Last Word

The Catholic Church and Social Justice: What’s Government Got to Do with It?

By Roger Bergman, Ph.D.

In 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, the Catholic bishops of the United States issued a pamphlet titled “Social Reconstruction: A General Review of the Problems and Survey of Remedies.” According to Monsignor John Tracy Ellis in his classic study, American Catholicism, some of the remedies were “minimum-wage legislation; unemployment, health, and old-age insurance for workers; age limit for child labor; legal enforcement of the right of labor to organize; and the need for a public housing program and for a national employment service.”

In response, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers wrote a letter to Cardinal Gibbons, the leading American prelate, stating “’it is our belief that a careful reading of this pamphlet will lead you to the conclusion … that it involves what may prove to be a covert effort to disseminate partisan, pro-labor union, socialistic propaganda under the official insignia of the Roman Catholic Church in America.’”

Nonetheless, despite the hostility of such vested interests, by mid-century all but one of the bishops’ proposals for social reconstruction, for social justice, had become the law of the land. So much a part of the fabric of American life have those ideas become that it would be unthinkable for a candidate for public office to run on a platform calling for their repeal. As an opponent of the recent health care legislation is reported to have shouted at a congressman who supported the legislation, “Keep your hands off my Medicare!”

I was reminded of that prophetic 1919 pamphlet when earlier this year media personality Glenn Beck accused all churches who preach social justice of actually promoting socialism. That is especially ironic since the document that inspired “Social Reconstruction” was Pope Leo XIII’s groundbreaking encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, also known as “On the Condition of Labor” (1891). That letter presented a vigorous critique of the socialist movements that were roiling the political waters throughout newly industrialized Europe at the end of the 19th century. Because the pope assumed that socialism was monolithic and that its “main tenet” was “the community of goods” or the abolition of all private property, it had to be “utterly rejected” as an alternative to capitalism.

On the other hand, Pope Leo was not naïve about what unbridled 19th century capitalism had meant for the working man. He observed that “the misery and wretchedness which press so heavily at this moment on the large majority of the very poor” is the result of “the callousness of employers and the greed of unrestrained competition.” He does not mince his words: “a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than slavery itself.”

Leo’s remedies to the social malaise included not only a general renewal of Christian morality but also an assertive role for government: “Whenever the general interest of any particular class suffers, or is threatened with, evils, which can in no other way be met, the public authority must step in to meet them,” and “when there is a question of protecting the rights of individuals, the poor and helpless have a claim to special consideration.”

But notice that important clause: “which can in no other way be met.” This is an early statement of what later became known as the “principle of subsidiarity,” a key theme of modern Catholic social teaching. Leo described subsidiarity as the principle “that the law must not undertake more, nor go further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the danger.”

Commentators often point out that subsidiarity cuts both ways. Simply put, no bigger than necessary, but also, as big as necessary. The second part of that motto explains why the popes of the last half-century have consistently supported the United Nations and other world bodies. Global problems, such as climate change, call for global solutions. That is not an argument for a single world government or that “bigger is better.” But neither does subsidiarity align with Henry David Thoreau’s famous dictum, “That government is best which governs least.” Of course, faithful citizens will and even should argue vigorously about where the line between big-enough and too-big is to be drawn in any particular case.

Whenever the Catholic Church is accused of promoting socialism, I gratefully recall that 1919 pamphlet and its prophetic vision, which close to a century later doesn’t seem extreme at all.

Roger Bergman, Ph.D., is director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the Creighton College of Arts and Sciences. His book Catholic Social Learning: Educating the Faith That Does Justice is being published this year by Fordham University Press.