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.

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[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.