Catholic Social Teaching and Pope Benedict XVI by Charles E. Curran

Author:Charles E. Curran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Right and Duty to Teach

The primary explicit approach to ecclesiology and the understanding of the Church in the documents of Catholic social teaching concerns the right and the duty of the Church to speak out on issues facing human society. As mentioned earlier, the Catholic Church is not a sect but a church type, which by its very nature lives in the world and has a concern and interest in what occurs in the world. In his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno, Pope Pius XI explicitly addresses the role of the Church and traces his teaching to Leo XIII. “But before proceeding to discuss these problems, we lay down the principle long since clearly established by Leo XIII that it is our right and our duty to deal authoritatively with social and economic problems” (nos. 41–42, O–S, 52). The Church “can never relinquish her God-given task of interposing her authority, not indeed in technical matters for which she has neither the competence nor the mission, but in all those that have a bearing on moral conduct.” Economic activity and morality are grounded in their own principles in their own spheres, but they are not so distinct that economic activity in no way depends on morality (nos. 41–42, O–S, 52). The sixth chapter of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus annus, written on the one hundredth anniversary of Rerum novarum, raises the question of why the Church has developed its Catholic social teaching in the one hundred years since Rerum novarum. “Her sole purpose has been care and responsibility for the human person, who has been entrusted to her by Christ himself…. This, and this alone, is the principle which inspires the Church’s social doctrine” (no. 53, O–S, 513–14).

Benedict’s Caritas in veritate follows in the tradition and occasionally explicitly explains why the Church can and should develop such a social teaching. At the end of the introduction, Caritas in veritate deals explicitly with the role of the Church in proclaiming its social teaching. In this context, Benedict recalls the previous papal teaching that the Church does not have technical solutions to offer. “She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to the human person, to his dignity, to his vocation…. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth that sets us free” (no. 9, O–S, 530–31).

Caritas in veritate, like Populorum progressio, concerns itself primarily with integral human development. In the design of God, every person is called upon to develop and fulfill herself. “This is what gives legitimacy to the Church’s involvement in the whole question of development” (no. 16, O–S, 534).

The two most significant particular issues in this encyclical are the economy and technology. Here again Benedict insists that these issues must be seen and guided on the basis of the meaning of the human, thus justifying why the Church needs to teach on these issues. “The Church’s social doctrine

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