Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis

539 Pages·2016·3.695 MB·English

by  David J. O’Brien, Thomas A Shannon

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Copyright © 1992, 2010, 2016 by David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon
Published by Orbis Books, Box 302, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0302.
All rights reserved.
Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate copyright © 2009 and Pope Francis’s Encyclical Letter
Laudado Si’ © 2015 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana are used with permission of Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O’Brien, David J., editor. | Shannon, Thomas A. (Thomas Anthony), 1940- editor.
Title: Catholic social thought : encyclicals and documents from Pope Leo III to Pope Francis / edited by David J.
O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon.
Description: 3rd Revised Edition. | Maryknoll : Orbis Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017903 (print) | LCCN 2016028901 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626981997 | ISBN
9781608336654 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Christian sociology--Catholic Church--Papal documents. | Peace--Religious aspects--Catholic
Church. | Economics--Religious aspects--Catholic Church. | Catholic Church--United States--Bishops. |
Catholic Church--Doctrines.
Classification: LCC BX1753 .C39 2016 (print) | LCC BX1753 (ebook) | DDC 261.8088/282--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017903
We dedicate this edition with deep gratitude to all of the Women Religious of the United States,
who have done so much to make social justice a living reality.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Roman Catholic Social Teaching
Part I
The Classic Texts of Leo XIII and Pius XI
Rerum Novarum: The Condition of Labor (Leo XIII, 1891)
Introduction
Text
Quadragesimo Anno: After Forty Years (Pius XI, 1931)
Introduction
Text
Part II
Catholic Social Thought in Transition
Mater et Magistra: Christianity and Social Progress (John XXIII, 1961)
Introduction
Text
Pacem in Terris: Peace on Earth (John XXIII, 1963)
Introduction
Text
Part III
Vatican II and Post-Conciliar Catholic Social Teaching
Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Second Vatican
Council, 1965)
Introduction
Text
Populorum Progressio: On the Development of Peoples (Paul VI, 1967)
Introduction
Text
Octogesima Adveniens: A Call to Action on the Eightieth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (Paul
VI, 1971)
Introduction
Text
Justice in the World (Synod of Bishops, 1971)
Introduction
Text
Evangelii Nuntiandi: Evangelization in the Modern World (Paul VI, 1975)
Introduction
Text
Part IV
The Social Teaching of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis
Laborem Exercens: On Human Work (John Paul II, 1981)
Introduction
Text
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: On Social Concern (John Paul II, 1987)
Introduction
Text
Centesimus Annus: On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (John Paul II, 1991)
Introduction
Text
Caritas in Veritate: On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth (Benedict XVI,
2009)
Introduction
Text
Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (Francis, 2015)
Introduction
Text
Preface
Since 1978, when our previous collection of many of these documents, Renewing the Earth,
was published, a great deal has happened in the Roman Catholic Church. For one thing, Pope
John Paul II, himself now canonized, deepened the theological and cultural foundations of
Catholic social teaching. He also broadened its reach, commanding attention as he traveled the
globe, moving among the powerful and the powerless. At the same time, the pope and his curia
challenged some developments of Catholic social theology, particularly in Latin America; they
even more forcefully attempted to control the application of Catholic teaching in concrete
political contexts. Where once there was a more or less top-down character to Catholic social
teaching, as local churches and apostolic movements attempted to apply official doctrine to
specific problems, there was often sharp debate between Rome, local churches, and theologians,
about poverty and politics, about markets, economic growth, political pluralism, and many other
issues. A preferred hierarchy of social issues was promulgated along with a somewhat muted
desire for a church-confronting-culture model of social analysis. With the election of Pope
Francis and his model of the church as a field hospital, the direction of social teaching has taken
a clearer turn to a preferential option for the poor as well as an emphasis on the traditional
teaching on mercy.
The centennial of Rerum Novarum in 1991occasioned publication of a new collection of the
basic documents, including the last social encyclical of Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus.
This collection was then again updated in 2010 to include the social teachings of Benedict XVI
with his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Now, in 2016, we again update this volume to include the
letter of Pope Francis on the environment, Laudato Si’. This is the first encyclical exclusively
devoted to environmental issues and it fills a lacuna in Catholic social teaching.
Because of the length of the book—to say nothing of its weight—we have made the difficult
decision to drop the pastoral letters of the American bishops from this new edition. We explored
a variety of ways to reconfigure the book but ultimately concluded that the texts that we finally
included were classic, foundational texts and should be published in their entirety. We continue
to hope that these documents give purpose and vitality to the church in the United States as well
as to the universal church.
Introduction:
Roman Catholic Social Teaching
The year 1991 marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s
great encyclical on social questions, Rerum Novarum. Leo’s letter initially received only limited
attention in the United States, as most educated Catholics, like other Americans, found little
serious fault with the nation’s economy. Later, during the progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt
and Woodrow Wilson, a few Catholic reformers, led by John A. Ryan, drew on the encyclical to
encourage Catholic support for social reform. This effort reached its climax with the publication,
in the name of the hierarchy, of the quite radical “Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction” in
1919.
In the 1930s, when the great depression shook popular confidence in American capitalism, a
significant number of priests, religious, and lay people found support for union organizing, social
action, and New Deal politics in Catholic social teaching, now supplemented by Pope Pius XI’s
1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. Influenced by Ryan, the bishops championed the cause of
reform while America’s largely blue-collar Catholics became solid backers of unions, moderate
social welfare programs, and measured government intervention in the marketplace, what came
to be called “bread and butter” liberalism.
Nevertheless, the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI were too rigid in their theology, too
rooted in preindustrial and to some degree antidemocratic ideologies to be directly useful to
Americans, at least without the drastic shifts provided by interpreters like Ryan. With Pope Pius
XII’s endorsement of democracy and human rights, and especially with publication of Pope John
XXIII’s Mater et Magistra in 1961, that began to change. The teachings of Pope John XXIII, the
Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI, and Pope John Paul II have much in common with those
of the earlier popes, but they are informed by more flexible approaches to scripture and tradition
and by a more positive assessment of the modern world. Leo XIII and Pius XI were filled with
charity and passion for justice, but these qualities were smothered by triumphalist ecclesiology,
antidemocratic political values, and a conservative, even negative understanding of natural law.
The modern documents, in contrast, communicate a vision of the church as servant to humanity,
a renewed concern for the human person and human rights, an increasing emphasis on popular
participation, and a more open and humble acknowledgment of the historically conditioned
character of human life and consciousness. The social teachings of the modern church also
reflect the ideas and perspectives of the emerging Christian communities of the Third World.
Still somewhat European-centered, the documents are nonetheless far more universal in origin,
spirit, scope, and impact than ever before.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Catholic social teaching, like everything else Christian, begins with the person and message
of Jesus. Jesus offered no specific economic message, of course; instead, he proclaimed the
advent of the kingdom of God and the redemption of people from sin. The toil and suffering that
marked the lives of most people, especially the poor, was not the ultimate reality. There was
another, superior reality of grace and redemption, joy and love. The life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus confirmed this message and thus offered new meaning, a new vision of history and of
human possibility. That good news, carried haphazardly by a remnant of quarrelling people, gave
form and substance to humanity’s dreams in a considerable portion of the world.
Still, the turbulent life of Christ’s followers over two millennia demonstrates that his legacy
was at least ambiguous. For believers, the kingdom of God had indeed arrived, yet even the most
committed experienced its new life only imperfectly. The kingdom was present and the Holy
Spirit continued Christ’s work, yet in some sense the kingdom was not yet here but beckoned
from the future. Jesus had taught his followers to pray that God’s kingdom would come on earth,
yet he also taught that his kingdom was not of this world but somehow apart from it. Today, as in
the days following Christ’s ascension to the Father, Christians live amid the mysteries of human
life, knowing God as “through a glass darkly,” trying to live by Christ’s teachings completely,
here and now, and at the same time trying to live as responsible workers and citizens. Then as
now it is no simple matter.
The early Christian community expected the Lord to return quickly. As a result they
practiced a heroic ethic of uncompromising love, which allowed no adjustment to the demands
of worldly life. But as Christianity spread through the Mediterranean world, millennial
enthusiasm waned. With more members, the church drew closer to the society around it but kept
its zeal for equality and justice to itself. Christians cared for one another and for the Christian
poor, practicing a charity whose purpose was not to heal social wrongs but to awaken and
express a spirit of love. There was no perception that Christians could or should make a specific
contribution to the larger society. Although hope for the early arrival of the kingdom had faded,
its anticipation still separated Christians from the temptations and responsibilities of ordinary
economic and political life.
By the time Christianity became the official religion of the empire, however, its new
responsibilities had necessarily modified its earlier sectarianism. Primitive communism of
property, for example, gave eloquent testimony to the equality of all believers, but such ideas
could breed explosive social discontent. The subjection of property to religious authority and the
denunciation of the rich, as in St. Ambrose’s charge “it is greed that has engendered the rights of
property,” had to be toned down once Christianity assumed responsibility for social order.
Private property and coercive human authority, it was argued, were required by God as a
consequence of sin. Indeed, it increasingly appeared that the social order that existed had been
ordained by God, so that discontent could only arise from sinful pride and selfishness. An
organic social theory, strengthened by emerging ideas of natural law, provided a firm foundation
for the specification by the church of rules governing social and economic activity, rules adapted
to a society and economy oriented toward the efficient distribution of scarce resources.
Medieval Catholic social thought reflected this shift from a community focused on its own
expression of love to one which shared responsibility for the preservation of civilization. In the
work of St. Thomas Aquinas, Christianity found a synthesis that could embrace both the radical
demands of the primitive gospel and the pressing responsibilities of a religious establishment.
Aquinas defined society as a system of mutual exchange of services for the common good.
Society and government were part of nature, operating according to laws that reflected the
universal structure of creation. Before the fall, harmony existed among persons, nature, and God;
no laws or government were needed. After the fall, they were needed to regulate the community
and restrain evil. This understanding of society fit into a two-story model of the universe; the
first story the created world, now in a state of sin, the second the supernatural order, the goal and
fulfillment of the natural world.
Eternal law existed in the mind of God from all eternity. Natural law was the apprehension of
eternal law by human reason, in theory capable of knowing God’s will and acting on it, but in
practice flawed by sin. The state was both a punishment and a remedy for sin; it provided for the
common good, most notably by the repression of evil. The church, of divine origin, possesses
revealed truth and directs people and institutions to their final, supernatural end.
The church is therefore superior to the state; it interprets the demands of natural law and
imposes sanctions on both institutions and individuals. Some, called by God to a special
vocation, practice the heroic virtues demanded by the gospel, while church and state cooperate to
enforce more moderate, realistic moral demands on society at large.
The person thus stands at the center of two intersecting lines, the natural and supernatural,
united through the eternal and natural law and through the church and the state. On this basis
Aquinas envisioned an organically unified universe in which there were transcendent norms to
assist in understanding and evaluating human experience. There was in this universe a proper
ordering of all things and harmony within and among the several orders. Individuals occupied
particular roles or functions within a hierarchical society. They were bound to one another and to
social institutions by duties inherent in their state of life. What held society together and gave it
ethical discipline and coherence was a theory of social obligation that sprang from the very
nature of society and was related to a hierarchical universe presided over by God. Social
obligations thus took priority over individual desires and wants.
After 1100 the economy of Western Europe entered upon a period of significant expansion,
and the tension between the gospel ethic and social responsibility reappeared with renewed force.
The money economy, the growing importance of trade, and vigorous competition all challenged
the harmonious organic theories of the earlier era. Gradually, as conflicts sharpened, radical
alternatives appeared. Exponents of primitive gospel simplicity, like Francis of Assisi,
denounced the materialism of the towns and the arrogance of their merchant leaders, while
religious apologists for the new classes bent gospel injunctions and ecclesiastical prescriptions in
order to justify new economic activities. The later Middle Ages were thus a time of ferment
occasioned by the growing chasm between Christianity and economic practice. Unfortunately the
church was deeply involved in the economic developments of the era; it was an economic
institution of prime importance, encouraging trade, acquiring enormous debts, engaging itself in
trade, investment, and profit. Its theologians and religious leaders struggled to reconcile this
vigorous economic activity with the teachings of Jesus, sometimes in creative ethical
formulations, at other times in expedient compromise.
In this setting the Reformation churches arose, finding their strength in the major centers of
economic modernization. It was natural for later observers to associate Protestantism with the
supposedly new spirit of capitalism. Yet Protestantism’s social ethic represented the reawakening
of older tensions within the Christian tradition. For example, Protestantism, and especially
Calvinism, rejected completely the otherworldly asceticism of Catholic religious communities.
No one was to live as a hermit or monk, but everyone was to live a life of disciplined self-control
and mystical piety. Theirs was a worldly asceticism, carried into the marketplace, where one was
to do one’s duty to God, to family, and to community, always with the inner life oriented
completely toward God.
Similarly, the reformers creatively recovered and revised ancient Christian ideas of vocation,
or calling, and stewardship, and they did so within an understanding of Christian society that still
supposed an integration of religion and culture, church and state. Perhaps most important, one of
the major consequences of the breakup of the medieval unity of civilization was the perception
that individuals stood in an adversary relationship to the larger society, a perception which,
together with the opportunity for choice presented by contending religious factions, fostered a
deeper sense of individual autonomy and personal worth. As a result of this new perception of
the individual’s place in society, a new theory of the proper relationship between the individual
and society was needed.
This was provided over several centuries by the elaboration of contract theories of society,
the most famous associated with Hobbes and Locke. While presenting diametrically opposed
pictures of human nature, both theories emphasized individual rights as claims against society,
and both looked at the individual as the bearer of certain rights that society should not
contravene.
This articulation of a theory of rights created a major change in social ethics. On the one
hand, there was continuity with the medieval tradition in that contract theories were related to
natural law understood as articulations of the demands of a permanent and universal moral order.
On the other hand, there was discontinuity with medieval philosophy in that this theory of natural
law based itself on inalienable rights inherent in each individual, with social and political
obligations arising not from nature but from voluntary consent, even if exercised only in a
mythic past. The implication of this was that forms of social organization were mutable and
arbitrary, not dictated by the content of natural law. The value of the individual person was
enhanced, because the individual, not society, became the locus of natural law.
In medieval formulations obligation was associated with one’s state in life. In the contract
framework, obligations resulted from positive law agreed upon by individuals. This gave rise to a
situation in which there could be continual and inherent conflict between individuals and society.
Such conflicts in fact appeared, first in churches, later in society, climaxing in the modern
revolutions. For Catholics whose social thought and imagination remained grounded in
premodern assumptions about individuals and institutions, the experience was one of rebellion
against all authority, human and divine. Again and again the Catholic church faced a choice of
adapting to new ideas of individual autonomy and popular participation, and almost always it
chose to assert the need for order and hierarchy backed by a divinely constituted authority
capable of announcing and enforcing the demands of nature and nature’s God. This tension
between modernity—in religion, culture, and politics—and the Catholic church provides the
basic context for the emergence of Catholic social thought a century ago.
ON READING THE TEXTS
Introductory statements appended to the documents in this text describe how Leo XIII, faced
with new challenges posed by industrial capitalism, drew on this heritage and initiated modern
Catholic social teaching. As this historical review indicates, no element of the contemporary
church’s social teaching can be fully understood apart from the fuller body of teaching and belief
on which it draws, a teaching that from the start has been torn between sectarian idealism and
responsible moderation. To take but one example: Advocates of one or another of the modern
church’s positions on peace and human rights are often concerned primarily with the prophetic
integrity of the church’s witness and miss the broader “Catholic” dimensions of the teaching, its
century-long effort to unify the church and enable it to exert a significant influence upon society
as a whole. Critics who charge that church teaching on specific issues is too idealistic, in
contrast, often miss the need for the church to preserve its prophetic integrity, to take the risk of