What does Catholic Social Teaching say about...

Hi, I'm Sandy Cornish and this is a Social Spirituality Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to talk about how to find out what Catholic social teaching has to say about any given issue, theme or principle. It's a question that students often ask. They're able to analyse what this or that document has to say about a given issue, but when asked to critically reflect on what the body of teaching has to say about the issue, they aren't quite sure how to find the relevant documents. So how do we find out what Catholic social teaching has to say about a particular theme or issue? Firstly, it helps to be familiar with the Catholic social justice tradition and its major documents. In fact, if you want to develop a sophisticated professional grasp of Catholic social teaching, there is really no substitute for knowledge of the major documents. Yes, friends, you have to read them all, in full, over and over. You will want to be as familiar with the social teaching documents as a scripture scholar is familiar with the Bible. If you want to understand this tradition deeply, you can't just rely on summaries. Not even mine. But you can start with summaries and general introductions. They can help you to focus your reading around a particular issue or theme. I would suggest that you start by reading a few good scholarly works that provide a general introduction to the tradition and an historical overview of the major international documents. Something like Bernard Brady's Essential Catholic Social Thought or Thomas Massaro's Living Justice. I like to use these texts when I'm teaching the tradition of Catholic social thought and action because they give a good introduction, point to the most important international documents and they include a thematic treatment of issues, as well as examples of local church teaching and action. Each of these books also has a good analytical index, which obviously will also help you to find material on particular issues or themes within the book. So a good introductory text will help you to identify some of the most important documents of your issue or theme. Here's a tip. Pay attention to which church documents appear in the references when you are reading a thematic chapter. Second, published collections of the major documents often provide an introduction or historical context for each document. David O'Brien and Thomas Shannon's collection, Catholic Social Thought Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, does a really good job of situating each text and indicating its main concerns. If you know what prompted the publication of each document and what its major concerns were, then you'll know which ones are most likely to have touched on your issue or theme. Remember that the teachings develop in dialogue with human history. So think about situations, events or movements in current affairs that might have prompted the development of teachings or the need to explain and communicate existing church teaching. One very famous example is the publication of the encyclical Parchmenteris, Peace on Earth. It was published in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It applied existing church teaching to the new situation of a nuclear standoff and further developed the teaching in relation to weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying the entire earth. Keep in mind the need to understand each document within its context within the tradition. Ask yourself if there might have been further developments since a particular document was published. Is it the most recent authoritative teaching on the matter, or not? Scholarly commentaries on the major documents will be helpful here. For instance, the book Modern Catholic Social Teaching, edited by Kenneth Himes together with an eminent array of associate editors, provides excellent commentaries on each of the most significant international documents of the tradition. Bear in mind too that journal articles are published more frequently than books, so search theology journals for articles on your topic or theme. If you're really lucky, you might find that a scholar has recently conducted your literature review for you. One key journal in this field is the Journal of Catholic Social Thought. You could start there. Another good starting point is a reference work like the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. It was produced by what was then the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, precisely to try to provide a synthesis of the teachings. The work of the Council is now part of the New Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development. The Compendium includes a number of thematic chapters and an analytical index, as well as foundational material on the nature and role of Catholic social teaching. The full text of the Compendium is available freely online on the Vatican website. Because it was published in 2004, it doesn't take into account the development of the teachings by Pope Benedict XVI or Pope Francis. So you need to think about how they may have added detail to the teaching or changed the focus or the emphasis of the teaching in relation to your theme or issue in the period since 2004. For example, the chapter in the Compendium on the environment is out of date because it doesn't reflect the significant new teaching of Pope Francis in Laudato si' on the care of our common home. The Catechism of the Catholic Church also contains material on some of the more well-established and enduring principles and themes in Catholic social teaching. I'd recommend using all of this whilst checking with the online version. It's unusual, but the Catechism can be updated. For instance, in 2018, Pope Francis approved an amendment to the Catechism that updated the teaching on the death penalty. Until then, there was an in-principle acceptance of the legitimacy of the death penalty in certain very limited circumstances. The teaching now is that the death penalty is not acceptable in the contemporary world. If you were using a printed edition published before 2019, you could easily miss this development. Within the tradition of Catholic social teaching, there are both international or universal teachings and local teachings. There are teachings by popes and teachings by bishops or groups of bishops, often national or regional conferences of bishops. The international and local teachings develop together in dialogue. The local teachings are likely to draw on the international teachings and put them in dialogue with what's happening in a particular time and place. So thinking about where and when a particular issue or theme would have been important might point you towards the teachings of local bishops or their conferences. Again, be aware of context. International social teachings will emphasise those things that are most relevant to the context of their audience, rather than attempting to provide guidance to the whole world – their local teachings. However, because the local bishops teach in communion with the Pope, they may include references to the general position of the Church on particular issues in their own teaching documents. They might even give an overview of the international teachings and interpret their meaning for the local context. Returning to the example of the death penalty, the Catholic bishops of the Philippines have produced a number of pastoral letters on this topic, and also a primer. These local teachings set out the position of the universal teachings and also the bishops' own teaching in relation to the death penalty debate in the Philippines. So the local teachings can be another way in. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, there is the Vatican website. It's an amazing resource, but you'll need to think very carefully about your search terms and criteria, or you'll be buried in thousands of results. It helps to know something about the levels of authority of different kinds of documents, the structure of the Vatican and its regular activities, and a range of occasions on which teaching documents are regularly issued. But this is such a big topic that I'll devote a separate episode to that. So just to recap, get familiar with the major documents of the Catholic social teachings and their major concerns, read scholarly commentaries on the documents, search theological journals, use reference works such as the Compendium in a discerning manner, don't forget that local bishops teach in communion with the Pope too, and tackle the Vatican website. I'm Sandy Cornish, thanks for listening.