Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Patrick Briscoe

May 22, 2025

This transcription was generated using AI technology. Please note that there may be errors or inconsistencies.

00:00:05:11 – 00:00:25:13

This is Father Patrick Briscoe. And this is Father Gregory Pine. Welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation to us on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcasts. The Gregory I think most of our listeners, I mean, I feel like I know our listeners pretty, pretty well at this point.

00:00:25:13 – 00:00:58:12

Yeah, not like everyone’s name. Yeah. But, you know, but like last year with 30 students of Rollins College, I forget. How did you both strategy. Yeah, I was safe because most of the girls were named like Caroline. So that was pretty good. Sarah. Sarah. Kate. Mary. Yeah. Some variation of Catherine. Yeah. Anyway, I think that I know our audience pretty well, and I think that most of them would be surprised that we would think it was important to do an episode on Catholic social teaching.

00:00:58:14 – 00:01:08:19

I think you’re right. In fact. Very well. It could be. We need to convince each other if we’re going to convince them. Right?

00:01:08:21 – 00:01:29:14

And that’s a so. Well, this is how we do it. We get together for a planning meeting to determine titles of upcoming episodes, and usually we just say a bunch of words at the same time, and some of those words get strung together. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. The lots. And then the reading of entrails. Yeah, exactly. So this one came up.

00:01:29:14 – 00:02:00:15

I’m teaching a class right now in Catholic social and sexual teaching, and I was like, what if I prepared for this episode for an entire semester? And people were like, I, I need to use a semester. Of studies. Me me me me me me me me me me me me. Yeah, exactly. No, I think, like, it’s funny. When we hear Catholic social teaching, we often hear, like, a body of progressive opinions adapted to contemporary circumstances with limited or negligible efficacy.

00:02:00:16 – 00:02:19:11

That’s like, I think what a lot of people think of, they’re just like, yeah, it’s like the church getting involved in social justice, right? And there are probably people who went to Catholic universities that aren’t, you know, as strong as they come when it comes to identity and mission, that the only thing left right now is Catholic social teaching of the Catholic heritage.

00:02:19:13 – 00:02:37:11

I remember one time I went on a retreat. I was not in charge of this retreat. I’d just like to say at the outset. And, it was for, like, a Catholic campus ministry, but it was run by a particular individual who had a particular understanding. This is so vague, particular understanding as to the church, but I’m just trying to defend all innocent parties.

00:02:37:13 – 00:03:02:16

And so, like the formation period of this retreat day was, the individual distributed themes from Catholic social teaching to the students who were required to make little groups and then come up with like, poster board lists of activities that they could undertake during the semester so as to live out these principles of Catholic social teaching. And I remember, like one kid, like getting the term subsidiarity.

00:03:02:16 – 00:03:19:04

And this kid had no idea what it meant. And then the squad got together and the like, I mean, people were looking it up on their phone and then they just got to making lists and then they came together for the presentation. At the end, they’re like, number one, we’re going to buy Fairtrade coffee.

00:03:19:06 – 00:03:40:05

And I remember having the thought, like, our Lord Jesus Christ took human flesh, suffered, died and rose from the grave to deliver us from the wages of sin so that we could make stupid like Fairtrade coffee. It sounds like insane. And I think a lot of people engage with it on those terms. And as a result of which they have like no patience for it or no interest in it.

00:03:40:05 – 00:04:07:01

And it just seems silly. But as it turns out, Catholic social teaching it can bear or it does bear the riches of the church’s tradition for us in our kind of social and political lives. But we have to get there in order to appreciate it. Well, you just said one of the buzzwords that I that I wanted to get to you very early on in this episode, which is that if people have heard the phrase Catholic social teaching, one of the contexts which they’ve surely encountered it is the political context.

00:04:07:03 – 00:04:29:20

Yeah, because the church is political. This makes people very uncomfortable. The claims that are made in the gospel, in fact, have downstream consequences in the way that we live. This is the whole challenge with the Obama administration on the contraceptive mandate. Christianity is not simply, about the way that we worship, but it’s about the entirety of our Christian lives.

00:04:29:20 – 00:04:51:02

The entirety of our lives, the entirety of the way we live. So it’s not enough to say that freedom of religion in the United States is the same thing as the freedom to worship, or the right to worship that, but in fact, dogmatic teachings of the church do have little consequence. So the church is going to be involved in politics, and they’re very important reasons for that.

00:04:51:02 – 00:05:22:13

But I think that the way that that the phrase Catholic social teaching is often encountered is in, in line with social justice mandates that prescribe a set of political ideals or a set of political goals or a set of political aspirations that are just kind of loosely baptized. Yeah. Someone will someone will make a statement. Often it’s, often and maybe it may represent, something exclusive on a political platform.

00:05:22:15 – 00:05:43:07

And then cite a Bible verse or a vague kind of teaching of Jesus. You know, they’ll say something like, whatever you do for the least of the least of these, you do unto me. And, and they’ll claim that this is the sum, total expression of Christianity, and therefore that particular political platform must be supported, because this is represented as gospel.

00:05:43:07 – 00:06:03:02

So I think a lot of people, again, keeping it broad. So that might not be as accessible to some as maybe after 1 or 2 people. But but I think that again, it can be that this set of teachings can serve. Teaching is often encountered in politics, and it can be immediately polarizing, or being counted as polemic.

00:06:03:04 – 00:06:29:15

So that that’s really the long and short of what I want to do. Yeah. And I think that people have their own reasons for, resisting what they might deem to be, inappropriate incursion into the social or political sphere. I think we have kind of wonky notions as to our zone of autonomy, or the place in which we should be free from dogmatic or moral or otherwise authority based claims.

00:06:29:17 – 00:06:34:15

I think a lot of those notions are wrong.

00:06:34:17 – 00:07:08:12

Nevertheless, what the church is saying, in effect, is we have this history of meditation upon the mysteries of the faith. Okay. So we have real dogmatic understanding of what God reveals and the grace that he mediates. We also recognize that has that that has a profound moral impact. Okay. So that translates to a way of life, as you described, that has very concrete, very particular, peculiar, influences or that ought to have, very concrete influences or consequences in our lives.

00:07:08:14 – 00:07:28:11

And that we can actually speak with some scientific precision or we can speak with some determination as to what this looks like in the social and political sphere. That’s all we’re saying. Basically, like the church knows God and loves God, God reveals himself and mediates his grace. We’re able to formulate credo statements on the basis of which, you know, relationship or interaction.

00:07:28:16 – 00:07:47:20

We can then live a coherent Christian life. But then as we bring that coherent Christian life to different settings, social and political, there are ways in which we should live in ways in which we shouldn’t live, and that that can get pretty fine grained, and that the church can speak to particular political systems, for instance, like Marxism. Right?

00:07:47:20 – 00:08:09:19

Like socialism, like totalitarianism of whatever sort, but even also like it can speak to capitalism in its excess or in its defect or whatever, and prescribe certain behaviors which are salutary for Christians who heed that encouragement, which is wild. Now, when we refer to this thing, we started right away talking about Catholic social teaching as if it were into findings.

00:08:09:21 – 00:08:41:11

Our tradition are very divided. There are ten commandments Moses, God inscribed on the tablets. We brought them down the mountain. Here are the 15 way little, number two that for all of you fans out there. Nice round one, smash round two. Okay, we won’t smash the attitudes there. Eight. Nine, depending on the way, you count the attitudes when when you look at other, other ideas surrounding Christian morality, they’re prescribed traditional sets of virtues.

00:08:41:13 – 00:09:06:17

Virtues. There are three theological virtues. When we start talking about Catholic social teaching, what does it mean for that to be a body and where does it come from? Yeah. So so I think often enough when people say Catholic social teaching, they’re referring to an assemblage or a kind of group of conclusions. Which conclusions can be further elaborated or teased out for particular social and political contexts?

00:09:06:19 – 00:09:32:15

But these would be the things that are downstream of the dogmatic and moral claims as accommodated to our life together, our life in community. And these really start getting distilled, or they really start getting kind of concentrated as a doctrine or as a, as a teaching in the 19th century. And so we’ll often look to the last roughly 140, 150 years as a repository of these conclusions.

00:09:32:17 – 00:09:56:05

And we’ll find them enunciated for us in certain key documents of the church’s magisterium. Like we’re looking especially to papal encyclicals. And then we’re also looking to, consequential magisterial formulations of that teaching. And you can think here, especially of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the compendium of the Social Doctrine of the church, which we often, you know, kind of hold side by side in these matters.

00:09:56:07 – 00:10:16:21

So I think, like, a lot of people would point to Real Novara, which is published in 1891. All right. So May 15th, 1891, in fact. Nice. Well done. I looked at that because I was disappointed that it wasn’t. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Alas. And a lot I think it does it does it anti date that feast.

00:10:16:21 – 00:10:38:19

That’s the question. Okay. Yeah. So Ram Navami that’s Pope Leo the 13th who reigned gloriously from 1878 to 1903 and was extremely, extremely engaged in these particular matters. I mean, it was engaged in all number of matters. He published a lot of what we would call today encyclicals, although some of them, I think, were formulated more after the manner of bulls.

00:10:38:21 – 00:11:00:21

But reign of aam begins this continuous tradition in the modern magisterium of meditation on social and political issues. And so we’ll rehearse it often enough at ten, 20, 30, 40 or intervals as a way by which to recover its teaching given contemporary problems. What’s the earliest example that you can think of of Catholic social teaching? That I want to run by you.

00:11:01:00 – 00:11:26:07

Okay. I mean, like, it depends on how principal you want to be or how tongue in cheek you want to be. I mean, like a lot of Catholic social teaching courses will start with sacred Scripture, and they’ll just start with the Old Testament and they’ll observe certain social or political ramifications for belief in the one God. So like one that comes through clearly, as God says, take care of widows and orphans, the widows.

00:11:26:07 – 00:11:44:08

That’s what I wanted to mention. Not for the Old Testament, okay, because I’m thinking Catholic social teaching in the life of the church. So I was thinking the neglect of the Greek. Oh, okay. Oh, nice. Okay. This is like a first. This is the first moment where the church receives a doctrinal teaching on how they are to how, we are to live.

00:11:44:12 – 00:12:15:12

Yeah. So, so basically, it must be equal. Exactly. And so it’s like the idea is that our belief, our profession, informs the way in which we live. Not just in its individual realization, but in its communal realization. And so, like you’ll see, society breaks down in certain places. And like those who are most exposed, are often those who are cut off from a family unit, because in the Hebrew culture, it is the family unit that really provided everything, you know, like wealth, defense law, like legal justification, etc..

00:12:15:14 – 00:12:38:19

And so widows and orphans were often cut off from the father’s house and thus from the clan, thus from the tribe, and so exposed. And so, you see, like Hebrew law says, don’t harvest the entirety of your crop. Leave some of it unharvested so that alien sojourners, widows, and orphans can pick up from what remains. So there’s a kind of recognition there that we should have, or we should express a care or a concern for those who might otherwise go without.

00:12:38:21 – 00:12:59:11

But it’s not just like these kind of what we would call, or what we would associate in the 21st century with, like, progressive measures for welfare. It concerns every aspect of our political lives. And so we’ll often have these principles kind of enumerated for us, different length lists, but enumerated for us as informing our social and political vision.

00:12:59:13 – 00:13:15:21

In the Middle Ages, I wondered if you had an example look at that’s top of mind, because what I’m what I want, what I want to do is, is, is really push on this point that this isn’t some kind of moderate innovation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the point that Leo the 13th did something different in round the bottom is important.

00:13:16:00 – 00:13:49:22

Yeah. Yeah. Often people talked about Catholic social teaching as having been gone. Yeah. Okay. And I think you can say that. Modern Catholic social. Sure. Sure, sure. Just for example, they were highly conscious. Yup. Yeah. There’s a phenomenal book about me like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We can think about our brother. Saint Anthony is a Florence, you know, who is known for helping, in effect, dissolute aristocracy resolve their debts, and reestablish their kind of social and political liberty.

00:13:50:00 – 00:14:12:20

Or you can think about, like, the peace of God and the Truce of God, certain laws that grew up as a way of governing warfare so as to ensure that it wouldn’t devolve into barbarism. It’s like you don’t you don’t fight on certain days, you don’t fight with certain frequency. There has to be pauses from combat. Otherwise there’s a real risk that you lose hold of your humanity in an environment where you’re predisposed to lose hold in your humanity.

00:14:12:22 – 00:14:33:01

Yeah. There are various monuments. I don’t know if you have others in mind. No, no, no, I, I think the point is made, right. This this discussion of from whence it comes and then and then the to to really flesh out and summarize the second point. It’s not as if Catholic social teaching is for 7 or 10 principles sure handed down on the tablet.

00:14:33:01 – 00:14:55:05

So, so so how are these derived? Who gives them. How do we begin to navigate that? Where do we find the principles in this together? Announced enumerated inclusive of Catholic social? Yeah. I don’t know that you find a particular encyclical in which they are all listed. You’ll have encyclicals that underline certain aspects of our social and political life as important.

00:14:55:07 – 00:15:19:04

So one that comes to mind is labora and exertions, which are Saint John Paul the Second wrote on human work. Or you might think of the pair Mulia as dignitary term, and read them towards custos. A lot of people know about the former. Not many people know about the latter, which is about Saint Joseph, but you can think about them as, respectively, about the feminine masculine genius taken together as a kind of testimony to the dignity of the human person.

00:15:19:06 – 00:15:44:07

And then Saint John Paul the Second writes in Donna. Well, I guess whatever you have, various papal pronouncements and then pronouncements of the cdfs to the dignity of life and beginning of life issues and end of life issues, which can be taken together as, so I think the idea is basically the church continues to teach as a recovery of perennial principles and like with conclusions pertinent to the age.

00:15:44:09 – 00:16:03:16

And then as we go through time, we’ll often look back and then we’ll distill or consolidate on the basis of what we have seen to be enduring or lasting. And so the Catechism does this. And then the compendium of the social doctrine of the church does this. And then other people, kind of commentators within the tradition will make attempts to do this.

00:16:03:16 – 00:16:24:20

So you’ll see different lists and those different lists enunciate, you know, for seven, ten, 15, you know, like however many, the most important. But basically what we’re talking about is how do the dogmatic and moral claims of the church, you know, interfacing with our anthropology, like our humanity? How is that to be concretized for different aspects of our life together?

00:16:24:22 – 00:16:45:06

Recently, Pope Francis, has picked up, and this became actually one of the, one of the major themes of Pope Francis approach to church teaching in general is highlighting this principle of human dignity. Is that something Pope Francis created? Where did that come from in the tradition, and how does that situate itself within the context of the rest of Catholic social?

00:16:45:08 – 00:17:11:13

Yeah, sure. No. So, I mean, it’s obviously not something that Pope Francis made up. It’s something that, you know, again, it has roots. It has anthropological roots. It has scriptural roots. And then we see receptions of that teaching in various ways. You know, throughout the course of the church’s life. So, like, for instance, you can think about the way in which the emperor was made to seek penitential reconciliation with Saint Ambrose.

00:17:11:15 – 00:17:31:22

Because he had, you know, like perpetrated atrocities and he had to make public penance as a recognition of the fact that this is a it’s like not what you do to people. Or you can think about, other things, like, like Francisco de Vitoria, for instance, in the 16th century, he teaches at the University of Salamanca between 1526 and 1546.

00:17:32:04 – 00:17:55:14

He’s largely lauded as the kind of creator, as it were, consolidator of international law. But he’s receiving word back from the Dominican friars who went ahead to the island of Hispaniola like Anton de Montesinos, who are, you know, kind of getting the getting the feel for things there in the new world and seeing that the encomienda system is, you know, not good, you know, that it’s quasi enslavement.

00:17:55:15 – 00:18:20:06

And that it and then it works contrary to, the evangel, like the evangelization of the people whom they encounter there and the liberty of those individual to which they were entitled. And so you have Francisco de Vitoria in his reflections, giving a consistent teaching as to the rights of de. And so, you know, like the rights of the indigenous persons on the basis of what he’s hearing back and the principles upon which he’s operating.

00:18:20:12 – 00:18:38:10

You know, so it’s like this, this teaching of the dignity of the human person will look different depending upon the historical circumstances, insofar as those who are arguing for it are going to try to emphasize or bring out certain aspects on the basis of the ones with whom they’re contending or the particular teaching that they’re trying to advance.

00:18:38:12 – 00:18:53:12

But it’s been with us, you know, like, but I think the Pope Francis is seeing all of the threats to the dignity of the human person in the 21st century. And he’s trying to highlight it against that backdrop or as a way by which to recover something of the perennial tradition, given the yeah, the situation that we find ourselves in at present.

00:18:53:16 – 00:19:18:11

Yeah, I very much agree with that. I think it’s an essential, foundational principle. And that whatever this this list looks like this, this one has got to be. Yeah. It’s not the beginning point itself. Right. And the reason is because, of course, it’s so tempting to compromise human dignity for all kinds of reasons. Yeah, yeah. It’s just so easy to, to to treat someone as an inconvenience or to take advantage of another person.

00:19:18:12 – 00:19:41:19

And this, this principle, I would say I also happen to like it because of our own American tradition. Inalienable rights. Right. Yeah. That are do human beings. And I think you must you must say that the human person is a particular kind of thing in order to derive those inalienable rights from it. And if it’s a particular kind of thing that that particular kind of thing must have a certain dignity to it.

00:19:41:21 – 00:20:10:15

Yeah. I sort of like it from an American perspective, too. I think if, if, if up this principle. Can easily be derived from our American tradition and, appropriated by American Catholics. And you think about it, too, with respect to the modern Magisterium, so rare. Navarro in 1891, just mono in 1931, martyr magister in like 1961 and then contesting Lucentis in 1991.

00:20:10:17 – 00:20:30:13

And each you know, like each is contending against particular threats so rare. Navarro. The big threat is Marxism or socialism. So it’s it really is working to recover the dignity of the worker, right? Which is an extension of this dignity of the human person. But specifically is having a right to the fruit of his labor.

00:20:30:15 – 00:20:54:00

And as having a right to the means of production in some kind of distributive sense. Consequence. I mean, as you’re saying, the dates are really important. Guys, we have to we have to situate them. 1891 we’re talking about the heels of the Industrial revolution. And that’s the context for this point. Yep. And so he he on both sides and even handed fashion, he’s trying to acknowledge the excesses and defects of contending economic system.

00:20:54:00 – 00:21:20:16

So like Marxist capitalism, excuse me, Marxist socialism and then kind of unchecked capitalism. And he’s saying our vision should not just have the human person at the heart, but the human community. Right. And that’s like another principle that comes forward in the Catholic social teaching is this idea of the common good, that we as individuals aren’t like ends in ourselves as somehow free floating monads, but that were meant for a human community, a social and political community.

00:21:20:18 – 00:21:45:05

And that that’s not to say like we’re just cogs or it’s not to say we’re just parts of a whole in the sense of that. But it does mean that we have higher aims than we can fulfill just left to ourselves or within the setting of our family, that we have social and political aims. And so, like a lot of the other principles of Catholic conclusions of Catholic social teaching, are a distillation of that or a kind of recognition and codification of that?

00:21:45:07 – 00:22:09:16

Yeah. Let’s get let’s continue on, because I think the history is important here. So what? So, so 40 years later when we get to a quote, a German, scholars of German. Yep. In 1931, we’re we’ve we’ve experienced the Great Depression. In a particular way in the United States, but globally. So when Pius the 11th was responsible for responding to that, what was the argument?

00:22:09:18 – 00:22:38:20

You can think about this especially against the backdrop of the long 19th century. People talk about the long 19th century as lasting from 1789 to 1918. And it’s like epochal world historical and the changes visited upon, especially Europe, but then the new world as well, because you go from the ancient regime, you know, you go from a largely monarchical aristocratic dispensation to an age of revolution and just every imaginable revolution of every imaginable sort.

00:22:38:22 – 00:23:01:21

And you have sowed seeds of destruction. And then in 19, you know, 14 through 18, you reap the whirlwind. Because what you have in the wake of the First World War is massive disillusionment. Massive disillusionment. And then you’ve lost, like, half of Europe to the Red plague, as it were, you know, to like the communist threat, which is which is real, you know, which is not nothing.

00:23:01:21 – 00:23:33:15

And people appreciate that. And so in 1931, you’re in the years long de guerre, and there’s a real economic slump and combined with a modernist lack of confidence in the human project and in the human trajectory. But still, there’s there’s a persistent need to re propose these principles. Given the current circumstances to furnish those who are working, you know, with, you know, in goodwill, or in good faith for the advancement of, of human people, not just says like a kind of vague, political project or social or political project, but as one informed by ecclesial principles.

00:23:33:15 – 00:23:48:15

So, yeah, I don’t know all the things that are that are kind of pertinent to the conversation, but it strikes me that that’s that’s the big first kind of renunciation of the principles of freedom of arm. Absolutely. And I think what we see, what I would argue we see from the 11th, is a stronger pronouncement of subsidiarity. Yeah.

00:23:48:17 – 00:24:12:06

The importance of graduate. Okay. Sure. To to basically take a look at the organization of society and to begin to insist on, well, how it actually does this all. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also like so 1927 I think is the rise to power of Benito Mussolini. And then it’s whatever like 1933, you see, kind of like the in the Italian context.

00:24:12:08 – 00:24:32:04

Well, I mean, you, you know, we’re like, we’re going to Rome here pretty soon for the canonization of blessed, pure Giorgio facade. And those familiar with his story knows that he was very socially and politically involved, not just with, like, student groups, but with kind of like intermediate institutions, things that we’d think of, like Kiwanis or Knights of Columbus or Rotary Club or those are different things.

00:24:32:04 – 00:24:54:00

I realize that, but these intermediate institutions whereby we realize our social and political goals on a local level, he was involved in a lot of those things, and he came into conflict with the Italian government increasingly on account of the rise of fascism. You know, so this idea that you have to respect subsidiary ends, that you have to argue for a graduated order makes sense in light of the rise of totalitarianism.

00:24:54:02 – 00:25:12:14

Okay. So then we keep kind of moving on through this history and we get later and my guest challenge on the 23rd in 1961. Yeah. And that was on. So yeah, I mean, there’s a lot going on for sure. I think a lot of people, when they when they hear Catholic social teaching, they think of social justice.

00:25:12:15 – 00:25:36:10

This is an important point. Social justice really kind of shows up for the first time in the literature in the 19th century, and then in the church’s magisterial documents. I think it gets mentioned in just a moment, but it really gets mentioned in part from a terrace. And it mattered. Magistrate. And social justice is a kind of drift justice, because ordinarily you have general justice, which concerns the common good, and then particular justice which concerns the individual.

00:25:36:16 – 00:26:12:15

And that might be distributive. So it’s the common, I mean, like the polity basically distributing goods to the individual or commutative, which is the individual to the individual. What you have with social justice is originally it’s used to cover general justice as concerns the common good, but then it kind of drifts to distributive justice. And then rather than thinking about our responsibility to distribute whatever store of goods we have now, it’s a matter of my rights and what’s owed to me, and how I can accumulate a just reappropriation of social conditions to and to ensure, you know, kind of like reorganization of institutions, whatever, you know, like people mean all manner of things by social

00:26:12:15 – 00:26:36:11

justice. But often enough, it’s like progressive opinions about welfare. So that’s slides happening here, right? So it’s a it’s a very distinct social order. And I think the document is beginning to reflect that. It’s beginning to describe the common good as like a sum total of parts rather than an indivisible whole. So those are those are very interesting questions that concern political liberalism because political liberalism is being normalized or.

00:26:36:13 – 00:26:58:23

Yeah. And the context again, to underscore this, right, in 1961, we’re in the postwar era and all of Europe is looking at the USSR. And they’re they’re trying to articulate the OSCE is beginning to try and articulate a modern vision of what the Catholic Church is going to propose for what would make a just society against what’s whatever is happening behind the Iron Curtain.

00:26:59:03 – 00:27:18:21

Yeah, I think that’s that’s very well established. Your point there about the tension. And then when you when you look at it against that, you can see a kind of desire to express the common good in a novel way for the Christian. Yeah, yeah. Which then, I mean, kind of like brings us to not the present day, but you think with chance.

00:27:19:00 – 00:27:42:08

Misano 1991. The Berlin Wall just fell a couple of years previously. And how did it fall? It fell through the solidarity movement, you know, and it’s like solidarity means any number of things. I think it just used to be imagining John Paul the second, you know, like waving from heaven on. Exactly. Holding a koala flying over at the last, solidarity means all manner of things.

00:27:42:08 – 00:28:06:10

The the most basic acceptation is universal brotherhood, you know, so it’s like it’s the we’re all in this together dimension of Catholic social teaching. Like if we are going to make it through, it’s going to be by coming together, which will mean setting aside certain differences. But it’ll mean doing the work of finding similarity. And so you have the dignity of the human person as radical, the common good as that towards which we’re working.

00:28:06:10 – 00:28:38:03

Subsidiarity is the way that you go about it. So each institution, according to its proper competence, each person motivated by a love of things local, where you can actually make a contribution, can actually shape the institution. And then solidarity as we come together in a way recognizing that, like we don’t exert a lot of force or like we don’t wield a lot of power and maybe don’t have political authority, but if we’re going to bring about a just order, it’s in coming together more so in a recognition of likeness than in an accentuation of difference.

00:28:38:05 – 00:29:00:17

And so contesting Masonic is one of the, the clearer enunciation of solidarity attendant upon that earlier annunciation of subsidiarity, which gives us kind of like our main principles of Catholic social teaching. About two years ago, the, Polish martyr who is the great, chaplain, priest, chaplain of the solidarity movement, often called the Pauline imperative to carry one another.

00:29:00:18 – 00:29:21:17

Which is a which is such a, a wonderful biblical summary of what solidarity actually means, to carry one another’s burden in the context of solidarity was making it possible for workers to strike. Yeah. To support the families that would be making a sacrifice because they wouldn’t be getting the paycheck. Yeah. Because the wage earners were on strike.

00:29:21:19 – 00:29:43:06

You know, so just to show how particular this case in the context of Saudi solidarity with is, such a phenomenal illustration of this. And in 1991, of course, we’re talking about the post Soviet dispensation. That was the but the post Soviet era and a kind of promise for what life after communism could mean for the Christian world, which is always very exciting.

00:29:43:06 – 00:30:03:17

And we’re 30 years down the stream for that. Maybe that should be our next episode of Catholic Social Teaching. Yeah. Social teaching after Pope Saint John Paul the second. Yeah. Caritas convert, to being the big monument thereof. So again, these principles I think are very well enunciated, but I think the kind of historical progression is helpful for us to contextualize that.

00:30:03:19 – 00:30:31:10

Yeah. To see how the church’s teaching and builds upon, and builds upon the, the context and actually responds to it in this very living thing, and, for listeners, what I would encourage is to continue to challenge yourself on what those principles applied in your day to day life looks like. Yeah. No. And I think like, it’s kind of like a whimper instead of a bang if one just leaves it at that, like, good luck, you know?

00:30:31:10 – 00:30:49:06

But but I think that, often enough, like, Catholic social teaching informs our lives together in very simple ways. Very modest ways, very humble ways, like contributing to the common good for us is often a matter of contributing to the family and other intermediate institutions. Like it sounds crass, but like means like showing up for your local sports teams.

00:30:49:06 – 00:31:13:20

It means contributing to your local municipality. It doesn’t just mean like voting, paying taxes, serving your jury duty. It means building up the institutions which themselves build up the polity, which itself is the ordinary setting in which our lives take shape. You know, because, like, this is like not all goods are available to us as individuals. Not all goods are available to us as families, like we need to associate as a reflection of our nature, right?

00:31:13:20 – 00:31:39:12

And as a realization of our, our end. And so I think it’s like in learning to prefer the common good to our individual good, in cultivating the type of appreciation for the, dignity of the human person and the subsidiarity and solidarity which we can deploy. We really do humanize our lives. Rather than permitting them to be kind of ground down and chewed up by the corporate man, or by the political totalitarian just waiting in the wings, which is.

00:31:39:12 – 00:31:58:21

Yeah, it’s what it is. Friends, I hope you enjoyed this rosary history and random assortment of principles. And we we are going to continue to be thinking and talking about this. So if you have thoughts or questions, please send me love to hear from you. If you want to challenge, probably Gregory. In some ways I especially want to hear that.

00:31:58:23 – 00:32:27:02

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00:32:27:04 – 00:32:48:20

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