The Catholic Social Teaching

THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF FAITH

The popes who had proclaimed the
Catholic Social Teaching
 Preliminary remarks:

 Religion is always personal, but never just a private affair.

 The Gospel imperative to love our neighbor entails not only that we should help
those in need, but also address the causes of destitution and poverty.
 The deepening of the spiritual life must go hand in hand with practical concern for
our neighbor, and thus with social action.
 The social dimension of the Gospel enables us to see how society helps or hinders
people to live out the command to love God and our neighbor.
 The social teaching of the Church provides a set of consistent and
complementary principles, values and goals.
 It is aimed at Catholics but the ideas it espouses are not solely Catholic property.
 Its aim is to bring about a good and fair society, for the benefit of everyone.
 Origins of Social Teaching

 It began towards the end of the nineteenth century, when European nations had
experienced the impact of industrialization and the severe and rapid disruption it
caused in hitherto relatively stable patterns of community.
 The Church noted the conflict between the opposing theories of laissez-faire
capitalism and Marxist Communism for governing the progress of industrial
societies, and in the name of social justice found much to object to in each of
them. Each regarded human society as being subject to inevitable economic
laws.
 The subordination of human well-being to economic principles prompted Pope
Leo XIII to issue the encyclical letter Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Labor)
in 1891.
 Catholic Social Teaching: What is it?
How does it come about?

 It is not a "third way" between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, but
rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the
complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international
order, in the light of faith and of the Church's tradition.
 Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or
divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation.
 “Encyclical letter” (circular letter) that the Church used in contacting various
church communities since the early centuries.
 The social encyclicals are the Church’s institutional response to the social
problems of a given time period, thus some refer to them as practical or praxis
theology.
Methodology

There are three stages which should normally be followed in the

reduction of social principles into practice. First, one reviews the
concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgement on it in the
light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what the
circumstances can and should be done to implement these
principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in
the three terms: observe, judge, and act.
Pope John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, 1961 (# 236)
Methodology
See – Judge – Act Process
See – Judge – Act Process
See – Judge – Act Process
See – Judge – Act Process