year, Centesimus Annus; On Human Work, Laborem
Exercens; The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor. Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain Aspects of Liberation
Theology; Christian Freedom and Liberation. E. Fortin, “St. Augustine”
and “St. Thomas Aquinas,” in L. Strauss and J. Cropsey, eds., History
of Political Philosophy. R. and A. Carlyle, A History of Medieval
Political Theory in the West. H. Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought. R.
Charles, S.J., The Social Teaching of Vatican II. M. Novak, The Catholic
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Robert
Royal Russell
Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright ©
1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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