Unit IIB: Justice and Right Relation: The Prophetic Tradition

The readings for this unit include Charles Curran’s Catholic Social Teaching: 1891- present, chapters 4 and 5, and the introduction to Philip Wogamann’s Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction. The readings are aimed at providing both historical and theoretical background to the documentary history we will begin to study next week with the social encyclicals of Leo XIII.

Wogamann

Wogamann’s essay is an argument concerning how we should think about the biblical legacy for Christian ethics. Christian communities (and Christian ethicists) draw from biblical materials in a wide variety of ways in their attempt to articulate moral positions, some mining the diverse writings for rules or commands; others seeking moral exemplars; others identifying core themes, such as “the kingdom of God” or “the triumph of the Cross,” to be interpreted in contemporary contexts. Wogamun proposes raising up six tensions or points of conflict which run through both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. One way of reading the history of Christian ethics (and within that, Catholic social thought) and, further, of understanding the developments within the history as well as the differences between ethical stances taken by different Christian communities, is to think about choices made with respect to these tensions. As you read Curran on the nature of the person, the meaning and role of the state, the nature of the economy in a just society as treated in Catholic Social Thought, think about how the tradition has chosen over time to resolve tensions such as: revelation versus reason; materialism versus the life of the Spirit; universalism versus group identity; grace versus law; love versus force; and status versus equality.

Curran

Chapters 4 and 5 of Catholic Social Teaching: 1891-present trace developments in Catholic Social Thought’s underlying anthropology and its treatment of the nature and function of the state. Just a few points to highlight:

1. It is important to notice which commitments remain relatively constant throughout the social encyclicals and which commitments (or assumptions) will admit of development and/or reinterpretation. For example, the commitment Curran underscores to the centrality of human dignity in the tradition will be evident in all the documents in some form; however, in the documents of the Vatican II era and beyond, there is a discernable shift from the language of “human nature” as the basis for discerning the requirements of dignity to the language of “the human person integrally and adequately considered.” Among other things, this shift recognizes historical consciousness as a given and therefore as a feature of moral experience. CST remains committed to the belief that the state (as political community or public authority) is natural, necessary and good. However, Leo XIII’s organic understanding of the state will give way to a more limited view of the role of the state, an emphasis on equality and eventual support for democratic forms of government, and a stronger distinction between the state and civil society. CST will continue to affirm the common good as the context for articulating and promoting human rights and duties, although the scope of its attention will become increasingly global.
2. CST’s understanding of the common good is often described as “personalist-communitarian” (See Curran p. 157). This means that, overall, CST self-consciously rejects both an individualistic view of community (where the aim of social participation is the pursuit of individual interests) and a “collectivist” view (wherein the state supercedes the individual). As Curran notes (p.147), CST “sees itself in the middle, in opposition to both totalitarianism and individualism.” Behind this effort to find a “middle way” between totalitarianism and individualism lies the belief that while participation in community, including political community, is necessary for human flourishing, the human person transcends the state. Especially in contemporary documents, we can find increasing sympathy with the principles of liberalism—in particular the defense of democratic forms of government and a limited role for the state---but at the same time an explicit rejection of laissez-faire liberalism. As Curran puts it, CST recognizes no contradiction between “an expanding role for government in the area of justice and a lesser role for government in the area of religion and private morality” (147). In much the same way, CST will try to steer a middle way between laissez-faire capitalism and socialism/communism.
3. In several places in these two chapters, Curran notes the optimism of CST’s anthropology. As you consider whether or not his worries about the implications of a fundamentally optimistic anthropology for social ethics are warranted, it is helpful to consider the "building blocks” of that optimism:
   1.  the belief that “the glory of God and human fulfillment are intimately related” (129);
   2. the interdependence of faith and works;
   3. an intrinsic view of morality;
   4. a commitment to the intelligibility of the Good.