"Catholic Social Teaching"

Quotes from Major Church Documents
Arranged by Topic


 


TOPICS:

Faith's Call to Action
The Role of Church in Society
The Proper Role of Government
Ecology
Economic Justice
Threats to Human Life & Dignity
Poverty
Peace, War, & the Arms Race
Property & Wealth
Racism
Work & the Rights of Workers


FAITH'S CALL TO ACTION

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties for the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.


According to the Christian message, therefore, man's relationship to his neighbor is bound up with his relationship to God ... Christian love of neighbor and justice cannot be separated. For love implies an absolute demand for justice, namely a recognition of the dignity and rights of one's neighbor. Justice attains its inner fullness only in love.


It is to all Christians that we address a fresh and insistent call to action ... Let each one examine himself, to see what he has done up to now, and what he ought to do. It is not enough to recall principles, state intentions, point to crying injustices and utter prophetic denunciations; these words will lack real weight unless they are accompanied for each individual by a livelier awareness of personal responsibility and by effective actions.


The Church well knows that no temporal achievement is to be identifies with the Kingdom of God, but that all such achievements simply reflect and in a sense anticipate the glory of the Kingdom, the Kingdom which we await at the end of history, when the Lord will come again. But that expectation can never be an excuse for lack of concern for people in their concrete personal situations and in their social, national and international life, since the former is conditioned by the latter, especially today.


[Solidarity] is a firm and preserving determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and each individual, because we are all really responsible for all ... A commitment to the good of one's neighbor with the readiness, in the gospel sense, to 'lose oneself' for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to 'serve him' instead of oppressing him for one's own advantage.


The prime purpose of this special commitment to the poor is to enable them to become active participants in the life of society. It is to enable all persons to share in and contribute to the common good. The 'option for the poor,' therefore, is not an adversarial slogan that pits one group or class against another. Rather it states that the deprivation and powerlessness of the poor wounds the whole community. The extent of their suffering is a measure of how far we are from being a true community of persons. These wounds will be healed only by greater solidarity with the poor and among the poor themselves.


THE ROLE OF CHURCH IN SOCIETY

[T]he Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and the relationship of the one to the other.


The Church, by reason of her role and competence, is not identified in any way with the political community nor bound to any political system. She is at once a sign and safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person ... It is only right, however, that at all times and in all places, the Church should have true freedom to preach the faith, to teach her social doctrine, to exercise her role freely among men, and to pass moral judgment in those matters which concern public order when the fundamental rights of a person or the salvation of souls require it.


It is up to the Christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country, to shed on it the light of the Gospel's unalterable words and to draw principles of reflection, norms of judgement, and directives for action from the social teaching of the Church.


Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world full appear to us as a constitutive dimension of preaching of the Gospel, or in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.


In the work of evangelization we cannot and must not disregard the immense importance of those questions which are so much at issue today: questions concerning justice, liberation, progress and world peace. If we disregard these we are likewise disregarding the teachings of the Gospel about the love of our neighbor who is suffering and is in want.


Positive signs in the contemporary world are the growing awareness of the solidarity of the poor among themselves, their efforts to support one another and their public demonstrations on the social scene which, without recourse to violence, present their own needs and rights in the face of the inefficiency of corruptions of the public authorities. By virtue of her evangelical duty, the church feels allied to take her stand beside the poor, to discern the justice of their requests and to help satisfy them, without losing sight of the good groups in the context of the common good.


THE PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

As for the State, its whole raison d'être is the realization of the common good in the temporal order.


Now, the common good embraces the sum of those conditions of social life by which individuals, families, and groups can achieve their own fulfillment in a relatively thorough and ready way.


If Pope Leo XIII calls upon the state to remedy the condition of the poor in accordance with justice, he does so because of his timely awareness that the state has the duty of watching over the common good and of ensuring that every sector of social life, not excluding the economic one, contributes to achieving that good while respecting the rightful autonomy of each sector.


The state must never absorb the individual or the family, both should be allowed free and untrammeled activity so far as it is consistent with the common good and the interest of others...


[I]t is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.


The State ... should safeguard the rights of all citizens, but especially the weaker, such as workers, women and children. Nor may the State ever neglect its duty to contribute actively to the betterment of the living conditions of workers.


Experience has taught us that, unless these [civil] authorities take suitable action with regards to economic, political and cultural matters, inequalities between the citizens tend to become more and more widespread, especially in the modern world, and as a result human rights are rendered totally ineffective.


Just as within individual societies it is possible and right to organize a solid economy which will direct the functioning of the market to the common good, so too there is a similar need for adequate interventions on the international level.


ECOLOGY

Nor can the moral character of development exclude respect for the beings which constitute the natural world ... [First] one cannot use with impunity the different categories of beings, whether living or inanimate -- animals, plant, the natural elements -- simply as one wishes, according to one's economic needs. On the contrary, one must take into account the nature of each being and its mutual connection in an ordered system ...

[Second] natural resources are limited; some are not, as it is said, renewable. Using them as if they were inexhaustible, with absolute dominion, seriously endangers their availability not only for the present generation but above all for generations to come ...

[Third] the direct or indirect result of industrialization is, ever more frequently, the pollution of the environment, with serious consequences for the health of the population.

The dominion granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to 'use and misuse,' or to dispose of things as one pleases. The limitation imposed from the beginning by the Creator himself ... shows clearly enough that, when it comes to the natural world, we are subject not only to biological laws but also to moral ones, which cannot be violated with impunity.

ECONOMIC JUSTICE
[The Catholic tradition calls for] a society of free work, of enterprise and of participation. Such a society is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole of society are satisfied.


The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can the society attain social peace.


It is an intolerable abuse and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father's low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children. Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs completely.


[A]n immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few ... which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure. The dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money.


From this it follows that the economic prosperity of any people is to be assessed not so much from the sum total of goods and wealth possessed as from the distribution of goods according to norms of justice, so that everyone in the community can develop and perfect himself. For this, after all, is the end toward which all economic activity of a community is by nature ordered.


Beginning our discussion of the rights of man, we see that every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services. Therefore a human being also has the right to security in cases of sickness, inability to work, widowhood, old age, unemployment, or in any other case in which he is deprived of the means of subsistence through no fault of his own.


Economic development must be kept under the control of mankind. It must not be left to the sole judgement of a few men or groups possessing excessive economic power, or of the political community alone, or of certain especially powerful nations. It is proper on the contrary, that at every level the largest possible number of people have an active share in directing that development.


But it is unfortunate that on these conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation. This unchecked liberalism leads to dictatorship rightly denounced by Pius XI as producing 'the international imperialism of money.' One cannot condemn such abuses too strongly by solemnly recalling once again that the economy is at the service of man.


Individual initiative alone the mere free play of competition could never assure successful development. One must avoid the risk of increasing still more the wealth of the rich and the dominion of the strong, while leaving the poor in their misery and adding to the servitude of the oppressed.


Unless combated and overcome by social and political action, the influence of the new industrial and technological order favors the concentration of wealth, power, and decision-making in the hands of a small public or private controlling group. Economic injustice and lack of social participation keep a man from attaining his basic human and civil rights.


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.


... [T]he many proposals put forward by experts in Catholic social teaching and by the highest magisterium of the church take on special significance: proposals for joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of business ... It is clear that recognition of the proper position of labor and the worker in the production process demands various adaptations in the sphere of the right to ownership of the means of production.


It should be noted that in today's world, among other rights, the right of economic initiative is often suppressed. Yet it is a right which is important not only for the individual but also for the common good. Experience shows us that the denial of this right, or its limitation in the name of an alleged "equality" of everyone in society, diminishes, or in practice absolutely destroys the spirit of initiative, that is to say the creative subjectivity of the citizen. As a consequence, there arises, not so much a true equality as a 'leveling down.'


THREATS TO HUMAN LIFE & DIGNITY

And how can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world's ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? It is impossible to catalogue completely the vast array of threats to human life, so many are the forms, whether explicit or hidden, in which they appear today!


For God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life -- a ministry which must be fulfilled in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.


Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violated the integrity of the human person ... whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society ... Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator.


It is necessary to go back to seeing the family as the sanctuary of life. The family is indeed sacred: it is the place in which life -- the gift of God -- can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed and can develop in accordance with what constitutes authentic human growth. In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life.


Human ingenuity seems to be directed more toward limiting, suppressing or destroying the sources of life -- including recourse to abortion, which unfortunately is so widespread in the world -- than toward defending and opening up the possibilities of life.


Even when not motivated by a selfish refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing perversion of mercy. True compassion lead to sharing another's pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear.


POVERTY

When there is a question of protecting the rights of individuals, the poor and helpless have a claim to special consideration. The rich population has many ways of protecting themselves, and stands less in need of help ...


The right to have a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one's family belongs to everyone ... If a person is in extreme necessity, he has the right to take from the riches of others that he himself needs.


While an immense mass of people still lack the absolute necessities of life, some, even in less advanced countries, live sumptuously or squander wealth. Luxury and misery rub shoulders. While the few more enjoy very great freedom of choice, the many are deprived of almost all possibility of acting on their own initiative and responsibility, and often subsist in living and working conditions unworthy of human beings.


The greater part of the world is still suffering from so much poverty that it is an if Christ Himself were crying out in these poor to beg the charity of the disciples. Some nations with a majority of citizens who are counted as Christians have an abundance of this world's goods, while others are deprived of the necessities of life and are tormented with hunger, disease, and every kind of misery. This situation must not be allowed to continue, to the scandal of humanity. For the spirit of poverty and of charity are the glory and authentication of the Church of Christ.


For it is not simply a question of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. It is not enough to combat destitution, urgent and necessary as this is. The point at issue is the establishment of a human society in which everyone, regardless of race, religion or nationality, can live a truly human life free from bondage imposed by men and the forces of nature not sufficiently mastered, a society in which freedom is not an empty word, and where Lazarus the poor man can sit at the same table as the rich man.


The principle of participation leads us to the conviction that the most appropriate and fundamental solutions to poverty will be those that enable people to take control of their own lives.

PEACE, WAR, & THE ARMS RACE
Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.


It must be said again: the arms race is an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which injures the poor to an intolerable degree.


Justice, then, right reason and consideration for human dignity and life urgently demand that the arms race should cease, that the stockpiles which exist in various countries should be reduced equally and simultaneously by the parties concerned, that nuclear weapons should be banned, and finally that all come to an agreement on a fitting program of disarmament, employing mutual and effective controls.


However, peace will be but an empty-sounding word unless it is founded on the order which this present document has outlined in confident hope: an order founded on truth, built according justice, vivified and integrated by charity, and put into practice in freedom.


When so many people are hungry, when so many families suffer from destitution, when so many remain steeped in ignorance, when so many schools, hospitals and homes worthy of the name remain to be built, all public or private squandering of wealth, ... every exhausting armaments race becomes an intolerable scandal.


The arms race is a threat to man's highest good, which is life; it makes poor people and individuals yet more miserable while making richer those already powerful; it creates a continuous danger of war; and in the case of nuclear arms, it threatens to destroy all life from the face of the earth.


How can one justify the fact that huge sums of money, which could and should be used for increasing the development of peoples, are instead ... assigned to the increase of stockpiles of weapons, both in developed countries and in the developing ones, thereby upsetting the real priorities? ... If 'development is the new name for peace,' war and military preparations are the major enemy of the integral development of peoples.


PROPERTY & WEALTH

It is necessary to state once more the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine: The goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a 'social mortgage,' which means that is has an intrinsically social function, based upon and justified precisely by the principle of the universal destination of goods.


It often happens that in one and the same country citizens enjoy different degrees of wealth and social advancement... Where such is the case, justice and equity demand that the government make efforts either to remove or minimize imbalances of this sort.


[T]he right of having a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one's family belongs to everyone. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church held this opinion, teaching that men are obliged to come to the relief of the poor and to do so not merely out of their superfluous goods. If one is in extreme necessity, he has the right to procure for himself what he needs out of the riches of others.


Indeed, it is the duty of the whole People of God, following the word and example of the bishops, to do their utmost to alleviate the sufferings of the modern age. As was the ancient custom in the Church, they should meet this obligation out of the substance of their goods, and not only out of what is superfluous.


We must repeat once more that the superfluous wealth of rich countries should be placed at the service of poor nations ... Otherwise their continued greed will certainly call upon them the judgement of God and wrath of the poor.


The world is given to all, and not only to the rich. That is, private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute and unconditional right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities.


All of us experience firsthand the sad effects of this blind submission to pure consumerism: in the first place a crass materialism, and at the same time a radical dissatisfaction, because one quickly learns ... that the more one possesses the more one wants, while deeper aspiration remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.

RACISM
Men rightly consider unjustifiable and reject as inadmissible the tendency to maintain or introduce legislation or behavior systematically inspired by racialist prejudice.  The members of mankind share the same basic rights and duties, as well as the same supernatural destiny.  Within a country which belongs to each one, all should be equal before the law, find equal admittance to economic, cultural, civil and social life and benefit from a fair sharing of the nation's riches.


Racism is the sin that says some human beings are inherently superior and others essentially inferior because of race ...  It mocks the words of Jesus: "Treat others the way you would have them treat you."  Indeed, racism is more than a disregard for the words of Jesus; it is a denial of the truth of the dignity of each human being revealed by the mystery of the Incarnation.


The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds.  They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority.  Members of both groups give unwitting approval by accepting things as they are.  Perhaps no single individual is to blame.  The sinfulness is often anonymous but nonetheless real.  The sin is social in nature in that each of us, in varying degrees, is responsible.  All of us in some measure are accomplices.


In the 18th century, a veritable racist ideology opposed to the teaching of the church was forged ...  This racist ideology believed it could find the justification for its prejudices in science.  Apart from the difference in physical characteristics and skin color, it sought to deduce an essential difference, of a hereditary biological nature, in order to affirm that the subjugated peoples belonged to intrinsically inferior "races" with regard to their mental, moral or social qualities.  It was at the end of the 18th century that the word race was used for the first time to classify human beings biologically ...


All racist theories are contrary to Christian faith and love.  And yet … racism still exists and continually reappears in different forms.  It is a wound in humanity's side that mysteriously remains open.  Everyone, therefore, must make efforts to heal it with great firmness and patience ...


It is important to note therefore that a world which is divided into blocs, sustained by rigid ideologies, and in which instead of interdependence and solidarity different forms of imperialism hold sway, can only be a world subject to structures of sin ...  [These] are rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove.  And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people's behavior.


WORK & THE RIGHTS OF WORKERS

All people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions, as well as to organize and join unions or other associations.


In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family ...


[T]he worker has a right to a wage determined according to criteria of justice, and sufficient, therefore, in proportion to the available resources, to give the worker and his family a standard of living in keeping with the dignity of the human person.


Without the priority of labor over capital there is no possibility of any human morality in the social order.


Work exists for the worker, not the worker for the work.


Their [unions'] task is to defend the existential interests of workers in all sectors where their rights are concerned. The experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life, especially in modern industrialized societies. [Unions] are indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice, for the just rights of working people in accordance with their individual professions.


The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can the society attain social peace.


All work has a threefold moral significance. First, it is a principal way that people exercise the distinctive human capacity for self-expression and self-realization. Second, it is the ordinary way for human beings to fulfill their material needs. Finally, work enables people to contribute to the well-being of the larger community. Work is not only for one's self. It is for one's family, for the nation, and indeed for the benefit of the entire human family.
These three moral concerns should be visible in the work of all, no matter what their role in the economy: blue collar workers, managers, homemakers, politicians, and others.

Quotes Selected by Michael Stone
Office of Justice & Peace
Catholic Diocese of Richmond
September 1997