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Catholic Social Teaching Isn’t Catholic
Catholic social teaching isn’t Catholic . . . at least with a capital C. It’s catholic, that is, universal, with a small c. It applies to everyone. Atheists, agnostics, and the neighbor whom you’ve consigned to Hell thirteen times this week are subject to “Catholic” social teaching and (what some people don’t want to hear) protected by it as well. Consistent with the positive formulation of the first principle of reason — that which is true is as true and is true in the same way as everything else that is true (the principle or law of identity) — all human beings, even (or especially) those whom you dislike or hate with all the fervor at your command, are as human, and human in the same way, as you.
Catholic social teaching is based on the natural law “written in the hearts of all men,” and women and children, too. It is therefore discernible “by the force and light of human reason alone.” Thus, although Catholic social teaching is often even in official Catholic Church documents referred to as doctrine, it is based on reason guided and illuminated by faith, not faith alone.
The argument is a little complex. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle said that all things aim at the good. If something or someone aims at that which is not good, i.e., is evil, it is because he has a distorted or wrong idea of good or is trying to avoid a greater evil. And what is good? Conformity with one’s nature, that is, with truth, which is itself conformity with reality.
This, by the way, is one of the things on which both paganism and Christianity agree, and how Christianity fulfills whatever truth is in paganism. When Jesus said only God is good, He meant “good” in the fullest possible sense of eternal reality, and thus absolute truth and therefore ultimate goodness. That’s not of course what Aristotle thought he was saying, but as is the case with many great thinkers, ended up saying more than he knew.
How do we know what is good, however? Man, as Aristotle pointed out, being the animal that reasons (note he didn’t say the only animal that reasons), we figure out what is good by using reason. That is, we discern truth by empirical observation and thinking logically and consistently.
That creates a problem. Most people, as Thomas Aquinas noted in the first question of the Summa Theologica, don’t have time to sit down and reason out what is good or even discern the existence of God. Of necessity they accept knowledge of good and evil by faith and conform their reason to what they accept by faith, rather than the other way around. This does not, however, change the fact that knowledge of good and evil is not a religious doctrine per se.
That knowledge of God’s existence and therefore of the natural law is discernible by human reason alone is a foundation stone of Catholic teaching. It has been declared infallibly true as an article of faith in Canon 2.1 of the First Vatican Council.
Yes, it sounds a little odd to say that it is a matter of faith that reason is the foundation of faith. It was, however, necessary to make the declaration, and reiterate it in the first article in the Oath Against Modernism and § 2 of Humani Generis — “Absolutely speaking, knowledge of God’s existence and of the natural law written in the hearts of all men may be known by the force and light of human reason alone.”
This was because the heresy somewhat inappropriately named “modernism” had convinced many people that knowledge of God’s existence and of the natural law could be known only by faith. Anyone, therefore, who differed from them in matters of faith or attempted to apply reason to questions of faith or morals was consigned to eternal hellfire — which is something the Catholic Church has never taught. Just the oppose, in fact. As Pope Pius IX declared in Quanto Conficiamur,
There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments.
Lest there be any confusion, Pius IX concluded by saying, “God forbid that the children of the Catholic Church should even in any way be unfriendly to those who are not at all united to us by the same bonds of faith and love. On the contrary, let them be eager always to attend to their needs with all the kind services of Christian charity.”
We must enter a caveat at this point, and it’s important. What the Catholic Church teaches is that it is possible to prove God’s existence and of the natural law through reason, not that it has been proved. The Catholic Church claims infallibility only in matters of faith and morals, not in matters of science — including philosophy and theology — or in applications of faith and morals, such as Catholic social teaching.
Mortimer Adler and Jacques Maritain once got into an argument on this very point. Adler contended that Aquinas had not proved God’s existence, and that the Catholic Church could not make any such claim. Maritain conceded Adler’s position that the Catholic Church did not teach infallibly that God’s existence had been proved but refused to yield regarding his opinion that Aquinas had nevertheless done so. (I don’t understand Adler’s argument and how it differs from that of Aquinas, which I accept, but it makes no difference in this discussion.)
The point here is that as an application of unchanging principles of natural law discerned by reason instead of faith, and not itself infallible unchanging doctrine, Catholic social teaching can, indeed, must be adapted to existing social conditions. This is especially the case when the goal is reform of institutions through acts of social justice.
Take, for example, the wage system, an institution pervasive throughout the world, and the primary cause, in this writer’s opinion, of the breakdown of the family, the marginalization of organized religion, and the glorification of the State. In the May 2005 issue of Culture Wars magazine, however, the late Dr. Rupert J. Ederer, a professor of economics, published an article titled, “The Just Wage Doctrine: What Happened?” [emphasis added]. According to Ederer, anyone (including this writer by name) who disagreed with his faith-based formulation of a doctrine that didn’t exist made one a dissenter and a promoter of Jewish economics. Failing or refusing to implement Ederer’s interpretation of the just wage made one a heretic.
Ederer’s error is obvious. By asserting that a fallible, changeable, and reason-based application of natural law principles is instead infallible, unchangeable, and faith-based, he undermined the very body of teaching he attempted to defend. By restricting understanding of Catholic social teaching to Catholics — and then only if they met his standards — he contradicted the Church’s claim that its truths are catholic, that is, universal, and apply to everyone, without qualification.
Admittedly, the world is in bad shape today, especially the world of economics, the main problem being that far too many people are inhibited or prevented outright from participating in the institutions of the common good and are thereby inhibited or prevented from being productive. Is the answer, however, to mandate wages as the sole legitimate form of income or coercively redistribute as Ederer and others have demanded in the name of social justice?
No, because that violates the natural law virtue of justice, with or without adding “social,” and the supernatural law virtue of charity. So, what is the proper response, and one that applies across the board to every human being, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, pagan, agnostic, or atheist?
First, it must clearly be understood that social justice is not a substitute for or replacement of individual justice or charity. Meeting people’s needs directly is, and always will be, a matter of individual virtue. Social justice consists of making it possible for people to become virtuous, not in forcing them or doing what individual virtue would have done had it been functioning. Again, social justice enables individual justice and charity, it does not replace them.
Now, in our day it is obvious to most people that labor, the human factor of production, is not the primary mode of production in today’s advanced economies. Capital, the non-human factor of production, accounts for the vast bulk of marketable goods and services.
That being the case, it makes sense that more people should own capital than rely solely on wages paid for labor for their income. Mandating everyone receive a wage, just or otherwise, is a blind alley in an advanced economy. What is necessary, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out in § 46 of Rerum Novarum, was that “The law . . . should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.”
Note that Leo said nothing about government making people owners. That would almost certainly require redistribution, coercive or otherwise. No, what the pope called for was that government should make it possible for people to become owners, something entirely different. He then made a tactical mistake and suggested that the way for people to become owners is to pay them more so they could save enough to buy a bit of land or some other income-generating asset.
A far better way for “as many as possible of the people to become owners,” however, is to do what Louis Kelso suggested. That is, make it possible for ordinary people to acquire capital ownership on the same terms as the rich. The financial and economic system should be restructured through acts of social justice to make it possible for people to purchase capital on credit, and pay for the capital with the future earnings of the capital itself, thereafter using the income from capital to meet consumption needs.
One proposal that has the potential to make everyone a capital owner is the “Economic Democracy Act” proposed by the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice in Arlington, Virginia. It’s a graphic example of the fact that Catholic social teaching isn’t an exclusive club for the spiritually enlightened. It’s something beneficial, even essential, for everyone — it’s catholic, not merely Catholic.
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