Social Teaching

The institutional Catholic Church largely ignored the social problems created by the Industrial Revolution until very late in the nineteenth century despite the fact that lay Catholic intellectuals in France and Germany had long denounced its abuses. During most of the nineteenth century Catholic social thought drew its inspiration from two major sources: the old tradition of charity and paternalism and a desire to avoid class warfare. The first tradition led to the evolution of a corporatist concept of a society in which capital and labor had mutual rights and obligations, while the second led to efforts to cut the ground from under radical secular worker’s movements by establishing a Catholic alternative.

The former tendency is central to the work of early thinkers like Franz von Baader (1765-1840) and Friedrich Schlagel (1765-1841) with their romanticized view of the medieval world of guilds and corporations. Baader even wrote in favor of the state intervening to establish an association led by priests that would encompass and protect the lowest stratum of workers.

Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler (1811–1877) is probably the best representative of the latter tendency. As Bishop of Mainz (1850) Ketteler founded several charitable orders to educate the poor of the diocese. He also embraced the concept of “Production Associations” put forward by the Jewish social philosopher Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864), who had formed the first German labor party in 1863. In The Question of Labor and Christianity (1864), Bishop Ketteler openly favored nonsocialist workers' associations, which, he felt, should be financed by Christian charity and even pledged a considerable sum of money to that end.

Bishop Ketteler’s views were a significant influence on the first Pope to weigh in on the social issues that were so pressing in the Europe of the late nineteenth century. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum ("On the Condition of the Working Classes"), opposing class conflict and supporting labor unions.

Both Leo XIII and his successor Pius XI agreed on the necessity for the state to intervene to mitigate the harsh consequences of liberalism and the free market. In Quadragesimo Anno (1931) Pius argued for limits on the free market and embraced a distinctly corporatist form of state intervention in labor management conflicts that was similar to the policies followed then and later by both Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain.

A global perspective on issues of fairness and equity in economic life was taken in later documents on economic relations issued by the Church. John XXIII’s encyclicals Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963) both connected world peace with the obligation of the richer nations to aid the underdeveloped world. Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio released in 1967 carried forward the themes stressed by John XXIII and underscored the key importance of international organizations in addressing the anomalies created by the free trade system while stressing the moral obligations of the richer nations.

The so-called “Catholic Manifesto,” which was issued by Catholics who gathered to protest the 2001 G-8 summit of the industrialized nations held in Genoa, updates Catholic social thought. Among other things, the manifesto called for cancellation of the debts of poorer nations, adoption of a tax on international trade to provide money for economic development and stabilization of the commodity prices paid to poor nations. The manifesto was blessed by Genoa’s influential Cardinal Tettamanzi, who was widely considered a strong candidate to become Pope in the 2005 papal election and who generally reflects advanced Vatican thinking on world economic priorities.

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