Unit IV: Catholic Social Thought in Transition

Overview

 John XXIII served the Roman Catholic Church as pope for only five years (1958-1963). The Encyclopedia of Catholicism calls him “perhaps the greatest, certainly the most beloved, pope of modern times, convener of the Second Vatican Council.”  He issued two social encyclicals during his papacy,  Mater et Magistra (1961), commemorating the 70th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, and Pacem in Terris (1963), issued in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. Taken together, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris address several issues that are important for our course:

• The widening gap between rich and poor nations
• The challenges of global interdependence and justice between nations
• The threat of nuclear war and the human costs of the arms race
• The relationship between justice and peace
• A defense of human rights as the foundational principle of social justice

We will come back later in the course to the questions of international economic justice raised in these documents, as well as to the questions of nuclear war and the stance of the Catholic Church on war and peace.  For this week, we will concentrate on the defense of human rights, especially as presented in Pacem in Terris. # 8-38.

First, however, a little background on the Second Vatican Council. 

I.  Vatican II 

Vatican II was convened by Pope John XXIII in 1961. There were four sessions between October, 1962 and December, 1965. Pope John died after the first session. He was succeeded by Pope Paul VI.

Vatican II is widely considered to be one of the most significant events of the twentieth century for the Church. The total number of participants (delegates and observers) exceeded 3,000 and represented cardinals and bishops from around the world, as well as lay theologians and non-Catholics. For the first time in history, most of the bishops attending from mission countries (e.g., Africa and Latin America) were natives of those countries. It was also the first council in history to have access to modern means of communication (telephones, typewriters, electric lights) and to be widely covered in the mass media. Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner observed that the Second Vatican Council marked the beginning of Catholicism as a self-consciously world-wide community.

Pope Paul VI captured the vision of the council in his opening address of the second session, September 29, 1963. The council was to encourage renewal, based on a clear understanding of the Church’s history and mission, to seek the unity of all Christians, and to bring the Church into dialogue with the modern world. Unlike previous councils, this ecumenical council aimed not at reformulating traditional doctrine or correcting errors, but at bringing about a genuine, from-the-roots rebirth of a Church in the face of a new, complex, and pluralistic age.

Most Catholics experienced the influence of Vatican II most directly through changes in the ways they celebrated liturgy and the sacraments of the Church. In the reforms that followed the Council, liturgy (“the Mass”) was to become truly a work of the people, celebrated not in Latin but in their languages and with their full participation.  But Vatican II’s optimism, acceptance of religious pluralism, and openness toward the world had its most profound, long-lasting effect on the way theology itself was to be done. By extension, it had a profound effect on the way the Church would think about social problems. Among other shifts, we will see for the first time in the documents of this period the explicit acknowledgment of structural and institutional sin as well as a new awareness of the effects of globalization on both rich and poor nations. 

II. Catholic Social Teaching and Human Rights

In Living Justice, Thomas Massaro, S.J. writes, “The twentieth century witnessed a remarkable movement toward a worldwide consensus regarding human rights." International covenants (such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948) often base their arguments on the concept of human rights. Beginning especially with Pacem in Terris, the documents of Catholic social teaching also use the language of human rights as one way of expressing what is owed to all human beings by virtue of their dignity. Pope John XXIII dedicated Pacem in Terris to a full listing of the many types of human rights, calling these rights, “universal, inviolable, and inalienable.” Because it was the first strong statement of a human rights position from the Church, this encyclical earned the nickname the “Catholic charter of human rights.”

As we noted earlier, Pacem in Terris was written in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. Pope John is concerned with securing the conditions for world peace at a time when the world has already been taken to the very brink of nuclear war.  Like Mater et Magistra, Pacem in Terris reflects John XXIII’s basic optimism, his confidence in the future and in the capacities of human beings to come together in collective action for a better world, and his trust that one can make use of the opportunities of the moment for good (Mich, p. 95).  Like Mater et Magistra, it also reflects John XXIII’s concern for what he calls “socialization,” the increasingly complex web of relationships and interdependencies that characterize modern life. In the face of socialization, we must strive to build communities in which freedom and dignity are respected at the same time as all members are called to accountability. For John XXIII, “socialization” is neither automatically good or automatically bad – it is fact to be met as an  opportunity.

At the risk of oversimplification, the Catholic human rights tradition can be summarized in bumper sticker form: “If you want peace, work for justice.”  Peace is possible only if human dignity (as imago dei – image and likeness of God) is respected and the rights and duties of all persons are honored in and through the structures of society.  “Every human being is a person, that is, his nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. By virtue of this, he has rights and duties of his own, flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. And as these rights and obligations are universal and inviolable so they cannot in any way be surrendered” (PT, #9).

Pacem in Terris goes on to spell out the most comprehensive table of human rights in all of Catholic social teaching.  It includes social and economic rights (e.g., to life, bodily integrity, food, shelter, medical care) cultural and moral rights (e.g., to education and to a share in the benefits of culture), rights of religious freedom, family life rights, political rights (e.g., rights of assembly and association) and rights of freedom of movement and migration.  In all cases, rights are correlated with duties – everyone has a right to choose a station in life and to raise one’s children according to one’s own values because everyone has a duty to pursue a fitting vocation and to bring children up “in the Lord.”

Earlier in the course, we said that justice in Catholic Social Teaching is a question of enabling participation. “Rights” are another way of talking about what guaranteeing the means for participation in a given society would entail.

By including economic rights as well as political rights, Pacem in Terris steers a clear middle course between liberalism (as characterized by democracies such as the United States) and socialism or Marxism. As David Hollenbach explains, the theory of human rights here supports:

neither simply the liberty of the individual person stressed in the liberal democracies or simply the social participation and economic well-being stressed in various ways in Marxism and socialism. Rather the theory maintains that respect for freedom, the meeting of basic needs, and participation in community and social relationships are all essential aspects of the human dignity that is the foundation of all rights. . . . Any political, economic, or social system that is to be morally legitimate must provide respect for these spheres of freedom, need, and relationship (p. 95).

Pacem in Terris was enthusiastically received, within and outside of the Church. However, the comprehensiveness of this account of human rights has led to criticism as well as appreciation.  Some non-Western observers read the account of rights as promoting Western ideas of human dignity rather than universal ideals. Some conservative Catholics, such as Michael Novak, have argued that positive rights (rights requiring the provision of a particular social good such as health care) are not rights at all.  Only negative rights (rights to protection from interference, such as the right to free speech) can be and ought to be protected by the state. Others, such as Hollenbach, support the integration of political, social, and economic rights, but express frustration over the encyclical’s absence of attention to the realities of conflict. When claims for these rights come into conflict, as they inevitably will, how are we to know how to weigh them?  Which should prevail, liberty or well-being, if both cannot be guaranteed at the same time?  Hollenbach’s principle for choosing in the face of conflicting rights has been much debated: “the rights of the oppressed, those denied both political and economic power should take priority in policy over privileged forms of influence and wealth” (p. 99)

References

Hollenbach, David. Justice, Peace and Human Rights. (New York: Crossroad, 1990).

Mich, Marvin L. Krier. Catholic Social Teaching and Movements. (Mystic, CT:  Twenty-Third Publications, 1998).

The information on Vatican II  is drawn from Richard P. McBrien, “Vatican Council II”, in Encyclopedia of Catholicism, Richard P. McBrien, editor (New York: HarperCollins, 1995): 1299-1306).