Catholic Social Thought and the Common Good Explained

Introduction: Defining the Common Good

What is the common good? In terms of Catholic social thought, the common good refers to the goal of creating an environment within one's community that tends to the "spiritual and temporal needs" of the members of that community (Storck). Pope Leo XIII was the first to truly tackle the subject in the social encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891. In that encyclical, Leo XIII laid out the doctrine on how society should be organized in a just manner. He wrote the encyclical to address "the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics." The revolution to which the pope was referring was the one that had been rolling through Europe since the end of the 18th century — that is, the French Revolution. This paper discusses the common good from the perspective of Catholic social thought.

Pope Leo XIII understood his role as head of the Church when he wrote: "as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters bearing on political power, human liberty, the Christian constitution of the State, and like matters, so have We thought it expedient now to speak on the condition of the working classes."

Industrialization and the Degradation of Labor

The issue of the condition of the common man was one that had been greatly exacerbated by the rise of industrialization. Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, had described workers as resembling robots in a pin factory. He called it the "division of labor" and assigned every man a simple task that he could perform tens of thousands of times a day so that the factory could operate at maximum efficiency. One man's job might be to place a pin in a box — and he would do exactly that for ten hours a day, over and over. Another man's job might be to close the lid of the box, performing that action just as many times for every box coming down the assembly line. Yet another man would put the box on a cart, and still another would push the cart. In short, it was entirely mindless work with nothing humane about it: there was no education of the mind, no healthy physicality, no sense of contributing positively to society, and no sense of earning a fair wage based on the skilled use of one's labor to support a family. Each of these necessary aspects of work has been described by Schumacher as part of the principles of Buddhist economics — but they are also deeply Christian in that they apply to the betterment of the whole person and to the betterment of society.

What Smith did in his book on economics was change the way people thought about labor — not as something that could better a man and improve society, in the way the Benedictines understood labor in the Middle Ages (Jones) — but merely as something that benefited a corporation or a factory owner. This was what led Marx to believe there would be a class uprising — a war between the working class and the owners. Marx, however, did not view the problem from a Catholic perspective but rather from a materialistic one, believing that the worker would be satisfactorily served if he simply enjoyed a greater share of the profits. The Catholic view of labor has always been that it should be meaningful, should benefit the person — intellectually, physically, and financially, by allowing him to develop a skill and use that skill to support his family — and should benefit society by giving the community something useful. Smith's pin factory did neither, and it upset the natural balance between laborer and owner of the means of production.

This upset balance tipped over into other aspects of society. More and more people were drawn into factories to keep the machines running, and the rise of the corporation as the dominant institution accelerated. This put severe pressure on families, as children and women were also placed in factories to work long hours in unsafe conditions. The English author Charles Dickens wrote many novels depicting the poor working conditions, failing health, and diminished lives of people in London during this period. Workers attempted to organize in unions to combat the dreadful conditions, but the Church had not yet stepped forward to lead the way with Catholic doctrine on how society should be organized justly, according to the principles of Christianity, the primacy of the family, and the rule of Christ.

Socialism, Usury, and the Middle Way

With the rise of socialism occurring simultaneously, driven by the spread of Marxist ideology, the Pope had to illuminate a middle way — neither too far to the right, where industry acted inhumanely and destroyed families, nor too far to the left, where "the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies" (Leo XIII). Leo XIII recognized the problems of socialism as equally corrosive to the family and as merely the other side of the materialistic coin of industrialism.

The proper, middle way forward, grounded in Catholic social thought, also required addressing "the mischief" caused by "rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men" (Leo XIII). Pope Leo was adamant about the dangers of money lending at exploitative rates and the harm that usurious contracts inflicted on society. The unnatural practice of usury placed additional pressures on ordinary people and created an environment in which greed and the exploitation of those in worse circumstances could flourish. The Christian way has never been about using another's disadvantage to benefit oneself, and so Leo addressed this issue directly in his encyclical.

Conclusion: Restoring the Common Good

Catholic social thought is based on the idea of putting into practice in society the laws of Christ, Who commanded His followers to love God and to love one's neighbor (Mark 12:30–31). In the world, many factions contend over how society should best be organized, but only the Church — thanks in large part to the guidance of Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI — has provided the world with the necessary leadership in applying the principles of Catholicism to the problems of society. With materialism growing ever more rampant over the past century, usury taking a deep hold on the global economy, and the family more destabilized and threatened than ever before, the Catholic principles for restoring the common good — as articulated in the teachings of these popes — deserve renewed and serious study.

Works Cited

Leo XIII. Rerum Novarum, 1891. http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

Jones, E. Michael. Barren Metal. Fidelity Press, 2014.

Schumacher, E. F. "Buddhist Economics," 1966.

Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. https://www.adamsmith.org/the-wealth-of-nations

Storck, Thomas. "Catholic Social Teaching: St. Pius X through Pius XI." Distributist Review, 2010. https://distributistreview.com/catholic-social-teaching-st-pius-x-through-pius-xi/