Thinking Outside the Box

Nancy R. Powers

Catholic social teaching is pro-life, pro-family, pro-democracy, pro-worker, and progressive.  This can cause both cognitive dissonance and public confusion. Catholic thought doesn’t fit the “liberal” or “conservative” boxes Americans use to describe political and social thought. 

Our Catholic vision is different. It challenges us to action with a profound, nuanced, and coherent ethical guide to the complexities of the modern world.

A Different Starting Point
Catholic social teaching begins with the dignity of the human person. Because every individual child of God is precious, we oppose abortion, capital punishment, racism, euthanasia, and cloning.  Because God’s creations deserve respect and dignity, we believe that education, health care, housing, and food are fundamental human rights.  In order that poor people born in developing countries might live a more dignified life, we support debt relief, foreign aid, and a right to immigrate. 

            In contrast, both the liberal and conservative perspectives begin with the principle of freedom, differing mainly in the purposes for which they promote freedom. For example, “liberals” urge freedom from government regulation of what they consider personal lifestyle choices, while conservatives urge freedom from government regulation in the economy.  

Starting with the principle of freedom provides little guidance when freedoms collide: a baby’s freedom to live competes with a woman’s freedom to control her body; a victim’s freedom from fear of a past attacker collides with a convict’s right to atone for the crime and move on with his life.  Freedoms collide not merely because we cannot agree on which freedoms are priorities, but because the principle of individual freedom is difficult to extend to all equally– your individual freedom, pushed to its limits, eventually tramples on mine. 

            The “freedom” principle also provides inadequate guidance when individual freedom collides with the common good: my freedom to put pornographic pictures on my front lawn undermines the community’s desire for beauty and decency; my freedom to develop a piece of real estate may collide with the community’s concerns about traffic or protecting wetlands.

The Catholic Perspective
The Catholic viewpoint doesn’t give us easy answers to all of these problems, but it does help to avoid some contradictions and tensions between principles, because it offers different starting points from mainstream American thought.

First of all, the Catholic vision is rooted in transcendent rather than secular values.  Because we profess that Christ came to save every human being, evangelization goes hand in hand with defending the dignity of every human being.  Because human life has a transcendent purpose, we must reject materialistic ideologies that treat individuals as means to economic, state, or personal ends (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus).

Secondly, Catholic Social Teaching gets us out of the trap of seeing the common good as an infringement on individual freedom.  In the Catholic worldview drawn from Aquinas, God created us as social beings. Thus individual freedom and the good of the community are joined, not in conflict.  As our bishops put: “The common good is the sum total of those conditions in society that make it possible for all persons to achieve their full potential” (A Jubilee Call for Debt Forgiveness, 1999, p.10).  

This communitarian tradition distinguishes Catholicism from many strains of Protestantism.  Catholics are called to do more than have an individual relationship with God.   We are called to Eucharist--to be in communion with God and each other in a universal community we call Church.

            Third, because we are called to communion, our Catholic perspective is global, not parochial or nationalistic.  Just as Jesus taught that the Samaritan was neighbor to the Galilean, so too, we must think of Ugandans, Iraqis, or Japanese not as foreigners, but as neighbors.

Pope John Paul II developed the concept of solidarity to explain our duty to see ourselves as our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Solidarity requires crossing barriers of race, gender, class, and nationality, in order to recognize our common condition as children beloved of God.  “That’s not my problem” is not a solidaristic option. 

Fourth, in U.S. political discourse, folks debate government versus individual freedom; federal versus local control; and public versus private sectors.  Americans’ fear of a powerful central state goes back to colonialism.  The Catholic tradition, however, makes no broad presumptions that government is “good” or “bad.” Our principle of subsidiarity teaches that decisions should be made and implemented at the lowest feasible level; but where problems cannot be solved by individuals, civil society, or local governments, it is right and appropriate that larger entities tackle them, for the dignity and good of all.  

Fifth, Catholic social teaching calls us to charity and justice. Both are important, neither is sufficient without the other (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.  2446). Justice requires changing our world so that fewer people need charity.

Charity is typically easier than justice.  Charity may require sacrifice of money or time, but it may not require that we change. Justice, on the other hand, may require giving up our  self-righteousness and our attitudes, choices, or lifestyles that aid or abet injustice.  Justice calls us to spend time reflecting on problems that it would be more comfortable to ignore.

Our Catechism teaches that injustice—in laws, institutions, social structures, or ways of doing things—is sinful.  When we participate in and contribute to these injustices we commit “social sins” (sections 408 and 1868-69).

            Sixth, Catholic Social Teaching calls us to exercise a “preferential option” for the poor and vulnerable”—that is, when choices must be made, we are to side with the people who are most weak, poor, or vulnerable. They deserve our special attention simply because they have the fewest resources with which to defend their own God-given dignity.

Finally, Catholic social teaching tells us, in the oft-quoted words of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, that our dignity “comes from God, not from any human quality or accomplishment, not from race or gender, age or economic status.”  In our highly materialistic and individualistic society, we are bombarded with messages that human worth and dignity are rooted in personal “success,” as measured in wealth.  Catholics eschew this prideful materialism, which, on the one hand, denies the hand of God in our accomplishments, and on the other hand, denies the ways racism and other social sins obstruct God’s will that every human being have a full and dignified life.

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