EXTRACTS FROM CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
Pope Leo XIII: (Rerum Novarum, 1891)
A tiny group of extravagantly rich men have been able to lay
upon the great multitude of unpropertied workers a yoke little better
than that of slavery itself. (2)
When socialists endeavour to transfer privately owned goods into
common ownership they worsen the condition of all wage-earners. By
taking away from them freedom to dispose of their wages they rob
them of all hope and opportunity of increasing their possessions
and bettering their conditions. (4)
[As a result] all incentives for individuals to exercise their
ingenuity and skill would be removed and the very founts of wealth
dry up. The dream of equality would become the reality of equal want
and degradation for all. (12)
What is truly shameful and inhuman is to misuse men as instruments
for gain and to value them only as so much mere energy and strength.
(16)
The one purpose for which the State exists is common to the highest
and lowest within it. By nature, the right of the unpropertied men
to citizenship is equal to that of the wealthy owners of the means
of production, for they through their families are among the true
and living parts which go to form the body of the State. It is evident
that the public authorities ought to take proper care to safeguard
the lives and well-being of the unpropertied class. (34)
Private means must not be exhausted by excessive taxation... To take
from private citizens under the guise of taxation more than is equitable
is unjust and inhuman. (35)
The first task is to save the wretched workers from the brutality
of those who make use of human beings as mere instruments for the
unrestrained acquisition of profits. (43)
The wage ought not to be in any way insufficient for the bodily needs
of a temperate and well-behaved worker. If having no alternative
and fearing a worse fate, a workman is forced to accept harder conditions
imposed by an employer or contractor, he is the victim of violence
against which justice cries out. (45)
The condition of the workers is the question of the hour. It will
be answered one way or another, rationally or irrationally, and which
way it goes is of the greatest importance to the state. (58.1)
Pope Pius XI: (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)
The amount of pay must be adjusted to the public economic good. The
opportunity to work [must] be provided to those who are able and
willing to work. An excessive lowering of wages, or their increase
beyond due measure, causes unemployment. Hence it is contrary to the
common good when, for the sake of personal gain and without regard for
the common good, wages and salaries are excessively lowered or
raised. (74)
Labour is not a mere commodity. On the contrary, the worker's human
dignity in it must be recognised. It therefore cannot be bought and
sold like a commodity. (83)
The right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free
competition of forces. From this source as from a poisoned spring
have originated and spread all the errors of individualistic economic
teaching. Destroying through forgetfulness or ignorance the social
and moral character of economic life, it held that economic life
must be considered and treated as altogether free from and
independent of public authority, because in the market, i.e. in the
free struggle of competitors, it would have a principle of
self-direction that governs it more perfectly than would the
intervention of any created intellect. But free competition, while
justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain
limits, clearly cannot direct economic life - a truth which the outcome
of the application in practice of the tenets of this evil
individualistic spirit has more than sufficiently demonstrated. (88)
An immense power and despotic economic
dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not
owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds
which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and
pleasure. (105)
This concentration of power and might,
the characteristic mark, as it were, of contemporary economic life, is
the fruit that the unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors has
of its own nature produced, and which lets only the strongest survive,
and this is often the same as saying, those who fight the most
violently, those who give least heed to their consciences. (107)
A no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance, whose country
is where profit is. (109)
Pope John XXIII: (Pacem in Terris, 1963)
One of the fundamental duties of civil authorities is so, to
co-ordinate and regulate social relations that the exercise of one
person's right does not threaten others in the exercise of their own
rights. (62)
The common good requires that civil
authorities maintain a careful balance between co-ordinating and
protecting the rights of the citizens on the one hand, and promoting
them, on the other. It should not happen that certain individuals or
social groups derive special advantage from the fact that their rights
have received preferential protection. (65)
A ruling authority is indispensable to civil society authority must
be exercised for the promotion of the common good. (83,84)
The universal common good requires the
encouragement in all nations of every kind of reciprocation between
citizens and their intermediate societies. There are many parts of the
world where we find groupings of people of more or less different
ethnic origin. Nothing must be allowed to prevent reciprocal relations
between them. (100)
The deep feelings of paternal love for
all of humanity which God has implanted in our heart make it impossible
for us to view without bitter anguish of spirit the plight of those who
for political reasons have been exiled from their own homelands. There
are a great number of such refugees at the present time, and many are
the sufferings - the incredible sufferings - to which they are
constantly exposed. (103)
Second Vatican Council: (Gaudium et Spes, 1965)
It cannot be denied that people are often diverted from doing good and
spurred towards evil by the social circumstances in which they live and
were immersed from their birth. The disturbances which so frequently
occur in the social order result in part from the natural tensions of
economic, political and social forms. But at a deeper level they flow
from pride and selfishness, which contaminate even the social sphere.
When the social structure is flawed by the consequences of sin, the
human being, already born with a bent towards evil, finds there new
inducements to sin, which cannot be overcome without strenuous efforts
and the assistance of grace. (25.2)
There is a growing awareness of the
exalted dignity proper to the human person, since he stands above all
things, and his rights and duties are universal and inviolable.
Therefore, there must be made available to all men and women everything
necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and
shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a
family; the right to education and employment, to a good reputation, to
respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the
upright norms of one's own conscience, to protection of privacy and to
rightful freedom, even in matters religious. (26.1)
This Council lays stress on reverence for
humanity; everyone must consider his every neighbour without exception
as another self, taking into account first of all his life and the
means necessary to living it with dignity, so as not to imitate the
rich man who had no concerns for the poor man Lazarus. (27)
Excessive economic and social
inequalities within the one human family, between individuals and
between peoples, give rise to scandal and are contrary to social
justice, to equity, and to the dignity of the human person, as well as
to peace within society and at the international level. (29.2)
God destined the earth and all that it
contains for the use of all human beings and all peoples...
Furthermore, the right to have a share of earthly goods, sufficient for
oneself and one's family, belongs to everyone. (69)
The Church does not rest its hopes on
privileges offered to it by civil authorities; indeed it will even give
up the exercise of certain legitimately acquired rights in situations
where it has been established their use calls in question the sincerity
of its witness. (76.4)
Peace is not merely the absence of war,
nor can it be reduced solely to the balance of power between enemies,
nor is it brought about by dictatorship. (78)
Peace on earth cannot be obtained unless
personal well-being is safeguarded and men and women freely and
trustingly share with one another the riches of their inner spirits and
their talent. A firm determination to respect the dignity of other
individuals and peoples, as well as the studied practice of
brotherhood, are absolutely necessary for the establishment of peace.
(78.1)
Pope Paul VI: (Populorum Progressio, 1967)
Certain concepts have somehow arisen that present profit as the chief
spur to economic progress, free competition as the guiding norm of
economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an
absolute right, having no limits or concomitant social obligations.
This unbridled liberalism paves the way for a particular type of
tyranny. (26)
It is evident that the principle of free trade, by itself, is no longer
adequate for regulating international agreements. It certainly can work
when both parties are about equal... But the case is quite different
when the nations involved are far from equal. Market prices that are
freely agreed upon can turn out to be quite unfair. It must be avowed
openly that in this case the fundamental tenet of liberalism as it is
so called, as the norm for market dealings, is open to serious
question. When two parties are in very unequal positions, their mutual
consent does not alone guarantee a fair contract; the rule of free
consent remains subservient to the demands of the natural law. (58)
Pope Paul VI (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975):
At the main point and very centre of his Good News, Christ proclaims
salvation; this is the great gift of God which is liberation from
everything that oppresses people, particularly liberation from sin and
from the Evil One, together with the joy experienced when one knows God
and is known by him, when one sees God and entrusts oneself to him. (9)
Evangelising means bringing the good news
into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming
humanity from within and making it new... But there is no new humanity
if there are not first of all new persons renewed... The Church
evangelises when she seeks to convert, solely through the divine power
of the message she proclaims, both the personal and the collective
consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the
lives and concrete milieux which are theirs. (18)
Pope John Paul II: (Laborem Exercens, 1981)
It is certainly true that work, as a human issue, is at the very centre
of the 'social question' to which, for almost a hundred years, the
Church's teaching and the many undertakings connected with her
apostolic mission have been especially directed. (2)
We must emphasise and give prominence to the primacy of human beings in
the production process, the primacy of human beings over things.
Everything contained in the concept of capital in the strict sense is
only a collection of things. The human being - as the subject of work,
and independently of the work he does - and only the human being, is a
person. (12.5)
The right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use,
to the fact that goods are meant for everyone. They cannot be possessed
against labour, they cannot even be possessed for possession's sake,
because the only legitimate title to their possession, whether in the
form of private ownership or in the form of public or collective
ownership, is that they should serve labour and thus by serving labour
that they should make possible the achievement of the first principle
of this order, namely the universal destination of goods and the right
to common use of them. (14.1,2)
Pope John Paul II: (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 1984)
Social sins are the result of the accumulation and concentration of
many personal sins. It is a case of the very personal sins of those who
cause or support evil or who exploit it, of those who are in a position
to avoid, eliminate or at least limit certain social evils but who fail
to do so out of laziness, fear or the conspiracy of silence, through
secret complicity or indifference, or those who take refuge in the
supposed impossibility of changing the world and also those who
sidestep the effort and sacrifice required, producing spurious reasons
of a higher order. (16)
Pope John Paul II: (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 1987)
Super-development consists in an excessive availability of every kind
of material goods for the benefit certain social groups, [which] easily
makes people slaves of 'possession' and of immediate gratification,
with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement
of the things already owned with others still better. This is the
so-called civilisation of 'consumption' and 'consumerism'". One quickly
learns that the more one possesses the more one wants. (28.1)
The sum total of the negative factors working against a true awareness of
the universal common good and the need to further it gives the
impression of creating, in persons and institutions, an obstacle that
is difficult to overcome. If the present situation can be attributed to
difficulties of various kinds, it is not out of place to speak of
structures of sin. (36.1)
Among the actions and attitudes opposed to the will of God, the good of
neighbour and the structures created by them, two are very typical: on
the one hand, the all consuming desire for profit, and on the other,
the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one's will on
others. (37)
Not only individuals fall victim to this double attitude of sin: nations
and blocs can do so too. And this favours even more the introduction of
the structures of sin. Behind certain decisions, apparently inspired
only by economics or politics, are real forms of idolatry: of money,
ideology, class, technology. (37.2)
Pope John Paul II: (Centesimus Annus, 1991)
There are many human needs that find no place in the market. It is a strict duty of justice
and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied". (34)
In his desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man
consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive
and disordered way. At the root of the senseless destruction of the
natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately
is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform
and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets
that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the
things that are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the
earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though the earth
did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which
man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his
role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets
himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on
the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him. (37)
Although people are rightly worried - though much less than theyshould be -
about preserving the natural habitats of the various animal species
threatened with extinction because they realise that each of these
species makes its particular contribution to the balance of nature in
general, too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions
for an authentic 'human ecology'. Not only has God given the earth to
man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for
which it was given, but man too is God's gift to man. (38)
The first and fundamental structure for 'human ecology' is the family, in
which man receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness,
and learns what it means to love and to be loved, and thus what it
actually means to be a person=8A It is necessary to go back to seeing
the family as the sanctuary of life. (39)
Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help to
utilise resources better, they promote the exchange of products, above
all they give central place to the person's desires and preferences,
which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another
person. Nevertheless these mechanisms carry the risk of idolatry of the
market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their
nature are not and cannot be mere commodities. (40)
Can it be said, after the failure of Communism, that capitalism is the
victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the
countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? If
by capitalism is meant an economic system which recognises the
fundamental and positive value of business, the market, private
property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production,
as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the
answer is certainly in the affirmative though it would be perhaps more
appropriate to speak of a business economy, market economy, or simply a
free economy. But if by capitalism is meant a system in which freedom
in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical
framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its
totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the
core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly
negative. (42)
The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes
the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically
denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach
satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical
point of view, nor can that society attain social peace. (43)
The Church has no models to present: models that are real and truly
effective can only arise within the framework of different historical
situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront
concrete problems in all their social, economic and cultural aspects as
these interact with one another. (43)
The State has the duty to sustain business activities by creating
conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those
activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of
crisis. (48)
Excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh
criticism of the welfare state, dubbed the "Social Assistance State".
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility,
the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an
inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by
bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their
clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.
(48)
The individual today is often suffocated between two poles represented by
the State and the marketplace. At times it seems as though he exists
only as a producer and consumer of goods, or as an object of State
administration. (49)
Another name for peace is development. Just as there is a collective
responsibility for avoiding war, so too there is a collective
responsibility for promoting development. Just as within individual
societies it is possible and right to organise a solid economy which
will direct the functioning of the market to the common good, so too
there is a similar need for adequate interventions on the international
level. For this to happen, a great effort must be made to enhance
mutual understanding and knowledge and to increase the sensitivity of
consciences. (52)
Pope John Paul II: (Veritatis Splendor, 1993)
In the political sphere, it must be noted that truthfulness in the
relations between those governing and those governed, openness in
public administration, impartiality in the service of the body politic,
respect for the rights of accused against summary trials and
convictions, the just and honest use of public funds, the rejection of
equivocal or illicit means in order to gain, preserve or increase power
at any cost - all these are principles which are primarily rooted in,
and in fact derive their singular urgency from, the transcendental
value of the human person and the objective moral demands of the
functioning of the State. (101)
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