Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The Catholic Perspective on the Common Good
A first framework of analysis may be provided by Catholic social teach-
ing. Although Catholic social ethics refers at its foundation to a belief in
a creating and redeeming God who sustains and judges human societies,
it also advances a normative view of social relations that may be shared
with other communities of religious and moral belief. The distinctive
contributions of this view are that it upholds relatively objective and uni-
versal standards of behavior, it emphasizes human solidarity above indi-
vidualism, it trusts in and relies on a human propensity for cooperative
social living, and it evokes imaginative empathy with our fellow human
beings by drawing on biblical symbols and commands. In the last half
century, this normative view of society has become increasingly global
in scope.
This social vision goes back in its essentials to Aquinas and even Saint
Augustine; but it makes its signature modern appearance in 1891 in the
encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII,
Rerum Novarum
(
On the Condition
of Labor
). An admittedly somewhat conservative response to the abuses
of industrialization, this encyclical sought to maintain order and deter
Marxist revolution by urging the property-owning classes to use their
wealth in responsible ways, and to recognize the basic material and social
rights of workers. Some of Leo's main concerns are captured in the fol-
lowing statement of his program for just social reform:
To the State the interests of all are equal whether high or low. The poor are
members of the national community equally with the rich; they are real compo-
nent parts, living parts, which make up, through the family, the living body; and
it need hardly be said that they are by far the majority. It would be irrational to
neglect one portion of the citizens and to favor another; and therefore the public
administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort
of the working people, or else that law of justice will be violated which ordains
that each shall have his due.
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Later eras modified, if not abandoned, Leo's organic view of society and
his assumption that the state and the higher classes shall take the lead
in making provision for the lower classes. Yet the lasting contributions
of this encyclical include the ideas that the state and all social relations
are subject to higher laws of justice and reason; that the state's function
is to order and serve society according to the moral law; that members
of society enjoy a basic equality; that human persons by nature exist in
