Rerum Novarum: The Root of Catholic Social Teaching

From the excellent and little-used Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church.  Excerpts:

...In response to the first great social question, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the first social Encyclical, Rerum Novarum[143]. This Encyclical examines the condition of salaried workers, which was particularly distressing for industrial labourers who languished in inhumane misery. The labour question is dealt with according to its true dimensions. It is explored in all its social and political expressions so that a proper evaluation may be made in the light of the doctrinal principles founded on Revelation and on natural law and morality.

Rerum Novarum lists errors that give rise to social ills, excludes socialism as a remedy and expounds with precision and in contemporary terms “the Catholic doctrine on work, the right to property, the principle of collaboration instead of class struggle as the fundamental means for social change, the rights of the weak, the dignity of the poor and the obligations of the rich, the perfecting of justice through charity, on the right to form professional associations”[144].

Rerum Novarum became the document inspiring Christian activity in the social sphere and the point of reference for this activity[145]. The Encyclical's central theme is the just ordering of society, in view of which there is the obligation to identify criteria of judgment that will help to evaluate existing socio-political systems and to suggest lines of action for their appropriate transformation.

Rerum Novarum dealt with the labour question using a methodology that would become “a lasting paradigm” [146] for successive developments in the Church's social doctrine. The principles affirmed by Pope Leo XIII would be taken up again and studied more deeply in successive social encyclicals. The whole of the Church's social doctrine can be seen as an updating, a deeper analysis and an expansion of the original nucleus of principles presented in Rerum Novarum. With this courageous and farsighted text, Pope Leo XIII “gave the Church ‘citizenship status' as it were, amid the changing realities of public life” [147] and made an “incisive statement” [148] which became “a permanent element of the Church's social teaching”[149]. He affirmed that serious social problems “could be solved only by cooperation between all forces” [150] and added that, “in regard to the Church, her cooperation will never be found lacking”[151]...(articles 89-90)

Catholic Code Words

Signaling he's one of the good guys.  Excerpts:

...Johnsen’s not as much of a fan of Brennan as other members of the media have been, reflected in a New York Times Magazine piece on the president’s kill list, Brennan’s domain, and a Washington Post profile of his role at the CIA. The Post fawned over Brennan’s “deep knowledge of the Middle East, Islam and the CIA, and the critical thinking forged during a classic Jesuit education,” and his “nearly priest-like presence . . . with a moral depth leavened by a dry Irish wit.”

Johnsen suggests that Brennan’s strategy for the CIA (ramping up the drone program and neglecting human intelligence) is precisely the opposite of what the agency needs right now, and he stridently opposes the possible nomination of him to replace David Petraeus as director. He is apparently not as impressed as the NYT Magazine was by what they called Brennan and Obama’s “attempt to apply the ‘just war’ theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.” Amazingly, not everyone thinks it was so wise for the president and Brennan to replace COIN with Cliffs’ Notes Aquinas.

I dislike the sideswipe at Aquinas, and am kind of amazed at National Review criticizing the drone program. Did they ever run such a piece during the Bush years? If they did, good for them. if they didn't, then all my rather uncharitable presuppositions are given fodder. Hm. It's funny how they think "classical Jesuit education" and "priest-like presence" translate to "peace-loving, social justice infused, skeptical yet compassionate critical thinker" and "somehow saintly, the sort of person we want in charge of something as dubiously ethical as a drones program which tends to kill the innocent."

"Is Life Fully Human Wthout Christianity?"

So I posted this to Facebook:

h/t Father Robert Barron and the Catholicism Project.
 Read the Pope's Wednesday address here.

and immediately got this question from a friend:

Is life fully human without Christianity?

to which I responded:

Ah--thereby hangs a massive, massive theological discussion. Bleah--permit me a few really nuanced, seemingly non-answer answers.

Looks like Jesus to Me!

So a couple of friends were talking about Platonic ideals and so on and so forth, and we came round to the question of the ideal man.

"Plato would say it's a spiritual reality entirely," commented Philosopher Friend.

"But it's Jesus!" responded Writer Friend.

And they were both right.

The Son of the Father is a spiritual being from all eternity.  With the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary, true God, true Man.  With the Incarnation, Jesus becomes the ultimate Everyman, the ultimate Man, opening the way for all of humanity to share in God's grace and glory.  He saved us by taking on humanity, and thereby making it the means for our salvation, opening the way for grace to well up as streams of living water from within our hearts.  By his sacred humanity, the fact that his human heart becomes capable of serving as the seat of his divine personhood, our hearts then become capable of providing a home for the Trinity, as well.

The heart is the core of the person, according to Scripture.  And the person is necessary for covenants to be sworn, as Dr. Hahn has repeatedly declared.  By the exchange of persons, sacred kinship bonds are formed.  Law takes force, ordered to love, and as the Holy Father has pointed out in his Letter to Seminarians written during the Year of the Priest, there is no love without law.  There can be no exchange of persons without constancy, without stability, and no deification without a true self-gift.  God comes and dwells in the hearts of men when men love God.  We are made capable of loving God by the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit, by prevenient grace, by God's loving us into life and love, so that his life and love can come and dwell with us, pouring forth from us into the world as Jesus came from Mary's womb, as Jesus came from his burial tomb.

Jesus became man so that men might become other Christs, sons of God, mediating the face, the person of the Father into the world and consecrating the world into the heart of the divine life and love at the heart of the Trinity till God be all in all.

The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?  To know that, you need to answer the question, "Who am I?"

Hearing him speak was a remarkable experience. I'd bet the book is just as good.

Maurin's Method

Teaching whoever would listen seemed such a haphazard business that Peter was sometimes asked why he did not have a plan.  "Our Lord had no plan," Dorothy quotes him as saying.  "He did this on the principle that you never knew where you were going to find a disciple and that there was a spark in every man that could be kindled if you could but find the proper word.  Of course you planted the seed and God gave the increase.  Everything depended on God's good pleasure, whether or not he chose to call this one or that.  But he, Peter, would go around planting his ideas hopefully, watering them with his kindness and persistence and faith and hope, and leave it in God's hands as to whether they would grow and bear fruit."--William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 237.

Peter Maurin's Reading List

An important consideration, of course, is what he read, who "influenced" him.  It is impossible to know all that he may have read over the obscure years of his life, but Dorothy mentions some of the books he had her read.  "Besides Fr. Vincent McNabb and Eric Gill, there were Jacques Maritain, Leon Bloy, Charles Peguy of France, Don Sturzo of Italy, [Romano] Guardini and Karl Adam of Germany, and [Nicholas] Berdyaev of Russia."  Then she says that "the books Peter brought us enriched us immeasurably."--William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 234.