What is Catholic Social Teaching? – Fr. Brad Elliott, O.P.

Hello, I'm Father Ambrose Little, the Director of the Timmist Against Institute. Before we begin the next great TI lecture, a quick word with you. Thanks to donors like you, our content is cutting through the digital noise with the truth of the Catholic intellectual tradition. But we can't keep it coming without your help. If you enjoy programs like the TI Podcasts in Aquinas 101, please consider a small contribution of $25 or more. You can use the link in the description or visit our website to donate. Your generosity ensures that these important programs will continue to lead souls to the truth all over the world. So please enjoy this episode and may God bless you and keep you in His grace. Welcome to the Timmistic Institute Podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the University, the Church, and the wider public square. The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Timmistic Institute chapters around the world. To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at TimmisticInstitute.org. It's an honor to be here to give reflections on the topic of Catholic social teaching, what it is, and why it's so important and why everybody should actually care about it and learn about it. In this presentation, then I want to answer, first ask, and then answer, two questions, what is Catholic social teaching? Because that's a confusing topic. Everybody has their own kind of pet answer. And then also, second question, why is Catholic social teaching so important for my spiritual life? And my goal is to show that built within the very answers to the first question is also the answer to the second question. You understand what we're talking about. But I also recognize that answering the first question is no easy task. Catholic social teaching means a lot of things to a lot of diverse people. It's kind of turned into just anything that anybody wants it to be. Almost sometimes I like a bludgeon for different factions within the church. It's been very confusing. So first, it is Catholic. Second, it is social. This is actually important. This is a trust me. And finally, it is a real teaching or, more specifically, theology. Which means it's actually real theology. So Catholic social teaching as real theology has God as object. I see some people taking notes. It has God as object. That's actually very important. I did not, for purposes of this presentation, Hunter asked me earlier if I have a presentation or a kind of a slide show or anything. I did not. I see people taking notes which is wonderful. As a student of Catholic social teaching, I understand that power corrupts. And PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. So I did not. Although I could have run this thing after he said, "Do you have a PowerPoint?" It's like this could actually lend itself to PowerPoint. I'll take your feedback later if PowerPoint might actually be helpful. I think it's corrupting. But that's another here. First, a summary of what the church colloquially refers to as Catholic social teaching. Simply put, Catholic social teaching is a tradition of theological, moral, and social reflection inaugurated by Pope Leo XIII, over 100 years ago, the great encyclical Réreum de Varrom of 1891. It's kind of the commencement of this tradition. And as the title of the encyclical suggests, Réreum de Varrom of new things or on new things, Catholic social teaching was a response to the new things thrust onto the Christian West by the emerging industrial revolutions, the financial revolution, and the socialists and Marxists reactions to these revolutions, reactions that had built into them in many ways, the very reaction and even the contours, the very contours, and content of the error that they were trying to correct. That's important. Pope Leo XIII himself did not use the phrase "Catholic social teaching." At that point, it was simply Catholic political thought. The phrase "Catholic social teaching" was a development of Pope Pius XI, in the great encyclical commemorating the 40th anniversary of Réreum de Varrom, which is quadri-Gessemoano in 1931. But the introduction of the phrase "Catholic social teaching" and the proliferation of the comp, the comp, we use this phrase all the time. The newness of this phrase in the 20th century lends us to be tempted to assume that Catholic social teaching is itself something new. This is a mistake. This is a great error. We think that it is a new teaching distinct or in many ways different from what the church had taught before. I would insist not to explain why actually let me use an illustration that I have used for many of my students in illustration. When I first entered a Dominican, a St. Albert's Priory in Oakland, California, my duty was to be the sacristan of the house. And there's a lot that goes into it. It's kind of complicated. There's a lot of things to know, a lot of things to remember. I had it down to a science and knew where everything was. I knew what to put out when, what to put away when, but the thing is, at the end of my duty as a sacristan, I actually had the additional duty of explaining the sacristan duty to someone else. A new guy that just came in that was going to be the sacristan. And in the process of actually having to explain to someone else what I had been doing for years, I actually realized for the first time all of these little things that I was doing that I didn't even realize I was doing. Little things that I knew were part of the job, but I never articulated them, even to myself. Right? Does anybody know the phenomenon I'm talking about? When we actually have to explain an enterprise for the first time, oftentimes the very explainer learns it again, a new, in detail, details that perhaps were left unarticulated, and now have to be articulated. Catholic social teaching in the 20th century is just precisely such an explanation. It wasn't until the revolutions of the 18th and 19th century that we actually had to explain certain social principles that had never been questioned before. Does that make sense? And then for the first time, the church has to actually put into articulated words, and it's the essence that we always understood. Let me give you another example of what I'm talking about. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door in the Vittenberg Cathedral in 1517, Europe at that time, or what we now call Europe, was a patchwork of about 500 different flags. There were 500 quasi-independent polities that we call Europe. When Leo the 13th was elected Pope, in 1878, those 500 units were reduced to about 25. The development of the modern nation state, Treaty of Westphalia, wars that had never been consolidated before. Now, back in the 14th century, we didn't call this patchwork of 500 distinct units. We didn't call it subsidiary. We didn't call it division of powers. We didn't call it decentralizing. We didn't call it anything. It was just what we did. But it had never been questioned. Is Catholic social teaching something new? Yes and no. It is a new articulation, yes, but it is a new articulation of fundamental spiritual and social and anthropological principles that are buried in the church's classical tradition. Actually, they even predate the church. It's the classical tradition. And that's what we're going to talk about. Cool? All right. It's a new theological reflection on the principles of society in light of and conditioned by the new situations of modernity. With this in mind, then, let me articulate first what Catholic social teaching is not. This is going to be important. Catholic social teaching is not simply Catholic politics. It's not a Catholic prescription for state action. That is a radical, kind of shrinking, or even contradiction of what Catholic social teaching is. It is not the emergence of a new Catholic voice which finally drummed up the courage in the modern world to enter political debates. That's not what it is. The Catholic Church has always influenced politics. The Catholic Church has always been influential in social action. Also, Catholic social teaching is not simply the "activistic" arm of the church. Catholic social teaching is not social activism. Like I said, it's theology. It's not simply activism. Okay? That's very important. This is a great deception and can reduce the church's moral reflections to something far less than it actually is. So what is it? As mentioned already, and I will keep repeating, it is real theology. It has God as its object. It's moral theology, meaning it's a reflection on how the human person, through the human person's authentic human action, act as humans, authentic human action, moves towards his own perfection as a creature created in the image and likeness of God. So, it's a social moral theology. Reflection on how the human person is the type of creature who must come to perfection reach his end through society. Does everybody with me? All right. So what does it mean to be social? Okay. So the first thing we have to understand. Does it actually mean to be social? As human beings, we are genus and species. We are rational animals. We're rational animals. It's the genus and species who we are. But as rational animals, the ancient philosophers and ancient thinkers also realized that built into our rationality was something else. Something else built into it. And that is relationality. We are not just rational animals, but as rational animals, we are social animals. We are the social animal. In Greek, we are "Zo-On" political. We are the political animal. "Zo-On" political. In the contemporary world, it's easy to misunderstand what this means because of the horrific violence that has been done to the word political. Let's talk about this word political. It's the meaning. Let me use an illustration to talk about what has happened to the word political. This is an example for my own life. It was at the beginning of the pandemic that we just experienced, the tragic lockdowns, when everybody was stuck in their house. I remember talking on the phone back in late 2020 with a friend of mine who worked at a parish where I was at the time. I was talking, just catching up. He says, "Oh my gosh, ever since the lockdown, ever since the lockdown, I've gotten so political." I just say, "What?" I say, "What do you mean you've gotten political?" He says, "Oh, well, I've just been in my house all day. I've been stuck in my house, but I've gotten really political." I'm like, "What?" I just say, "You've been stuck in your house all day. You haven't seen it, but you've gotten really political." I said, "Can you describe from what you mean by getting political?" She goes, "Oh, yeah. Totally political." I'm just like binge watching eight hours a day of CNN. So that's what has happened to the word "politics." Yelling at pixels on a screen. That's what we think being political means in the modern world. Yelling at pixels on a screen. Guys, I mean, please. You are a social animal to be political. To be political animals means that we are the type of creatures that must exist and inhabit society, society. In other words, we are creatures who by nature live in a palace, a palace, which is Greek for city, where we get the word "political." We have a palace to which we belong. We have a place. To be a human person, a social creature means that you have a place to which you have a type of allegiance, a place to which you belong, a place in Greek and topos, a place. For the ancient thinkers, this was common sense. To not live in society meant that one was more like either an angel or a brute animal, but not a human. Not a human, not a rational animal. This was so much the common sense of the ancient philosophers, particularly Aristotle, Cicero and the like, that the ancient reason that to not live in a palace, to not have one place or a topos or a palace was actually a type of vice. It was a vice. It was given a name. Does anybody know the name of this vice? To not have a palace? The vice of cosmopolitanism. To be cosmopolitan. The ancients understood this as a vice. What does cosmopolitan mean? It means that the whole cosmos is my palace. Be a citizen of the world. It's a vice for the ancient thinkers. This means that you have no place because every place is my place. Now to be a citizen of the world, to be cosmopolitan is equivalent to having no city at all. It's equivalent to being anti-social. To have no society, no community, no place. This means actually being nowhere, having no topos or place. And the person without a place, the person who is cosmopolitan, who doesn't have their topos is the person who is utopian, which is also a type of vice for the ancients. To be utopian. That's where we get the word utopia. Comes from no place. So the Greek word utopia doesn't mean good place. Like some people assume that it means in the modern world it just means like this perfect place. But it's not a utopos. It's utopo, like no place. Actually this word utopia was first coined by Saint Thomas Moore. It's 19, or I'm sorry, 15, 16 book called utopia. So what does it mean then to be social by nature? Means this. As rational animals, we are social by nature and not by coercion. You're not social because someone else forces you to be social. You're social by nature. You are social by nature and not by contract. Okay? That's another, that's important. You're not social by contract. You are social by nature and not merely social by consent. So the social nature of the human person is something far, far deeper than these, let's say, tools of statecraft. Consensus, coercion, contract, right? We reach fulfillment as rational animals through society. We develop the fullness of virtue through society. We develop the full nature of our human personalities through society. This is the center of the teaching of Pope Pius XI. In his great encyclical, his 1937 encyclical, "Divini Redemptoris." I highly recommend that you read it. It's one of my favorites, 1937, "Divini Redemptoris." This is a quote from his paragraph 29. It's a little bit longer, but there is so much built into this quote. The sisters are so studious taking notes. This is great. Quote, "God has likewise destined man for civil society according to the dictates of his very nature." In the plan of the Creator, society is a natural means which man can and must use to reach his destined end. Here this, "society is for man and not vice versa." This must not be understood in the sense of a liberalistic individualism which subordinates society to the selfish use of the individual, but only in the sense that by means of an organic union with society and by mutual collaboration, the attainment of earthly happiness is placed within the reach of all. He continues, "In a further sense, it is society which affords the opportunities for the development. of all the individual and social gifts bestowed on human nature. These natural gifts have a value surpassing the immediate interest of the moment. For in society they reflect the divine perfection, which would not be true or man to live alone. But on final analysis, the Pope continues, even in this latter function society is made for man that he may recognize this reflection of God's perfection and refer it to the praise and adoration of the Creator. Only man, the human person and not society in any form is endowed with reason and a morally free will. There's a lot there. That's a beautiful quote. Is this distracting? Okay, I'm hearing some kind of feedback, but that's all right. This notion of the human person as a rational animal, as a political animal, has remarkable implications. Many might think that society is simply a collection of individual members of a species that work together for survival. And this is indeed part of what society affords us survival. The human society is more than a mere collection of individuals each protecting itself. For instance, a pack of wolves hunting as a group might be a collection of individual wolves. But this wolf pack is not a society. A herd of animals is not a society. A hive of bees might work in synchronization for the development of the hive, but this hive is not a society, not in the real sense. Okay? Only rational animals that is human persons can enter into society. But here's the big question. Why? Why is only rational, the only rational animal capable of society, and why must the rational animal come to perfection in that thing called society? The answer to this lies in a type of love, a type of love of which only the rational creature is capable, and that only the rational creature can enjoy. A type of love that not only thrusts us towards another individual that is enjoyed as good, but even more, a type of love that thrusts us towards a transcendent good that is shared with others and enjoyed with others precisely because it is shared. This type of love is called friendship, friendship love, friendship love. Aristotle and his Nikamaki Nethik spends books on friendship. This is the culmination of the life of virtue. The great consummation of the life of virtue is to be able to have a friend. That's why we grow to be capable of that love called friendship. Let's go into this. Friendship creates society. Friendship is the heart and soul of society, and wherever we have friendship, wherever we have friendship love, we have a type of society. Okay? I'm getting affirmative nods from the sisters. This is just great. This is just great. Friendship love is a love of a shared good. This is important. A shared good. Another word for a shared good, a good that is shareable is the common good. A common good is a shared good. A common good is not simply any good that is shared. A common good is good precisely because it is shareable. Its goodness lies in its shareability. Let me explain a little bit more. I can share pizza with you guys by dividing it up and handing out pieces. This does not make pizza a common good. Pizza is always an individual good that is divided. The pizza does not need to be shared in order to be enjoyed. I can enjoy the pizza whether or not I share it with you. That means it can't be common. Let me use another example that might be even more difficult. We're all breathing the oxygen in this room right now. In a sense we're all sharing the oxygen. But is oxygen a common good? No. The oxygen that I'm breathing is precisely not the oxygen that you're breathing. I can enjoy the oxygen in this room whether or not I share it with you at all. Its goodness does not lie in its shareability. Again, its shareability is accidental to its goodness. So it's not the type of good that we would call a common good. There is nothing in my use of oxygen or pizza that requires my sharing it. It's likely. But the common good, the shared common good at the heart of real friendship love is completely distinct from these mere consumable realities. Now actually brothers and sisters this is the heart and soul of real what we call consumerism. This is the real pathology of real consumerism. It's to treat everything as my own particular good that I consume. That's my aside. That's another lecture. A common good and the common good's shareability is an indivisible hole into which individuals can enter into and participate together. In other words, the common good's shareability does not divide the good itself. Rather, the common good's shareability is the opposite. It actually unites those people into one who enjoy it. Those who share a common good do not consume this good by dividing it up like a material reality. No. Instead both enter into this good precisely because it is greater than them. A good that is greater than both of them and can encompass them both together as a good that is shared without diminution. This means that a common good of friendship of any kind cannot be possessed in isolation. It's important. I can't possess the common good in isolation from others. One cannot possess a friendship, a family, a marriage, a city in isolation from others. If one exits a friendship or tragically if one exits a marriage, they can't take their portion of the marriage with them. They just have their portion of the marriage. The only way to enjoy these goods, city, marriage, family, friendship is not a good, it's not the only way to have them is to participate in them. It's a type of goodness that can only be possessed by being shared. Thus a common good causes real union. It's the only type of good that can cause union. Not mere sameness. This is important. A society is not a collection of everybody that's exactly the same. No, no, no, no. Actually the sameness of everybody in the society is accidental to the common good that's shared. This is actually seen most clearly in the family. The common good which is the family, everybody is distinct. But nonetheless they're all sharing this good which is the family. And actually the share ability depends on the distinctness of each of its members. There's a distinct role in the father, mother, brother, sister. It is precisely this entering into a shared union that causes growth in virtue. This is a condition. It is this shared good that is a social friendship. The common good then is just the type of goodness that can cause friendship love and in turn can be the cause of society. The common good causes society. It is a common good because it is a common cause. Everybody with me? I know that got a little abstract. So let's turn the corner now. Catholic social teaching from Leo the 13th on, particularly Pius XI stressed, not just the necessity of society, the necessity of love of a common good, but also the fact that there are three necessary societies, three necessary societies. As mentioned, Catholic social teaching is not new. It is merely a re-articulation in modern form of truths that were handed down from antiquity on. And in this classical tradition of Catholic social thought, a tradition that expands all the encyclicals from Rerem de Varrum up to Centrismus Anus of John Paul II and even into Benedictine on, there are three distinct societies that are necessary for the human person. They're completely distinct, but they're necessary. Popeye's the 11th claims this, these three societies are each completely different. Each one's function is irreducible to the other, yet they are each necessary for full human flourishing and growth towards human perfection. These three necessary societies are, anybody know, the family, the polity, and the church, the church is a society. And this is why since the advent of Catholic social teaching, in the late 19th century, we have papal encyclicals specifically dedicated to these three societies. For the first time, Leo XIII started writing encyclicals dedicated just to the family, which is a whole part of the 20th century, because this is a society. And for the first time, we have magisterial statements on ecclesiology, what is the church? I'm thinking particularly, Pius XII, Pius XII, Mestici Corpore's Christi in 1951. Beautiful encyclical, because these are the three necessary societies. Let's go back to some encyclicals. In his 1929 encyclical, Divini Ilius Modjustri, Pope Pius XI speaks of these three necessary, this is paragraph 11. I highly recommend that you read this encyclical. Divini Ilius Modjustri is an encyclical on Catholic education. It's on education, but so we don't oftentimes think of this as one of the great social encyclicals, but nonetheless it is a social encyclical. And he writes this in paragraph 11. Now there are three necessary societies distinct from one another and yet harmoniously combined by God into which man is born, two, namely the family and civil society belong to the natural order, and the third, the church to the supernatural order. He then elaborates by describing, in the next paragraph, paragraph 12, describing these societies. This is important, this is paragraph 12. In the first place, the family instituted directly by God for its particular purpose, the generation and formation of offspring. For this reason, it has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society. I'm gonna say that again. For this reason, the family has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society. Nevertheless, the family is an imperfect society since it has not in itself all the means for its own complete development, whereas civil society is a perfect society, having in itself all the means for its particular end, which is the temporal well-being of the community. And so in this respect, that is, in view of the common good, it, that is, civil society, has preeminence over the family, which finds its suitable own temporal perfection precisely in civil society. This is interesting relationship between the family and civil society, both are necessary, but they're distinct. And third, this is paragraph 13, the third society into which man is born, when through baptism he reaches the divine life of grace is the church. A society of the supernatural order and of universal extent, we're gonna go into this, what he means, universal extent. A perfect society, because it has in itself all the means required for its own end, which is the eternal salvation of mankind, hence it is supreme in its own domain. Each one of these societies is based on a distinct mode of friendship. The family is rooted in marital friendship, that is the union of husband and wife. The polity is rooted in political friendship that emerges among those who share a common good, who share a common community or a common topos place. And finally, the church is rooted in friendship with God, divine friendship. And another word for divine friendship is charity. The virtue of charity, St. Thomas defines as friendship with God. It's important. An interesting Lee in his very first question on charity, he brings in the notion of society, that through charity God enters into a type of society with man. That's charity. Society, friendship. It's such a beautiful thing. Let us explain then these three societies, similarities and differences. Let's go into more detail. Let's imagine now a type of matrix, a type of matrix. This is probably when PowerPoint would have come in handy. It's imagining a mind, a type of matrices, okay? Where you have these three distinct societies, necessary societies on top of you, the family, the polity, and the church. And then on the other axis, let's look at some qualities that these societies have. They're origin, they're telos or they're end, their number, their extension, how far they extend, and their duration through time. Cool? The origin of these societies, the origin. From what principle does each society emerge? The family emerges from nature. The family is a natural society. But it emerges from the very biological complementarity between the sexes and the necessity for union of the sexes in procreation. It is a biological reality. The society of the family emerges from our very biology. The structure woven into our biological, psychological and emotional human nature and human complementarity. Now the polity also emerges from nature. It's natural. But unlike the family, it does not emerge from our biological nature. It emerges from what? A rational nature. Its origin is the rational and relational nature of the human person. Something we don't share with animals. The church, however, unlike the family in the polity has no origin in nature at all. It is not a natural institution. The origin of the church is completely supernatural. When our Lord Jesus took on flesh during the incarnation, the great hypostatic union of divine and human natures in the one person of our Lord, the supernatural principle of grace penetrates into human history and places within human history a supernatural principle of charity, divine friendship. Now, all who share in this divine friendship are members of the city of God and the society of the blessed. St. Paul tells us, we are aliens and sojourners. Our citizenship is not of this world, our citizenship is in heaven. When through grace we are made friends with God, it's a completely supernatural society. Cool. Let's go to the second little level here on our matrices. What's the end, the end or the tell-offs of each of these societies? Well, the church is, as we said, a supernatural society. It is sacramental. The end of the church is your blessedness, your sanctification and your ultimate union with God in the beatific vision. Thus the church and the church alone has a mark. holiness. It's one of the four marks of the church. She is holy because that's her end is to make you holy. The polity is a natural society and its end is distinct. It does not have a supernatural end. Its end is the natural tranquility of order within the temporal realm. It is not a sacramental reality. The human polity cannot give grace. The state cannot give grace. The dispensation of grace is the unique monopoly of the supernatural society of the church. That's why she alone bears that mark of holiness. Let us remember if you guys know your church history, the church has decided that the coronation of a king is not a sacrament. There's still many people today that kind of wish it was a sacrament. But interesting enough, and I must add this, and this will continue. This theme will continue as we reflect on the nature of these societies. In the fallen world, in a fallen world, in a sinful world, the polity will always try to usurp the mark of holiness. The polity will always want to pretend to be the church. Always. This is why those four marks of the church are so important because these are the four marks that make this society completely distinct. The state will always try to co-opt the mark of holiness. But the monopoly on grace is given by our Lord Jesus Christ to his church. Cool? Now the family is unique in this altogether. What's the end of the family? The family is also, as we said, its origin is natural, so it has a natural origin. Yet unlike the polity, it has been elevated by grace to a sacrament. Hmm, that's interesting. The family has its origin in nature. Yet it is the type of good that even as St. Paul says is a type of the church, a great, a magnum, a great mystery that represents Christ in the church. It has been elevated by grace, by a sacrament, to even be a source of an instrumental source of grace for us. That's the family. Not interesting. So the family is unique. This is why. And it's been so tragic in the 20th century. There's been this move to separate family and marriage ethics from social teaching. These cannot be separated. Catholic social teaching has as its heart, the church is teaching on marriage in the family. And the teaching on marriage in the family have to be integrated back into Catholic social teaching. Or else we just have a cue. It's a radical handicap of Catholic social teaching. Cool? That's another one of my little editorial comments. Got it? Let's go to this next little element on our matrices. The number. The number of these societies. How many societies are there? This is important. Well, there are three societies, your right sister. Three societies. But let's go a little bit. But let's go deep within each. How many are there of each? Okay? How many families are there in the world? A lot. There's a plurality of families. There's at least three. Yeah, there's more than three families. So within families, there can be potentially no limit to the amount of families that can be on planet earth. Right? The family is not one. The family is many. There are plurality of families. How many policies are there? Many. There's a more or three. There's theoretically there's no limit to how many policies there can be. Every time there's a people that has a shared common place and custom, there's a polity you can emerge. And there's theoretically no limit to this. How many churches are there? There's one. Oh, and we're getting somewhere. This is another mark of the church as a unique mark or feature of that unique supernatural society founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. There is only one church and there can be no other. She resists a plurality. Right? One of her marks is this oneness. And I must add, because of this, because of this oneness, only the church is cosmopolitan. Only the church is cosmopolitan. The polity cannot be cosmopolitan. Only the church is global. Because she's supernatural. Because the principle that holds her together, the very glue is not a natural principle. It's a supernatural principle that transcends all natural borders or division. Only the church through the supernatural principle of grace can extend all throughout the world and encompass all peoples. Since the principle of grace transcends nature, only the church can encompass all peoples without destroying their own individual cultures, languages, races. Keep in mind. Keep in mind at the end of the book of Revelation, the very end of the Bible. What comes down from heaven? The Holy City. The city is the end of the Scriptures. The Holy City Jerusalem. Heaven is described as a society, as a city. Where? What? All the nations stream towards her. Isn't that beautiful? So this Catholic social teaching actually touches upon this deep theology of what's going on, right? And also just like just like the mark of holiness in the fallen world, in the fallen world, it is always the fallen polity that wants to usurp the mark of oneness. Always. It's a feature of our fallen nature. We always want to turn the polity into something like the church. And when I say, this is important, another reason I'll say to your nowls, I'll bring it up later. Why I specifically follow the classical tradition of social thought and use the word polity as opposed to another word that floats around there. Another word that's a substitution for polity oftentimes. What do you think the word is? The state. The state. The polity is something distinct from the state. The state is just the material apparatus that a polity uses to govern itself. But that's not the polity. The state that's not so the state is a distinct reality. And in the fallen world, the state will always want to usurp these marks. Cool. Let's go to the next one. The extension. The extension of these societies. What about the extension? How far can these bonds of friendship within each distinct society actually extend? This is important. The bonds of kinship within a family are the strongest bonds we have on earth. They are absolutely the strongest natural bonds that we have. The blood bonds uniting family members are built into our very biology. The strongest connections that we have. Yet in spite of their strength and perhaps because of the intensity of the strength of family bonds, their power to extend is actually quite limited. They extend to a rather limited range of people. For instance, the family can have four, eight, maybe even twelve children. But at a certain point, mother and father cannot have infinite children. Maybe you can extend kind of into the double digits a little bit. But not that much. The family bonds are the strongest. They are the strongest. But because they're strong, their range of extension is limited. We have the reality of extended families, extended families or reality. But even these, and even these realities, if people, I have a large extended family so I can say from my own experience, as the extended family extends to cousins, second cousins, third cousins, fourth cousins, the bonds of unity decrease very quickly. They just do. In a sense, I consider the family bonds to be, this is a metaphor that I use. The family bonds are kind of like the nuclear strong force. Inside, they're so, they're like the strongest force we have. They're the strongest thing, but they extend to a very limited range. And because they are so, so, so, so strong, once that union is broken, if the family is broken, that force can create tremendous destruction in society. Because they're so strong. Cool? That's the family. What about the polity? The polity's extent is wider than the family. Since it is rooted in our rational nature, instead of merely our biological nature, it can extend to hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. But even here, its extent is still limited. It can extend to tens of thousands, but it can't be infinite. It can't be infinite. It is not like the church, cosmopolitan. This is also why, through time, the polity will not really exist in heaven. We'll go talk about this later, too. But the church, however, being built on the supernatural friendship with God, can indeed extend to a limitless number of people. And her temporal extension also has no limit. So she can extend throughout space, and the church also extends through time. Thus only one society that is the church possesses the mark of universality or Catholicity. It's a unique mark of the church. Often until I really started to study the theology of Catholic social thought, I never really got the real depth of why the marks of the church. We say it in the creed, these four mark one holy Catholic and apostolic. But it doesn't tell I really understood social theology that I realized the importance of these four marks, that they distinguish this society from all of us. Cool? Only the church is universal. This is why only she is also apostolic in the sense that she's called to go out to the whole world making disciples of all nations. She is uniquely called to extend her reach to every corner of the world. And again, let me double back in a fallen world, in a fallen world, the human state will always want to usurp this mark of Catholicity and extend to all corners of the world its influence. Let's go to the next. Let's go to the duration. The duration is the last one. The duration of these. Now let's examine not the society's extension through space, but specifically these societies extension through time. What is the duration of these societies? Will the polity exist in heaven? In heaven will we be Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Germans? Well not really. Not really. In heaven we will be citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem depicted in Revelation. We will be in, like St. Paul says, by virtue of our baptism, we are members of the household of God and citizens of heaven. Our citizenship, he says, is in heaven. Our natural and earthly nationalities will pass away into that perfect citizenship in the society of the blessed. Will the family exist in heaven? What do you guys think? No, no it won't. It won't. What did you say? Did you say yes? That's all right. I forgive you. It's all about forgiveness. That's all about forgiveness. All right, no. The family's extent through time then is also limited. It's not eternal. The family will not exist in heaven. Now keep in mind this was actually a question that our Lord Himself had to answer. Whose wife will she be in heaven? And Jesus says, you know not the Scriptures. Why? In heaven they will neither marry nor be given in marriage but will be like the angels. Even though the family is brought into the sacred order by being elevated into a sacrament, the sacrament is given as an instrumental source of grace here and now. There will be no sacraments in heaven. The sacraments are for us here and now on the way in via. We will need no sign of the heavenly reality once we have reached the heavenly reality. Now remember what Pius XI says about these first two societies, the polity and the family, they are natural. They are natural. They only have a natural extent and a natural tell us. Now the whole purpose of these societies is to get you to heaven. It's the ultimate tell us. Even if the two natural societies have approximate end. We need natural societies to learn, to love a transcendent good, the common good above ourselves. And when we learn to love a transcendent good, that good can be a good that can be shared by many. And we then can we be fit to love the God who is shareable by all. Right? He's in necessary societies. I've been talking a long time, I'm sorry. I'm going to wrap this up. This is now the conclusion. This is the conclusion. Now we are in a position to answer the second and final question in which we started the presentation. Why is Catholic social teaching important for us? I think that should be kind of self evident now. Why it's actually important. Recall that I mentioned that the answer to the second question is built into the first. What's the opposite? The opposite notion of the person as a social animal. The opposite notion is this. The opposite image of the human person would conceive of the human person as entering the world, not within society, but entering the world as some type of hyperbolic individual in a state of nature. A state of nature. Virtually all modern political thought begins with this thought experiment about the human person in a state of nature. But in a state of nature, each isolated individual discovers that he has these rights and then enters into political society in order to defend those rights from others. It's fundamentally an anti-social outlook, right? This is not Catholic social teaching. You are a political animal. This means you are the creature that becomes a saint by living in and by loving society. Different societies. Your participation in a type of goodness greater than yourself is the heart and soul of your growth into st.hood. Only your participation in a good greater than yourself, which is a common good, can elicit from your soul a type of self-sacrificial love that mirrors the very love of our Lord Jesus. Only this self-sacrificial love can free you from the burden of isolating selfishness. And most of all, only this self-sacrificial love possible only in society can free you from loneliness. The burden of loneliness. It is not good for man to be alone, the very beginning of the scriptures. Only this type of love can free you from that. Also, society is not the material apparatus of the state. This is important. This is really important. Society is much more. Your nature as a political animal does not mean that you sit around and wait for the political apparatus of the state to give you consumable goods. That's not what it means to be a social creature. That's not it. The state is there to protect the common good, to serve the common good, but it is not the source of the common good nor does it create the common good. Our least can it dull out consumable pieces of the common good as some type of pizza. It's not what it is. You are the social creature. You are the social creature, not the state. You are the primary protagonist of the common good. You are. You are meant to be a giver of goodness, not a mere consumer of stuff, no matter where you get it from. This means that as a political animal, you also have responsibilities and duties. Your duties to society are precisely yours and they cannot be expropriated to another. You either bureaucracy, a team of econometrisians, a central authority, a planner, the state. Your duty and your role as a social creature cannot be expropriated to the state. Social justice, care for the poor, the universal destination of goods, all features of Catholic social teaching, or your responsibilities that cannot be simply expropriated. The protagonist of friendship as the soul of society belongs to you. If you live your vocation as a political animal, as a social creature, you will grow in holiness. If you live your call, the call of Catholic social teaching, to be a social creature, a political animal, you will grow in happiness. If you live the call of Catholic social teaching, to be the social animal, you will be happy. So, you will grow in happiness. And with that, that's why it's important. And that will be, thank you, this is the very end of my talk. God bless you guys. 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