COMMENTARY: We cannot truly understand the human person, human relationships or the economy without God.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Staudt’s column is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver. It is reprinted here with permission.
The Church has always taught that the Gospel bears social implications, shaping how Christians live in the world. Catholic Social Teaching (CST), however, developed only when the fabric of Christendom — the legacy of Christian culture — had worn thin.
Political revolutions overturned longstanding monarchies aligned with the Church, and the Industrial Revolution displaced family patterns rooted in the land and shaped by religious customs. In short, Catholic Social Teaching sought to apply the Church’s teaching to a dramatically changing situation as society embraced secularization and new economic realities.
We certainly continue to face fast-paced social change, and the Church continues to respond, as we see in Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas. Pope Leo situates his message as a continued unfolding of the approach of his predecessor and namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who addressed the profound changes afoot in industrialization:
“While Leo XIII spoke in his time of ‘new things’ (rerum novarum), today we cannot limit ourselves simply to repeating his insightful teachings. Instead, we must ask God for the wisdom to interpret the great trends of our time, particularly technological advances” (4).
When Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum, it was to address the objectification of workers, who were used solely to generate profits. He re-situated their work in light of the family’s flourishing and the need for workers to be able to worship God on Sundays and earn a living wage. He provided a model that the Church continues to follow: using natural principles of reason and justice, illuminated by the Gospel, to guide the Christian response to the problems of the day.
I would like to lay out the basic principles of Catholic Social Teaching, situating them in the context of the United States as a primer for reflection ahead of the upcoming election.
Society exists for a purpose. Its goal is to achieve the common good, which the Church defines as “the sum of those conditions which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment” (Gaudium et Spes, 26). Human beings are rational and social animals and cannot come to their good alone. We cooperate and rely on one another for both material sustenance and for our higher needs, such as education and the spiritual life. Although secularism seeks to separate material and spiritual goods, human fulfillment, which reflects the unity of our body and soul, requires the complete flourishing of the person; therefore, society exists to create the conditions for both kinds of goods.
In America, we’re used to hearing that the overarching priority for our country, and therefore in the election of our leaders, is the economy. “It’s the economy, stupid,” reduced this premise to a soundbite. In the middle of an affordability crisis, it makes sense that economic issues would garner serious attention, but our focus on the common good suffers when we overemphasize one issue at the expense of others. In fact, emphasizing economic activity above all else instrumentalizes the human person as a means to a material end.
This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:
“A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order. A system that ‘subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production’ is contrary to human dignity” (2424, quoting Gaudium et Spes, 65).
The common good is not simply the highest economic output, as might be found in unbridled capitalism, nor can it be found by subordinating the dignity of the human person to the collective whole, as happens in Communism.
This is why the Church emphasizes a second principle as absolutely non-negotiable in her social teaching: the dignity of the human person. Without this bedrock principle, society undermines itself because it exists precisely for the flourishing of human persons. The Church rejects utilitarian proposals that would sacrifice the lives of some for the outward benefit of the whole. This type of thinking has created a culture of death that views people as expendable if their lives are inconvenient, especially the unborn, elderly and handicapped.
Pope St. John Paul II points out that it is not possible to achieve the common good while undermining this foundational right:
“It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop” (Evangelium Vitae, 101).
How could society claim to lead to the fulfillment of its members if it cannot even secure their own lives? The dignity of the person is inalienable because it is based on “who” the person is, not on “what” a person does. Outward goods are meant to serve the person, not the other way around.
Next in priority comes the family as the foundation of society. Pope Leo XIII affirmed that “the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature” (Rerum Novarum, 13). Like the human person, the family does not derive its standing from a recognition given to it by the State. Rather, as something upon which society depends for its existence, the family must be recognized as possessing its own rights and as deserving of support.
This respect given to the family reflects another important principle called subsidiarity, defined by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them” (203).
In an age of the Mass State, in which governance, communication and economics have become centralized, the Church recognizes the importance of preserving local institutions, which enable people to become directly involved in shaping the life of their own community.
Subsidiarity cannot be interpreted in libertarian fashion, simply leaving everyone to their own devices. Solidarity represents an important complement to it by recognizing that, as social beings and even more so as Christians, we bear a responsibility toward one another. We cannot simply sit back and let large-scale institutions and systems address problems in abstract ways.
Pope Benedict XVI points out that, “In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation, and therefore it involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone” (Caritas in Veritate, 11).
Society’s pursuit of the common good means working together to ensure that everyone has access to goods and services such as medical care, education and emergency assistance.
If society is rightly ordered to the true fulfillment of the human person, respecting the family and local community, while serving those in need, the fruit of peace will follow. We tend to think of peace as the absence of conflict, but St. Augustine sees it more appropriately as the tranquility of order.
The same is true on the international level, which should follow the same general principles of human rights, justice and mutual cooperation for the common good. All human beings are bound together by a shared nature — created by God and directed toward the same end of happiness in him. As within a given society, forceful interventions are sometimes necessary to prevent harm to others, so, on the level of international affairs, war may be necessary as a means of self-defense when all other options have been exhausted. Nations, however, bear the responsibility of promoting peace throughout the world. As Pope Leo XIV has pointed out recently, technological advancements in automation require further attention to ensure that the fate of human life is not subject to impersonal algorithms (Magnifica Humanitas, 197-200).
Catholic Social Teaching draws upon timeless truths related to the human person, family and society and applies them to the changing circumstances of the day. Although it articulates principles that anyone could access through reason, it still finds its ultimate illumination in God himself.
You cannot truly understand the human person, human relationships or the economy without God. The world might determine the best way to maximize efficiency and production, but it cannot know what work is for and how it fits into the goal of human life without reference to its true origin and end.
The conviction that this world is passing away helps us to make the best use of it as a means of loving others and working with them to build a civilization of love.