Text: Dr Anna Rowlands on 'What does Catholic Social Teaching have to offer politicians'

Dr Anna Rowlands

Dr Anna Rowlands Lecturer in Theology and Ministry at King's College, London, gave the following lecture to politicians in the Speakers Room of Parliament last night. What does Catholic Social Teaching have to offer to politicians: some introductory reflections.

In the late 1960’s the Jewish political thinker Hannah Arendt wrote a little book about the people she thought the most impressive of the 20th Century. The book, given the evocative title ‘Men in Dark Times’, was concerned with rare individuals who had stood out in a century marked by extremes: great human achievements in arts, culture and science and devastating political darkness.

Amongst commentaries on an array of impressive cultural and political figures sits a surprising chapter on the life and work of Pope John XXIII (1958-63). The chapter is entitled ‘Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli: A Christian on the Chair of St Peter’ (you can tell that she was at least a little skeptical that all occupants of the seat of St Peter fitted that criteria!). Her praise for John XXIII is all the more surprising given the appropriately harsh criticism Arendt made elsewhere about the ways that organized religion failed the Jews of the 20thC. Yet she finds in Pope John XXIII a particular quality that was largely lacking in her other post-war figures, (a quality that had also seen him grace the front of Time magazine as ‘man of the year’): a rare ability to communicate a profound and tangible hope in a time of deep despair and pessimism. What Arendt says so beautifully about JXXIII in her little essay is precisely what Catholic Social Teaching as a tradition tries most to be and do in relation to the body politic: that is, CST tries to talk in an urgent but non-trite way about hope, truth, freedom, love and justice as animating forces for politics, economy and civil society. In speaking about such virtues CST isn’t trying to be another grand intellectual theory, but above all seeks to inspire very ordinary everyday practices of these virtues. Nor is CST trying to speak exclusively to Catholics – it believes a healthy political and economic life is a fully collaborative endeavor. It addresses itself to ‘all people of goodwill’ and its concern is for the person in community, no matter the person or the quality: it’s subject is reflection on the human condition as it changes in context and its agents are all those who wish to search for truth, freedom, justice and love.

It is no coincidence then that the opening phrase of the main social document produced by the Second Vatican Council, overseen by John XXIII, starts with the following statement:

“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. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.” Put more straightforwardly for those of you who may be completely new to CST, the Catholic Church’s ‘Social Teaching’ is simply what the Church has to say, and with others put into practice, in relation to the issues that we face in living together in human societies.

The ‘official’ tradition of CST begins in 1891 with the publication of the first ‘letter to the global Church’ on social questions. That letter, known by the Latin title of the first few words of the document ‘Rerum Novarum’ is a commentary on the condition of work in the industrial context of the 1880’s. It sounds a warning about the threats to human dignity posed by both excessive individualism expressed through forms of economic liberalism, and excessive collectivism expressed in communism. Both, Pope Leo argued, fail to protect human dignity, although they fail in different ways. He called instead for a politics of the common good in which class conflict, the tensions between labour and capital, extremes of inequality were overcome not by revolution and violence but by a gradual, practical politics of mediation, justice, and political friendship. This didn’t require everyone to agree or to think the same, far from it, but it did require a commitment to see the forming of relationship between opposing groups as absolutely necessary for protecting human dignity. Leo – and all of the later documents of CST - returns again and again to the idea of civic or political friendship across differences as a foundational practice for social justice.

Since then a dozen more social letters and various statements by national groups of bishops have been written, each aiming to connect the teaching of the church on the human person to the major developments in economy, politics and civil society. Some themes reoccur in almost all the letters, these include: the changing realities of work and pressures on living, the relationship between labour and capital, the responsibilities of business, just (or living) wages, changes in family life, poverty and welfare, environmental degredation, the need for political participation, the global dimension to questions of social justice, international development, reflection on patterns of human migration, the changing activities of the state, and peace and war.

In addition to commentary on these re-occuring themes, the letters have proposed to the global community a number of core principles: these principles can be summarized as - human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good. In addition CST teaches the universal destination of goods, the option for the poor and the stewardship of creation. (we will return to some of these)

So, on the one hand that’s fairly straightforward – a series of global letters and statements by bishops on key social, political and economic questions and a number of core principles. But this tradition, much as it makes sense within a Catholic worldview, seeks to be heard in a wider context. This throws up a number of difficulties and some potential misunderstandings, which are important to note:

1. Whilst the Popes start to write these global letters for the first time in 1891, the tradition of reflecting on the human person and their interaction with the body politic is as old as the Scriptures and the Churches themselves. CST needs to be understood as both something very old and something new.

The biblical roots of this social teaching lie in firstly, a belief that God, who created the world in goodness, is deeply concerned with how things go in his creation. With the Fall God has not abandoned Creation and in salvation God does not offer people mere escape from it.

Co-operating with our Maker, our vocation is then to deepen our engagement with all things human: to descend more fully into the depths of what it is to be human and learn to resist the ever-present temptation we face, as individuals and as institutions, to find ways to become less than human. In that light, the Churches have always offered teaching on how we might think about living well in human societies – this is integral to the task of the Church, not a political add on. CST is then simply an improvisation for our age of an ancient biblical tradition.

2. So, from the Church’s perspective it’s important to understand that this tradition is simply a continuation of its constructive task to care for the human world. However, in a secular liberal context there are understandably those who think the last thing we need is more views on politics and economics from the Church: a liberal order is supposed to protect us from that, not encourage it.

So perhaps it helps to be absolutely clear about what CST is and isn’t claiming to do/be in a liberal context.

The core purpose of CST is to help societies keep the human person in focus by aiding the best possible quality of reflection on the ‘peace and welfare of the city’ . CST therefore needs to be distinguished very clearly from specific lobbying activity by the Church, or special interest politics. The Church’s social teaching is not written as a letter directly to politicians (although I’m going to explain what it says about politicians shortly), in fact its addressee is all people of goodwill – because the work of seeking the common good belongs to all, the political task is not reserved just for elected politicians. Whilst it provides principles and insights to guide reflection and keep the human person in focus, CST in no way seeks to prescribe concrete policies, nor does it back individual political parties.

One of the frustrations that some politicians express as they try to engage with CST is it can seem neither one thing nor the other: it disobeys liberal rules and comes crashing into public life with its principles and virtues talk but it doesn’t follow through with concrete policy suggestions. So ends up being more of a well-meaning irritation than a really useful tool for front-line policy makers. I don’t want to say that this criticism has absolutely no basis, however it is important to understand why CST does not and should not make concrete policy proposals.

The view of the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council is that the vocation of the politician has to be exercised as a genuine ‘positive’ freedom – the popes repeatedly emphasise that it is beyond the competence and role of the institutional church to propose policy detail. The church seeks to celebrate and help form virtue in those who go in to politics, it offers clear principles for reflection and to aid the formation of conscience, and it holds before all people what it believes to be the goal of human social life – that is, the overcoming of all forms of isolation towards a life in communion: that life of communion being characterised by relationships of charity and justice. But the free interplay of faith and reason enacted within a context of pluralism means politicians must be free to use their prudential judgement to form law.

So for now, let’s note:

1. CST is not interested in telling politicians what to do, or in seeking narrow power-influence for the Church

2.CST absolutely respects the separation between Church and Political Power, but it maintains that faith is public as well as private. This is where it sits in some tension with forms of liberalism. It believes that faith and political powers need to be separate, but that they need to cooperate with each other, for the sake of human flourishing. We become less free rather than more free when religion is removed completely from public life, because we take away the foundational languages of human dignity.

3. CST is a language of faith and reason, and proud to be so, but is not sectarian: it genuinely seeks a cooperative relationship between believers of all kinds and non-believers for the sake of the welfare of all. It believes in social pluralism, but insists that social pluralism is seen as a context for building constructive civil friendships across dividing lines – only pluralism without civil friendships and a capacity to tolerate religious freedom is a problem.

So, it is most accurate to say that CST sees faith as inherently and rightly political with a small ‘p’ – that is neither party political, nor seeking privileges or direct political power, nor even establishment.

Pope Francis is currently involved in a rather fascinating attempt to communicate just this complex fault-line of a Church that is appropriately political, particularly through his interventions on unemployment and the economy, human migration, human trafficking and war. However, equally political in genuine ‘ecclesial’ sense of the word have been his person to person embrace of the sick, disabled, disfigured and the imprisoned. If we do not understand these as the truly political gestures of the Church, we have not grasped the true politics of the Church.

In the second half of what I have to say, I want to talk in more specific detail about how CST sees the nature of politics, the vocation of the politician and the role of political parties.

The absolute core of CST is its distinct view of the human person. The human person is understood to be created social and political by nature, made for freedom and some autonomy but most profoundly for relationship and interdependence with others in human communities. We are not first and foremost islands, not wolves to each other, not merely conflict-driven, competitive creatures whose nasty natures must be restrained by law. Of course we are capable of all this destructiveness and much, much worse, but all this darkness does not, according to the Catholic tradition, obliterate a deeper abiding truth of goodness to our nature. And it is here that politics first begins.

You may have noticed that I said CST says we are made both social and political by nature: one of the unique contributions of the Catholic social tradition is to view politics itself as a natural inclination of all rooted in the good life. The political instinct is a gift of creation – even if Adam and Eve had not eaten the apple, figuratively speaking, there would still have been politics. That is a thought worth thinking about for a moment, because not all Christians would say that, for some politics is simply a consequence of sin. Of course, even for Catholics politics becomes even more necessary after the apple is eaten and conflict and division enters the human family, but fascinatingly the Catholic tradition sees the roots of politics within the good life of Eden itself. Politics is a consequence of goodness and sin, it represents the very best and the very worst of what we are capable. If politics is born once in grace in Eden, then it is born again in heartbreak with the Fall, and for Christians it is renewed once again in the Resurrection time between Easter Sunday and the end times.

So, if you are scratching your head at this point – where in Eden does politics find expression – it finds expression firstly in our naturally good desire to relate and to associate, and secondly from our desire and need to create and participate in ordering the world around us.

Associating and ordering are desires rooted in goodness, they are not just about sin. So relationality and order lie at the heart of a Catholic belief in the necessity and virtue of politics.

Lets be 100% clear: none of this is to deny a world of conflict, loss and trauma and the role politics plays in both causing that conflict and having to clear up the conflict caused by others – but it is to say there is something prior and something at the end of politics which is greater, truer and stronger. It is in this that the Christian political vocation has its more solid roots.

Of course, before we Catholics start to look too unrealistically cheery, CST would be the first to say that there is every risk that politics oriented towards polling figures, focus groups and sound bites, special interests and the power of money, transactional relationships rather than transformational ones mitigates against this vision. CST is not Pollyanna, it does not blindly insist that all politics has a silver lining if we look hard enough, rather that no matter how dire politics gets we cannot ourselves obliterate the extraordinary potential for the good that it contains – it is simply the deeper, truer capacity for political virtue that CST seeks to remind us of, even in the darkest days – perhaps especially in darkest days. Some of this is what I think Arendt sensed in John XXIII. The question is then whether we, as politicians, can dignify that which dignifies us?

And this is the hinterland to something that Pope Francis expressed with characteristic brevity last month. He said that the work of elected politicians is seen by the Church as ‘one of the highest forms of charity’… charity here meaning caritas – that wasn’t an observation on the rosy state of politics, but a statement about the capacity latent in the political vocation. Politics is about more than just giving people their due – it is about deeper relationships of transformation.

CST sees the role of the elected politician within a wider political system that begins not with the state, but with the first-level communities of families, associations and civil institutions and then the state and market, both of which exist in moral terms to serve the needs and aspirations of these first level communities. This is the concept of the state that William Temple too had in mind when he coined the much misunderstood phrase ‘the welfare state’ in the 1920’s. He understood that a Christian state should be one whose profound orientation was one of service to the associations, families and social groups that made up the body politic. This he contrasted with ‘power states’ who lacked any sense of a duty to serve in charity and justice. The task of a welfare state (in this more general dispositional sense) was to help foster and actively serve a welfare society.

CST goes on to stress that in seeking political solutions, the elected representative has a duty to work for the common good, to consult widely with these first level communities on the content of the common good and to foster the political, economic and social conditions which they believe will maximise the participation and flourishing of all – balancing in particular principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. They must help the state negotiate the twin dangers which will always confront it:

over-ambition: in which governments imagine that they can perform all social functions, thus becoming all solidarity and no subsidiarity; and under-ambition: where a government or state gives in to the temptation to imagine that solidarity and charity/caritas are not part of its role, thus becoming all subsidiarity and no solidarity. CST sees the task of the state as a coordinating instrument of solidarity, ensuring conditions of justice and charity in the character of the administration and each policy area, but not necessarily always being the full substance of that solidarity: that is often better expressed through lower level (or sometimes higher level) bodies.

The politicians ‘common good task’ comes with what is called a biblical ‘preferential option for the poor’, in which the needs of those with least must be placed first in the policy making process. Two further notes on this:

Firstly, this is a macro point about the interests of the poor being served as a concrete outcome of the policy process; but there is also a micro point about how the poorest are able to participate in the negotiation of political solutions to the problems they face in the first place – one CST document from 1930’s makes very clear that elected representatives, knowing the voices with most power tend to be heard the loudest need to factor in at the earliest stages of policy making those who they know are least likely to be able to lobby in their own favour: that might be the economically poorest, those whose disabilities mean that they can least enter into formal political negotiations, the unborn, and those whose political membership status – prisoners and immigrants – makes speaking and being heard in public most difficult. This is a radical challenge to policy making and surely as relevant in 2013 as 1931.

The second footnote on the option for the poor here is that poverty is not just understood as economic – it is understood as all forms of social reality that isolate, threaten material wellbeing and social participation. For example, the isolation of many of our elderly falls within this category of the option for the poor more and more clearly. The human crisis is poverty as isolation in all its forms.

CST on economic life

Perhaps the area of political and social life that CST speaks most about is in fact the impact of markets and the economic order on human dignity. A comprehensive coverage of this would be a whole talk by itself, so I will ask briefly: what kind of ‘common good’ vision of economics are politicians encouraged to hold onto?

CST roots its economic teaching in its belief in the universal destination of all goods – that all created things are to be shared fairly under the guidance of justice and love.

Private property is a good thing as long as it serves genuinely social ends and is accessible to all – all should have the option in some measure to be owners.

But when we become owners what we have must serve a wider social function. Private property is not an absolute right, it is a necessary means to peaceful ends. When ownership becomes impossible for the poorest this directly inverts the purposes of private property. This applies to land, to housing, to basic social assets. It is also an interesting principle to note in a context where basic realities like, fresh fruit and vegetables costing more in poorer areas affects wellbeing in a very practical way.

The second basic economic teaching concerns the dignity of work – work is necessary toil but also a cooperation in the creative function of God: work is a vital part of how we learn to be fully human – a true welfare society requires access to work, and work that pays enough to survive materially and to afford basic leisure and educational services. Fair hard work in return for a living wage, conducted within a system that maximises the opportunities to be employed: where access to work, and effective educational preparation to be ready to work, is real. A low wage economy and significant unemployment is a political, economic and spiritual problem for CST.

Flowing from all this, CST emphasises the priority of labour over capital: money must serve people and not people serving money…. And workers must have maximum opportunity to participate in governance of the workplaces that shapes their life.

(So, CST understands all forms of economic life to have a moral character – the task of politics is by and large to ensure freedom for the pursuit of economic life, but to coordinate – and where necessary intervene in intelligent ways – to support a vision in which markets are understood as a form of service to the common good, not amoral masters whose successes and failures dictate the terms of social life.)

In 2009 Pope Benedict wrote a letter which focused on the state of the world economic order, and he made particular comments on the dire consequences of having viewed the wider economy as overly autonomous. Markets are and should be moral actors.

The market is subject to the same three-fold character of justice as all other forms of human life: fair contract, fair distribution of resources, and maximum chance for all citizens to participate in employment and production.

He criticised the failure to apply this logic of justice to every phase of economic activity – to every phase of an economic transaction – not just the end point.

Perhaps the most striking part of his letter though was his insistence that markets need relationships of solidarity and trust to function - when solidarity and trust breakdown, so do markets. Friendship, solidarity and reciprocity is not something for outside of markets, for when you get home from the office, but can and must be elements of how the office itself runs.

He also argues that we need a more genuinely plural form of market in which there is more room for non-profit, social enterprise, microeconomic ventures. But the values of solidarity, gift exchange and economic friendship should apply to all forms of enterprise not just these more obviously charitable kinds.

Creating political space for a more plural, more participatory and more just economic system is a vital component of the political task. This understanding is based on the three-fold character of justice as:

distributive, commutative and contributive – each of these elements implies forms of political action in relation to economic life, and Pope Benedict judged that these had been largely neglected by politicians to catastrophic effect.

Conclusion: CST and the role of Political Parties in the Common Good

In much common good discussion there can be a tendency to focus on the role either of ‘the state’ or of the individual politician but perhaps less focus is placed on the role of political parties per se as agents and organs of the common good in a democratic system, so I want to conclude now with four particular ‘common good’ tasks which belong to political parties. This is especially timely given, firstly, the gathering pace of electioneering in the lead up to 2015, the drafting processes now underway with seriousness for manifestos for 2015 and the falling membership of political parties throughout the West:

The four common good ‘tasks’ of political parties are described in short summary as:

• To foster wide-spread participation in political life and in doing so to make taking on public responsibilities seem accessible to all. This I think raises very interesting questions for us about what kind of people are and aren’t currently well represented in elected roles, and the extent to which what happens within political parties is a force for good in encouraging participation especially amongst those who don’t think standing for local or national govt is for them

• The task of all parties is to interpreting the aspirations of civil society (to actively listen to the desires of the people you seek to represent and try to get a sense of a wider set of hopes and griefs amongst the electorate beyond special interests). How are political parties currently listening and what reflections do we have on whether these methods of ‘listening’ seem to be good vehicles of engagement for a politics of the common good?

• But crucially CST says that the party task is not just to listen to the mood of civil society, but to seek to listen and then to help orientate these aspirations towards the common good. This partly how we ensure listening doesn’t just become the tyranny of the majority in moral terms.

To what extent, then, does our practice of party politics foster division or seek to build opportunities for civil friendships between groups, especially brokering relationships between those whose interests might be seen to be opposed: do political parties help as an active force for social mediation and transformation through the way they work and not just through their policy proposals?

• Finally CST emphasises that political parties are tasked with offering effective ways for all citizens (ie beyond just the membership of a party) to contribute to the formulation of party policies. Attempts by the Conservatives to chose candidates through local primaries and Labour to engage policy ideas through meetings with non-members using community organising techniques are interesting experiments in this area, but what else might be done?

What I have said this evening is simply a rather hasty and crowded whistle-stop tour of some aspects of a wide social tradition which far exceeds what I’ve had time to say here. I’ve said nothing about international development, migration, peace and war and many other themes addressed deeply by CST. But I hope that I have communicated what kind of ‘thing’ CST is – CST intends itself to be a kind of gift to stimulate a political conversation – when CST speaks, it wants a conversation – it doesn’t intend to be a monologue – it is genuinely interested in the response of those whose daily vocation is the political task, and it wants to hear how you see the challenges and opportunities of seeking the common good in the current context, how you understand the griefs and sorrow, hopes and aspirations of those who you serve, and how you reflect on your own vocation. The health of our body politic depends in part on precisely such conversations and exchanges between politics and faith.