Catholics should have known better - especially because popes "condemned from the beginning the colonial slavery that developed in the newly discovered lands....it must be remembered that Christians themselves, and notably members of the clergy, frequently and sometimes blatantly violated this same teaching....we can look to the practice of dissent from the teachings of the Papal Magisterium as a key reason why slavery was not directly opposed by the Church in the United States" (Rev. Joel S. Panzer, The Popes and Slavery: Setting the Record Straight, The Catholic Answer, Jan/Feb 1996). Many clergy and lay people simply ignored Truth proclaimed by "the home office."
Modern Catholic Social Teaching begins with Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum of 1891. Notions have inaccurately taken hold that the Church teaches about the sanctity of human life and marriage/family for "conservatives," while social teaching is for "liberals." Seamless connections between the sanctity of human life, marriage/family, and social issues get lost in that aforementioned haze.
Msgr. John A. Ryan, Ph.D was a face of Catholic Social Teaching, in the first part of the 20th century - speaking forthrightly about the sanctity of human life, marriage/family, and social issues. Rejecting population control notions, Ryan argued for just wages, allowing workers to properly support their families. Also in the early 20th century, a young lay woman palled around with Greenwich Village intelligentsia and literati, temporarily adopting communist and "free love" perspectives. After aborting her first child, she was abandoned by her lover. She became pregnant by a second lover and dramatically re-awakened to the sanctity of the new human life growing inside her and to the sanctity of marriage. Raising her daughter as a single mom on New York's Lower East Side, Dorothy Day became synonomous with Catholic Social Teaching - providing food and housing in Catholic Worker houses and publishing a newspaper of that same name.
In the early 1960s, one of Day's young colleagues authored The Other America, which has been credited with inspiring the War on Poverty. Though a social justice icon, many would be shocked to learn that Day did not embrace the philosophy of the War on Poverty. Many would be similarly shocked to learn that she saw seamless connections between the sanctity of human life, marriage/family, and social issues - with every fiber of her being.
One hundred years after Rerum Novarum, Pope John Paul II stated: “Just as a century ago it was the working classes which were oppressed in their fundamental rights, and the Church courageously came to their defense by proclaiming the sacrosanct rights of the worker as person, so now, when another category of persons is being oppressed in the fundamental right to life, the Church feels in duty bound to speak out with the same courage on behalf of those who have no voice” [letter to all bishops on “The Gospel of Life,” 5/19/91].
With Catholics vying for the office of vice president, Catholic Social Teaching is in the news. Vice President Joe Biden has stated that "The Ryan budget...is contrary to the social doctrine my church teaches." With all respect to the vice president's office, there is minimal evidence that he has anything but a superficial understanding of Catholic Social Teaching. Whether you agree with him or not, there is no question that Representative Paul Ryan has the more sophisticated understanding:
- "I feel it’s important to discuss how, as a Catholic in public life, my own personal thinking on these issues has been guided by my understanding of the Church’s social teaching. Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government. Look at the results of the government-centered approach to the war on poverty....In this war on poverty, poverty is winning. We need a better approach" (4/26/12 remarks at Georgetown).
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