Catholic social doctrine and political authority at the national and international level

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EnDLeSs

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I wanted to see if the catholic community here can help me understand the Catholic social doctrine a little better.

I am seeking to find the answer in how the Catholic social doctrine creates a clear and persuasive framework for thinking about and judging the proper role of authority nationally and internationally.

How does the Catholic social doctrine address problems in economics and social realms?

Let me point out that I am really new in understanding the catholic social doctrine, so please if you respond, please be very detailed.
 
EnDLeSs
Perhaps you should look at Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus, 1991, which refers to earlier social teaching, at:
tinyurl.com/5m32e

These may be useful also:
drwilliamluckey.com/
mises.org/daily/4310
thomasewoods.com/articles/
mises.org/articles.aspx

In Caritas in Veritate, the latest social Encyclical (2009), Benedict XVI has explained that “Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (#36).

“Space also needs to be created within the market for economic activity carried out by subjects who freely choose to act according to principles other than those of pure profit, without sacrificing the production of economic value in the process.” (#37).

Also:
“The key problem of social ethics in this case is that of just remuneration for work done” (no.19). This, as we have seen, has been a major theme of papal social teaching since Leo XIII. John Paul reminds his readers of the connection of just wages with the family. “Just remuneration for the work of an adult who is responsible for a family means remuneration which will suffice for establishing and properly maintaining a family and for providing security for its future” (no.19). This can be done either by means of “what is called a family wage – that is, a single salary given to the head of the family for his work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse having to take up gainful employment outside the home” or by “family allowances or grants,” which are common in many European countries. Such arrangements are a way in which a society can ensure that mothers are not forced to leave the home to take up paid work, something which is “wrong from the point of view of the good of society and of the family when it contradicts or hinders [the] primary goals of the mission of a mother” (no. 19).
Catholic Social Teaching: John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, (Thomas Storck)
[catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0286.html]](http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0286.html])
 
There are three types of government. The first is where one person, or a group of persons, pass laws and issue decrees which everyone must obey. The second is where every person is his own master, acting as he or she thinks fit. The third is where God is acknowledged as ruler, and all people seek to follow his way of love. This third type of government is the ideal to which we should aspire, and for which we should pray. And if every person were truly seeking to follow God’s way of love, then we could also have the second type of government. We would know that if people were free to make their own decisions on all matters, these decisions would conform to God’s laws, so there would be perfect harmony. However no society has ever existed in which every member fully and consistently tries to obey God; there are always people motivated by greed and self-interest. For this reason there need to be individuals or small groups who pass laws and issue decrees which can be enforced. The existence of the first type of government is a tacit admission of human sin and frailty. The challenge is to ensure that these lawmakers act on behalf of the people as a whole and not just for their own benefit.
St John Chrysostom, On Living Simply, 42
​

The people we choose to make our laws for us should make them in accord with the teachings of the Church. Not to twist the teachings of the Church to fit their own preconceived notions about government power and economics.

If you want to learn it though, you should not really get it from an Internet forum. Because any answer I give will be filtered through my own attitudes. Even if I cite or extract something, it will be a quote that supports my argument.

Better for you to learn on your own if you are genuinely interested. I would suggest studying the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Again, try to set aside your preconceived notions. Let me share with you a trick to reading that document: it is a compendium. It doesn’t create doctrine, it *compiles *doctrine. The book is extensively footnoted. Look at the documents it cites in the footnotes: most are online. And then look at the footnotes within these cited documents. (For example, JPII’s Centesimus Annus has a lot of citations from Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno within it)

It is not something that you can master in minutes or hours, but it is an achievable task.

As for political authority, you want to support those who support the doctrine that you’ve learned in these documents. Even if those policies don’t specifically cite that doctrine.
 
EnDLeSs said:
On chapter 4, this is where it goes into generalities on some of the principles. And I am trying to understand how this specifically creates a framework on which people can judge or understand political authority.

And also how it creates a framework on dealing with economic problems
Click to expand...
Wit the exception of a small handful of issues, what the Church provides are only generalities and principles; it is up to each individual to determine how best to satisfy the objectives the Church has identified. This is why there could never be such a thing as a Catholic political party because Catholics can legitimately disagree over the means to accomplish political goals. Our obligations are to honestly try to solve social problems but there are no specific directives on how best to go about that task, so we are free to take whatever side we choose on immigration, spending, health care, and all the other social issues we face.

Ender
 
EnDLeSs
Thanks,
I was looking more at vatican.va/roman_curia/po…tt-soc_en.html
On chapter 4, this is where it goes into generalities on some of the principles. And I am trying to understand how this specifically creates a framework on which people can judge or understand political authority.
Click to expand...
And also how it creates a framework on dealing with economic problems
Click to expand...
Your website is the Vatican, and no document is identified. Please do so.

Catholic teaching supports free enterprise, based on the Catholic Late Scholastics who discovered and developed the natural laws of cause and effect in economics.

Pope John Paul II teaches in Centesimus Annus, 1991:
CA 42. ‘Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?
‘The answer is obviously complex. If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.
‘CA 43. The Church has no models to present;’

The Popes have some realization of the cause and effect of economic laws:
“If I were to pronounce on any single matter of a prevailing economic problem, I should be interfering with the freedom of men to work out their own affairs. Certain cases must be solved in the domain of facts, case by case as they occur…[M]en must realise in deeds those things, the principles of which have been placed beyond dispute…[T]hese things one must leave to the solution of time and experience.” [Pope Leo XIII. Quoted in *The Church And The Market, Dr Thomas E. Woods, Lexington Books, 2005, p 4].

Pius XI wrote of “matters of technique for which [the Church] is neither suitably equipped nor endowed by office.” Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, 41]….“economics and moral science employs each its own principles in its own sphere.” [QA, 42].
 
markomalley said:
There are three types of government. The first is where one person, or a group of persons, pass laws and issue decrees which everyone must obey. The second is where every person is his own master, acting as he or she thinks fit. The third is where God is acknowledged as ruler, and all people seek to follow his way of love. This third type of government is the ideal to which we should aspire, and for which we should pray. And if every person were truly seeking to follow God’s way of love, then we could also have the second type of government. We would know that if people were free to make their own decisions on all matters, these decisions would conform to God’s laws, so there would be perfect harmony. However no society has ever existed in which every member fully and consistently tries to obey God; there are always people motivated by greed and self-interest. For this reason there need to be individuals or small groups who pass laws and issue decrees which can be enforced. The existence of the first type of government is a tacit admission of human sin and frailty. The challenge is to ensure that these lawmakers act on behalf of the people as a whole and not just for their own benefit.
St John Chrysostom, On Living Simply, 42
​

The people we choose to make our laws for us should make them in accord with the teachings of the Church. Not to twist the teachings of the Church to fit their own preconceived notions about government power and economics.

If you want to learn it though, you should not really get it from an Internet forum. Because any answer I give will be filtered through my own attitudes. Even if I cite or extract something, it will be a quote that supports my argument.

Better for you to learn on your own if you are genuinely interested. I would suggest studying the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Again, try to set aside your preconceived notions. Let me share with you a trick to reading that document: it is a compendium. It doesn’t create doctrine, it *compiles *doctrine. The book is extensively footnoted. Look at the documents it cites in the footnotes: most are online. And then look at the footnotes within these cited documents. (For example, JPII’s Centesimus Annus has a lot of citations from Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno within it)

It is not something that you can master in minutes or hours, but it is an achievable task.

As for political authority, you want to support those who support the doctrine that you’ve learned in these documents. Even if those policies don’t specifically cite that doctrine.
Click to expand...
That is exactly what I was reading. I was reading the Compendium and decided to post this question in search for answers. The compendium just left me with so many questions as I was reading.

How does “human dignity” play a role in politics? How does the human dignity collide with politics? What does the catholic social doctrine say about that?

tinyurl.com/455cdw3
 
EnDLeSs
How does “human dignity” play a role in politics? How does the human dignity collide with politics? What does the catholic social doctrine say about that?
Click to expand...
“With Vatican II, Catholic doctrine, or divine law, remains as always that societies and their public authorities are morally obliged to act, legislate, and govern in accordance with the principles of the true religion. (The Council’s *Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity *also reaffirms that teaching in its article 13, which says that Catholics should “strive to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures” of their community). This same unchanging divine law entails the right and duty of public authorities to penalize those who attack the true religion - to the extent that the common good requires.”
See: rtforum.org/lt/lt9.html

The whole concept of Catholic social teaching is to ensure that with their God-given human nature individuals are enabled to live according to His laws – the natural moral law and the teaching of His Church. Therefore any man-made laws should conform to the natural moral law and not transgress it – those politicians who vote otherwise are thus abusing human nature.

In the case of a choice between a bad law and a worse law, a politician should choose the lesser of the evils if that would defeat the worse law.
 
EnDLeSs said:
That is exactly what I was reading. I was reading the Compendium and decided to post this question in search for answers. The compendium just left me with so many questions as I was reading.

How does “human dignity” play a role in politics? How does the human dignity collide with politics? What does the catholic social doctrine say about that?

tinyurl.com/455cdw3
Click to expand...
Well, if the dignity of the human person is the overarching of Social Doctrine, then there are some definite implications for governmental policy. For example
Paragraph 132: A just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human person.
Right there, you can see that you cannot have a just society that is built upon disregard for that innate human dignity. Abortion, euthanasia, genocide, apartheid/segregation, class warfare are thus utterly foreign to an authentically Christian society. If you have politicians who support those types of policies, then their policy goals are at odds with Christian doctrine.

Paragraph 133: In no case, therefore, is the human person to be manipulated for ends that are foreign to his own development,

Paragraph 133: The person cannot be a means for carrying out economic, social or political projects imposed by some authority, even in the name of an alleged progress of the civil community as a whole or of other persons, either in the present or the future. It is therefore necessary that public authorities keep careful watch so that restrictions placed on freedom or any onus placed on personal activity will never become harmful to personal dignity, thus guaranteeing the effective practicability of human rights. All this, once more, is based on the vision of man as a* person*, that is to say, as an* active* and* responsible* subject of his own growth process, together with the community to which he belongs.

Paragraph 134: Authentic social changes are effective and lasting only to the extent that they are based on resolute changes in personal conduct. An authentic moralization of social life will never be possible unless it starts with people and has people as its point of reference: indeed, “living a moral life bears witness to the dignity of the person”[250]. It is obviously the task of people to develop those moral attitudes that are fundamental for any society that truly wishes to be human (justice, honesty, truthfulness, etc.), and which in no way can simply be expected of others or delegated to institutions. It is the task of everyone, and in a special way of those who hold various forms of political, judicial or professional responsibility with regard to others, to be the watchful conscience of society and the first to bear witness to civil social conditions that are worthy of human beings.
“I am not a number…I am a free man” is a famous quote from an old British series, the Prisoner. That is also an implication of paying due regard to the dignity of the human person in governmental policy.

From paragraph 134, we learn that the human person should be the end of government policy, not the means to bring it to pass. For example:
  • If a government manipulates the news in order to garner public support for its policies, that would be a bad thing.
  • If a government manipulates the value of the currency in order to bring about social change, that would be a bad thing.
  • If a government manipulates commodity prices through its policies, that would also be a bad thing.
(An example in my humble opinion in the US would be the “security theater” we go through any time we board an airplane – that is a criticism of both the current administration and the previous one. It offends human dignity and doesn’t really accomplish very much…except to exacerbate fear and to numb people to intrusions)

Also in paragraph 134, we see this gem: Authentic social changes are effective and lasting only to the extent that they are based on resolute changes in personal conduct.

If we have governmental policy that forces right conduct rather than encouraging people to do the right thing, that is offensive to human dignity.

So as examples again in my opinion – your prudential judgment may vary:
  • If you have policies in place to force corporal works of mercy on people (such as a mandate for wealth redistribution or even policies forcing “service hours” on school children), those policies are violations of human dignity
  • Almost everybody knows that an excessive diet of McDonalds is not good for the health. But governmental policies prohibiting people from eating McDonalds would be a violation of human dignity. Not that those people should eat McDonalds 3 meals a day, but the decision to eat healthy should come from within the person, not by governmental fiat.
Any policy that is implemented should respect human dignity first and foremost. There are those who scream “the common good” when implementing draconian policies, but without the respect for basic human dignity for each and every person, “the common good” can simply turn into tyranny. There are multiple direct implications for multiple governmental policies in this.

I hope that is able to get you started.
 
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