Catholic Social Teaching Principles

Theology 3: Christian Vision of the Church in Society: Modern Social Teachings of the Church (RN-LS)

• The course covers the Church's modern social teachings.
• Questions raised include how the Church fulfills its mission as a herald and how the social teachings of the Church developed.
• The study requires grounding the lesson in real-life situations, acknowledging prior beliefs and questions, and addressing current issues and realities.
• Research is encouraged, involving different perspectives and approaches from various disciplines.
• A YouTube video is linked for further study (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ORAKULel4).

Social Justice

• Social justice is the exercise of God-given individual rights in relation to common welfare.
• The Church defines social justice as applying God's law to present-day economic and social conditions to achieve its primary objective of sanctifying and saving humanity.

Social Role of the Church based on Social Encyclicals

• The Church's social teachings are a rich treasure of wisdom for building a just society and living a life of holiness amidst modern challenges.
• Modern Catholic social teachings are articulated through papal, conciliar, and episcopal documents.

What is an Encyclical?

• An encyclical is a letter, usually from the Pope, addressing Catholic bishops or the world on aspects of Catholic doctrine.
• It may address a particular region or the entire world.
• Encyclicals often have a broad audience.

Social Role of the Church based on Social Encyclicals

• The Church has the right to speak out on issues affecting religion, morality, moral, and social issues.
• The Church can reconcile and unify social classes through the use of Gospel principles and educate people to act justly.
• Individual Christians should advance civil institutions, human dignity, and unity between peoples, given their shared earthly situation and the need for justice.

Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 1891 (Of New Things)

• Context: The Industrial Revolution led to the exploitation of workers.
• Message: A first comprehensive document on social justice, defending workers' rights based on natural law.
• Rights: Work, private property, just wage, worker associations.
• Other Themes: Property issues and inequalities among people.
• Wage and Protection of Workers: Wages regulated by free consent, but the government can intervene to avoid injustice. Employers' duty is just treatment of all workers.
• Solidarity and Workers' Unions: Supporting workers' unions as legitimate expressions of natural rights and criticizing state suppression of unions.

Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931 (The Fortieth Year)

• Context: Fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum; Great Depression; dictatorships growing in Europe.
• Message: States need to reform greedy capitalist systems, reject violence and abolish communism, emphasize the interdependence of labor and capital, urge international cooperation, and establish the principle of subsidiarity.
• Themes: Economic dictators refer to powerful monopolies and powerful states like the U.S. which dictated the global economy, questioning its hypocritically as an economic dictator, questioning the totalitarianism governments of Europe.

John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, 1961 (Mother and Teacher)

• Context: Technological development in developed nations amid poverty in the Third World, the Cold War, the rivalry between the US and USSR, the arms race, and the space race.
• Message: Disparity between rich and poor nations must be addressed, the arms race contributes to poverty, and rich nations must help poor ones, respecting their cultural differences, and nations are interdependent and need to cooperate.
• Themes: Focus on the agricultural sector, balanced industrial and agricultural production, cooperation among nations, and socialization.

John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 1963 (Peace on Earth)

• Context: Two years after Mater et Magistra; the height of the Cold War; the Berlin Wall; the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• Message: Peace requires social rights and responsibilities, recognizing women's rights, and addressing the arms race and the need for a stronger United Nations.
• Themes: The importance of moral order in the context of peace, order between individuals, individuals and governments, and order between states.

John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 1981 (On Human Work)

• Context: High unemployment and exploitation of migrant workers.
• Message: Work is part of human vocation and dignity. Decent wages, rights, benefits and worker's rights must be assured. Work must serve the family and steps to ensure disabled can participate in dignified work.
• Themes: Objective and subjective components of work, a warning against economism, and the roles of indirect employers, family wage, worker's unions, and spirituality of work.

John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, 1987 (On Social Concern)

• Context: Global economic issues including debt, unemployment, recession that affected many countries.
• Message: Critiques the economic gap between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, East-West tensions, consumerism and waste, and international trade practices that negatively impact developing nations, also questioning the increasing tendency for states to conflate the problems of demographic growth with the conditions of underdevelopment.
• Themes: Superdevelopment and Underdevelopment which recalls the immorality of the extreme gap between the rich and the poor, and reiteration of the option for the poor.

John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991 (The Hundredth Year)

• Context: Centenary of Rerum Novarum; Collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
• Message: Critiques the atheistic view of humanity in communism, supports the free market, and warns against consumerism.
• Themes: The new things of today (oppositions between socialist and liberal capitalism) and subsidiarity and solidarity.

Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 2009 (Charity in Truth)

• Context: The Worldwide economic crisis, centered on the financial institutions.
• Message: True human development has roots in respect for the common good, religious freedom, and the sanctity of human life. An economy based on communion, and not on profit is necessary to overcome the economic and financial crisis.
• Themes: Phenomenon of globalization and Promoting the Logic of Gift and the Principle of Gratuitousness.

Francis I, Laudato Si, 2014 (“Mi Signore”, Praise be to you, my Lord)

• Context: Warning against neglect of environment.
• Message: Denounces the harms that contemporary society causes to the environment; humanity's propensity for short-term gains, and the danger of our negligence toward the environment. Our duty is caretakers of this world.