Catholic Social Doctrine III

I have been reviewing the underlying values of the seven principles of Catholic Social Doctrine. Last time I sketched the concepts of Unity in Community; Order; the Natural Law; Responsibility; the Common Good; and Authority. To round out this picture, there are four other values that inform Catholic thought on social structures. Solidarity: the well-being of the community and the well-being of its members are interdependent. Participation by individuals is both a right and a responsibility; concern for individual good and the common good are both required. Whether we wish it or not, our lives are interwoven.

Subsidiarity: ideally, decisions are to be made at the most immediate level by those directly affected, beginning with the family, the most basic unit of society. Higher levels of authority support this individual activity with accountability; those higher levels are engaged only to resolve situations that cannot be addressed by the lower level.

Organic Growth: rooted in Subsidiarity, we have a natural preference for those more closely related to us. Again, the family is the basic unit of society and larger units and structures develop to coordinate and foster the smaller units’ flourishing.

We see this reflected in the various levels of governance in organizations in business, education, Church, government, and elsewhere. Ideally, local, state, federal, and international organizations all exist to serve the needs of the common good in an ordered harmony rather than in competition.

Tolerance of evil: this value comes from the writing of St. Augustine and needs careful discernment. It states that what cannot be prohibited or changed in a society without causing greater harm or hindering greater goods can be tolerated while not approving of it and actively seeking ways to change it. This is always a prudential judgment that must be rooted in true concern for the common good and not simply avoidance of responsibility or passive condoning of harms. Catholic Social Doctrine (CSD) has at times been misunderstood or mischaracterized. A few of those common misunderstandings are worth noting.

Myth 1: CSD began in 1891 with Leo XIII

Catholic Social Doctrine is not new, nor is it a separate moral structure or set of norms. It is the same moral teaching of the Church, applied prudentially to particular questions regarding the ordering of the social good of the human person. To be adequately understood, then, CST must be viewed in that fuller context of all of Catholic morality.

Myth 2: CSD is about social matters, while traditional Catholic morality is about individual choices. At its core, as always in Church teaching, CSD is about the human person, made in the image of God. As God is a communion of three divine Persons, it follows that part of our human nature made in God’s image is that we are called to community in love. Unlike the thinking of some philosophies, we are not isolated individuals forced into relationship to meet needs we cannot on our own. We are in fact created for and fulfilled in relationships.

This is the origin of “politics” – how we best arrange our common life to benefit one another. The politics we so often see today, while often marred by a lack of cooperation and partisan interests, still retains this fundamental responsibility.

For Catholic thought, the purpose of social structures is to foster love, goodness, and cooperation to attain the goals of human life that are not possible by individual efforts alone, so that all may live up to their individual potential. Realistically, we know that even the most ideal human structures are not enough; a truly worthy political life requires the conversion of hearts (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 1888, 1931; Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi 24).