The Social Teaching of The Church - The Roman Catholic Diocese Of Prince George

To begin it must be noted that the church’s social teaching is a central and essential element of our faith. This is rooted in the preaching of the Hebrew prophets and in the teaching of Jesus himself (Luke 4:18; Matthew 25:45).

So much so is this true that the church’s proclamation of the gospel is incomplete without it. If our Catholic education and formation does not hand on the church’s social teaching it is not fully Catholic.

In the Apostolic Letter on the Coming Jubilee, Pope John Paul II affirms: “A commitment to justice and peace in a world like ours, marked by so many conflicts and intolerable social and economic inequalities, is a necessary condition for the preparation and celebration of the Jubilee.”

Catholic social teaching must not be treated as something optional. Without it, schools, catechetical programs and other formation programs would be offering an incomplete presentation of our Catholic tradition. What something as basic as this does is reflect on all of us as Catholic educators, on all levels, the responsibility of incorporating more fully and explicitly Catholic social teaching in all of our efforts.

I believe it is true to say, and this in true charity, that the social teaching of the church is not known by many of us; that it is not shared or taught in a consistent and comprehensive way in many of our schools, religious education programs, colleges and universities. Perhaps many of us are not aware of nor familiar with the basic content of the church’s social teaching, nor do we see it as an essential part of our Catholic faith. As a result of this our very capacity to be a church that is true to the demands of the gospel is weakened.

Central to our identity as Catholics is that we are called to be a leaven for transforming the world; we are to be agents for bringing about a kingdom of love and justice. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, we are praying for God’s kingdom of justice and peace, and committing ourselves to break down the barriers which obstruct God’’ kingdom of justice and peace and to work to bring about a world more respectful of human life and dignity. “Catholic social teaching proclaims that we are our ‘sisters’ and brothers’ keepers’ wherever they may live.”

Clearly the church must practice what it preaches and teaches about social justice and human rights. A church that ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in the eyes of people. Within the church rights must be preserved. No one should be deprived of their ordinary rights because they are associated with the church in one way or another.

The theological basis for this teaching is the principle of sacramentality. The church is a sign as well as an instrument of the presence of God in Christ. As such, it must embody in its own internal life and practice the values it proclaims to the other institutions of society.

Looking to Jesus and his teaching in this regard we are led to the Lord’s description of the last judgement.

In this parable the righteous were surprised at the king’s reply. The surprise was not in hearing that they would be judged by their acts of love, mercy and justice. Rather, they were surprised at where these acts of mercy and justice were to be done: among those who were hungry, thirsty and in need of clothing, among strangers, prisoners and the sick; among those who lacked the basic necessities of life; among those who were least able to return the kindness.

In John’s Gospel we read of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples (John 13:1-11). Jesus then tells them that they should do to one another as he has to them (v.15). A little later (v.34) Jesus tells his disciples: “I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

The gospel could not be clearer. To be followers of Jesus Christ – to be Christians – means above all that we love one another precisely because God has loved us. To love as Jesus loves calls us to serve any one in need, without questioning, without judging, without expecting a reward. “Do to one another as I have done to you.”

Jesus proclaimed the good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed (Luke 4:18-19). Throughout his ministry Jesus addressed the daily physical needs of people, especially those who were poor, those who were struggling in any way, those who were vulnerable.

The church that Jesus founded also reaches out, as part of its central mission, to people as part of its central mission, to people with these same needs. Particularly for the past 100 years the church has been developing its teaching on social, economic and political issues. What the church is attempting is to take the gospel and weave it into the daily living of people. This teaching offers fundamental principles about the human person and about society. I will attempt to summarize these main principles.

Every human being is created by God, redeemed by Jesus Christ and called to communion with God. For this reason every person has a sacred dignity; each of us has a special place within God’s creation. Each of us is so loved by God that the only possible response we can offer is to love God in return, and to love and respect all that God has created.

In this sacred dignity all humans are equal. Respect for the dignity of others allows for no distinctions or discriminations based on gender, race, language, religion or social conditions. Respect for the dignity of others does not allow oppressive economic and social differences within God’s human family.
The dignity of the human person means that all life is sacred. Christians respect the lives of all humans and extend this respect to all creation. Life is a loving gift of the Creator. Our response – always and everywhere – must be to show loving respect for such a gift. The dignity of the human person is the foundation of the church’s teaching about people and how we organize our society.
We hear very much today about individual rights. Many of us are quick to claim personal rights against the claims of others – sometimes even against the good of the community. Catholic social teaching offers a balanced view of individual rights. Human rights flow from our God-given dignity, belonging to us precisely as humans and so belonging to all people. Rights are not optional. They are not granted by human laws or by individual accomplishments. They are part of what it means to be a human person, and so human rights surround and protect the dignity of each person.
Among the most fundamental rights one can have is the right to life. From conception to natural death, people have the right to live their lives as fully as they can. Catholic teaching condemns abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide as grave sins against the Creator of all life.
Flowing from the right to life is another fundamental human right, namely the right to means enabling one to live life with dignity. The right to life means that every person on this planet has the right to a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one’s family. Every person has the right to adequate food, clothing, housing, health care, education, employment and a safe environment. One cannot speak of the right to life without acknowledging the right to live that life in a manner that reflects the dignity of creatures made in God’s image.
When discussing individual rights one must necessarily discuss the responsibilities that come with these rights. Rights and responsibilities always go together. It is especially necessary to balance individual human rights with community responsibilities. Every time we claim an individual right, we must consider the impact of that claim on the larger society. For example, ownership of private property must never be regarded as an absolute right. The right to own carries with it a responsibility to sue one’s property in a manner that respects the neighbor and contributes to the common good.Christians understand that responsibilities have as their source love of neighbor. We have responsibilities to one another, to our families, to our communities, to the larger society. Our response to God’s love for us must itself be a loving concern for people around us and for the community and societies we build. “The one who loves the parent loves the child.” As Christians we must never focus only on our own needs, on claiming our own rights, without asking how our actions affect the larger community.
Humans are social beings. We realize our dignity, exercise our rights and live out our responsibilities in relationships with others. Our full human development, our movement toward God, take place in a social context – in our families, among friends, in the work place, in our communities.Families are especially important settings for us to realize our dependence upon others. Families are where we first experience how much we are loved and how we are to love in return. It is in families that we learn moral principles and how to contribute to the building of community.
Communities also shape and individual’s growth as a responsible and loving human person. Cultural norms and expectations, laws and public policies can influence that development. When people live in poverty or have to struggle for basic rights, it is difficult for them to realize their dignity, to grow as loving and responsible persons, and even to contribute to their community.
People in any kind of need deserve our help. We know that as Christians we are obligated to practice the corporal works of mercy. Acts of charity, helping people meet their immediate needs, are a necessary way of living out our faith. They are tasks of our faith but they are not enough. While charity is essential, it is not a sufficient response to the poor and the needy within our diocese or anywhere else.Beyond charity, our faith calls us to work for justice. We are to serve those in need, to pursue peace, and to defend the life, dignity and rights of all our sisters and brothers. But more than this we are called to work for structural changes – changes in economic and social institutions that will make it easier for everyone to care for themselves and contribute to society. It was said, “Give people fish to eat”. Then it was affirmed, “Giving someone a fish enables them to live for a day. Teach them to fish and they can live for life”. Now we need to say, “Stand up for changes to stop the water pollution that is killing the fish”.
The Catholic Church has always shown a special concern for persons who are poor and vulnerable. The Hebrew prophets remind us that fidelity to God is tested by our attitude toward the weaker members of society. (Isaiah 1:11-20; 58:1-12; Jeremiah 7:1-7). Jesus’ parable of the Last Judgement teaches us that Christian discipleship requires caring for those in need, especially those in economic poverty. Over the past century papal and episcopal documents have named this obligation the “preferential option for the poor”.This option for the poor does not mean that the church should neglect the many needs of those who are not poor, but calls us to give particular attention to the needs of the economically poor.
This preferential option means that as individuals, parishes, diocese, we address these needs in our communities and beyond. It means that we strengthen already existing programs like food shelves, meals for the needy, shelters for the homeless. It means that when we contribute to programs or to individual needy persons, we do so out of our substance rather than from the spare change in our pockets.

Again this preferential option for the poor means that we not only respond in charity to the needs of the poor through our contributions of money, time or through programs we initiate. It also requires that we bring about changes in our society that will make it easier for people who are poor to move out of their poverty. It means supporting legislation, programs, public policy changes that are of particular benefit to those who are most in need, even when these changes might not benefit ourselves. This is a serious test of our Christian faith and love: “As long as you did it to one of these, the least of my sisters and brothers, you did it to me.”

Poverty has many faces and touches all of us. Presently I am told, Prince George has an unemployment rate of 17 per cent. That is almost double the national average. One in five children in Canada lives in poverty. Likely the fastest-growing segment of the poverty population is single-parent families headed by women. We have much spouse abuse, physical and sexual abuse of children.

People find themselves in poverty for many reasons. Lack of work or adequate income from one’s job, a health crisis, a major financial setback, divorce, lack of education – and the list continues.

Poverty has many other forms and people have many other needs. Some of these we find particularly difficult to acknowledge and to receive into our communities – persons with mental illness or chemical dependencies, individuals or families who are homeless, former prison inmates now on parole – on and on goes the list.

Having outlined the general principles of the church’s social teaching, I have tried to help us reflect on the application of these principles on the local scene. As Catholics we belong to a universal church. In that same way we must see our connectedness to all members of the human community. We are one family, regardless of our national, racial, ethnic, economic and ideological differences. Whether it is our neighbor next door or our neighbor across the globe – we all share the same Creator; all of us are redeemed in Jesus Christ; all of us are called to communion with God. We all possess the same dignity as God’s children and the same rights and responsibilities that protect this dignity.

Pope John Paul II asks us to be in solidarity with all people and to work for a just social order, where goods are fairly distributed and the dignity of all is respected. This solidarity crosses national and regional boundaries. It recognizes that the denial of dignity and rights to people anywhere on the globe diminishes each of us.

This call to solidarity is strongly emphasized in the preparation for the Great Jubilee and received particular focus in the Synod For America.

One way of attempting to respond to this is by committing ourselves and our communities to prepare for the Great Jubilee by reclaiming the Three R’s (not reading and riting and rithmatic), the three biblical themes of release from bondage, redistribution of wealth and renewal of creation.

Release from Bondage
A theme flowing throughout Leviticus 25 is the remission of debt. In most countries of the world, including Canada, the control of the national debt by faceless and publicly unaccountable international financiers, leaves people with less control over social and economic policies.Especially in the poorer countries of the South, debt repayments demanded by various financial institutions are many times higher than spending on health care. Southern countries now pay the rich West and North three times more in debt repayment than they receive in aid. Large populations are forced into poverty each year because we have refused to change this unjust situation.

Several religious organizations, including the Vatican, have already called on financial institutions and the wealthy countries of the world to declare 2000 a Jubilee Year of release from debt, especially for severely indebted low income countries.

We need to commit ourselves to the efforts of others to have the backlog of unpayable debts owed by the world’s poorest countries, and to work to make effective international reforms that can help avoid this structural injustice from reoccurring. What is essential in the cancellation of debt is that it must affect the poor.

Another important Leviticus theme was release from slavery. To proclaim liberty for captives today requires us join the campaigns of the international labor and human rights movements to end child labor practices and the inhuman working conditions of women workers. Part of this is the task of pressuring transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct with respect to their labor practices – NIKE, LEVI-STRAUSE.
Redistribution of wealth
Deuteronomy affirms, “There must then be no poor among you” (15:4). Still as we draw near the celebration of Jubilee we experience a world with rapidly-growing disparities between rich and poor.The share of the poorest 20 per cent of the world’s people in global income is decreasing. Some 1.3 billion human beings survive on less than the equivalent of $1 US a day. Nearly a billion people are illiterate. Well over a billion lack access to safe water. Some 840 million go hungry or face food insecurity. Nearly a third of the people in the least developed countries are not expected to survive the age of 40.

What can I do for so many? (Little boy and the star fish along the sea shore). What can be done to make the Great Jubilee a true celebration for all, especially the impoverished, the outcasts, the slaves and the disinherited of the 20th Century?

Any celebration of the year 2000 which would not attempt to redress yesterday’s wrongs, seek new approaches to overcome today’s problems, and celebrate our faith as a commitment to social justice and renewal, could be little more than simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing (1 Corinthians 13:2).

That those who have give a little (like: equitable food distribution, end wasteful spending on military hardware, declare a moratorium on nuclear weapons) – in order that other may have a little.

In Canada, where one child in five lives in poverty, and where the major political parties have pledged to eliminate child poverty before the great Jubilee, we can do no less than actively support Campaign 2000, the initiative that pressures our lawmakers to keep this pledge. What a joy it would be to celebrate that “they and their children with them shall go free” (Leviticus 25:4).
Renewal of Creation
In the covenant with Noah (Genesis 6:9-11) we remember that human beings are relationally interdependent with all of creation. In Leviticus, the land was to lie fallow every Sabbath year, and was seen as a sacred gift that could not be sold in perpetuity (25:23). In fact the way to keep the covenant with God and benefit from the goodness of creation that was intended for all, was to practice Jubilee.Today, as the degradations of environmental destruction surround us and threaten our very survival, a new covenant of caring for the earth and sharing its bounty is sorely needed.

At other Jubilee periods throughout history, a pilgrimage was a means of travelling respectfully and prayerfully over another person’s land in a quest for spiritual growth. Today we commit ourselves to a Jubilee pilgrimage that means travelling light without all the consumer items that unnecessarily burden us and prevent care for each other, other forms of life and the earth. (How we abuse Mother Earth! Imagine if Mother Earth stopped conserving!).

The description of Jubilee in the Bible made pointed demands not only to care for the land, but also its return to its original owners whenever they had been dispossessed of it. The call for land reform today is not just relevant in countries of the South, where peasants have been displaced from the best lands by huge land owners and huge projects designed to produce for export. In Canada today, recognizing the original owners of the land and their need for redress of their rights would mean much more serious efforts to settle Aboriginal land claims in a just manner. Many prairie farm families have lost their farms. Governments and the public need to consider and act upon the serious recommendations for deep-rooted change enunciated in the report of the Royal Commission for Aboriginal Peoples.

The approaching Jubilee Year claims the need for people of good faith to begin the Jubilee journey by renewing our spirituality in these very relevant and necessary manners, and to begin now.

To be a Christian means that we love our neighbor both near and far. Love of neighbor includes doing what we can to ease one’s suffering. It means giving what we can to meet someone’s immediate needs. It also means trying to understand why people today have such serious unmet needs. It means acknowledging our own contribution – as individuals and as a nation – to the suffering of others. It means, finally, acting to change whatever causes people to be dependent upon another’s charity. This love and this action must be shown to people in need here in our own diocese and throughout the world. For this is what it means to be Christian, to be the church, to be a parish.