The Roots of Catholic Social Justice Teachings:

1
The Roots of Catholic Social Justice Teachings
Franciscan Sisters of Chicago Social Justice
Committee 2007

• An historical overview

2
The Prophetic Tradition

• The Spirit of our God is upon me anointing me
  and sending me to bring glad tidings to the
  poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery
  of sight to the blind and release to prisoners.
  To announce a year of favor from our God.
• LUKE 418

3
1878-1903 Pope Leo XIII

• Leos election changed the course of the papacy.
  He was a modern man of his times, and he worked,
  by preaching and writing, to bring Catholic
  attitudes into the modern world without losing
  it's core. He managed to end Kulturkampf in 1887.
  He tried to bring French Catholics to support the
  republic.

4
1878-1903 Pope Leo XIII

• His 1885 encyclical Immortale Dei explained the
  position of Catholics as citizens in modern
  secular, democratic states.
• He refuted the French royalists' claim that they
  were exceptional Catholics, and the French
  anti-Catholics contention that the Church was
  politically reactionary overall he supported and
  vindicated Catholic democrats.
• He opposed the anti-Catholic government of Italy.

5
1878-1903 Pope Leo XIII

• In Rerum novarum in 1891, Leo explained the sad
  deficiencies of Marxism and gave an early warning
  of the misery it would inflict on the world.
• He countered intellectual attacks on Christianity
  by advancing Thomism, with its insistence that
  there is no conflict between science and faith
  he wrote Aeterni Patris in 1879 in which he
  declared the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas
  official, and required its study. He founded the
  institute of Thomistic philosophy at the
  University of Louvain.

6
1878-1903 Pope Leo XIII

• He opened the Vatican secret archives to
  scholars, and reminded Catholic historians that
  nothing but the whole truth must be found in
  their work.
• He encouraged Bible study, set up the permanent
  Biblical Commission in 1902, and sponsored the
  Catholic University at Washington, DC, USA.
• First pope to have his voice recorded.
• The length of his reign, over 25 years, allowed
  him to stock the college of cardinals with many
  excellent men he created 147 of them.

7
1891 Rerum Novarum

• RERUM NOVARUM
• Lays out rights and responsibilities of capital
  and labor
• Describes proper role of government
• Condemns atheistic socialism

8
RERUM NOVARUM

• Paragraph 19 The great mistake to take up with
  the notion that class is naturally hostile to
  class, and that the wealthy and the working men
  are intended by nature to live in mutual
  conflict. So irrational and so false is this view
  that the direct contrary is the truth.

9
RERUM NOVARUM

• Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the
  result of the suitable arrangement of the
  different parts of the body, so in a State is it
  ordained by nature that these two classes should
  dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain
  the balance of the body politic.

10
RERUM NOVARUM

• Each needs the other capital cannot do without
  labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual
  agreement results in the beauty of good order,
  while perpetual conflict necessarily produces
  confusion and savage barbarity.

11
RERUM NOVARUM

• Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in
  uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian
  institutions is marvellous and manifold.

12
RERUM NOVARUM

• First of all, there is no intermediary more
  powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the
  interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and
  the working class together, by reminding each of
  its duties to the other, and especially of the
  obligations of justice.

13
RERUM NOVARUM

• Paragraph 20 Of these duties, the following
  bind the proletarian and the worker
• fully and faithfully to perform the work which
  has been freely and equitably agreed upon
• never to injure the property, nor to outrage the
  person, of an employer
• never to resort to violence in defending their
  own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder
• and to have nothing to do with men of evil
  principles, who work upon the people with artful
  promises of great results, and excite foolish
  hopes which usually end in useless regrets and
  grievous loss.

14
RERUM NOVARUM

• The following duties bind the wealthy owner and
  the employer
• not to look upon their work people as their
  bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity
  as a person ennobled by Christian character.
• working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to
  a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable
  livelihood
• but to misuse men as though they were things in
  the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for
  their physical powers - that is truly shameful
  and inhuman.
• Again justice demands that, in dealing with the
  working man, religion and the good of his soul
  must be kept in mind.

15
RERUM NOVARUM

• Hence, the employer is bound to see
• that the worker has time for his religious
  duties
• that he be not exposed to corrupting influences
  and dangerous occasions and that he be not led
  away to neglect his home and family, or to
  squander his earnings.
• Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work
  people beyond their strength, or employ them in
  work unsuited to their sex and age.
• His great and principal duty is to give every one
  what is just.

16
RERUM NOVARUM

• Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are
  fair, many things have to be considered but
  wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be
  mindful of this - that to exercise pressure upon
  the indigent and the destitute for the sake of
  gain, and to gather one's profit out of the need
  of another, is condemned by all laws, human and
  divine.

17
RERUM NOVARUM

• To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a
  great crime which cries to the avenging anger of
  Heaven. "Behold, the hire of the laborers...
  which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth
  and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of
  the Lord of Sabaoth."(6)

18
RERUM NOVARUM

• Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from
  cutting down the workmen's earnings, whether by
  force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing
• and with all the greater reason because the
  laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected,
  and because his slender means should in
  proportion to their scantiness be accounted
  sacred.

19
RERUM NOVARUM

• Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed
  out, would they not be sufficient of themselves
  to keep under all strife and all its causes?

20
1922-1939 Pope Pius XI

• Pius's pontificate, like his pre-papal career,
  was marked by great Papal legate to Poland in
  1918 put the Church on good terms with the
  Polish government, and made some inroads with the
  Bolsheviks in Russia.
• He openly opposed the youth activities of Fascist
  governments, and he finally published the papal
  letter Non abbiamo bisogno in 1931 it showed one
  could not be both Fascist and Catholic. Relations
  between Mussolini and the Holy See deteriorated.

21
1922-1939 Pope Pius XI

• Pius denounced the Nazi government and Nazi
  theory in Mit brennender Sorge in 1937.
• Soon after, he issued the analysis On Atheistic
  Communism, denounced persecutions in Russia,
  Mexico, and Spain, and was on unusually good
  terms with England, Holland, and France.

22
1922-1939 Pope Pius XI

• Pius XI spoke out against
• nationalism
• racism
• anti-Semitism
• totalitarianism
• He established the new feast of Christ the King
  to recall the rights of religion in the state.

23
1922-1939 Pope Pius XI

• Pope Pius XI thought little of laissez-faire
  capitalism, and urged social reform in the 1931
  encyclical Quadragesimo anno.
• He called for greater participation by the laity,
  a movement he called Catholic Action.
• He supported missionary work, but wanted to
  integrate Christianity with native cultures
  instead of making them European.

24

• To protect Eastern rite Catholics from Latin
  influence, Pope Pius XI
• augmented their congregation,
• established a commission to study their canon
  law,
• exhorted Western Catholics to embrace their
  brothers of the various Eastern rites.

25
Quadragesimo Anno

• QUADRAGESIMO ANNO
• Decries the effects of greed and concentrated
  economic power on working people and society
• Proposes a society based on subsidiarity

26
1958-1963 Pope John XXIII

• Pope John XXIII held office for only 5 years
• He had spent 25 years as a papal diplomat for
  Bulgaria, Turkey and France, and six years as
  archbishop of Venice, not being elected pope
  until he was 77.
• Pope John XXIII is perhaps best known for
  convening the second ecumencial council at the
  Vatican, known as Vatican II.

27
1958-1963 Pope John XXIII

• Vatican II is that it differed from previous
  councils in a very important manner.
• Earlier councils were typically convened in order
  to correct some popular doctrinal error.
• He envisaged a council
• which would positive instead of negative.
• which promoted mercy, faith and the pastoral role
  of the church rather than simply strict adherence
  to a new statement of orthodoxy.

28
1958-1963 Pope John XXIII

• He even went so far as to label Vatican II a "new
  Pentecost
• His vision of it as a new beginning
• The role which the Holy Spirit played in his
  religious life and in his religious style.
• For John, Christianity was not simply a matter of
  legalisms and doctrines but rather a way of
  living in communion with the love of God. This
  was an important reason for why he became so
  popular among Catholics.

29
1961 Pope John XXIII

• MATER ET MAGISTRA
• Deplores widening gap between rich and poor
  nations, arms race and plight of farmers
• Calls Christians to work for a more just world

30
1963 Pope John XXIII

• PACEM IN TERRIS
• Affirms full range of human rights as the basis
  for peace
• Calls for disarmament and a world-wide public
  authority to promote universal common good

31
1963 Pope John XXIII

• Beginning our discussion of the rights of the
  human person, we see that everyone has the right
  to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means
  which are suitable for the proper development of
  life these are primarily food, clothing,
  shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the
  necessary social services. (PACEM IN TERRIS,
  11)

32
1965 Vatican Council

• GAUDIUM ET SPES
• Laments growing world poverty and threat of
  nuclear war
• States responsibility of Christians to work for
  structures to make a more just and peaceful world

33
1963-1978 Pope Paul VI

• As Pope, Paul continued the reforms of John
  XXIII. He reconvened the Second Vatican Council,
  and supervised implementations of many of its
  reforms, such as the vernacularization and reform
  of the liturgy.
• He instituted an international synod of bishops
  bishops were instructed to set up councils of
  priests in their own dioceses.
• Powers of dispensation devolved from the Roman
  Curia onto the bishops, rules on fasting and
  abstinence were relaxed, and some restrictions on
  intermarriage were lifted.
• A commission to revise canon law revision was
  established.

34
1963-1978 Pope Paul VI

• In 1964, Paul made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land
  and became the first pope in over 150 years to
  leave Italy
• India in 1964
• United States in 1965
• Africa in 1969
• Southeast Asia in 1970
• Relations between the Vatican and the Communists
  improved, and Communist leaders visited the
  Vatican for the first time.

35
1963-1978 Pope Paul VI

• Paul met with leaders of other churches, and in
  1969 addressed the World Council of Churches, and
  limited doctrinal agreements were reached with
  the Anglicans and Lutherans.
• He enlarged the college of cardinals, and added
  cardinals from third world countries.

36
1967 Pope Paul VI

• POPULORUM PROGRESSO
• Affirms right of poor nations to full human
  development
• Decries economic structures promoting inequality
• Calls for new international organizations and
  agreements

37
1971 Pope Paul VI

• OCTOGESIMA ADVENIENS
• Calls for political action for economic justice
• Develops the role of individual Christians and
  local churches in responding to unjust situations

38
1971 Synod of Bishops

• JUSTICE IN THE WORLD
• Names action for justice a constituent part of
  being a Christian
• Calls the church to model the justice she preaches

39
1975 Pope Paul VI

• EVANGELII NUNTIANDI
• Notes the dramatic societal changes and their
  challenges to the church
• Calls evangelization the transforming of all
  aspects of life from within

40
1979 Pope John Paul II

• REDEMPTOR HOMINIS
• Describes the treats to human dignity and freedom
• States that current economic and political
  structures are inadequate to remedy injustice

41
1981 Pope John Paul II

• LABOREM EXCERCENS
• Affirms the dignity of work based on the dignity
  of the worker
• Calls for workplace justice as a responsibility
  of society, employer, worker

42
1986 National Conference of Catholic Bishops

• ECONOMIC JUSTICE FOR ALL CATHOLIC SOCIAL
  JUSTICE TEACHING AND THE U.S. ECONOMY
• Applies the major principles of Catholic social
  teaching to the structure of the United States
  economy
• Provides a moral perspective on the economy and
  assesses the economys impact on people who are
  poor

43
1987 Pope John Paul II

• SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS
• Names East-West blocs and other structures of
  sin which hinder the development of poor nations
• Calls for solidarity and for an option for the
  poor by affluent nations

44
1991 Pope John Paul II

• CENTESIMUS ANNO
• Reaffirms principles of Rerum Novarum
• Identifies failures of both socialist and market
  economies
• Calls for a society of free work, enterprise and
  participation

45
2005 - Pope Benedict XVI

• DEUS CARITAS EST
• Charity as a responsibility of the Church
• The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her
  three-fold responsibility
• proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria),
• celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia)
• exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia).

46
2005 - Pope Benedict XVI

• The Church is God's family in the world. In this
  family no one ought to go without the necessities
  of life. Yet at the same time caritas- agape
  extends beyond the frontiers of the Church.
• Following the example given in the parable of the
  Good Samaritan, Christian charity is first of all
  the simple response to immediate needs and
  specific situations feeding the hungry, clothing
  the naked, caring for and healing the sick,
  visiting those in prison, etc.

47
2005 - Pope Benedict XVI

• Christian charitable activity must be
  independent of parties and ideologies.
• Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means
  of engaging in what is nowadays considered
  proselytism. Love is free it is not practised as
  a way of achieving other ends.

48
References

• http//www.osjspm.org/major_themes.aspx
• http//search.msn.com/images

49
Credits

• Created by Sister Jeanne Marie Toriskie, OSF, PhD