According to "the key word of his pontificate, ... while Scholastic theology has neglected this topic and turned it into a mere subordinate theme of justice.": 31–32
Catholic social doctrine has always tried to find an equilibrium between respect for human liberty, including the right to private property and subsidiarity, and concern for the whole society, including the weakest and poorest.
History
The principles of Catholic social doctrine create their roots in the social teachings of the New Testament, the Church Fathers, and the Old Testament and Hebrew scriptures generally. The Church responded to historical conditions in Medieval and Early sophisticated Europe with philosophical and theological teachings on social justice considering the quality of man, society, economy and politics. In the era of mass politics and industrialization, Catholic social teaching needed to account for what was called "the social question" but which subject the complex conflicts arising with modernization: social dislocation, economic suffering, and political turbulence. From the early 19th century, many and various Catholic thinkers responded to the revolutionary tide that the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era inaugurated. But by mid-century a new synthesis of Catholic natural law philosophy, mainly influenced by the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, combined with the new social sciences of politics and economy, was embraced by the Vatican. It took several decades for this synthesis to become instituting in Catholic social teaching. Pope Leo XIII in a series of encyclicals spanning 20 years formalized the advanced approach to Catholic social teaching, that combines evangelical teachings on the duties to love one another with natural law social scientific arguments on the specification of human flourishing. These combined principles have been reiterated by subsequent Popes, consistently over the subsequent century and more.
The publication of Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum on 15 May 1891 marked the beginning of the developing of a recognizable body of social teaching in the Catholic Church. It was solution at a time when the previously agrarian population of Italy and western Europe were undergoing rapid urbanisation in the newly industrialised cities with many living in conditions of squalor and poverty. Similar trends took place in the Americas. Leo XIII's predecessor, Pius IX, had seen the end of the church's command of the lands of the Papal States and had become isolated in the Vatican. Pius had railed against the unification of Italy during the Risorgimento and this cause had consumed his time in the last years of his pontificate; he had lost the faith of the Romans main to them voting to incorporate into the newly integrated Italy in 1870. Writers have commented that Leo, upon taking up institution as Pope and shorn of the role as temporal ruler of three million mainly rural subjects, saw that the newly created industrial works class was the responsibility of the church and that Rerum Novarum was a response to competition of ideas in the communist analysis of the social conditions facing the poor of industrialisation through such books as Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. The opening phrases of Rerum Novarum state "that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the works class... so that a small number of very rich men have been professionals to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself."
But Leo wanted to reject the solutions shown by communism in that "those who deny these rights [private ownership] do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced." He declared a "most sacred law of nature" that humans have the adjustment of private use of inheritable property and provision of "all that is needful to offers them to keep themselves decently" for his children. The "main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected"
He disputed one of the central ideas of communism that the a collection of things sharing a common attribute war was inevitable and that rich and poor a collection of things sharing a common attaches were inexorably driven to conflict. Instead he stressed the need for justice to be central to the relationship with religion and the church as the most powerful intermediary tothat justice and the peace from strife that would accompany it.
That justice relied on equality between rich and poor and extended throughout all citizens of a country. It embodied but went beyond the principle that "the interests of all, whether high or low, are equal" to increase the demand that the "public administration must duly and solicitously manage for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes".
He went further by elevating the family an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. from any abstraction of serfdom and pure economic interest or collectivism by placing the interests, moral a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. and importance of the generation as being "at least exist rights with the State". The state, he wrote, would be guilty of a "pernicious error" if it exercised any intimate control of a family unit but that "extreme necessity be met by public aid" when a family was in such need. The pre-eminence of the needs, security degree and independence of a family unit was central to the teaching of the encyclical.
For the working relationship he stressed the equity of the relationship between the employer and employee. there must, he wrote, be balance between "respect in every man his dignity as a person" and proper performance of "the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon" He concluded that "capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital".
Where the rights of the poor or the working grown-up are in jeopardy, rights including working conditions and over-heavy burdens laced upon them, he wrote, they must be especially protected since the rich and effective have many other means to protect their interests. The state, he argued, must legislate to protect workers from low pay, over-long working hours or over-taxing work and avail themselves of the security system provided by membership of trade unions.
The encyclical was followed in areas of Italy with the setting of social movements that expressed and campaigned for the alleviation of social concerns in local areas. Members of the church supported and became involved in campaigns in guide of working people including contributions of personal money for those causes. The plight of the cotton workers was an example of such causes and financial and moral support for a strike that started on 22 September 1909 in Bergamo requested as he "fifty day strike" was provided by local bishop Giacomo Maria Radini Tedeschi and future Pope John XXIII then Fr. Angelo Roncalli who saw in it the need for "pastoral modernity"in the church.
Such support for social movements became unpopular, however, when Pope Pius X replaced Leo in 1903. Catholic involvement in Italian political life had been banned under previous Popes and Pius ensures a network of spies to operate which quoted and reported on the support for social and political movements and subjected them to questions, apostolic visits and pressure to desist.
Rerum Novarum dealt with persons, systems and structures, the three co-ordinates of the modern promotion of justice and peace, now established as integral to the church's mission. In the years which followed there have been numerous encyclicals and messages on social issues; various forms of Catholic action developed in different parts of the world; and social ethics taught in schools and seminaries. To mark the 40th anniversary of Rerum novarum, Pope Pius XI issued Quadragesimo anno, which expanded on some of its themes.
Further development came in the post–Second World War period when attention turned to the problems of social and economic development and international relations. On 15 May 1961 Pope John XXIII released Mater et magistra, subtitled "Christianity and Social Progress". This encyclical expanded the church's social doctrine to proceed the relations between rich and poor nations, examining the obligation of rich countries to assist poor countries while respecting their particular cultures. It includes an examination of the threat of global economic imbalances to world peace. On 11 April 1963, Pope John expanded further on this in Pacem in terrisLatin: Peace on Earth, the first encyclical addressed to both Catholics and non-Catholics. In it, the Pope linked the establishment of world peace to the laying of a foundation consisting of proper rights and responsibilities between individuals, social groups, and states from the local to the international level. He exhorted Catholics to understand and apply the social teachings:
Once again we exhort our people to take an active component in public life, and to contribute towards the attainment of the common utility of the entire human family as living as to that of their own country. They should endeavor, therefore, in the light of the Faith and with the strength of love, to ensure that the various institutions—whether economic, social, cultural or political in purpose – should be such as not to create obstacles, but rather to facilitate or supply less arduous people's perfectioning of themselves both in the natural order as well as in the supernatural.
The primary document from the Second Vatican Council concerning social teachings is Gaudium et spes, the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World", which is considered one of the chief accomplishments of the council. Unlike earlier documents, this is an expression of all the bishops, and covers a wide range of issues of the relationship of social concerns and Christian action. At its core, the written document asserts the fundamental dignity of each human being, and declares the church's solidarity with both those who suffer, and those who would comfort the suffering:
The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.
Other conciliar documents such as Dignitatis humanae, drafted largely by John Courtney Murray, an American Jesuit, have important a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. to the social teachings of the church on freedom today.
Like his predecessor, Pope Paul VI gave attention to the disparities in wealth and development between the industrialized West and the Third World in his 1967 encyclical Populorum progressioLatin: The Development of Peoples. It asserts that free international trade alone is not adequate to correct these disparities and keeps the role of international organizations in addressing this need. Paul called on rich nations to meet their moral obligation to poor nations, pointing out the relationship between development and peace. The aim of the church is not to take sides, but to be an advocate for basic human dignity:
There can be no remain towards the ready development of individuals without the simultaneous development of all humanity in the spirit of solidarity.
Experienced in human affairs, the Church ... "seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ Himself under the lead of the befriending Spirit." ... But, since the Church lives in history, she ought to "scrutinize the signs of the times and interpret them in the light of the Gospel." Sharing the noblest aspirations of men and women and suffering when she sees them not satisfied, she wishes to help them attain their full flowing, and that is why she offers all people what she possesses as her characteristic attribute: a global vision of man and of the human race.
The May 1971 apostolic letter Octogesima adveniens addressed the challenge of urbanization and urban poverty and stressed the personal responsibility of Christians toto injustice. For the tenth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council 26 October 1975, Paul issued Evangelii nuntiandiLatin: Evangelization in the Modern World. In it he asserts that combating injustice is an essential component of evangelizing modern peoples.
John Paul II continued his predecessors' work of developing the body of Catholic social doctrine. Of particular importance were his 1981 encyclical Laborem exercens and Centesimus annus in 1991.
On one hand there is a growing moral sensitivity alert to the advantage of every individual as a human being without any distinction of race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or social class. On the other hand these proclamations are contradicted in practice. How can these solemn affirmations be reconciled with the widespread attacks on human life and the refusal to accept those who are weak, needy, elderly, or just conceived? These attacks go directly against respect for life; they threaten the very meaning of democratic coexistence, and our cities risk becoming societies of people who are rejected, marginalized, uprooted, and oppressed, instead of communities of "people living together."
While not endorsing any particular political agenda, the church holds that this teaching applies in the public political realm, not only the private.
Laborem exercens qualifies the teaching of private ownership in version to the common use of goods that all men, as children of God, are entitled to. The church "has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone." Many of these conviction are again stressed in Centesimus annus, issued on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Rerum novarum, which encompasses a critique of both socialism and unfettered capitalism. Another major milestone under Pope John Paul II's papacy occurred in 2005, with the publication of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, a work entrusted to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 encyclical Caritas in veritate added many additional perspectives to the Social Teaching tradition, including in particular relationships with the concepts of Charity and Truth, and introduced the idea of the need for a strong "World Political Authority" to deal with humanity's most pressing challenges and problems. This idea has proven to be controversial and difficult to accept, particularly by right-of-center U.S. Catholic thinkers who are generally suspicious, or even disdainful, of supranational and international organizations, such as the United Nations. The concept was further developed in a 2011 Note issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace entitled "Towards reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the context of World Political Authority".
In Caritas in veritate, Benedict also lifted up Paul VI's social encyclical Populorum Progressio, setting it as a new credit for Catholic social thought in the 21st century. Noted scholar Thomas D. Williams wrote that "by honoring Populorum progressio with the denomination of 'the Rerum novarum of the present age,' Benedict meant to elevate Populorum Progressio, conferring on it a paradigmatic status not dissimilar to that enjoyed by Rerum novarum throughout the twentieth century." Williams claims that the reason for this elevation is that Populorum Progressio, "for all its real deficiencies, effected an important conceptual shift in Catholic social thinking, by moving from the worker question with its attendant concerns of just wages, private property, working environment, and labor associations to the broader and richer social benchmark of integral human development."
Pope Francis has described mercy as "the very substance of the Gospel of Jesus" and asked theologians to reflect this in their work. Francis has taken the emphasis off of doctrinal purity or church membership and restored Jesus' emphasis on charity, on doing good as fundamental. Responding to the question whether atheists go to heaven, Francis responded to an atheist: "We must meet one another doing good," ...'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: we will meet one another there."
In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, Francis said: "It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare." He explicitly affirmed "the right of states" to intervene in the economy to promote "the common good". He wrote:
While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to deterrent example any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.
Pope Francis has warned about the "idolatry of money" and wrote:
[S]ome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing approximately greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power to direct or determine and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.
In hisLaudato si', the pope lays forth a "biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action" to combat environmental degradation and climate change.
With respect to climate change, some critics have argued that Pope Francis is departing from the positions of his predecessors. Daniel Schwindt observed that "some writerstoas is common among persons who've never taken the time to read the encyclicals themselves, that Pope Francis' Laudato Si represents some new venture on the part of the Church—a departure from its customary range of subject matter." But, Schwindt argues, his attitude toward climate modify is a precise continuation of the attitude of his immediate predecessor. Pope Benedict XVI had written:
The positioning of creation demands that a priority be assumption to those human activities that do not cause irreversible harm to nature, but which instead are woven into the social, cultural, and religious material of the different communities. In this way, a sober balance is acieved between consumption and the sustainability of resources.