Christian Vision of the Church in the Society

The Development of the Social

Teaching of the Church

UNIT IV.A
OPENING PRAYER

Holy Mary, Mother of

God, Queen of Heaven
and Queen of Angels,
please be mother to us
too and enlighten us
and protect us in all
things today.

Hail Mary…
BIBLICAL ROOTS OF THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
• The Old Testament expresses strong concern for a just
social order, expressed as concern and material help for
the poor, the orphan, and the widow; as honesty in
business and government dealings; and as fair and
upright dealings with one's neighbor.
• This Old Testament concern is true both in the Law (the
first five books of the Old Testament, which contain the
blueprint of Israelite social order), and in the Prophets
(the prophetic books, in which the individual prophet
calls Israel back to the right path whenever social
behavior veers away from the blueprint given in the Law).
• These concerns form the natural context of the Gospels,
and are developed in a distinctively Christian way in the
other books of the New Testament, focusing on the
person of Jesus Christ and our following of him in his
Spirit.
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The Medieval Concept of Man and Society
• The moral doctrine of the Church began
heavily in the area of person to person
morals, and of the morality required of
individuals.
• As the centuries passed and the institutions
of the Church took their place beside the
secular institutions of society, and as society
itself continued to develop, the Church began
to respond to the wider social issues of the
day.
• These early stages of Catholic social doctrine
can be traced through the Middle Ages.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES

Play mp4
“The Christian Mind of the Middle Ages”
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The Medieval Concept of Man and Society
• In the Medieval Christian view, man in the
image of God was a creature who could
reason, who could act, and who could make
things.
• In reason man sought truth, in acting he
sought justice, and in making things he
sought usefulness and beauty.
• Faith was not opposed to reason nor to
science, but was the firm foundation upon
which these things stood.
Cf. Bede Jarrett, Social Theories of the Middle Ages
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES
In the later Middle Ages, the Church exerted a
potent influence upon law. Widows, orphans and
helpless folk in general were protected by the
Church, which also dealt with such a wide range
of semi-secular offenses as falsification of
measures, weights and coins; forgeries of
documents; libel and scandal; perjury, including
false witness and failure to perform an oath or
vow.

Thomas P. Oakley, catholicculture.org

 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES
There were various other respects in which early
medieval law was influenced by the Church. It
was largely through the work of clerics that the
field of criminal law was first extended to cover
offenses not only against individuals but also
those that tended to undermine the social
order. A religious marriage replaced the pagan
one of sale or of contract, and the Church
repeatedly intervened to protect the wife.
Ecclesiastical protection was extended to slaves
manumitted (freed) in a church or by testament.

Thomas P. Oakley, catholicculture.org

 St. Thomas on the just ownership of goods
(the right use of private property)
1. God designed creation to support life, especially human
life (we have a human right to the goods of nature).
2. Private property engenders good stewardship (we
genuinely try to care for what is ours).
3. Private ownership supports order in society (by working
for what is our own, we maintain the orderly division of
labor that society requires).
4. Private property helps maintain peace in communities
(there is no quarrel over what society recognizes as mine).
5. Private property benefits the community (we privately
hold natural goods with the understanding that when
neighbors are in need they have a right to the goods that
they need, and we must freely provide for them out of
our own property).
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES
At the end of the 11th century, as commerce began to
develop in Europe, European society experienced the
emergence of two new classes of people: the middle
class and the extremely poor, who were often reduced
to begging. Governments during this time attempted to
ban poor people from public areas and institute
vagrancy laws to keep beggars out of cities. In
response, the Catholic Church moved to aggressively
protect the poor, insisting they were entitled to basic
rights. The Church attempted to protect these by
exempting the poor from court fees in ecclesiastic
courts and by providing free legal counsel, food, shelter
and alms.
Agatha Clark, classroom.synonym.com
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Modern society is at times not better than the
government in the Middle Ages. To enforce the anti-
vagrancy law in the UK, a police officer uses a water hose
to drive away a sleeping homeless man.
 IDEOLOGIES OF THE MODERN TIME: CAPITALISM
The agricultural revolution, brought about by the use of
new technology, made farming more efficient. More food
was produced using fewer workers.
 IDEOLOGIES OF THE MODERN TIME: CAPITALISM
No longer needed on farms, people moved to the cities.
There the new mechanical means of production set up and
owned by wealthy capitalists required more and more
cheap human labor in order to generate greater profits.
 IDEOLOGIES OF THE MODERN TIME: CAPITALISM
The unrestrained pursuit of wealth by industrial
capitalists during the industrial revolution came at great
human cost.
 IDEOLOGIES OF THE MODERN TIME: CAPITALISM
• In only a short time after the preceding photos and
videos became public, public revulsion and protest in
the U.S. and Britain over the working conditions of
children, women, and other cheap labor brought about
legislation over working conditions, wages, workers'
rights, and child employment.
• Factory conditions and the lives of laborers began
noticeably to improve.
• Also, industrial capitalists could no longer wield absolute
decision-making over their means of production, but
now had to negotiate with labor unions.
• The popes of the Catholic Church had themselves
already begun making official statements on social
issues such as these (we shall see these in later lessons).
 OTHER RESPONSES TO INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM
1. During these times, however, there were not only
the Christian responses to the excesses of
industrial capitalism.
2. Socialism and its ideological child, Marxist
communism, also arose as primary responses.
3. Socialism and Marxism were first of all intellectual
responses driven by individuals who drew on
philosophical ideas that arose in what is
commonly called the Age of Enlightenment, which
dominated the preceding century (1700s), and
also on scientific and sociological theories of the
time.
 IDEOLOGIES OF THE MODERN TIME:
SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM, PART 1
 IDEOLOGIES OF THE MODERN TIME:
SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM, PART 2
The Church's stand today on capitalism and socialism
To this day in its Catechism the Church maintains the
Christian view articulated by St. Thomas, and explicitly
refuses to embrace either capitalism or socialism:
CCC 2425. The Church has rejected the totalitarian and
atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with
"communism" or "socialism." She has likewise refused
to accept, in the practice of "capitalism," individualism
and the absolute primacy of the law of the
marketplace over human labor.
The Church offers, instead, what she has always
offered: The person and Spirit of Jesus Christ.