Transcript HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND GLOBAL POVERTY

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING PART 1:
• Introduction to Key Principles: no official canon of
principles (hand-out)
• Clarification of terms used in political/economic
theory:
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right-wing/left-wing
liberalism/capitalism
socialism
Communism
• Discussion concerning how CST transcends
political ideologies of the right and left
CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING PART 2:
• 3) Principles of CST:
– Human Dignity
– Solidarity
– Subsidiarity
What is Catholic Social Teaching?
• Doctrine concerning the human person, the
person in relation to family, community, the
environment, and the State
• Doctrine concerning wealth and poverty,
economic systems, modes of social organization,
and the role of the State
• Based on Scripture and Tradition
• First began to be combined together (in
Encyclicals and other official documents) into a
system in the late nineteenth century
• Rerum Novarum 1891
Key Documents:
• Rerum Novarum (1891) Leo XIII (The Condition of Labour)
• Quadragesimo Anno (1931) Pius XI (Reconstruction of the
Social Order)
• Mater et Magistra (1961) John XXIII (Christianity and Social
Progress)
• Pacem in Terris (1963) John XXIII (Peace on Earth)
• Gaudium et Spes (1965) Vatican II (The Church in the
Modern World)
• Dignitatis Humanae (1965) Vatican II (On Religious Liberty)
• Populorum Progressio (1967) Paul VI (The Development of
Peoples)
• Humanae Vitae (1968) Paul VI (On Human Life)
Key Documents:
• Octogesima Adveniens (1971) Paul VI (A Call to Action)
• Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) Paul VI (Evangelization in the
Modern World)
• Laborem Exercens (1981) John Paul II (On Human Work)
• Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) John Paul II (On Social
Concern)
• Centesimus Annus (1991) (The Hundredth Year)
• Evangelium Vitae (1995) John Paul II (The Gospel of Life)
• Deus Caritas Est (2005) Benedict XVI (God is Love)
• Caritas in Veritate (2009) Benedict XVI (In Charity and
Truth)
• Beginning with Rerum Novarum, CST critiques
social and political ideologies both of the left
and the right
• CST as a whole is distinctive in its ongoing and
consistent critiques of the social and political
ideologies of left and right
• CST transcends these political ideologies
Let’s unpack these terms: important!
Meaning of left and right?
• Terms “left” and
“right” appeared
during French
Revolution (1789)
• National Assembly
(1789-81) divided into
supporters of the king
(nobles who sat to the
right of the president)
• And those opposed
(the commons who
sat to the left)
Right:
• Term originally designated reactionaries and
political conservatives (Ancien Régime)
• In politics: social hierarchy, inequality (perceived
as natural)
• In liberal democracies: opposed to
socialism/stresses small government/free
markets (laissez-faire capitalism)/individual
initiative
• Extreme Right:
• Virulent nationalism/racism
Left:
• Opposed to political hierarchy
• Advocates social and economic
equality/extensive government intervention in
the economy/welfare state
What is Socialism?
• Socialism: A theory or system of social
organization that advocates the vesting of the
ownership and control of the means of
production and distribution, of capital, land,
etc, in the hands of the community as a whole
• In Marxist theory, the stage following
capitalism, in the transition of a society to
communism (=perfect implementation of
collectivist principles)
What is Communism?
• “A theory or system
of social
organization based
on the holding of all
property in
common, actual
ownership being
ascribed to the
state”
What is Liberalism?
• A political/social
philosophy advocating
the freedom of the
individual, parliamentary
systems of government
• Unrestricted
development in all
spheres of human
endeavour, and
governmental guarantees
of individual rights
What is Capitalism?
“An economic system
that is based on private
ownership of the means
of production and the
creation of goods and
services for profit”
• Competitive markets (“laissez-faire”: government
should not have control over markets)
• Wage labour
• Capital accumulation
• REPEAT: CST as a whole is distinctive in its
ongoing and consistent critiques of the social
and political ideologies of left and right
• Transcends political ideology
• While communism has been condemned, so
too have fascism and Nazism
• While socialism has been condemned, so to
has liberalism been condemned, and so to has
unbridled capitalism
• Rerum Novarum, for example, condemned
socialism, but at the same time advocated
economic distributism [will return to this principle
when we detail CST topics]
• Catholic Social Teaching opposes collectivist
approaches such as Communism
• BUT also rejects unrestricted laissez-faire policies
and the notion that a free market automatically
produces social justice
• The state has a positive moral role to play: no
society will achieve a just distribution of resources
with a totally free market
Catechism of the Catholic Church [2403]:
– “The right to private property, acquired by work
or received from others by inheritance or gift,
does not do away with the original gift of the
earth to the whole of mankind. The universal
destination of goods remains primordial, even if
the promotion of the common good requires
respect for the right to private property and its
exercise”
• Laborem Exercens (1981), John Paul II said,
concerning the right to private property:
– The Church “has always understood this right within
the broader context of the right common to all to use
the goods of the whole creation: the right to private
property is subordinated to the right to common use,
to the fact that goods are meant for everyone”
• Gaudium et Spes:
– “God intended the earth and all it contains for the use
of all men and peoples…created goods should flow
fairly to all, regulated by justice and accompanied by
charity”
CST Themes
• According to Pope John Paul II, the foundation
of CST "rests on the threefold cornerstones of
human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity”
• According to Pope Benedict XVI, its purpose is
“to contribute, here and now, to the
acknowledgment and attainment of what is
just”
• Human Dignity
• Solidarity
• Subsidiarity
= the three cornerstones for the modern promotion
of justice and peace
Dignity
• Human dignity
• The prime principle of Catholic social teaching
is the correct view of the human person:
• Made in the image and likeness of God
• Not just something, but someone
• Capable of freely giving him or herself, and of
entering into communion with other persons
• Called by grace to a covenant with God
Sanctity of human life and dignity of
the person
Inherent dignity of the human person starting from
conception through to natural death
Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life):
•opposes the deliberate taking of innocent life:
•abortion
•euthanasia
•capital punishment
•genocide
•torture
•the intentional targeting of noncombatants in war
• The Roman Catholic Bishops of England and
Wales, in their document ,"The Common
Good" (1996), stated that:
• "The study of the evolution of human rights
shows that they all flow from the one
fundamental right: the right to life” (section 3)
Gaudium et Spes:
• “from the moment of its conception life must
be guarded with the greatest care"
FAMILY
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Person and family
Person and community/state
Humans are social animals
Families are the first and most basic units of a
society
Relationship between the sexes:
• “Complementarianism”
• "God gives man and woman an equal personal
dignity," but the harmony of society "depends
in part on the way in which the
complementarity, needs, and mutual support
between the sexes are lived out"
FAMILIES/COMMUNITIES
• Together families form communities (and
communities larger forms of social
organization)
• 1) All people have a right to participate in the
economic, political, and cultural life of society
• 2) Under the principle of subsidiarity, state
functions should be carried out at the lowest
level that is practical
Subsidiarity
• Pope Pius XI:
– "It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy,
fixed and unchangeable, that one should not
withdraw from individuals and commit to the
community what they can accomplish by their
own enterprise and/or industry”
• Incidentally, the subsidiarity principle,
originating in Rerum Novarum, was
established in E.U. law by the Treaty of
Maastricht (1 February 2003)
Solidarity
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Unity of humankind
Am I my brother’s keeper?
Good Samaritan: welcome the stranger
“Solidarity is a firm and persevering determination to
commit oneself to the common good, not merely
vague compassion or shallow distress at the
misfortunes of others”
• “Solidarity, which flows from faith, is fundamental to
the Christian view of social and political organization.
Each person is connected to and dependent on all
humanity, collectively and individually”
• cf. political liberalism/individualism
Distributism
• Distributism holds that social and economic
structures should promote wide ownership of
corporations
• Distributism is the basis for anti-trust laws and
economic cooperatives, including credit unions
• Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, and
Centesimus Annus, are Catholic Social Teaching
documents which advocate economic
distributism
Rights and Responsibilities
Rights
• Right to life and to the necessities of life:
• Decent housing, employment, health care, and
education
• Right to private property:
• “Every man has by nature the right to possess property
as his own"
• This right, is not absolute, however; it is limited by the
concept of the social mortgage
• “It is theoretically moral and just for members of a
society to destroy property used in an evil way by
others, or for the state to redistribute wealth from
those who have unjustly hoarded it”
• Right to exercise
religious freedom,
publicly and privately,
by individuals and
institutions
• Freedom of
conscience
Responsibilities
• Corresponding to these rights are duties and
responsibilities:
• to one another, to our families, and to the larger
society
• "Love one another, as I have loved you" (John 13:34,
15:9-17)
• "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these
least brothers of mine, you did for me”
• Pope Benedict XVI:
• “Love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick
and needy of every kind, is as essential as the ministry
of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel”
Preferential Option for the Poor and
Vulnerable
• This “preferential option for the poor” and
vulnerable includes all who are marginalized:
• unborn children, persons with disabilities, the
elderly and terminally ill, and victims of
injustice and oppression
Dignity of Work and
Rights of Workers
• Economic justice
• What we’ve said thus far:
• right to private property is tempered by the principle of
the universal destination of goods
• Just wage
• Right to trade unions
• Workers have responsibilities also
• In 1933, the Catholic Worker Movement was founded
by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (advocating nonviolence, voluntary poverty and hospitality for the poor
and marginalized)
CARE OF GOD’S CREATION
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