Church and Social Teaching

“Curiously, interest in Catholic social teaching waned with the coming of Vatican II,” Archbishop Martino said. “Many were unhappy with the term doctrine, preferring social teaching or social reflection or social thought.

“There was the feeling in many places that the social teaching of the Church should be a form of social ethic which could be shared by people of various viewpoints, religious or not.”

A book on Catholic social teaching is not a recipe book, or a catechism old-style with a list of ready made answers to the social and political questions of the day.It presents a unified corpus of principles and criteria which draw their origin from the Gospels and which are applied to the realities of the times in order to form Christians to make their own personal responsible judgments on the best manner to stimulate the ideals proposed by the Gospel in contemporary culture.

Catholic social doctrine does not take away the risk of politics, but it aims to provide an injection of purpose, idealism, integrity and truthfulness into the way politics is carried out.

The social teaching of the Church is an admirable instrument for community formation. The Compendium is too important a document to be usurped by episcopal commissions or professional Church bureaucrats.

There is a sense in which the real ‘translation’ of any social encyclical or any document of the social teaching of the Church is written not by professional interpreters, but by the action of Christian laypeople in the world — who try, day by day, to apply these principles in their life and commitment.

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is an asset, it reminds us of the tremendous value of the social teaching of the Church and the deep ancient wells from which it springs.

Rodger Charles, S.J., wrote the single best expression of the social teaching of the Church in its entirety and he makes it clear that it is a teaching with a history that began with Genesis.

His two-volume work was published in Great Britain in 1998, Christian Social Witness and Teaching: The Catholic Tradition from Genesis to Centesimus Annus (Volume 1) & (Volume 2) The Modern Social Teaching Contexts: Summaries: Analysis.

An excerpt: “Like the Old Testament, the New spoke of man made in God’s image, but now he was in a new relationship with God, taken up into Christ and therefore into the life of God himself. The parable of the vine and the branches (John 15: 5-6) brings this out. St. Paul extended this parallel using the example of the human body. It is made up of many parts but is none the less one body; so it is with Christ’s mystical body, the Church. ‘In one spirit we were baptized, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens’ (1 Cor.12:12-30, Rom. 12: 4-8, Eph. 4: 11-13).

“The kingdom, then, is vivified by the life of Christ, and his Church is its first budding forth on earth, though potentially it embraces all mankind. The Gospel which united man to his God therefore was also a Gospel of solidarity and brotherhood. It encourages its citizens toward mutual association and these characteristics of its history are not accidental. There is a natural instinct which draws mankind to mutual co-operation; he is a social being. But membership of the Church raises the social connection of human beings from the sphere of convention to that of moral obligation.

“Charity among men, as a duty stemming from love of God, follows; the parable of the Good Samaritan and its practical implications demonstrate this most fully. (Luke 10: 29-37). Christ was talking about solidarity with his suffering brethren whoever they are, not only those of the Jews. ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me…’ (Matt. 25: 35-46). This new aspect of the theology of benevolence has been the basis of Christian works of charity in which the Church has been outstanding from the earliest times. In the long term, and peacefully, this kingdom, purely spiritual and moral though it was, was to exercise immense influence on earth, precisely because it did not seek access to direct political power. This is the paradox of the kingdom of God in terms of the social order, of ethics and civil society. There was in the Gospel a message of solidarity and brotherhood, an impulse to mutual association which was not accidental or peripheral to it. It spiritualized all that was best in man’s social nature, the impulse that draws us to one another and endows what had been simple social convention with the character of moral obligation.

“It does this through the grace of Christ. He is the vine, we are the branches. The human race, human society, is bound up into his mystical body—which is not only the Church, though it is the Church primarily; secondarily but no less really it is all mankind, whether mankind knows it or not. There is in us a supernatural life, and through us as social beings that life permeates human society also. This bond between men is capable of being stronger than any merely human bond. It should bind us together from the time we come into human society through the most basic of its forms, the family. It should teach us that man is more to be valued for what he is than for what he has, to protect the poor and defend their rights and dignity. It should enable the rich to use their riches for God’s glory and the service of others as well as for their own honest enjoyment, and warns of the spiritual dangers wealth can bring.

“If we let it, it provides in sum the principles and ideals on which a healthy human society can be based; it exhorts us to pray that the kingdom will come on earth and that the Father’s will be done here as it is in heaven, and through grace it gives us the power to do this. Fulfilled as it will be only in eternity, the kingdom none the less begins on earth and helps inspire human society to charity and justice. It secures for us the means to self-giving because the Christ in whose life we live gave himself of us. It bases human rights on man’s dignity as made in God’s image and likeness, and it establishes human freedom in the context of the divine and natural laws which alone can ensure the true happiness and fulfillment which men and women seek.” (Volume 1, pp. 32-33)

INTRODUCTION

AN INTEGRAL AND SOLIDARY HUMANISM

a. At the dawn of the Third Millennium
b. The significance of this document
c. At the service of the full truth about man
d. In the sign of solidarity, respect and love

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE
GOD’S PLAN OF LOVE FOR HUMANITY

I. GOD’S LIBERATING ACTION IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
a. God’s gratuitous presence
b. The principle of creation and God’s gratuitous action

II. JESUS CHRIST, THE FULFILMENT OF THE FATHER’S PLAN OF LOVE
a. In Jesus Christ the decisive event of the history of God with mankind is fulfilled
b. The revelation of Trinitarian love

III. THE HUMAN PERSON IN GOD’S PLAN OF LOVE
a. Trinitarian love, the origin and goal of the human person
b. Christian salvation: for all people and the whole person
c. The disciple of Christ as a new creation
d. The transcendence of salvation and the autonomy of earthly realities

IV. GOD’S PLAN AND THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH
a. The Church, sign and defender of the transcendence of the human person
b. The Church, the Kingdom of God and the renewal of social relations
c. New heavens and a new earth
d. Mary and her “fiat” in God’s plan of love

CHAPTER TWO
THE CHURCH’S MISSION AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE

I. EVANGELIZATION AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE
a. The Church, God’s dwelling place with men and women
b. Enriching and permeating society with the Gospel
c. Social doctrine, evangelization and human promotion
d. The rights and duties of the Church

II. THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH’S SOCIAL DOCTRINE
a. Knowledge illuminated by faith
b. In friendly dialogue with all branches of knowledge
c. An expression of the Church’s ministry of teaching
d. For a society reconciled in justice and love
e. A message for the sons and daughters of the Church and for humanity
f. Under the sign of continuity and renewal