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The Church has no models to present
. . .
Helen Alford
One of the more striking statements from the recent
social teaching of the Church forms the title of this editorial. It
comes from the end of chapter IV of Centesimus annus, produced on
the 100th anniversary of the publication of Leo XIII’s
Rerum Novarum:
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,
political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another. For
such a task the Church offers her social teaching as an indispensable
and ideal orientation... (Centesimus Annus, n.43).
Further insight into the Pope’s position here comes
from his 1987 Encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis:
The Church's social doctrine is not a "third way"
between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible
alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another:
rather, it constitutes a category of its own. Nor is it an ideology, but
rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection
on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the
international order, in the light of faith and of the Church's
tradition. (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, n.41).
t is evident in these texts that the Pontiff is at pains to avoid
certain problems. In the quotation from Centesimus annus he
argues that the Church’s social teaching is not just a child of a
particular time, but has a validity that goes beyond particular
historical and geographical circumstances. It offers a set of principles
to help people orient themselves when they are trying to work on, or
work out, social problems. The quotation from Sollicitudo Rei
Socialis emphasises this further: the Church’s social teaching is
not a kind of “in between” position between two historically conditioned
ways of looking at the economic and political orders, but is rather the
result of a reflection on concrete situations in the light of the
Gospel, evaluating such situations on the basis of Gospel principles.
While it is always a little dangerous to comment on quotations taken out
of context, it is nevertheless fair to say that the positions of the
present Pope described here are well known; he has repeated them, for
instance, in numerous talks and documents. Therefore, we can comment in
a way that has sense, even though it is likely that one could find
opposing “proof texts” if one looked hard enough through his writings.
Despite the great contribution that John Paul II has made to the
development of social teaching, there are some problems with these
positions, even if one can also see why the Pope has adopted them. We
can summarise the main problems in two questions:
To what meaning of the words “Church” and “model” is
the pope referring when he says: “The Church has no models to
present...”?
What is the role of documenting and publicising practical, workable
examples of political and economic systems that operate in accord with
at least some of the Church’s social teachings?
In the context of Centesimus annus, it seems that the “model” the
Pope is talking about at n.43 is a kind of ideological system, like
capitalism or Marxism. We will say more about models in a moment, but
let’s turn first to the meaning of the word “Church”. When the pope says
that the “Church” has no models to present, but also that “models...
can only arise... through the efforts of all those who responsibly
confront concrete problems” it would seem that
he is equating the word “Church” with the hierarchy and its magisterium.
As the classic text for this number shows, this equation between Church
and hierarchy with regard to the social tradition would have been quite
acceptable before Vatican II. Now, however, after Council documents such
as Lumen Gentium, such a position is more problematic. Central
place in Lumen Gentium is given to the idea of the Church as the
“people of God”, in which the hierarchy has a guiding role. To equate
the Church with the hierarchy, then, seems odd, and particularly so in
relation to the Church’s social thought. Here it is primarily lay people
who carry the tradition forward and bring it to bear on the practical
situations of life. Lumen Gentium recognises that the saving
mission of the Church: cannot be carried out by priests alone:
The sacred pastors, indeed, know well how much the
laity contribute to the well-being of the whole church. For they know
that they were not established by Christ to undertake by themselves the
entire saving mission of the church to the world (LG n.30).
This may seem a small point, and a kind of carping, ungenerous
interpretation of what the Pope is trying to say, but it is made because
there does seem to be a problem here. Note that the Pope does not say
here that the “Church’s social teaching” or the “magisterium” does not
have models to present, but the “Church” tout court. For a writer
as careful as John Paul II, it is hard to see this as no more than an
oversight. I think, however, that the Pope would agree that Christian
economists and political scientists, working on economic and political
models and aiming to understand what is both technically effective and
also in accord with the principles of the social teaching of the Church,
are contributing to the development of the Church’s social
mission. If this is so, insofar as baptised Christians do this kind of
work, they are living out their vocation within the general mission of
the Church, and through them, the Church does have models to present.
Our second problem, then, follows on from the first. If the Church has
no models to present, all too easily people are left with a very
abstract idea of the Church’s social teaching, one that they find
difficult to put into practice. Without some kinds of practical models
that they can see to be embodying its principles, the Church’s social
teaching remains detached and aloof from the real social problems which
it is meant to help us in addressing. Many people speak of the Church’s
social teaching as the Church’s “best kept secret”, and one cannot help
thinking that this is one of the main reasons why. Proposing the
Church’s social teaching without practical examples is somewhat like
proposing the faith to human beings as a set of propositions from the
Catechism, without the Gospels and their narratives and parables, or the
stories of the lives of the saints. It is precisely through learning
about how people in the concrete circumstances of their lives have tried
to follow Christ heroically that we are able to see some of the
implications of the faith in our lives. Practical examples are essential
to the wider diffusion of the Church’s social thought. Although it would
be wrong to say that the pontiff is excluding this, the minimal emphasis
that is put on this aspect does not help us overcome this problem. In a
practical sense, the Church has indeed presented some types of models in
its past. Here we are talking about “models” in terms of “practical
examples” of how one can live out in a business, a local district, a
prison, a political party the principles that the Church’s social
teaching presents. These “models” are good examples because they really
involve promoting the common good, like the renaissance “monti di pietà”
in Italy that are the fore runners of modern banks but which were
originally set up to help the poor.
While we can see that the Pope wants to protect social teaching from
being tied to erroneous thought and inadequate examples, in the process
he risks both cutting out the contribution of the very people who could
make it practically applicable in today’s society, and isolating it from
practical examples that could make it more real and living to people in
general. Perhaps what is needed is some kind of equivalent to the
“canonisation” process, where examples are thoroughly gone through and
tested before they are accepted. Perhaps also the Pontifical Academy of
Social Sciences could oversee a kind of evaluation of various economic
and political advances that could be seen to be nearer to or further
from the Church’s social teaching. Or maybe even the Pope needs to
emphasise more the idea of the “Catholic social tradition” rather than
“Catholic social teaching” to avoid these exclusions without
compromising the Church’s official teaching. What is clear is that we
need to involve lay experts and to incorporate practical examples into
what the Church offers the world if it is to have the impact in society
that it should.
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