The term “Catholic social teaching” usually refers to the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on matters of economic, political, and social justice. While the teaching of the church on these issues is clearly rooted in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and in traditional Christian philosophy and theology, its modern articulation is embodied in a series of papal, conciliar, and other official documents issued by the church since the late nineteenth century.

Rerum Novarum, an encyclical promulgated in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, represents the earliest official articulation of the major tenets of modern Catholic social teaching. Pope Leo’s letter addresses the plight of industrial society and sets for itself the task of defining “the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor.” While Pope Leo clearly recognized the need for social change to support exploited workers, he was sharply critical of attempts by socialists and Marxists to effect such change by abolishing private property or by encouraging class struggle.

Rerum Novarum then goes on to articulate the central principles of the church’s teaching on social matters. At the heart of this teaching is the idea that justice demands certain virtuous forms of life from all members of society. Workers are to carry out their jobs honestly and effectively; employers are to respect the dignity of their workers by paying them sufficiently and by providing appropriate working conditions; the rich are to recognize that excess wealth should be given to those in need; and the poor ought not look on their material poverty, which is indeed a great misfortune, as a disgrace. Pope Leo argued that Christian spirituality and the teachings of the church must be at the heart of any social renewal: “if human society is to be healed now, in no other way can it be healed save by a return to Christian life and Christian institutions.”

Importantly, Rerum Novarum and the other major social encyclicals stress that the state has a role to play in furthering social justice and intervening in situations where the opportunities to live virtuously are seriously threatened. Leo argued for the importance of appropriately organized workers’ unions, he claimed that the state has a duty to ensure that workers are paid what has come to be called a “living wage,” and he noted that the essentially vulnerable condition of the poor gives them a claim to especial consideration in the eyes of the state. While he took care to note that “the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief,” and to note the injustice of “excessive taxation,” it is nevertheless clear that Rerum Novarum and the other official documents that follow in its path maintain that the state must play an essential part in helping the church carry out her mission to heal human society.

Pope Pius XI’s 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (“On Reconstruction of the Social Order”) emphasizes the importance of avoiding the errors of both “individualism” and “collectivism.” Individualism, wrote Pius, ignores the “social and public character” of the right to property, while collectivism fails to recognize property’s “private and individual character.” Pius emphasized that the public authority, under the guidance of divine and natural law, ought to consider the common good in determining what owners are and are not permitted to do with their property. What is perhaps most remarkable about Quadragesimo Anno is that while Leo had clearly singled out socialism as his primary target, Pius focused his criticisms more squarely on liberalism and capitalism. He argued that “free competition, while justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly cannot direct economic life,” and he claimed that the deep economic disparities present in capitalist societies are evidence of grave injustice within liberal capitalist regimes. Importantly, Pius also articulated what has come to be known as the “principle of subsidiarity,” which holds that “[t]he supreme authority of the State ought . . . to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance.”

Centesimus Annus, issued by the late Pope John Paul II in 1991, is the most recent official articulation of the principles of Catholic social teaching. In the course of offering a “re-reading” of Rerum Novarum, John Paul reaffirmed many of its core tenets, noting especially its teaching that “the more that individuals are defenseless within a given society, the more they require the care and concern of others, and in particular the intervention of governmental authority.” Writing just after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, John Paul praised Leo’s prescient critique of socialist political systems. He further contended that the root problem of socialism is its view of “the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socioeconomic mechanism.”

John Paul indicated that the church prefers a political arrangement within which society and the state work together to protect the dignity of workers and ensure that they can find work at living wages and under acceptable working conditions. He argued that the fundamental problem identified by Leo is “an understanding of human freedom which detaches it from obedience to the truth, and consequently from the duty to respect the rights of others.” Thus, he contended that opposing Marxism by setting up free-market economies is appropriate only so long as such economies do not undermine authentic human values or regard the human good purely in terms of material satisfaction. He emphasized, therefore, that we ought to approach the development of poorer countries “in a way that is fully human,” by “concretely enhancing every individual’s dignity and creativity, as well as his capacity to respond to his personal vocation, and thus to God’s call.” Indeed, Pope John Paul claimed that such development does not reach its pinnacle until the members of society turn to God in order to “know him and to live in accordance with that knowledge.”

Hence, like his predecessors, John Paul stressed that while there are positive aspects of the modern “business economy,” one must also bear in mind certain connected risks and problems. While he noted that modern societies have changed in many ways since Rerum Novarum, he reminded us also that “the human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people are far from disappearing.” He offered an extensive criticism of the “phenomenon of consumerism” in advanced economies and of the tendency in industrialized economies toward ecological irresponsibility, and he cautioned against what he called the “idolatry of the market.” While the free market can effectively encourage social renewal in many ways, he noted that “there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied . . . . It is also necessary to help these needy people . . . develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources.” Still, he offered heavy criticism of what he called the “Social Assistance State,” a form of political order that violates the principle of subsidiarity and in which bureaucratic state action interferes with the effective authority and rightful autonomy of lower-level associations.

In sum, John Paul responded to the question of whether capitalism ought to serve as the economic model for developing countries with a heavily qualified answer: insofar as “capitalism” is understood to refer to an economic system that recognizes the key role of a free market and true human creativity in a productive economy, the answer is affirmative; but insofar as it suggests “a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its [ethical and religious] totality,” then the answer must be in the negative. True liberation requires freedom from all forms of sin, and any socioeconomic arrangement that fails to so liberate its members is ipso facto unjust.

It should be noted that some commentators have argued that the Catholic Church’s failure to more fully embrace liberal capitalism is the consequence of the church’s earlier antimodern prejudices, which more recent church teachings have gradually abandoned. But a close reading of the relevant documents reveals very little of the sort of doctrinal “development” that such scholars claim to have found. Hence Catholic writer Michael Novak’s claim in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism that the democratic capitalist order “calls forward not only a new theology but a new type of religion” seems approximately correct; the problem, however, is that the theology and religion he advocates do not seem to be those of the Catholic Church.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the relationship of postwar American conservatives to Catholic social teaching has been an uneasy one. While conservatives have been strongly opposed to communism and socialism, they have generally also allied themselves with liberal political systems and capitalist economic institutions in ways that are in deep tension with many of the church’s core social doctrines. Less prominent strains within modern conservatism, however, seem more compatible with these teachings. Writers like Russell Kirk, Eric Voegelin, and Richard Weaver, for example, expressed a healthy distrust of modernity. Others, such as Irving Kristol, Robert Nisbet, and Wilhelm Röpke, have also concerned themselves with the justice of robustly capitalistic social orders.

It might be argued that the uneasy relationship between postwar conservatism and Catholic social teaching is best understood as a reflection of the breadth of, and internal tensions within, each of these traditions. Here it is important to recall Pope John Paul II’s claim, in Centesimus Annus, that “[t]he Church has no [political or economic] models to present; models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects.” To the extent that conservatives view political systems in this way—as means to a transcendental end infinitely exceeding the importance of material goods, and as subject to criticism and in need of change insofar as they fail to steer their members toward this true end—there seems to be no good reason why conservatives cannot be allied with the Catholic Church toward the perpetual renewal of the political and social order.

Further Reading

Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic

Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues

David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage

David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation

This entry was originally published in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, pp. 131–134.