THE
P RTAL
July 2018
Page 9
Catholic Social Teaching
Human dignity
Fr Ashley Beck
O ne of
the great mistakes people often make about Catholic Social Teaching is when people suggest it
is simply a religious gloss on political or economic theory. This mistake is made by two distinct groups
of people. First, by people who think that it is simply an example of the Church ‘interfering’ or ‘meddling’
in politics, people who want to reject or ignore it (I am not sure which is the more harmful), falsely thinking
that the Church as an institution should concentrate on ‘spiritual’ issues or simply trying to get more people
into our churches; moreover lay people should be free of the influence in such matters of clergy, including
bishops and pope. This view has an ignoble pedigree among Catholics in this country going back to ‘penal
times’ in the 17 th and 18 th century when leading lay Catholics in the aristocracy were desperate to show
Protestants that if they were allowed to get involved in political life the Catholic Church wouldn’t dictate to
them about ‘political’ matters.
The mistake is also made by people who like and
believe in Catholic Social teaching, particularly
politicians and economists. Quite genuinely such
people are committed to what the Church teaches, but
often on the basis of a couple of articles written about
specific issues are quickly seen as experts in it (part of
the problem is that there aren’t many experts in it!).
Both views overlook that the Church makes it very
clear that Catholic Social Teaching is a branch of moral
theology. It is primarily about theology - that is, what
we believe and say about God. This realisation can
be very unsettling as it makes it hard to dismiss what
the Church says. We saw this in the EU referendum
just over two years ago: I wrote an article for the
Catholic Herald explaining the guidance Catholic
teaching was able to give us (that is, it helped us to be
opposed completely to the ‘Leave’ campaign) with the
provocative title ‘It’s the Theology, Stupid!’ It caused
considerable offence and a crop of very angry letters.
At the heart of the theology of Catholic Social
Teaching is the concept of the dignity of the human
person created in the image of God. Christianity
teaches us that because we are made in God’s image
we have an inalienable and unconditional dignity
and sacredness. Our human rights theory, which
is more extensive than those developed in political
life, is characterised by seeing our rights and dignity
as coming from God - and that means they can’t be
changed. An example would be what we teach about
the rights of refugees and migrants: even though
these are enshrined in international law, and being
somewhat challenged by unscrupulous politicians
(including some in various parts of Europe who claim
to be committed Catholics), for us because these rights
stem from our dignity as persons created by God,
they’re not negotiable.
In our time one of the most important theologians
of the human person was St John Paul II. He had been
immersed as a student and young priest-professor in
the ways in which Christian philosophers had written
about the human person (in the movement known
as ‘personalism’) and of course he worked through
this in the context of the assault by the Nazis on the
dignity of the human person in Poland and the rest
of Europe during the Second World War. Reflecting
on the nature of the human person doesn’t simply give
us rights because we’re created by God: it also helps
us understand that our personhood is defined by our
relationships with others. Through these relationships
we have the potential to become good people, to be
able to try and avoid selfishness, individualism and
competitiveness. This concept of the human person
rooted in the Christian doctrine of creation is totally
at odds with the Enlightenment idea of the individual,
isolated and ‘self-made’, characterised by a false idea of
autonomy and freedom. This contrast between ideas
shows how important a properly rooted Catholic Social
Teaching is: so much of what is wrong in contemporary
Britain is because of the false and damaging exaltation
of the individual.
It also follows that if we deny the dignity of the
person we are denying God. When human persons,
created in God’s image, are denied their dignity and
sacredness, we’re really rejecting authentic belief in
God; it’s a form of blasphemy. In future months when
we look at the history of social teaching and examples
of it, try and remember that it’s deeply theological , all
the time.