I believe Catholic social teaching is wondrously rich and deep and offers us far more moral guidance than we perhaps think it does. However, to unlock this richness, we have to understand the inherant structure of the various principles involved and how they relate with each other.
We have the teaching of Jesus our Christ, the many and various writings of our Saints and papal encyclicals from relatively modern times. These are the source of our beautiful, living, breathing Catholic social teaching.
The Compendium offers us a first glimpse at what an underlying structure of these many principles might be. Catholic Social teaching has four “permanent principles”: human dignity, common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. These are “the very heart of Catholic social teaching” and human dignity is “the foundation of all other principles and content of the Church’s social doctrine” (Compendium, #160).
Clearly, any systemic approach to Catholic social teaching must have human dignity as its foundation and any social action must have the upholding of everyone’s human dignity as the measure of its goodness. To borrow a phrase from Eucharistic theology, human dignity is the source and summit of Catholic social teaching and praxis.
That leaves us with the three permanent principles: common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. Understanding how these three relate to each other and to human dignity is the obvious next step to creating a systematic understanding of Catholic social teaching.
Based on my understanding of these concepts and the overall way in which they are presented, albeit largely, if not entirely, independent of one another, I believe these three remaining permanent principles are mutually essential to the upholding of human dignity. Like the three legs of a stool holding up the seat upon which a person rests, these three pillars of human dignity are each required if a particular action is to uphold the dignity of the human person. Should any one be missing to any degree, the stool falls, and we've failed to uphold human dignity.
If this model is true, then any and all understanding and application of Catholic Social Teaching must show how it upholds all three pillars in order to show it upholds human dignity. The natural result of this is highly subjective, and requires a lot of dialogue.
Care to participate in that dialogue? Feel free to dive in in the comments section. For the whole schtick, please see my Model of Catholic Social Teaching.
The Compendium offers us a first glimpse at what an underlying structure of these many principles might be. Catholic Social teaching has four “permanent principles”: human dignity, common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. These are “the very heart of Catholic social teaching” and human dignity is “the foundation of all other principles and content of the Church’s social doctrine” (Compendium, #160).
Clearly, any systemic approach to Catholic social teaching must have human dignity as its foundation and any social action must have the upholding of everyone’s human dignity as the measure of its goodness. To borrow a phrase from Eucharistic theology, human dignity is the source and summit of Catholic social teaching and praxis.
That leaves us with the three permanent principles: common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. Understanding how these three relate to each other and to human dignity is the obvious next step to creating a systematic understanding of Catholic social teaching.
Based on my understanding of these concepts and the overall way in which they are presented, albeit largely, if not entirely, independent of one another, I believe these three remaining permanent principles are mutually essential to the upholding of human dignity. Like the three legs of a stool holding up the seat upon which a person rests, these three pillars of human dignity are each required if a particular action is to uphold the dignity of the human person. Should any one be missing to any degree, the stool falls, and we've failed to uphold human dignity.
If this model is true, then any and all understanding and application of Catholic Social Teaching must show how it upholds all three pillars in order to show it upholds human dignity. The natural result of this is highly subjective, and requires a lot of dialogue.
Care to participate in that dialogue? Feel free to dive in in the comments section. For the whole schtick, please see my Model of Catholic Social Teaching.
Posts
1 comment:
Prof. Ramon Tulio here. Dcn Patrick, I like this attempt to visualize the principles here. I do have one comment. Although many, including myself, would agree with you regarding the centrality of the life and dignity of the human person, I think there may be a reason the Compendium has four principles. Perhaps the source and summit, as you say, is ultimately Eucharistic...not just in systematic theology but also Catholic Social Teaching. Our life in the world is a step into the paschal mystery, if you take discipleship seriously...the paschal mystery is the pattern of our lives and the imitation of Christ in our various states of life.
This is all a long way to say that I'd rather keep that Eucharistic center in the middle of it all, and allow the four principles the Compendium allows.
It's interesting that the Compendium has these four principles...whittled down from the seven principles in the USCCB's Sharing Catholic Social Teaching...whittled down from popular articulations of 10 or more!
I agree the principles need to be held in balance.
More later (re: the above posts), Thanks for all the work on my favorite subject!
--Professor Tulio
Post a Comment