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Catholic social teaching

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   Catholic social teaching
   Neo-Calvinism · Neo-Thomism
   Important Documents

   Rerum Novarum (1891)
   Stone Lectures ( Princeton 1898)
   Graves de Communi Re (1901)
   Quadragesimo Anno (1931)
   Laborem Exercens (1981)
   Sollicitudi Rei Socialis (1987)
   Centesimus Annus (1991)
   Important Figures

   Thomas Aquinas · John Calvin
   Pope Leo XIII · Abraham Kuyper
   Maritain · Adenauer · De Gasperi
   Pope Pius XI · Schuman
   Pope John Paul II · Kohl
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   Catholic social teaching comprises those aspects of Catholic doctrine
   which relate to matters dealing with the collective aspect of humanity.
   The foundations of modern Catholic social teaching are widely
   considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter
   Rerum Novarum.

   A distinctive feature of Catholic social teaching is its concern for
   the poorest members of society. This concern echoes elements of the
   Jewish law and of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, and recalls
   the teachings of Jesus Christ recorded in the New Testament, such as
   his declaration that "whatever you have done for one of these least
   brothers of mine, you have done for me." Another distinctive feature of
   Catholic social doctrine is the way in which it has consistently
   critiqued modern social and political ideologies both of the left and
   of the right: Communism, Socialism, liberalism, capitalism and Nazism
   have all been condemned, at least in their pure forms, by the Popes at
   one time or another.

Key themes

   The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has identified seven
   key themes of Catholic Social Teaching:

Life and dignity of the human person

   The foundational principle of all Catholic Social Teaching is the
   sanctity of human life and the inherent dignity of the human person.
   Human life must be valued infinitely above material possessions. Pope
   John Paul II wrote and spoke extensively on the topic of the
   inviolability of human life in his watershed encyclical, Evangelium
   Vitae, (Latin for "The Gospel of Life").

   Acts considered attacks and affronts to human life include abortion,
   euthanasia, and every other deliberate taking of life, and must always
   be opposed. In the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on
   the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, it is written that
   “from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the
   greatest care ."

   War and the death penalty must almost always be opposed, the former
   being guided by the principles of just war doctrine and the latter may
   only be employed when "this is the only practicable way to defend the
   lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor." Both must
   always be a last resort. In addition, each human, being made in the
   image and likeness of God, has an inherent dignity that must always be
   respected. Every human person "is called to a fullness of life which
   far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it
   consists in sharing the very life of God." Racism and other forms of
   discrimination must then always be opposed.

Call to family, community, and participation

   Immediately after forming Adam the "LORD God said: "It is not good for
   the man to be alone.". The Church teaches that man is now not only a
   sacred but also a social animal and that families are the first and
   most basic units of a society. Together families form communities,
   communities a state and together all across the world each human is
   part of the human family. How these communities organize themselves
   politically, economically and socially is thus of the highest
   importance. Each institution must be judged by how much it enhances, or
   is a detriment to, the life and dignity of human persons.

   Catholic Social Teaching opposes collectivist approaches such as
   Communism but at the same time it also rejects unrestricted
   laissez-faire policies and the notion that a free market automatically
   produces justice. The state has a positive moral role to play as no
   society will achieve a just and equitable distribution of resources
   with a totally free market. All people have a right to participate in
   the economic, political, and cultural life of society and under the
   principle of subsidiarity state functions should be carried out at the
   lowest level that is practical.

Rights and responsibilities

   Every person has a fundamental right to life and to the necessities of
   life. In addition, every human has the right to what is required to
   live a full and decent life, things such as employment, health care,
   and education.

   The Church supports private property and teaches that “every man has by
   nature the right to possess property as his own." The right to private
   property is not absolute, however, and is limited by the concept of the
   social mortgage. It is theoretically moral and just for its members to
   destroy property used in an evil way by others, or for the state to
   redistribute wealth from those who have unjustly hoarded it.

Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable

   Jesus taught that on the Day of Judgement God will ask what each of us
   did to help the poor and needy: "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
   for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me."

   Through our words, prayers and deeds we must show solidarity with, and
   compassion for, the poor. When instituting public policy we must always
   keep the "preferential option for the poor" at the forefront of our
   minds. The moral test of any society is "how it treats its most
   vulnerable members. The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the
   conscience of the nation. We are called to look at public policy
   decisions in terms of how they affect the poor."

Dignity of work and the rights of workers

   Society must pursue economic justice and the economy must serve people,
   not the other way around. Workers have a right to work, to earn a
   living wage, and to form trade unions to protect their interests. All
   workers have a right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, and
   to safe working conditions.

   Workers must "fully and faithfully" perform the work they have agreed
   to do and employers must not "look upon their work people as their
   bondsmen, but... respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled
   by Christian character."

Solidarity

   Solidarity "is a Christian virtue. It seeks to go beyond itself to
   total gratuity, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It leads to a new
   vision of the unity of humankind, a reflection of God's triune intimate
   life...." It is a unity that binds members of a group together.

   All the peoples of the world belong to one human family. We must be our
   brother's keeper, though we may be separated by distance, language or
   culture. Jesus teaches that we must each love our neighbors as
   ourselves and in the parable of the Good Samaritan we see that our
   compassion should extend to all people.

   Solidarity at the international level primarily concerns the Global
   South. For example, the Church has habitually insisted that loans be
   forgiven on many occasions, particularly during Jubilee years. Charity
   to individuals or groups must be accompanied by transforming unjust
   structures.

Care for God's creation

   Stewardship of creation: The world's goods are available for humanity
   to use only under a " social mortgage" which carries with it the
   responsibility to protect the environment. The "goods of the earth are
   gifts from God, and they are intended by God for the benefit of
   everyone." Man was given dominion over all creation, but in return must
   be a good steward of the gifts God has given him. We cannot use and
   abuse the natural resources God has given us with a destructive
   consumer mentality.

History

           Key Documents
        Rerum Novarum (1891)

   Quadragesimo Anno (1931)

   Mater et Magistra (1961)

   Pacem in Terris (1963)

   Gaudium et Spes (1965)

   Populorum Progressio (1967)

   Solicitudo Rei Socialis (1987)

   Centesimus Annus (1991)
            Key Figures
              Leo XIII

   Dorothy Day

   Oscar Romero

   Pope John Paul II

   Joseph Bernardin

   The principles of Catholic social teaching, though in most cases far
   older in origin, first began to be combined together into a system in
   the late nineteenth century. Since then, successive popes have added to
   and developed the Church's body of social teaching, principally through
   the medium of encyclical letters.

Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno

   On May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued his seminal encyclical Rerum
   Novarum, subtitled "On Capital and Labor". In this document, Leo set
   out the Catholic Church's response to the social instability and labor
   conflict that had arisen in the wake of industrialization and had led
   to the rise of socialism. The Pope taught that the role of the State is
   to promote social justice through the protection of rights, while the
   Church must speak out on social issues in order to teach correct social
   principles and ensure class harmony. He restated the Church's
   long-standing teaching regarding the crucial importance of private
   property rights, but recognised, in one of the best-known passages of
   the encyclical, that the free operation of market forces must be
   tempered by moral considerations:

          Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and
          in particular let them agree freely as to the wages;
          nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more
          imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man,
          namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a
          frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or
          fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions
          because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he
          is made the victim of force and injustice.

   Rerum Novarum is remarkable for its vivid depiction of the plight of
   the nineteenth-century urban poor and for its condemnation of
   unrestricted capitalism. Among the remedies it prescribed were the
   formation of trade unions and the introduction of collective
   bargaining, particularly as an alternative to state intervention. Rerum
   Novarum also recognized that the poor have a special status in
   consideration of social issues: the modern Catholic principle of the
   "preferential option for the poor" and the notion that God is on the
   side of the poor found their first expression in this document.

   Forty years after Rerum Novarum, and more than a year into the Great
   Depression, Pope Pius XI issued Quadragesimo Anno, subtitled "On
   Reconstruction of the Social Order". Released on May 15 of 1931, this
   encyclical expanded on Rerum Novarum, noting the positive effect of the
   earlier document but pointing out that the world had changed
   significantly since Pope Leo's time. Pius XI reiterated Leo's defence
   of private property rights and collective bargaining, and repeated his
   contention that blind economic forces cannot create a just society on
   their own:

          Just as the unity of human society cannot be founded on an
          opposition of classes, so also the right ordering of economic
          life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from
          this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and
          spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching.
          Destroying through forgetfulness or ignorance the social and
          moral character of economic life, it held that economic life
          must be considered and treated as altogether free from and
          independent of public authority, because in the market, i.e., in
          the free struggle of competitors, it would have a principle of
          self direction which governs it much more perfectly than would
          the intervention of any created intellect. But free competition,
          while justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within
          certain limits, clearly cannot direct economic life...

   Quadragesimo Anno also supported state intervention to mediate
   labor-management conflicts (a reference to the economic system which
   Mussolini was attempting to establish in Italy at the time), and
   introduced the concept of subsidiarity into Catholic thought.

   One question which had occupied some Catholics prior to Quadragesimo
   Anno was whether Leo XIII's condemnation of radical left-wing politics
   in Rerum Novarum extended only to outright Communism or whether it
   included milder forms of Socialism as well. Pius made it clear that
   non-communistic Socialism was included in the condemnation. The
   Catholic Church thus marked out a distinctive position for itself
   between free-market capitalism on the right and statist Socialism on
   the left.

Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council

   Further development came in the post-World War II period when attention
   turned to the problems of social and economic development and
   international relations. On May 15, 1961 Pope John XXIII released Mater
   et Magistra, subtitled "Christianity and Social Progress". This
   encyclical expanded the Church's social doctrine to cover the relations
   between rich and poor nations, examining the obligation of rich
   countries to assist poor countries while respecting their particular
   cultures. It includes an examination of the threat of global economic
   imbalances to world peace. On April 11, 1963, Pope John expanded
   further on this in Pacem in Terris (Latin for "Peace on Earth"), the
   first encyclical addressed to both Catholics and non-Catholics. In it,
   the Pope linked the establishment of world peace to the laying of a
   foundation consisting of proper rights and responsibilities between
   individuals, social groups, and states from the local to the
   international level. He exhorted Catholics to understand and apply the
   social teachings:

          Once again we exhort our people to take an active part in public
          life, and to contribute towards the attainment of the common
          good of the entire human family as well as to that of their own
          country. They should endeavor, therefore, in the light of the
          Faith and with the strength of love, to ensure that the various
          institutions--whether economic, social, cultural or political in
          purpose -- should be such as not to create obstacles, but rather
          to facilitate or render less arduous people's perfectioning of
          themselves both in the natural order as well as in the
          supernatural.

   This document, issued at the height of the Cold War also included a
   denunciation of the nuclear arms race and a call for strengthening the
   United Nations.

   It was Pope John XIII who convened the Second Vatican Council, which
   considered a wide variety of topics in its four sessions from 1962 to
   1965, and which was presided over by Pope Paul VI after Pope John's
   death in 1963. The primary conciliar document concerning social
   teachings is Gaudium et Spes, the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church
   and the Modern World", which is considered one of the chief
   accomplishments of the Council. Unlike earlier documents, this is an
   expression of all the bishops, and covers a wide range of issues of the
   relationship of social concerns and Christian action. Fundamentally,
   this document asserts the fundamental dignity of each human being, and
   declares the Church's solidarity with both those who suffer, and those
   who would comfort the suffering:

          The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the
          people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way
          afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and
          anxieties of the followers of Christ.

   Other conciliar documents such as Dignitatis Humanae concerning
   religious freedom have important applications to the social teachings.

Pope Paul VI

   Like his predecessor, Pope Paul VI gave attention to the disparities in
   wealth and development between the industrialised West and the Third
   World:

          There can be no progress towards the complete development of
          individuals without the simultaneous development of all humanity
          in the spirit of solidarity.

   Released on March 26, 1967, Populorum Progressio, (Latin for "The
   Development of Peoples"), asserts that free international trade alone
   is not adequate to correct these disparities and supports the role of
   international oirganizations in addressing this need. Pope Paul called
   on rich nations to meet their moral obligation to poor nations,
   pointing out the relationship between development and peace. The
   intention of the Church is not to take sides, but to be an advocate for
   basic human dignity:

          Experienced in human affairs, the Church ... "seeks but a
          solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ Himself under
          the lead of the befriending Spirit." ... But, since the Church
          lives in history, she ought to "scrutinize the signs of the
          times and interpret them in the light of the Gospel." Sharing
          the noblest aspirations of men and women and suffering when she
          sees them not satisfied, she wishes to help them attain their
          full flowing, and that is why she offers all people what she
          possesses as her characteristic attribute: a global vision of
          man and of the human race.

   The May 1971 apostolic letter Octogesima Adveniens addressed the
   challenge of urbanization and urban poverty and stresssed the personal
   responsiblity of Christians to respond to injustice. For the tenth
   anniversary of the Second Vatican Council Pope Paul issued Evangelii
   Nuntiandi, (Latin for "Evangelization in the Modern World") ( October
   26, 1975). In it he asserts that combating injustice is an essential
   part of evangelizing modern peoples.

Pope John Paul II and the new millennium

   John Paul II, who was elected to the papacy in 1978, continued his
   predecessors' work of developing the body of Catholic social doctrine.
   Of particular importance was his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens.

          On one hand there is a growing moral sensitivity alert to the
          value of every individual as a human being without any
          distinction of race, nationality, religion, political opinion,
          or social class. On the other hand these proclamations are
          contradicted in practice. How can these solemn affirmations be
          reconciled with the widespread attacks on human life and the
          refusal to accept those who are weak, needy, elderly, or just
          conceived? These attacks go directly against respect for
          life;they threaten the very meaning of democratic coexistence,
          and our cities risk becoming societies of people who are
          rejected, marginalized, uprooted, and oppressed, instead of
          communities of "people living together."

   While not endorsing any particular political agenda, the Church holds
   that this teaching applies in the public (political) realm, not only
   the private.

   Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has argued that John
   Paul II was significantly more friendly towards capitalism than Paul
   VI, an attitude that she attributed to his experience of Communism in
   Poland. Certain other discontinuities between the different Popes'
   approaches to social questions may perhaps be discerned: for example,
   Prof. Eamon Duffy has argued that Leo XIII's successor, Pope Pius X,
   retreated somewhat from the position articulated in Rerum Novarum. On
   the other hand, the general development of Catholic social teaching
   since the nineteenth century has been consistent and evolutionary, with
   the Church continuing both to insist upon the importance of the ethical
   dimension of social and political action and to critique ideologies of
   the left and of the right, from Communism to Laissez-faire, which it
   judges not to conform with the requirements of Christian morality.

   Christian Democracy, a political movement in numerous European
   countries, took the social and political principles taught by the Popes
   as its main agenda. Catholic principles have also influenced many other
   political movements in varying degrees throughout the Christian world,
   even in non-Catholic nations.

Encyclical letters of the Catholic Social Teaching tradition

     * Rerum Novarum (1891)
     * Quadragesimo Anno (1931)
     * Mater et Magistra (1961)
     * Pacem in Terris (1963)
     * Populorum Progressio (1967)
     * Laborem Exercens (1981)
     * Solicitudo Rei Socialis (1987)
     * Evangelium Vitae (1995)
     * Centesimus Annus (1991)

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