Catholic Social Doctrine II

Underlying and connecting the seven principles of Catholic Social Doctrine are deeper values rooted in Christian revelation about what it means to be human. This consideration – the nature of our humanity – is the real theme of Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. What are those values?

Unity in Community: made in the image of the one God, who is a community of three divine Persons, we are created for community and cooperation. Our social life is not merely a human arrangement that arises to control competition, but an essential aspect of humanity.

Order: creating true unity out of diversity requires coordinating the differing and various endowments and gifts of the members of society and its structures. As in the Trinity, the Persons are not identical or interchangeable, so in human society, our essential common humanity is not erased but enhanced by the proper ordering of the abilities and needs of each, lest we become simply co-existing competitors rather than a unified human family. Indeed, our families become reference point to understand this kind of order, not imposed from outside but discovered from within and guided by love.

The Natural Law: respecting the givenness of the person as a body-soul composite, with ordered needs of body, mind, will, and spirit, means that persons are not an abstraction that can be created at will by history, economics, science, or politics; each person is never a means but always an end in himself/herself. Social structures exist to serve the common good, the flourishing of each member to the extent of each one’s individual capacity. Responsibility: freedom and responsibility are correlative; each person is responsible for what is freely and deliberately chosen, not only for oneself but for its effect on the social whole. Further, freedom is inherently linked to truth in order to achieve good ends; good ends do not automatically justify the means.

The Common Good: the community has the right and responsibility to create the conditions for each member to reach full potential; the whole owes distributive justice to the individual, and the individual owes commutative justice to peers and legal justice to the whole.

Authority: some form of authority must exist for the purpose of service to the whole: to determine, direct, and implement society’s ordering towards the common good. Just laws that bind all are needed, with participation and representation of each one’s interests and fair application and a means of redress against oppression and injustices. Authority exists not to dominate and control but to serve the common good. More values next time. I realize these can sound dry and abstract. I once did a presentation on Catholic Social Doctrine

with examples from Calvin and Hobbes cartoons – I enjoyed putting that together, but copyrights don’t allow me to share it here. But perhaps you can find the examples I found in that comic strip and entertain yourself at the same time.

NFP Week

Each year, the Church celebrates the gift of families and the miracle of human life co-created with God through Natural Family Planning Week. This July 25th marks the 58th anniversary of St. Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”). Each year the US Bishops publish lots of information, articles, testimonies, and teaching about NFP, but you might take 15-20 minutes this week to read the encyclical itself, going back to the original source (available at the Vatican website and many others).

While Humanae Vitae has generated much controversy over the years, the document itself is a beautiful and realistic affirmation of the dignity of marriage, the challenging vocation of parenthood, and the gift that each person is – beginning as a child – made in the very image of God. It addresses responsible parenthood and the regulation of birth in accord with the design of our human nature, both body and spirit– thus the term “natural family planning.” To be cocreators with God of a human person who is called to live eternally: this is a profound gift God entrusts to our stewardship and supports with divine grace. It demands much of parents; it bestows even more in return.

For many more resources, see www.usccb.org/ and click on the highlight for NPF Week: “Natural Family Planning: Designed by God – Guided by Love – Open to Life.”