Catholic Social Teaching in the 21st Century

In the turmoil of the end of the 19th Century Catholic Social Teaching (CST) was expressed in an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII.  John W. Miller reports on the America Magazine website that he learned 10 things in a year of writing about the economy through the prism of Catholic social teaching.

Catholic Social Teaching Review

 

In a remarkable book scheduled to appear in January, Cathonomics (Georgetown University Press), Tony Annett, a former speechwriter for the International Monetary Fund and an Irish Catholic, traces the roots of Catholic social teaching from ancient Greek philosophy through Thomas Aquinas to Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” (1891). 

1. Wages need to go up.

The biggest issue that bedeviled people in our economy was insufficient pay. .. a high-profile effort by some chief executive officers and companies to team up with the Vatican to promote changes to their business practices. Thus far, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism says it has “487 commitments from 200 organizations.” But only two private employers, Bank of America and the energy company BP, have promised the concrete thing that will really make a difference, wage increases. 1

2. Unions are back. 

Some two-thirds of Americans “approve” of labor unions... “Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union, and especially Black and brown workers,” said President Biden, who is the most pro-union president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Leo XIII “correctly saw unions as necessary for protecting the dignity and rights of workers and their families, given that capitalists, who hold an imbalance of power over workers, often do not give workers their just due,” 1

3. Forgiveness creates prosperity.

 What really changed the life of Ray Miles, an ex-prisoner and activist in Pittsburgh, was getting a full-time job that guaranteed income for the next 12 months. Many companies and governments refuse to hire ex-prisoners, keeping them stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime. Coming out of jail is “like being in critical condition,” said Mr. Miles. “You need life support.”1

4. We need to save local news.

 In a chaotic world, communities need local journalism. As Pope Francis said in a 2019 speech, local news helps citizens address “the same reality” and it spotlights “poverty, challenges [and] sometimes urgent issues” in families, neighborhoods and workplaces.1

5. Learning history can lead to justice.

 Telling the story of our past can lead to justice. A moving example of this is the private reparations movement, which has led institutions and people to offer reparations to the descendants of victims of slavery, even as the national reparations movement has stalled. This is the result of decades of work by activists, scholars and writers to highlight the wealth gap created by slavery.1

6. Urban planning is loving. 

learn of the easy convergence of urban planning and Catholic social teaching’s emphasis on building tighter communities. Robert Beauregard, for example, in his influential 2006 book, When America Became Suburban, takes the moral point of view that modern suburban life lacks “a moral center that would enable people to reach outside their communities and embrace diverse peoples” and also lacks “a widely shared sense of purpose.” When he looks at urban planning, Jamie Kralovec, an instructor in the urban and regional planning department at Georgetown University, said, he sees “this potential to build just and equitable use of the neighborhood, and bring about all these things Pope Francis talks about, like social friendship and solidarity.”1

7. Animals are important, too. 

Pope Francis, along with many theologians, seems to be calling for an increased appreciation for animal rights. “Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures,” he wrote in “Laudato Si’,” … Advocates for animals say, is to make meat a delicacy that comes from small farms, instead of a factory-farmed staple of every meal.1

8. What and where we buy changes the world. 

It is easy to forget that we did not always live in a world with one-click shopping… Americans and Europeans went for the cheap stuff, and gobbled up television sets, shoes, washing machines and a million other products from companies like Walmart, Target and the French retailer Carrefour. These companies helped create hyperglobalization, which is why American highways and neighborhoods have almost all the same big-box chain stores and fulfillment centers for shipping out online orders… The fair trade movement has created alternative supply chains that help small businesses around the world.1

9. Women still aren’t paid enough. 

For modern interpreters of Catholic social teaching, there is little question that women deserve equal pay and a chance to build successful careers that align with their desires for family and home life. The Catholic solution to the gender pay gap requires affirming women’s right to equal pay while pushing back against a purely capitalist impulse. “We’re affirming women should be treated equally in work,” said Kate Ward, a professor of theology at Marquette University. “We’re not just saying that women should become better capitalists and have fewer families” and children.1

10. There are no utopias. 

In Cathonomics, Mr. Annett emphasizes that Catholic social teaching resists utopian thinking, which is why the church rejects both communism and libertarian capitalism.1

Cindy Wooden writing for the Catholic News Service notes that Pope Francis issued his social encyclical, "Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship," in October 2020, then proceeded to explain and apply it in 2021 in meetings with migrants and refugees, in hosting religious leaders making a plea to governments to act on climate change and in setting out his vision for a synod process that listens to and relies on the prayers of all.

There, at the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham, the first person to believe in the one God and father of all, the pope called all believers to demonstrate their faith by treating one another as the brothers and sisters they are. "From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters," the pope said. "God loves us as his children; he wants us to be brothers and sisters," the pope said Dec. 5 in the camp on the shore of the Mediterranean on the Greek island of Lesbos. "He is offended when we despise the men and women created in his image, leaving them at the mercy of the waves, in the wash of indifference." In a public service announcement in August, Pope Francis had said, "Being vaccinated with vaccines authorized by the competent authorities is an act of love. And contributing to ensure the majority of people are vaccinated is an act of love — love for oneself, love for one's family and friends, love for all people."2

 

Catholic Social Teaching as applied by the Church since Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” (1891), an encyclical that declared the church’s support of trade unions and collective bargaining, and established concepts like a living wage, worker safety and regular time off from work, has depended on example rather than exhortation for action among Catholics and people who share these concerns about the welfare of people.

 

References

1	(2021, December 28). Ten things Pope Francis and Catholic social teaching taught me .... Retrieved December 28, 2021, from https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/12/28/pope-francis-economy-catholic-social-teaching-242106
2	(2021, December 28). example than exhortation: Pope's 2021 illustrated teaching on kinship. Retrieved December 28, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/more-example-exhortation-popes-2021-illustrated-teaching-kinship

 

Degrowth, the Market, and CST

The last two decades have seen an increase in calls to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor from authors who share Catholic Social Teaching (CST) with their readers.

 Freedom and the Market

 

The Encyclical of Pope Francis “Laudato Si” is a comprehensive look at how all people need to respond to these existential challenges. Alex Mikulich, an anti-racist Roman Catholic social ethicist and activist and author of Unlearning White Supremacy: A Spirituality for Racial Liberation, from Orbis Books in spring 2022, writes that Laudato Si' calls us to radical abundance through economic 'degrowth'. Degrowth is perhaps the most undervalued insight of Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Sí', on Care for Our Common Home." Francis promotes degrowth because the "environment is one of those goods that cannot be adequately safeguarded or promoted by market forces."

 Environment and Market Forces

Degrowth, an alternative way of being oriented toward radical abundance, began to emerge 50 years ago with the Club of Rome's 1968 study, The Limits to Growth, which documented the devastating ecological implications of unabated economic growth. In his recent primer on degrowth, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel explains degrowth.

Degrowth begins as a process of taking less. But in the end it opens up whole vistas of possibility. It moves us from scarcity to abundance, from extraction to regeneration, from dominion to reciprocity, and from loneliness and separation to connection with a world that's fizzing with life. Growth for its own sake, Hickel laments, creates more "illth than wealth," when the ongoing pursuit of growth in high-income nations produces more inequality and instability, stress and depression from overwork, and increasing pollution and ill health.1

Mikulich draws some terms from Raj Patel and Jason Moore, The History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet.)

The Anishinaabeg, whose original lands were in northeastern America (now Canada), have the word minobimaatisiiwin, which means "a continuous rebirth of reciprocal and cyclical relations between human and other life." In southern African regions, Bantu languages have ubuntu, meaning human fulfillment through togetherness, and the Shona have ukama, which indicates "the interrelatedness of the entire cosmos, including the biophysical world." The Chinese shi-shi wu-ai and Maori term mauri express "interrelatedness through the entire life force of the cosmos." 1

Matt Mazewski, a PhD student in economics at Columbia University and rapporteur of the University Seminar on Catholicism, Culture, and Modernity, reviews Freedom from the Market, America’s Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand, by Mike Konczal. He hopes that  Mike Konczal’s careful study of American history can help recover a forgotten tradition in our politics, and that his “Polanyi-ish and Pollyanna-ish” lens can reveal to a wider audience the many ways in which contemporary ideologies obscure important truths about the economy and society. In Freedom from the Market: America’s Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand, the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal sets out to demonstrate how, “for all the language about how markets open up opportunities, they also create dependencies as well.” Konczal credits an acquaintance with helping him to refine his “Polanyi-ish, and Pollyanna-ish, thinking,” a reference to the twentieth-century Austro-Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi, whose ideas permeate the book.

In his introduction, Konczal lays out five key reasons why “freedom requires the suppression of the market”: (1) markets allocate even essential and life-sustaining goods on the basis of ability to pay, rather than need; (2) they are less effective and efficient than the state at providing certain goods and services, such as health insurance, because of the logic of what economists would refer to as “market failures”; (3) market interactions, and in particular the employment relationship, can often be occasions of “domination by the will of others”; (4) the creeping commodification of everything “leaves no reward for things that don’t function as commodities,” such as the unpaid labor of those who raise children or care for elderly or disabled family members; and (5) markets themselves cannot function without state action, like that required to enforce contracts, protect property rights, or maintain a stable currency.2

Freedom from the Market offers a refreshing corrective to “anti-Polanyian” thinking.

	Konczal: “freedom requires the suppression of the market”
1	markets allocate even essential and life-sustaining goods on the basis of ability to pay, rather than need;
2	they are less effective and efficient than the state at providing certain goods and services, such as health insurance, because of the logic of what economists would refer to as “market failures”;
3	market interactions, and in particular the employment relationship, can often be occasions of “domination by the will of others”;
4	the creeping commodification of everything “leaves no reward for things that don’t function as commodities,” such as the unpaid labor of those who raise children or care for elderly or disabled family members;
5	markets themselves cannot function without state action, like that required to enforce contracts, protect property rights, or maintain a stable currency.2

 

The perspectives on political economy, in Freedom from the Market,  and its idea of freedom as requiring far more than just the absence of external coercion, lines up quite well with that of Catholic social thought. 

The late Canadian theologian Fr. Gregory Baum wrote of the “affinity” that exists between the thought of Polanyi and that of Pope Francis, even if there exists no evidence of a direct influence of the former on the latter. Likewise, an article published in the Atlantic a few months after Francis’s election commented on the efforts to label the pope a Marxist, and instead offered “a case for the pontiff’s debt not to Karl Marx but to Karl Polanyi.”2

The warning in Laudato Si that reliance on market solutions for climate change, environmental degradation, water resource protection, and loss of biodiversity point to concern of a lack of a response in harmony with Catholic Social Teaching to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

 

References

 

1	(2021, July 28). Laudato Si' calls us to radical abundance through economic 'degrowth'. Retrieved July 30, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/laudato-si-calls-us-radical-abundance-through-economic-degrowth
2	(2021, July 21). Polanyi-ish | Commonweal Magazine. Retrieved July 28, 2021, from https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/polanyi-ish

See Judge Act: CST Security and Economics of Climate Change

 Kevin Moynihan of KM Productions, a Halifax based fully equipped production company, shares “Laudato Si’ + 5: See, Judge, Act”. This review of our progress engaging with the 2015 Encyclical of Pope Francis, “Laudato Si”,under the Catholic Social Teaching tradition of See, Judge, and Act offers a reminder of the need for action on Water Shortage, Climate Change, and Loss of Biodiversity and hope in sharing the work of individuals and organizations involved in taking action today.

 

Sir David Attenborough, renowned British naturalist and broadcaster, presented a warning that the world risks ‘collapse of everything’ without strong climate action to the UN Security Council.

 

“If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature, and ocean food chains,” he said, adding “and if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilization will quickly break down... “People today all over the world now realize this is no longer an issue which will affect future generations,” he said.  “It is people alive today, and, in particular, young people, who will live with the consequences of our actions.”2

Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, spoke, in a recent interview, about how private finance is increasingly aligned behind achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Climate change is an existential threat. We all recognize that, and there’s increasing urgency around it. But the converse is, if you are making investments, coming up with new technologies, changing the way you do business, all in service of reducing and eliminating that threat, you are creating value. And what we have seen increasingly, spurred initially by the Sustainable Development Goals, accelerated by Paris, and then by social movements and governments, is societies putting tremendous value on achieving net zero. Companies, and those who invest in them and lend to them, and who are part of the solution, will be rewarded. Those who are lagging behind and are still part of the problem will be punished.3

We have evidence to see and judge the likely impact of the climate emergency on our health and welfare. Catholic Social Teaching and economic common sense underlie our movement to avoid catastrophe in the lives of our children and grandchildren.

 

References

1	(n.d.). KM Productions. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from http://www.kmproductions.ca/
2	(2021, February 23). World risks 'collapse of everything' without strong climate action .... Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1085452
3	(2021, January 21). Mark Carney: Investing in net-zero climate solutions creates value .... Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/mark-carney-investing-net-zero-climate-solutions-creates-value-and-rewards

 

 

Cooperation and Culture Wars

 

The inauguration of the 46th President of the United States and the second Catholic to be elected to that position has also highlighted tension within the US Catholic Church between liberal and conservative bishops on how to advance a consistent ethic of life emphasis to shape political policy.

 

The road of the culture wars

 

  A recent editorial in the National Catholic Reporter expressed the opinion that it is time for the Vatican to investigate the US bishops' conference. It is time for Pope Francis to order an apostolic visitation to investigate what has gone wrong with an organization that began during World War I as a model of cooperation and national audacity and is now a symbol of division and national embarrassment.

On Jan. 20, when the nation inaugurated Joseph Biden as the 46th president, the same Archbishop Jose Gomez issued a 1,250-word statement. After dispensing with congratulatory remarks, it promised there will be areas of "strong opposition" from the bishops toward the Biden administration. It then identified at least six issues of disagreement, expounding on them at length. If the intention was to somehow shame the country's second Catholic president for his political positions, it is perhaps a consolation that the shaming didn't quite hit the intended target. Instead, thanks to an unprecedented public rebuke by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Gomez was outed as bypassing normal conference procedures and not having given other prelates time to review his message to Biden. "Ill-considered," Cupich called Gomez's statement. A fit summary for the entire misbegotten operation of the U.S. bishops' conference.1 

The Tyler Clementi Foundation has published a statement from some Catholic Bishops in the United States on protecting LGBT Youth. They place the statement in accord with the Gospels, that show Jesus Christ taught love, mercy and welcome for all people, especially for those who felt persecuted or marginalized in any way. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that LGBT people are to be treated with “respect, compassion and sensitivity.”

 

All people of goodwill should help, support, and defend LGBT youth; who attempt suicide at much higher rates than their straight counterparts; who are often homeless because of families who reject them; who are rejected, bullied and harassed; and who are the target of violent acts at alarming rates. The Catholic Church values the God-given dignity of all human life and we take this opportunity to say to our LGBT friends, especially young people, that we stand with you and oppose any form of violence, bullying or harassment directed at you. Most of all, know that God created you, God loves you and God is on your side.2

Madeleine Davison reports in the National Catholic Reporter that Catholic Bishops have signed dueling statements on LGBTQ people.

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of the Catholic LGBTQ advocacy organization DignityUSA, was pleased that a group of Catholic bishops were willing to sign the statement. "Given that this statement asks for nothing more than human dignity, I would hope that more bishops would add their names," she said... In order to fully support LGBTQ youth, she said, church leaders must attend to the youth's "need not to hear themselves preached about in negative terms, need to not be excluded from Catholic education programs, [and the] need for parents to feel that they can love and support their kids just as they are." The other statement, released Jan. 22 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, expresses "concerns" with President Joe Biden's decision to extend existing federal protections against sex discrimination to include LGBTQ people.3 

Fran Ferder, a Franciscan sister and a clinical psychologist, and Fr. John Heagle, chair of the Gospel Nonviolence Working Group for AUSCP (the Association of United States Catholic Priests), offer a psychological analysis, in the National Catholic Reporter of the president and his supporters who conned Catholics to the extent that nearly 57% of white Catholics voted for Trump in this last election.

The Second Vatican Council ended more than 50 years ago, but the institutional church in the U.S. has failed to create a communication network to implement its vision and practice. Instead, the bishops have, by the failure of initiative and imagination, allowed EWTN to become the voice of Catholicism. The worldwide reach of EWTN evolved from pre-Vatican II traditional piety to advocating for right-wing partisan politics. EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo is a frequent guest on Laura Ingram's Fox News program. Is this really how the church intends to evangelize our culture?… Despite their polite rhetoric, the U.S. bishops, as a group, have not affirmed the prophetic vision and pastoral practice of Francis. If anything, they have passively resisted it and, at times, actively rejected it. This, in turn, has given encouragement for right-wing Catholic movements to become more vocal in their opposition to Francis. Timothy Busch, the Napa Institute, the Knights of Columbus, William Barr, Steve Bannon and the Federalist Society now lead the lay resistance to Francis and the opposition to finishing the work of Vatican II.4 

In the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters offers the opinion that on abortion, both Biden and the pro-life movement lack moral consistency. His view is that principles of all kinds, including those drawn from our religious beliefs, must be applied to concrete political and legal circumstances with prudence. We all choose some elements from our patrimony and not others. It is complicated, and different issues require greater or lesser degrees of morally acceptable policy alternatives.

The leaders of the movement do not see this because they are too busy walking to the bank. As my colleague Tom Roberts recently noted: Tens of millions of dollars, in some cases hundreds of millions, annually pour into organizations, extreme left and extreme right, intent on maintaining their pro-abortion and pro-life positions without compromise. What exists is the equivalent of a far-flung and deeply funded industry — the lobbying organizations themselves and the attendant universe of lobbyists for hire, consultants, advertising specialists, pollsters and digital specialists that make up the infrastructure for the endless war. Something in the culture will need to change before attitudes change, and attitudes need to change before the politics will change. I have no idea what that cultural change will be. As I noted in June, I used to think American society would rediscover its need for solidarity if we faced a horrible and indiscriminate threat, "something like a pandemic." Well, here we are… There needs to be some consistency about the invocation of religious sources. It is fine to have a liberal political expression of Catholic faith as it is fine to have a conservative political expression, but surely the presence of the faith element should cause a person to occasionally challenge their party, and it seems they only challenge their church...I tremble for our country when I think of how God and history will judge us for getting the abortion issue so wrong, for failing to craft and support a feminism that cherishes each and every human life. I tremble, too, when I contemplate the backlash that awaits on the morrow of the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe or Casey.5 

Rebecca Bratten Weiss, writing in the National Catholic Reporter, advocates that Pro-life and pro-choice Catholics should work together with President Biden to reduce abortion demand. Catholics who uphold magisterial teachings on morality ought to find common cause with pro-choice advocates because of our many shared goals of eliminating poverty, fighting structural racism, working for peace and protecting the environment.

the policies promoted by the Democratic Party are demonstrated to work to reduce abortion — as 48 years of culture war and misguided legislation from the right have not. And it is a mistake for pro-life Catholics to treat pro-choice concerns about personal privacy and bodily autonomy as irrelevant. Yes, we want a culture in which women choose life. Do we want one in which they are coerced into doing so? What kind of moral landscape would that be? I think Biden should articulate a consistent life ethic acknowledging the seriousness of the church's teaching on abortion — which he personally accepts — while also acknowledging the concerns of pro-choice leaders, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, who are motivated by genuine moral seriousness as well. He should pursue policies that are demonstrated, historically and globally, to reduce abortion, and call upon citizens to support these policies that will safeguard both the sanctity of life and the dignity of human choice. Rather than threatening women with punishment or placing them in impossible positions, we need to work collectively for a truly just society in which women are not driven to abortion because of fear, poverty or abuse.6 

The Catholic News Agency reports that Denver Archbishop Aquila challenges 'pro-choice' Catholics to test their conscience. The archbishop further added that some consciences are erroneous or even dead to the truth. He said, when one believes to be following their conscience, they should put it to the test and question whether it is consistent with Church teachings.

“Our consciences must be formed according to the Gospel and according to the teachings of the Church. We must listen to that, and then our works will become good, and they will bring light,” he said. The archbishop said Catholics should preach the Gospel of Life with clarity, mercy, and love but they should not be apathetic to or supportive of the evils of abortion. He encouraged Catholics to show kindness to abortion advocates, especially women who have terminated a pregnancy, and to pray for a greater conversion to life. “Let us first pray for the conversion of our country and for the conversion especially of Catholics who take a so-called pro-choice position,” he said.7

 

Pope Francis has commented on the indifference and “throw-away” attitude in our society. Efforts by bishops, conservative and liberal, in the Church to transform these morally and spiritually harmful trends, in accord with Jesus' teaching, will foster cooperation in addressing all of the anti-life action in our world.

 

References

1	(2021, January 28). Editorial: It's time for the Vatican to investigate the US bishops .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/editorial-its-time-vatican-investigate-us-bishops-conference
2	(n.d.). God Is On Your Side: A Statement from Catholic Bishops on .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://tylerclementi.org/catholicbishopsstatement/
3	(2021, January 25). Bishops sign dueling statements on LGBTQ people | National .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/bishops-sign-dueling-statements-lgbtq-people
4	(2021, January 14). How Catholics got conned by Donald Trump | National Catholic .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/how-catholics-got-conned-donald-trump
5	(n.d.). On abortion, both Biden and the pro-life movement lack moral .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/abortion-both-biden-and-pro-life-movement-lack-moral-consistency
6	(n.d.). Pro-life and pro-choice Catholics should work together — with .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/pro-life-and-pro-choice-catholics-should-work-together-president-biden-reduce-abortion
7	(2021, January 28). Denver archbishop challenges 'pro-choice' Catholics to test their .... Retrieved January 29, 2021, from http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/denver-archbishop-challenges-pro-choice-catholics-to-test-their-conscience-70430