Is Facebook doing right or overreaching?
Is anyone else out there conflicted about a publically traded company demanding social concessions from their vendors?
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Solidarity
Where the dignity of the person is the
first permanent principle of Catholic Social Doctrine and the one upon which
the others are built, solidarity, the fourth permanent principle, is the one
which binds the others together. Solidarity
is the recognition of the social nature of the human person, a person among
many who are on a path to a common final end.
Solidarity is a “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to
the common good”. (CSDC 193)
Much more than seeing ourselves as members
of the community of humanity, we think of ourselves as individuals. Individualism has become the defining
characteristic of the present day. This
individualism is perhaps best exemplified by the tale of the little red hen.
Recall the childhood story: a little red
hen is strolling through the barnyard one day and finds a grain of wheat. Rather than eating it, she decides to plant
it. She asks the other barnyard animals
for help and they all turn her down and she plants it by herself. The wheat grows and harvest time
arrives. After the barnyard animals turn
down the little red hen’s request for help, she alone fills a wheelbarrow with
the grain she harvested. Once again, she
extends an offer for help to take the grain to the miller’s but everyone turns
her down, leaving her to take the grain to the miller by herself. Returning with flour, she extends an
invitation to anyone who would like to help her use the flour to bake some
bread; everyone turns a deaf ear to her request. When the bread comes out of the oven, she
asks if anyone would like a slice. Of
course everyone answers “YES!” But now
the little red hen turns to them and says “when I asked for help to plant,
harvest, transport, and bake you all said no; so now I will eat this entire
loaf by myself.” And she does.
The sentiment of the little red hen is
heard often sometimes from individuals who started in poverty but found
developed a product or service which brought them great wealth: “I made this
fortune myself, don’t come asking me for a handout.” The little red hen is the archetypal
self-made person, able to survive and thrive by determined individual effort
alone. Yet, we have to ask is that
really the case? After all, the little
red hen did not act totally in isolation.
While she did act alone with respect to the other barnyard animals, she
did interact with one other person in the story – the miller. We are not told anything about what happened
at the miller’s other than she went with grain and returned with flour. Without the miller there would have been no
bread, the little red hen ceases to be a self-made success. The lesson of this is that, despite refusals
to help that made the hen seem the lone individual, she nonetheless could not
find fulfillment apart from being involved with another. Solidarity is the recognition of the other as
someone striving just as we do.
We are debtors to society. Every business person who claims they did it
on their own is forgetting the education they received growing up, the food
which nourished them that someone else
grew, and much, much more. Of course
this successful person would argue “None of that was free, I had to pay for it,
so I don’t owe nobody”. Simply not true,
there are multiple layers that brought that successful person to where they are
beginning with the family who sustained them until they could feed and clothe
themselves. There was the school
district that taught the successful person to read, write, and deal with
numbers. We fight against the idea of being
in debt to society because debt requires repayment. To accept that we are debtors to society means
that there must be some repayment that society expects from us. What is the repayment? It is not sending money to the poor in a
distant land to relieve a sense of compassion; it is actively working to end
corruption, oppression, and exploitation at every level of society. The repayment is active participation in
society, it is not detracting from the common good, and it is caring about
those around you.
Economics for a long time could not explain
why unions would go on strike; empirical research showed time and time again
that any gains from an improved contract would not repay the losses incurred
from the strike. In the early history of
the union movement many workers would not have disagreed with that because a
part of the motivation for the strike was the hope that future workers would be
better off. This is a type of
solidarity.
Another example of solidarity was evidenced
following the economic collapse of 2008.
While not widespread, it happened often enough to be noticed; at some
companies workers and management willingly accepted pay cuts rather than work
force reductions. Business had dropped
off a great deal and rather than lay off twenty percent of the workforce,
everyone took a twenty percent cut in pay and everyone kept their job.
Solidarity is a commitment to
interdependence and mutual responsibility.
CSDC refers to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the number refers to the paragraph in which the quote was found.
Subsidiarity
Subsidiarity is the recognition that when a
problem exists at any level, the resolution of that problem ought to be dealt
with at that level. What is it to talk
about levels and problems at these levels?
Subsidiarity is built upon the idea that
people interact with each other through various social strata, or layers. The base of all, the foundational level is that
the family. The first interaction a
person has with others is within the family into which they are born. The father, mother, siblings, grandparents,
aunts and uncles, and cousins, all interact with the newly born, they all are
responsible for and contribute to the child’s growth and development. As a result of increased mobility and
opportunities, this level of society has been undergoing tremendous change as nuclear
families, a set of parents and their children, move away from the grandparents,
aunts, uncles, and cousins. The concept
of the extended family is disappearing and to now speak of family is to mean
simply the nuclear family. The influence
of grandparents, along with the diversity brought by aunts, uncles, and
cousins, is slowly disappearing. Yet,
even with the diminution of the extended, subsidiarity recognizes the first
level of society as the family rather than the individual.
The next level of society is the
neighborhood, the grouping of families living in close proximity to each
other. It is in slightly wider setting
or level that both individuals and families interact for support, development,
and well-being. This level, as well, is
undergoing change. There was a time when
families communicated with each other much more than is the case today. Air conditioning has moved people indoors to
avoid the heat rather than sitting on the porch of an evening, lost is the
contact neighbors once had seeing each other out and about. Few people know much about their neighbors
beyond their name. It has become
increasingly difficult to know whether or not you can trust your neighbors and
homes have become secure fortresses with alarm systems. Children do not play with other kids in the
neighborhood, they are taken to playdates with people the parents know better
from work or school than the family next door.
The levels continue to ascend: various
neighborhoods close to each other form a town, towns form a county, counties
are part of a state, states together form a nation, and the community of
nations creates the global level. There
can be levels that form within levels, levels that address a specific area of
concern. For example, a school district
is a level above a neighborhood yet different that a town. Fire protection districts would be another
example of a level within a level addressing a specific issue.
Subsidiarity deals with the ability to
solve problems. Subsidiarity is the idea
that problems should always be solved at lowest social level possible. Consider security; when families where more
open to their neighbors, there was a sense of security in that everyone watched
out for everyone else. However, there
were always threats that could not be addressed by neighbors watching over
neighbors and towns stepped in to provide police protection. Towns were able to provide streets among the
neighborhoods of their borders, but linking itself to another town by roads was
difficult and county road crews were established. The Civil Rights Act is a good example of
subsidiarity properly applied. After the
Civil War, there were (widely scattered and few in number) neighborhoods where
racism disappeared, but the problem of discrimination was still widely
practiced. A few, very few, cities tried
to make conditions better for blacks, but still the problem persisted. Some states, but not many, also tried to improve
the lives of black men and women yet the problem of discrimination
persisted. The evil of racism, which
originates at the level of neighborhoods, could not be removed by actions at
the neighborhood level. The problems were not adequately addressed at the
community level or at the state level.
Attempts to solve this problem which was a local problem (at nearly all
localities) could not be put in place until it reached the national level and
even then it took one hundred years before it happened. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in the
Johnson Administration was a higher level of society addressing problems of
much lower levels of society; this was a true act of subsidiarity.
However, a higher level of society can
overstep its bounds and violate the spirit of subsidiarity if it attempts to
solve problems that could be solved at the lower level. The current imbroglio over education is
sometimes seen as an example of a higher level interfering with something a
much lower level could solve. Has the federal
government, a part of the national level of society, overstepped its reach in
establishing curriculum standards for local school districts? St. John Paul, in discussing the development
of the welfare state[1],
wrote:
By intervening directly ad depriving
society of its responsibility, the social assistance state leads to a loss of
human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are
dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving
their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in
spending. In fact, it would appear that
needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closet to them and
who act as neighbors to those in need.
(CA, 48)
Of course this raises the question of whether or not it is really
possible to address many welfare needs at a neighborhood level. Before the Great Depression, much assistance
for the poor came from churches and local communities; neighbors helped
neighbors. What happened to end
that? What was the failure that kicked
the responsibility up to higher levels of society? Families began to decrease their
participation in communal efforts to aid others.
Just as the permanent principle of the
common good implied the principle of the universal destination of goods and
which led to the development of the preferential option for the poor, the
permanent principle of subsidiarity strongly implies the duty of
participation. Participation deals with
the acts of individuals which contribute to the cultural, economic, political,
and social life of the civil community to which they belong. These acts can be individually performed or
in cooperation with others. Participation
is a duty to be fulfilled with responsibility and with a view towards the
common good. Failure to vote, even when
one feels their vote would not matter, is a failure to participate. Failures to participate can lead to the establishment
of groups with hidden privileges and creates conditions where some citizens
could make deals with institutions to serve their own needs rather than the
common good. In short, failure to
participate creates the conditions under which higher levels can overstep their
boundaries and violate the principle of subsidiarity.
There are, then, two areas of concern: first,
are problems being solved at the lowest possible social level; and second, are
people responsibly participating for the common good? With respect to the first, orthodox economics
generally fails to recognize societal levels because everything is modeled upon
the interaction of the representative agent, homo oeconomicus, and individual firms. There are sub-disciplines within economics
broadly defined such as Institutional Economics and Public Choice Theory that
could recognize and address the ideas of societal levels. However, the high school economics curriculum
and the principles courses most college students take are based upon the models
and contain policy ideas which ignore societal levels. Regarding the second, orthodox economics
generally assumes that everyone participates in market activity and that
nothing else matters. The decision to
vote or not is a response to a optimization problem rather than a
responsibility to participate. The idea
that large segments of people are excluded from participation is not logically
possible in economics because discrimination is not considered rational
behavior and since homo oeconomicus
always acts rationally, discrimination simply cannot occur.
CA refers to St. John Paul II's encyclical, Centesimus Annus, and the number is the paragraph in which the quote was found.
The Common Good
The prevailing ethos in today’s world seems
to be “watching out for number one”, that is to say “I simply have to do what
is best for me”. Many of the legends in
the business world are seen as “self-made men”, individuals who struggled
against mighty odds to achieve their dream and become rich. When it comes to being happy, we are exhorted
to find happiness within ourselves, that we cannot depend upon others for
making our lives better.
The truth underlying the principle of the
common good proceeds from the fact that we all exist “with” others and that we
cannot find fulfillment without them. But
that is only part of the truth; the other part brings in the dignity of those
others. They too desire the same
fulfillment that each of us seeks and the social nature of our design calls us
to not prevent them from reaching for the same ultimate end that we strive to
find. The foundation of the principle of
the common good is thus the acceptance that “the human person cannot find
fulfilment in their self apart from the fact that they exist ‘with’ others and
‘for’ others”. (CDSC 165) The common good is “the sum of those
conditions of social life which allow people, either as groups or as
individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.” (GS 26) These social conditions that are the common
good are not any sort of a utopian society, they do not imply an equal distribution
of all property, and they do not demand that everyone be the same. The creation of the social conditions which
are the common good is not an end in itself.
The common good is more than socio-economic well-being. Because the human person is a creation of
God, the common good has a transcendental nature which is directed towards a
specific goal, that of attaining the ultimate ends of the person, eternal
beatitude.
The common good is bound up in the idea
that no one should be excluded from such basics as food, housing, work,
education, and access to culture, transportation, basic health care, the
freedom of communication and expression, and the protection of religious
freedom. For example, racial
discrimination is a social condition that detracts from the common good because
it creates barriers which deny access to employment, adequate housing, and
education to persons of color. The key
concept is that society be structured and individuals act so that no one person
or group is excluded from the opportunity to attain their fullest meaning.
One immediate implication of the common
good is the idea of the “universal destination of goods” because God created
and gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its
members, without excluding anyone. People must have the material goods that
will meet their primary needs and are thus the beginning of their existence;
people must feed themselves to grow, communicate and associate with others, and
reach the highest purpose to which they are called. The universal destination of goods calls all
of us to stop looking at the things of this world as economic science sees
them, scarce resources. The universal
destination of goods calls us to reorient ourselves to the creation of wealth
rather than the hoarding of goods. This
creation of wealth is not to be understood in a monetary sense; all too often
the creation of wealth is understood as becoming rich. The traders and hedge-fund managers of Wall
Street, along with the heads of the large financial firms do not create wealth,
they accumulate wealth. Henry Ford’s
assembly line decreased the time to make a car from over twelve hours to two
and a half hours. The cost of each car
fell so that a much larger part of the population could buy them. Even with the drop in the price of cars, Ford
paid a very good wage for the time, a wage that would allow his workers to buy
the cars they produced. Henry Ford
created wealth in that not only did he become very rich, but thousands became
much better off in the process. The
universal destination of goods encourages us to “develop an economic vision
inspired by moral values that permit people not to lose sight of the origin or
purpose of these goods, so as to bring about a world of fairness and
solidarity.” (CSDC 174)
The principle of the common good and its
chief implication of the universal destination of goods are not and cannot be
opposed to the right to private property.
However, the universal destination of goods indicates a need to regulate
private property. Private property is
not absolute; it must be seen as a means rather than an end. The social doctrine of the Church teaches:
The universal destination of goods entails
obligations on how goods are to be used by their legitimate owners. Individual persons may not use their
resources without considering the effects that his use will have, rather thy
must act in a way that benefits not only themselves and their family but also
the common good. (CSDC 178)
For a single individual to buy a great deal of farm land is not wrong
or opposed to the idea of the universal destination of goods. For that individual to grow a great deal of
corn this year is likewise not wrong. To
withhold that corn from the market, to allow the land to lie fallow so that the
price of corn rises a great deal and then sell the corn would be detrimental to
the common good and thus violate the concept of the universal destination of
goods.
Taking these two together, the common good
and the universal destination of goods, calls us to consider the poor; together
they create what is called the “preferential option for the poor”. This requires that the poor, the
marginalized, and all those whose living conditions interfere with their proper
growth be of particular concern. The idea
of the poor in this sense is different from the idea of the poor as understood
in economic theory. In economics, being
poor is a result of a lack of work effort; people are poor because they choose
not to work. This understanding of
poverty creates a great deal of resentment against the “poor” who are thought
to be seeking a handout rather than a job.
To this kind of poverty people often recall the word of St. Paul in his
second letter to the Thessalonians: “in
anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.”
There is another type of “poor”, those who
are poor due to exclusion. These are the
poor who dearly want to work but for whom there are no jobs. These are the poor who are excluded from
access to education. Whether the
exclusion if deliberate or the result of a long established social custom,
these are not poor because of their own choice.
It is to these that we have social responsibilities and it is this
preferential option for the poor that would have us examine all our decisions
regarding the ownership and use of goods.
This second permanent principle, that of
the common good, recognizes what economic science recognizes, that people work
hardest when working for themselves; it does not deny that self-interested
behavior is a prime motivator. What this
principle does is to recognize that the pursuit of self-interest is not a
behavior undertaken by independent individuals; it is a behavior exhibited by
people striving for the same end who are interdependent, who are intimately associated
with each other and who can become beneficial to each other’s quest. This principle places limits upon
self-interested behavior because no person is independent from others, no
decisions can be made in a vacuum.
Orthodox economics holds for the idea that the best for society is a
result of people pursuing their own interest without regard for others; the
principle of the common good says that the best for society is not a result but
rather it is a choice to recognize the benefits to all that can arise from acts
of mutual responsibility and interdependence.
CSDC refers to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the number refers to the paragraph in which the quote was found.
The Dignity of the Person
From the viewpoint
of the world, molded as it is by the scientific developments which have
followed Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, and Richard Dawkins, a
viewpoint which guides the “science” of economics, the human person is a result
of chance. From the moment of the Big
Bang some fourteen billion years ago there has been a sequence of random,
chance events which the present field of cosmology is trying desperately to
trace, a sequence that has brought us to where we are today. Events in the first few seconds following the
Big Bank determined much of the physical structure of “space”, of the universe
we know today. The coming into
existence, one cannot say creation in this sense for nothing was created, all
simply came into existence, of the four fundamental forces (gravity,
electro-magnetic, strong, weak) and of hydrogen (the building block of the
universe) was in a strong sense deterministic, owing to the nature of the Big
Bang. After the first few minutes
following the Event, randomness began to set in and following the first billion
years of so random events began to congeal into the embryonic stages which have
resulted in stars, planets, and galaxies.
The formation of
all this is thought to be truly random.
In the developing theories of astrophysics and cosmology there are
indications of a multi-verse rather
than a uni-verse and in the universes
other than the one we inhabit there are quite possibly different rules of
physics that determine the composition of each universe. The universe in which we live is the result
of random events that followed the Big Bang.
From the random
sequence of events leading to galaxies, stars, and planets comes the random set
of events that ultimately led to the rise of homo sapiens on the third planet
out from a medium sized star. The
randomness that has resulted in our existence has been calculated and projected
outward in an effort to see if we are alone in this particular universe.
From the viewpoint
of the world as it is today, the rise of the human person is the result of
chance, of a sequence of random events.
Human beings were not created; they came into existence after nearly
fifteen billion years of random events.
In terms of a biological equilibrium, we may or may not be stuck in a
stable equilibrium; the time frames are too long to know until well past its
conclusion. We came into existence to
exist.
From the viewpoint
of the Magisterium, the human person was the result of a deliberate choice by
God to create. This is not to deny
evolutionary theory or give way to creationism.
Consider what Pope Francis recently said:
When we read in
Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining that God was a magician,
with such a magic wand as to be able to do everything. However, it was not like
that. He created beings and left them to develop according to the internal laws
that He gave each one, so that they would develop, and reach their fullness. He
gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time that He assured
them of his continual presence, giving being to every reality. And thus
creation went forward for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia
until it became what we know today, in fact because God is not a demiurge or a
magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. The beginning of the
world was not the work of chaos, which owes its origin to another, but it
derives directly from a Supreme Principle who creates out of love. The
Big-Bang, that is placed today at the origin of the world, does not contradict
the divine intervention but exacts it. The evolution in nature is not opposed
to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings
that evolve.[1]
So it is that God
created us, we did not come into existence as a result of random chance. We were created with a specific design
especially suited to bring us to an ultimate end, eternal beatitude with God. Further, the human person is created in the image
of God, in the imago dei:
Being in the image of God the human
individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but
someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely
giving himself and entering into communion with other persons and he is called
by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and
love that no other creature can give in his stead. (Catechism, 357)
There is a glimpse of the design of
our nature – “to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature
can give in his stead” – and one of the first indications of the dignity of
each person. Every human being has been
created in the imago dei and is free
to offer back to God a response of faith and love that will lead to eternal
beatitude. “The human being is a
personal being created by God to be in relationship with him. . .” (CSDC,
109)
There is more to
being created in the imago dei: the
human person is created as a social being, reflective of the Trinity. We are made to be with and to support others
even as they are with and support us. Thus,
a part of the dignity of each person is reflective of the fact that to act
according to our design is to reach out to others in a “response of faith and
love” because they, too, were created in the imago dei. Another part of
the imago dei is seen in that we are
able to work, to create. Just as God
created, so we are also able to impact the world around us by what we create,
by the work we undertake. This contributes
to the recognition of each person’s dignity by going back to the recognition
that every person is likewise call to share in the imago dei by creative acts which we can support or thwart.
We are all in this
together and the design of each of our being, that we are social creatures, is
such that I am can only be better off if you are one, no worse off (a necessary
condition), and more importantly, two, only if you are also better off (the
sufficient condition). Therefore, each
of us has a dignity which we cannot deny in any other. It is only the recognition of this human
dignity that can make possible the common and person growth of everyone. (CSDC
145) The root of all human rights is
found in the dignity that belongs to each human being;
The ultimate source of
human rights is not found in the mere will of human beings, in the reality of
the State, in public powers, but in man himself and in God his creator. (CSDC 153)
The dignity of the human person is
the first permanent principle of Catholic Social Doctrine and the foundation of
all the other principles and of all the content of the Church’s social
doctrine.
CSDC refers to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the numbers refer to the paragraph in which the quote was found.
[1] October 27,
2014; address by Pope Francis on the occasion of the inauguration of a Bronze
Bust of Pope Benedict XVI at Pius IV Casina in the Vatican Gardens.
The Social Doctrine of the Church
Given that Catholic thought sees the
consequences of people making choices as having a tendency towards negative
outcomes, the social doctrine of the Church is quite different than the laissez-faire doctrine of orthodox
economics. The problem is that the
Church agrees with one of the supporting ideas of laissez-faire; people work best when they are given the freedom to work
for themselves, to pursue what is best for themselves, to engage in
self-interested behavior. The task of
the Church’s social doctrine, then, is to find a way to balance the positive
results brought about from a framework where the freedom to pursue one’s own
self-interest provides substantial personal
incentives against the potentially damaging social
effects of self-interested behavior.
Catholic Social Doctrine (CSD), or the
Social Doctrine of the Church,[1] begins with the acceptance that God has given
the human person free will, an ability to choose what they would do in any
given situation. God
is said to have created the human person as a rational being who is able and
allowed to decide and direct his or her own actions. The Catechism of the Church teaches that; “by
free will one shapes one’s own life” (Catholic Church 1994, 430). An earlier Catholic thinker went so far as to
declare that “An act in which the will does not freely participate, by at least
an implicit consent, is not, strictly speaking, a human act” (Snell 1899,
20). Just as for orthodox economics[2],
CSD does not view people as programed robots; individuals are free to direct
and choose their own actions.
Where CSD departs
from orthodox economics is in its view of how it is that people are
designed. Orthodox economics sees the
human person as a creature designed to consume; the other economic activities
of production and exchange are to insure consumption may continue until death. Catholic Social Doctrine is built upon a much
different view of the design of the person.
As we discussed earlier, similar to how a piano is designed to produce
music but does not have to do so, or an automobile is designed to provide
transportation but can be used for something else, the design of the human
person is directed towards a very specific end, eternal beatitude, although it
is not required to accept or reach for that goal. Absolutely essential to CSD is that the
person be understood not as a creature designed to consume, rather each person
is designed as a sentient being, as a person striving for completeness, a
completeness that is both intimately caught up in their actual, historical life
and which also transcends it. Consumption
is not the goal; the ability to consume exists only in an instrumental rather
than final sense. Consumption exists to
enable the person to go beyond consumption; it is a means enabling the person
to move toward that other, higher goal of eternal beatitude. Each and every human person has been designed
by a loving God in this way and each and every human person is totally, radically
free either to pursue their ultimate end or to pursue some other end of their
own choosing. This is the first stone of
the foundation upon which the Social Doctrine of the Church is built, that the
God who created us loved us so much that we were designed to be able to share
in the beatitude of God, if we so choose.
Moving from this
focus upon the design and freedom of the individual, we must continue to move
further away from orthodox economics because the Church sees each individual as
a Social being rather than an
isolated, independent individual. Orthodox economic models are built up from
the assumption that each economic agent is completely independent from all
other economic agents, that the preference ordering that guides the decisions made
by each agent are without reference to the preferences or actions of any other
economic agent. The individual person in
Catholic Social Teaching is quite the opposite.
Every individual is born into a family without which they would
die. As the child grows, their degree of
social involvement grows as they become embedded in ever expanding circles of
society: from family to neighborhood, school, and community. From birth every person is continuously affected
by others even as they affect others.
The English poet, John Donne, captured well the sense of the social
nature of the human person’s design:
No
man is an island,
Entire
of itself,
Every
man is a piece of the continent,
A
part of the main.
If
a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe
is the less.
As
well as if a promontory were.
As
well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or
of thine own were:
Any
man's death diminishes me,
Because
I am involved in mankind,
And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
That the human person is also
created as a social rather than independent being is the second stone of the
foundation upon which Catholic Social Doctrine is built.
From these
adjoining foundation stones the edifice of Catholic Social Doctrine
arises. Catholic Social Teaching is
comprised of four permanent principles: the unique dignity of every person, the
common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. Catholic Social Teaching is
supported by four fundamental values: truth, freedom, justice, and love. The permanent principles are interrelated and
form a unity that affects the reality of society. The effects of these principles impact the
family, human work, economic life, the political community, the international
community, and the environment. These
permanent principles and values have the ability to promote peace among all
humanity.
Snell, M.-M. 1899. The Catholic
Social-Reform Movement. The American
Journal of Sociology 5, no. 1 (Jul., 1899): 16-50.
[1] There are two
different phrases the reader will encounter as they read more into the topic of
the Social Doctrine of the Church: Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic Social
Thought. Catholic Social Teaching is the
moral teaching set forth by the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic Social Teaching is recognized as a
set of encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, conciliar documents, and pastoral
letters issued by bishops, singularly or jointly, all of which provide moral
guidance for the faithful and increasingly for all humanity. Catholic Social Thought is what people have
to say about Catholic Social Teaching.
The encyclicals, Rerum Novarum by
Pope Leo XIII and Centesimus Annus by
St. John Paul II; the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium; the pastoral
constitution of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium
Spes; and the pastoral letters from the bishops of New Zealand (“Mindful of
the Common Good” in 2008) and the United States (“Economic Justice for All” in
1986) are all a part of the Magisterium’s Social Teaching. “Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Law:
An Unresolved Tension” by Woods; “Catholic Social Economics: A Response to
Certain Problems, Errors, and Abuses of the Modern Age” by Edward O’Boyle; Modern Catholic Social Documents and
Political Economy by Albino Barrera; and this book are the works of
priests, theologians, and laypersons are examples of Catholic social thought,
works where someone has something to say about the Church’s teaching.
[2]Of course this
“freedom to choose” that orthodox economics claims to exist is at odds with the
very behavioristic modes of behavior that form the basis of any model using the
construct homo oeconomicus.
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