As I’ve continued to learn about the beauty of the Church’s social teaching while preparing these bulletin columns, I’ve discovered that my former strategy of listing topics wasn’t really getting at the heart of the matter. Learning about abstract concepts like solidarity and subsidiarity and dignity can be helpful, but only if they help make sense of the scope of salvation history and God’s plan for the ordering of human society until his Second Coming. Unless I frame these concepts in relation to our salvation as well as our creation, to our supernatural destiny as well as our natural origin, my words will be indistinguishable from any secular human rights organization and they won’t advance the conversation in a meaningful way. They won’t help you understand why Christ and his Church matter for you and  your neighbor.



     A foundational principle for the Church’s social teaching is the following: God is good. God cares what happens down here on earth, and he cares whether we are organizing our society in ways that help us to know him and love our neighbor better. This might sound really obvious if we believe in a personal God who created everything and continues to sustain everything in being. But well-meaning Catholics can put so much emphasis on the next life (“as it is in heaven”) that they forget that their seemingly mundane choices in this life have eternal consequences (“thy will be done on earth”). Scripture demonstrates time and again that God chooses to intervene in events on earth to advance his kingdom: Adam and Eve in the Garden (Gen. 3), Noah at the Flood (Gen. 6), the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11), the Red Sea (Ex. 13-14), the Battle of Jericho (Josh. 6), the destruction of the Assyrian army (Is. 37), etc. He wants us to live in a society that is just and fair to the weakest and that loves and obeys him as God.

    A second reason why the Church has a social teaching is the following: we are not good. Since the Fall, human societies without God at the center have become sicker and sicker. We do not live in a vacuum, we are not born with a clean slate, the world we live in is not neutral ground. If you believe we’re closer to heaven on earth than previous ‘barbaric’ centuries, ask yourself in the words of Pope St. John Paul II whether modern man is “more mature spiritually, more aware of the dignity of his humanity, more responsible, more open to others, espcially the neediest and weakest, and readier to give and to aid all” (Redemptor Hominis 15). Rising rates of obesity, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, and social isolation all point in the wrong direction. We need Christ more than ever to help us understand why material prosperity and modern freedoms haven’t made us happier, more generous, more Christ-like people. Jesus Christ, through his Church, gives us solutions to these problems, but we first have to recognize the roots of our collective illness in order to work toward a lasting cure. I hope to funnel some of this perennial wisdom into our conversation through upcoming columns.

    -Fr. Stephen