Modern Catholic Social Teaching

Commentaries and Interpretations, Second Edition

Kenneth R. Himes, Kenneth R. Himes

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781626165151
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

Including contributions from twenty-two leading moral theologians, this volume is the most thorough assessment of modern Roman Catholic social teaching available. In addition to interrogations of the major documents, it provides insight into the biblical and philosophical foundations of Catholic social teaching, addresses the doctrinal issues that arise in such a context, and explores the social thought leading up to the "modern" era, which is generally accepted as beginning in 1891 with the publication of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum. The book also includes a review of how Catholic social teaching has been received in the United States and offers an informed look at the shortcomings and questions that future generations must address. This second edition includes revised and updated essays as well as two new commentaries: one on Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate and one on Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si'. An outstanding reference work for anyone interested in studying and understanding the key documents that make up the central corpus of modern Catholic social teaching.

PART I

Foundations

CHAPTER 1

The Bible and Catholic Social Teaching: Will This Engagement Lead to Marriage?

JOHN R. DONAHUE, S.J.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last century the Catholic Church has responded to the changing social and economic challenges of the modern world with a wide variety of official teaching, beginning with the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII, On the Condition of Labor (Rerum novarum, 1891) and continuing through the pontificate of Pope John Paul II (1978 to 2005).¹ The same period that witnessed the rise of Catholic social teaching was also the century during which the magisterium cautiously accepted the methods and conclusions of modern biblical scholarship.² The social teaching was based almost exclusively on the Catholic natural law tradition mediated primarily through Scholastic philosophy and theology, though later enhanced by dialogue with contemporary social ethics. During the evolution of Catholic social teaching and the development of Catholic biblical studies, these two great streams of renewal flowed side by side rather than together.

Yet there were tentative beginnings of the use of scripture in the early social encyclicals, which often evoked biblical texts and themes that had a long history in the patristic tradition. Rerum novarum highlights the need to use worldly goods for the benefit of others and the obligation to give alms (citing Luke 11:41 and Acts 4:34, RN 19, 24) and the equal dignity of all human beings (citing Rom. 10:12, RN 37). Quadragesimo anno (QA), while making comparatively little use of scripture, did invoke Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens,” to call back those “who have deserted the camp of the Church and passed over to the ranks of socialism” (QA 123), and later used the Pauline image of the body (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:24–25) to stress the importance of the common good (QA 137).³

A major change in the use of scripture was inaugurated by Vatican II, held twenty years after Pope Pius XII’s encyclical, Divino afflante spiritu, often called the “Magna Carta” of biblical studies.⁴ Following in the footsteps of Pope Leo XIII, Vatican II mandated that scripture be the soul of sacred theology, and stressed that “special care should be given to the perfecting of moral theology, . . . whereby its scientific presentation should draw more fully on the teaching of Holy Scripture.”⁵ In the post–Vatican II period the social teaching of the magisterium, while never abandoning its debt to philosophical analysis, began to be more explicitly theological and scriptural. The documents did not engage in exegetical discussions but drew on the fruits of exegesis, especially by giving a more Christological thrust to moral teaching. J. Bryan Hehir has observed, “After the appearance of Gaudium et spes (GS), however, the pressure for more biblically and theologically based social ethic came from within the ranks of Catholic theologians and advocates of social justice.”⁶

Select writings of Pope John Paul II indicate ways in which scripture has been used for social justice. In his letter dealing with human work, Laborem exercens (September 19, 1981), John Paul II speaks of human dignity and human destiny in the first two chapters of Genesis and comments: “An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express—sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought—the fundamental truths about humanity.”⁷ John Paul’s most sustained use of the Bible occurs in his encyclical, Sollicitudo rei socialis ([SRS] On Social Concerns; December 30, 1987), in commemoration of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum progressio (1967). Again the pope turns to Genesis 1 and 2 to stress that men and women are created in the image of God, and he further notes: “The story of the human race described by Sacred Scripture is, even after the fall into sin, a story of constant achievements which, although always called into question and threatened by sin, are nonetheless repeated, increased and extended in response to the divine vocation given from the beginning to man and woman (Gen. 1:26–28) and inscribed in the image they received” (SRS 29).

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) is one of the texts most often cited in modern social teaching. Vatican II cites the parable to show that “everyone must consider his [or her] neighbor without exception as another self,” so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor Lazarus (GS 27). In Populorum progressio, Pope Paul VI expressed a hope for “a world where freedom is not an empty word, and where the poor man Lazarus can sit down at the same table with the rich man” (47). In his world travels, Pope John Paul II has used the parable frequently, most notably in his address in Yankee Stadium on October 2, 1979, where he noted that the rich man was condemned because “he failed to take notice” of Lazarus who sat at his door. The pope further stated that this parable “must always be in our memory” and “form our conscience,” and that Christ demands openness “from the rich, the affluent, the economically advantaged to the poor, the underdeveloped and the disadvantaged.” He sees this as both an individual and national challenge.⁸ The key words in the papal statement are “always be in our memory” and “form our conscience.” The biblical material does not give direct precepts, but it is necessary to inform the Christian imagination and moral dispositions.⁹

Pope John Paul returns to this parable in Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987), stating, “it is essential to recognize each persons equal right to be seated at the common banquet instead of lying outside the door like Lazarus” (SRS 33). Though this use of the parable verges on the allegorical, I would argue that intertextually its use is legitimate and that it touches human imagination today in a way that can evoke a response to the parable analogous to that expected of Luke’s original readers.

Other texts most frequently used are a number of references to Genesis 1–2, especially to Genesis 1:26, the creation of man and woman in the image of God, as a basis of human rights and human dignity, and, as one might expect, to the allegory of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31–46, but interpreted in the universalistic sense that all the thirsty, the hungry, and people otherwise marginalized are brothers and sisters of Jesus.

In his Centesimus annus (CA) the pope makes sparing use of scripture, again invoking Genesis to undergird human dignity and the destination of the goods of the earth for common use. He also cites Matthew 25:31–46 (sheep and goats) and the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–35) to stress that everyone is responsible for the well-being of his or her brother or sister (CA 51). More important than citation of specific texts is that the pope sees the whole Christian tradition as affirming “the option or love of preference for the poor” (CA 42), and says that it is because of “her evangelical duty [emphasis mine] that the Church feels called to take her stand beside the poor, to discern the justice of their requests” (CA 39).

The most sustained use of the Bible in any church document on social justice was in the 1986 pastoral letter of the U.S. bishops, Economic Justice for All (EJA).¹⁰ Here the bishops recognize the difficulty of bringing the Bible to bear on complex economic and social issues, and call attention to “the Bible’s deeper vision of God, of the purpose of creation, and of the dignity of human life in society” (EJA 29). While offering no sustained biblical argument, the bishops select six themes from the Bible that are judged especially pertinent to social issues today: (1) creation of all men and women in God’s image, which stamps them with an inalienable dignity; (2) God’s formation of a covenant community that lives in justice and mutual concern; (3) the proclamation of God’s reign by Jesus, (4) along with his formation of a community of disciples that is (5) to be manifest in a special concern for the poor and marginal, and (6) that bequeaths to history a legacy of hope and courage even amid failure and suffering. Despite the cursory and selective nature of the biblical treatment and the criticism in some circles that the use of the Bible by the bishops softens the prophetic critique of injustice, the themes selected provide a foundation for further theological reflection. Also, as Benedictine Archbishop Rembert Weakland, the chair of the committee that drafted the economics pastoral, stressed, no matter how difficult the problems of interpretation and application of the biblical material, “if the document was to influence preaching and daily church life, there should be a scriptural section that would put people in touch with the major texts and social themes of the Bible.”¹¹ Whatever the intellectual power and depth of papal teaching, the encyclicals rarely touch the lives of everyday Catholics. If Catholic social teaching is to form people’s consciences, inspire their imaginations, and shape their lives, it must weave biblical theology into its presentations.

Though often the charge is made that church teaching simply uses the scripture for proof texting, this is not completely accurate. Catholic moral theologians have tended to base their teaching on a modified natural law theology as interpreted by a magisterial and theological tradition. Scripture is often used as “a moral reminder” or a way of motivating people to moral activity that is based on diverse sources.¹² Second, a distinction must be made between the use of scripture as intertextual reference and proof texting, strictly speaking.¹³ Contemporary studies of intertextuality show that often texts evoke earlier texts and a whole history of associations in a community.¹⁴ Much of the use of scripture in official documents is of this nature, and is in this sense quite legitimate. Neither usage is the same as crass proof texting, where there is neither a chain of traditional association nor little intrinsic connection between the scriptural reference and the doctrine to be “proved.”

While this volume offers careful studies of the mainly magisterial documents that produced a coherent body of social doctrine, the biblical renewal is much less focused and comprises a myriad of methods, originally historical criticism, now supplemented by varieties of “criticisms,” for example, redaction criticism, social science criticism, and literary criticism, all of which are enveloped by different hermeneutical approaches, for example, liberation and feminist hermeneutics, and a proliferation of “posts,” postmodern readings, postfeminist readings, and postcolonial readings. Nor among biblical scholars themselves is there one consistent position on what makes a particular biblical text or theme authoritative or how they concretely influence church life and practice. An adequate presentation of the relat...