UNCC100 Lecture 3: Module 3 - History and Principles of Catholic Social Thought
22 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
The History and Principles of Catholic Social Thought
Learning Outcome 1: Describe coherently in writing the principles of Catholic
Social Thought (CST), and through a personal written commentary on each
one, explain that the concepts of 'self' and 'community' are interrelated.
Learning Outcome 2: Analyse and evaluate the principles of CST in order to
write an argument that shows how issues relating to the dignity of the
human person and the realisation of the common good may be addressed by
you in your professional practice (ie. the degree program you are studying)
now and in the future.
-
Graduate Attribute 1: demonstrate respect for the dignity of each
individual and for human diversity
-
Graduate Attribute 2: recognise your responsibility to the common good,
the environment and society
-
Graduate Attribute 4: think critically and reflectively
-
Graduate Attribute 7: work both autonomously and collaboratively
-
Graduate Attribute 8: locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate
information
-
Graduate Attribute 9: demonstrate effective communication in oral and
written English language and visual media
3.1 Dignity of the Human Person
3.1.1 Catholic Social Teaching and Cathlic Social Thought (CST)
-
CST has had a significant impact on developing more peaceable and
compassionate societies over the centuries
-
Catholic Social Teaching offical teaching of Church
-
CST embraces this 'no-official' material that emantates from Catholic
school
-
Explains contextalises in the contemporary world
-
Universial principle importance of emapthy, recirocity and solidarity
3.1.2 The Dignity of the Human Person
-
Sean McKenna
○
Can maintaining dignity in robust situations
○
Can also be fragile in lose sense of self worth easliy,
○
It doesn’t take much to make a person feel diminished, but at the
same time it can take a great deal to destroy a person. A person
can survive the most terrible deprivations and still maintain their
sense of dignity.
○responsibility to consider not only the most robust individuals but also
the most fragile individuals when we think of how we deal with
people and how our actions might impact on their understanding of
the self, their sense of human dignity, their sense of worth.
-Kath Boyle
○All people deserve to be treated with respect
○Our dignity remains intact no matter what. And when we see some
people whose human dignity is compromised by poverty, by
inequality, by oppression, somehow all humans are diminished if
one person’s dignity is diminished
-Naomi Wolfe
○Remembering that dispite status, we are the same as the next
person
○What happens to someone else, there is an impact on everyone
○Remembering difference is ok, but focus on what brings us
together which is core humanity
-Margaret Fyfe
○Empowerment of people to take their role in society, full fulfilled
themselves and to give to society
○When we work together we strenghtening the whole community
and can develop our talents
-Catholic Social Teaching
○The Dignity of the Human Person
§Recognised the sacredness of life and the dignity of each
indivdual human person as invioable
§Every person, reasonable access to more than just bacsic
necessities of life
§Promtoes human rights, expecially whom lack accesses to
services, or whom may not be able to paricipant in
significant community activities
§Bring with it natual rights and duties
□God has imprinted his own image and likeness on
human beings (cf. Gen 1:26), conferring on them
an incomparable dignity ... In effect beyond the
rights which one acquires by one's own work,
there exist rights which do not correspond to any
work performed, but which flow from one's
essential dignity as a person
®John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991, #11
□The Church sees in men and women, in every
person, the living image of God himself. This
image finds, and must always find anew, an ever
deeper and fuller unfolding of itself in the mystery
of Christ, the Perfect Image of God, the One who
reveals God to the human person ... The whole of
the Church's social doctrine, in fact, develops from
the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of
the human person.
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 105, 107
○The Common Good
§Seeks confitions that enhance the good of all an contributes
to the achievemment of common life
§Poor and marginalised should be focus of concern
§Response to injustice at local and global levels
§Issue of poverty beyond caritable act and into the questioing
and challenging of social vales and structure
§Collabortation rather than hierchical
§Resonsibility for the environment
□it grows increasingly true that the obligations of
justice and love are fulfilled only if each person,
contributing to the common good, according to
one's own abilities and the needs of others, also
promotes and assists the public and private
institutions dedicated to bettering the conditions of
human life
®Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #30
□The principle of the common good, to which every
aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain
its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity
and equality of all people. According to its primary
and broadly accepted sense, the common good
indicates "the sum total of social conditions which
allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to
reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily".
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 164
○Subsidiarity
§Enables partiipantion of and amoung thoes who make up the
community or organisation
§Pariticpantion in decision-making processess affecting
personal and organisational life
§Promotes decision-making that is empowering of thoes
involved in and affected by process
§Ensures decision-making processess include consultation
with thoes who wil be most affected
□Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals
what they can accomplish by their own initiative
and industry and give it to the community, so also
it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil
and disturbance of right order to assign to a
greater and higher association what lesser and
subordinate organisations can do.
®Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #79
□The principle of subsidiarity protects people from
abuses by higher-level social authority and calls
on these same authorities to help individuals and
intermediate groups to fulfil their duties. This
principle is imperative because every person,
family and intermediate group has something
original to offer to the community
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 187
○Solidarity
§Acknowlwdgws that our responsibilities to all other cross all
differences
§Respects and promotes all rights
§Represents a spiritual and material solidarity with all, giving
priority to thoes in greatest need
□Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue ... In
the light of faith, solidarity seeks to go beyond
itself, to take on the specifically Christian
dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness and
reconciliation. One's neighbour is then not only a
human being with his or her own rights and a
fundamental equality with everyone else, but
becomes the living image of God the Father,
redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed
under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit.
®John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 1987 #
4
□Solidarity highlights in a particular way the intrinsic
social nature of the human person, the equality of
all in dignity and rights and the common path of
individuals and peoples towards an ever more
committed unity.
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 192
3.2 Common Good and Community
3.2.1 Further Reflection on the Common Good
-Christiaan Jacods-Vandegeer
○Creating world that is more just
○Creating world that takes care of everybody
○Discerning in our activities in creating a social order, political order
and economic order
○So the preferential option for the poor has to do with much more
than just charity, it has to do with creating a world that’s genuinely
just and that takes care of the people who suffer the most.
3.2.2 The ides of the Common Good has Several Dimensions
1. Mean that needs of all people are met
2. Includes the flourishing and fulfilment of al people in all different
dimensions of humanity
3. What is good that can only come about by being shared, 'in common'
3.2.3 The Common Good is the Responsibility of Each Person as Well as
Institutions
-The common good] implies that every individual, no matter how high or
low, has a duty to share in promoting the welfare of the community as
well as a right to benefit from that welfare. Common implies ‘all
inclusive’: the common good cannot exclude or exempt any section of
the population. If any section of the population is in fact excluded from
participation in the life of the community, even at a minimal level, then
that is a contradiction to the concept of the common good and calls for
rectification. Bishops of England and Wales, The Common Good and the Catholic Church’s Social
Teaching (1996), n.70.
3.3 What is Subsidiatity?
-David Carter
○About participant, making decisions as close as possible to the
people that they’re affected
○That includes questions like, “Can people be involved in those
decisions?” “Can they understand them?” And then, “Will the
people who’ll be offering services, for example, or implementing
those decisions be able to actually meet with those people one on
one in doing so?"
3.3.1 What Does it Facilitate?
1. Enables participation of and among those who make up the community or
organisation
2. Fosters life within the group, without undue social control and unwarranted
interference
3. Ensures participation in decision-making processes affecting personal and
organisational life
4. Promotes decision-making that is empowering of those involved in and
affected by the process
5. Ensures that decision-making processes include consultation with those who
will be most affected by them.
-Kath Boyle
○Subsidiarity means that decisions should be taken at the closest
possible level to those people who are going to be affected by
them. I think the best way to get to understand this is to think of
some examples.
○One example might be that we wouldn’t really want the federal
government in Canberra to make a decision about where to put
speed humps in my suburb. They wouldn’t know. Instead, that sort
of decision is best made by local council in consultation with the
people who live in my particular area.
-http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/themes/
-https://www.catholic.org.nz/social-action/principles/
-https://www.cctwincities.org/education-advocacy/catholic-social-
teaching/
-https://leocontent.acu.edu.au/file/8e8cfd0c-0c07-4862-92c1-118b46d20
3d4/28/notes-transcripts/promoting-human-flourishing.pdf
○Human Dignity
§All brothers and sisters which requires us to respect, value
and uphold common dignitiy for ourselves and eachother.
Human beings created in image and likeness of God -
inherent worth and distinction
§This is the most important principle because it is from our
dignity as human persons that all other rights and
responsibilities flow.
○Human Equality
§Equality of all people comes from their inherent human
dignity
§Differences in talents are part of God's plan, but not social,
cultural and economic discriminations
○Respect for Human Life
§All people every stage of life inherent dignitity and a right to
life that is consistent with dignity
§Every human stage is precious and worhty of protection and
respect
○Community and Participantion
§Community linked with history, not created to live alone
§Participnat in pursying common good for community
○Solidarity
§One human family
§Work globally for justice
§Be aware of what is going on in world around us
○Preferential Protection for the Poor and Vulnerable
§Put them first
§Look at public policy decision in terms of how they afffect
the poor
○Stweardship
§Responsibility to care for all God has given us
○Universal Destination of Goods
§The earth and all it produces is intended for every person.
Private ownership is acceptable, but there is also a
responsibility to ensure all have enough to live in dignity. If
we have more than we need, there is a social mortgage to
pay to ensure others do not go without.
○Care for Creation
§Respecting all of Gods creation
§Reengage with envirnoment and trake responsibility; lvie
substainable
○Dignity in Work
§Balnace for home and work
§Catholic Social Teaching work is not durdgery, but creative,
postiive and intrinsic good
§Play our part in being co-creators in God's loving act of
creation
○Peace and Reconciliation
§Central to the gospel
§Pope Benedict XVI challenges to be true peacemakes
bringing forgiveness and non-violent soutions to situations of
hurt and violence
-9 Catholic Social Teachings
1. The Common Good
2. Dignity of the Human Person
3. Preferential Option for the Poor
4. Subsidiarity
5. The Universal Purpose of Goods
6. Stewardship of Creation
7. Promotion of Peace
8. Participation
9. Global Solidarity
Module 3
Friday, 22 June 2018
4:53 PM
The History and Principles of Catholic Social Thought
Learning Outcome 1: Describe coherently in writing the principles of Catholic
Social Thought (CST), and through a personal written commentary on each
one, explain that the concepts of 'self' and 'community' are interrelated.
Learning Outcome 2: Analyse and evaluate the principles of CST in order to
write an argument that shows how issues relating to the dignity of the
human person and the realisation of the common good may be addressed by
you in your professional practice (ie. the degree program you are studying)
now and in the future.
-Graduate Attribute 1: demonstrate respect for the dignity of each
individual and for human diversity
-Graduate Attribute 2: recognise your responsibility to the common good,
the environment and society
-Graduate Attribute 4: think critically and reflectively
-Graduate Attribute 7: work both autonomously and collaboratively
-Graduate Attribute 8: locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate
information
-Graduate Attribute 9: demonstrate effective communication in oral and
written English language and visual media
3.1 Dignity of the Human Person
3.1.1 Catholic Social Teaching and Cathlic Social Thought (CST)
-CST has had a significant impact on developing more peaceable and
compassionate societies over the centuries
-Catholic Social Teaching offical teaching of Church
-CST embraces this 'no-official' material that emantates from Catholic
school
-Explains contextalises in the contemporary world
-Universial principle importance of emapthy, recirocity and solidarity
3.1.2 The Dignity of the Human Person
-Sean McKenna
○Can maintaining dignity in robust situations
○Can also be fragile in lose sense of self worth easliy,
○
It doesn’t take much to make a person feel diminished, but at the
same time it can take a great deal to destroy a person. A person
can survive the most terrible deprivations and still maintain their
sense of dignity.
○
responsibility to consider not only the most robust individuals but also
the most fragile individuals when we think of how we deal with
people and how our actions might impact on their understanding of
the self, their sense of human dignity, their sense of worth.
-
Kath Boyle
○
All people deserve to be treated with respect
○
Our dignity remains intact no matter what. And when we see some
people whose human dignity is compromised by poverty, by
inequality, by oppression, somehow all humans are diminished if
one person’s dignity is diminished
-
Naomi Wolfe
○
Remembering that dispite status, we are the same as the next
person
○
What happens to someone else, there is an impact on everyone
○
Remembering difference is ok, but focus on what brings us
together which is core humanity
-
Margaret Fyfe
○
Empowerment of people to take their role in society, full fulfilled
themselves and to give to society
○
When we work together we strenghtening the whole community
and can develop our talents
-
Catholic Social Teaching
○
The Dignity of the Human Person
§
Recognised the sacredness of life and the dignity of each
indivdual human person as invioable
§
Every person, reasonable access to more than just bacsic
necessities of life
§
Promtoes human rights, expecially whom lack accesses to
services, or whom may not be able to paricipant in
significant community activities
§
Bring with it natual rights and duties
□
God has imprinted his own image and likeness on
human beings (cf. Gen 1:26), conferring on them
an incomparable dignity ... In effect beyond the
rights which one acquires by one's own work,
there exist rights which do not correspond to any
work performed, but which flow from one's
essential dignity as a person
®
John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991, #11
□
The Church sees in men and women, in every
person, the living image of God himself. This
image finds, and must always find anew, an ever
deeper and fuller unfolding of itself in the mystery
of Christ, the Perfect Image of God, the One who
reveals God to the human person ... The whole of
the Church's social doctrine, in fact, develops from
the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of
the human person.
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 105, 107
○The Common Good
§Seeks confitions that enhance the good of all an contributes
to the achievemment of common life
§Poor and marginalised should be focus of concern
§Response to injustice at local and global levels
§Issue of poverty beyond caritable act and into the questioing
and challenging of social vales and structure
§Collabortation rather than hierchical
§Resonsibility for the environment
□it grows increasingly true that the obligations of
justice and love are fulfilled only if each person,
contributing to the common good, according to
one's own abilities and the needs of others, also
promotes and assists the public and private
institutions dedicated to bettering the conditions of
human life
®Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #30
□The principle of the common good, to which every
aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain
its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity
and equality of all people. According to its primary
and broadly accepted sense, the common good
indicates "the sum total of social conditions which
allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to
reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily".
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 164
○Subsidiarity
§Enables partiipantion of and amoung thoes who make up the
community or organisation
§Pariticpantion in decision-making processess affecting
personal and organisational life
§Promotes decision-making that is empowering of thoes
involved in and affected by process
§Ensures decision-making processess include consultation
with thoes who wil be most affected
□Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals
what they can accomplish by their own initiative
and industry and give it to the community, so also
it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil
and disturbance of right order to assign to a
greater and higher association what lesser and
subordinate organisations can do.
®Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #79
□The principle of subsidiarity protects people from
abuses by higher-level social authority and calls
on these same authorities to help individuals and
intermediate groups to fulfil their duties. This
principle is imperative because every person,
family and intermediate group has something
original to offer to the community
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 187
○Solidarity
§Acknowlwdgws that our responsibilities to all other cross all
differences
§Respects and promotes all rights
§Represents a spiritual and material solidarity with all, giving
priority to thoes in greatest need
□Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue ... In
the light of faith, solidarity seeks to go beyond
itself, to take on the specifically Christian
dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness and
reconciliation. One's neighbour is then not only a
human being with his or her own rights and a
fundamental equality with everyone else, but
becomes the living image of God the Father,
redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed
under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit.
®John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 1987 #
4
□Solidarity highlights in a particular way the intrinsic
social nature of the human person, the equality of
all in dignity and rights and the common path of
individuals and peoples towards an ever more
committed unity.
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 192
3.2 Common Good and Community
3.2.1 Further Reflection on the Common Good
-Christiaan Jacods-Vandegeer
○Creating world that is more just
○Creating world that takes care of everybody
○Discerning in our activities in creating a social order, political order
and economic order
○So the preferential option for the poor has to do with much more
than just charity, it has to do with creating a world that’s genuinely
just and that takes care of the people who suffer the most.
3.2.2 The ides of the Common Good has Several Dimensions
1. Mean that needs of all people are met
2. Includes the flourishing and fulfilment of al people in all different
dimensions of humanity
3. What is good that can only come about by being shared, 'in common'
3.2.3 The Common Good is the Responsibility of Each Person as Well as
Institutions
-The common good] implies that every individual, no matter how high or
low, has a duty to share in promoting the welfare of the community as
well as a right to benefit from that welfare. Common implies ‘all
inclusive’: the common good cannot exclude or exempt any section of
the population. If any section of the population is in fact excluded from
participation in the life of the community, even at a minimal level, then
that is a contradiction to the concept of the common good and calls for
rectification. Bishops of England and Wales, The Common Good and the Catholic Church’s Social
Teaching (1996), n.70.
3.3 What is Subsidiatity?
-David Carter
○About participant, making decisions as close as possible to the
people that they’re affected
○That includes questions like, “Can people be involved in those
decisions?” “Can they understand them?” And then, “Will the
people who’ll be offering services, for example, or implementing
those decisions be able to actually meet with those people one on
one in doing so?"
3.3.1 What Does it Facilitate?
1. Enables participation of and among those who make up the community or
organisation
2. Fosters life within the group, without undue social control and unwarranted
interference
3. Ensures participation in decision-making processes affecting personal and
organisational life
4. Promotes decision-making that is empowering of those involved in and
affected by the process
5. Ensures that decision-making processes include consultation with those who
will be most affected by them.
-Kath Boyle
○Subsidiarity means that decisions should be taken at the closest
possible level to those people who are going to be affected by
them. I think the best way to get to understand this is to think of
some examples.
○One example might be that we wouldn’t really want the federal
government in Canberra to make a decision about where to put
speed humps in my suburb. They wouldn’t know. Instead, that sort
of decision is best made by local council in consultation with the
people who live in my particular area.
-http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/themes/
-https://www.catholic.org.nz/social-action/principles/
-https://www.cctwincities.org/education-advocacy/catholic-social-
teaching/
-https://leocontent.acu.edu.au/file/8e8cfd0c-0c07-4862-92c1-118b46d20
3d4/28/notes-transcripts/promoting-human-flourishing.pdf
○Human Dignity
§All brothers and sisters which requires us to respect, value
and uphold common dignitiy for ourselves and eachother.
Human beings created in image and likeness of God -
inherent worth and distinction
§This is the most important principle because it is from our
dignity as human persons that all other rights and
responsibilities flow.
○Human Equality
§Equality of all people comes from their inherent human
dignity
§Differences in talents are part of God's plan, but not social,
cultural and economic discriminations
○Respect for Human Life
§All people every stage of life inherent dignitity and a right to
life that is consistent with dignity
§Every human stage is precious and worhty of protection and
respect
○Community and Participantion
§Community linked with history, not created to live alone
§Participnat in pursying common good for community
○Solidarity
§One human family
§Work globally for justice
§Be aware of what is going on in world around us
○Preferential Protection for the Poor and Vulnerable
§Put them first
§Look at public policy decision in terms of how they afffect
the poor
○Stweardship
§Responsibility to care for all God has given us
○Universal Destination of Goods
§The earth and all it produces is intended for every person.
Private ownership is acceptable, but there is also a
responsibility to ensure all have enough to live in dignity. If
we have more than we need, there is a social mortgage to
pay to ensure others do not go without.
○Care for Creation
§Respecting all of Gods creation
§Reengage with envirnoment and trake responsibility; lvie
substainable
○Dignity in Work
§Balnace for home and work
§Catholic Social Teaching work is not durdgery, but creative,
postiive and intrinsic good
§Play our part in being co-creators in God's loving act of
creation
○Peace and Reconciliation
§Central to the gospel
§Pope Benedict XVI challenges to be true peacemakes
bringing forgiveness and non-violent soutions to situations of
hurt and violence
-9 Catholic Social Teachings
1. The Common Good
2. Dignity of the Human Person
3. Preferential Option for the Poor
4. Subsidiarity
5. The Universal Purpose of Goods
6. Stewardship of Creation
7. Promotion of Peace
8. Participation
9. Global Solidarity
Module 3
Friday, 22 June 2018 4:53 PM
The History and Principles of Catholic Social Thought
Learning Outcome 1: Describe coherently in writing the principles of Catholic
Social Thought (CST), and through a personal written commentary on each
one, explain that the concepts of 'self' and 'community' are interrelated.
Learning Outcome 2: Analyse and evaluate the principles of CST in order to
write an argument that shows how issues relating to the dignity of the
human person and the realisation of the common good may be addressed by
you in your professional practice (ie. the degree program you are studying)
now and in the future.
-Graduate Attribute 1: demonstrate respect for the dignity of each
individual and for human diversity
-Graduate Attribute 2: recognise your responsibility to the common good,
the environment and society
-Graduate Attribute 4: think critically and reflectively
-Graduate Attribute 7: work both autonomously and collaboratively
-Graduate Attribute 8: locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate
information
-Graduate Attribute 9: demonstrate effective communication in oral and
written English language and visual media
3.1 Dignity of the Human Person
3.1.1 Catholic Social Teaching and Cathlic Social Thought (CST)
-CST has had a significant impact on developing more peaceable and
compassionate societies over the centuries
-Catholic Social Teaching offical teaching of Church
-CST embraces this 'no-official' material that emantates from Catholic
school
-Explains contextalises in the contemporary world
-Universial principle importance of emapthy, recirocity and solidarity
3.1.2 The Dignity of the Human Person
-Sean McKenna
○Can maintaining dignity in robust situations
○Can also be fragile in lose sense of self worth easliy,
○It doesn’t take much to make a person feel diminished, but at the
same time it can take a great deal to destroy a person. A person
can survive the most terrible deprivations and still maintain their
sense of dignity.
○responsibility to consider not only the most robust individuals but also
the most fragile individuals when we think of how we deal with
people and how our actions might impact on their understanding of
the self, their sense of human dignity, their sense of worth.
-Kath Boyle
○All people deserve to be treated with respect
○Our dignity remains intact no matter what. And when we see some
people whose human dignity is compromised by poverty, by
inequality, by oppression, somehow all humans are diminished if
one person’s dignity is diminished
-Naomi Wolfe
○Remembering that dispite status, we are the same as the next
person
○What happens to someone else, there is an impact on everyone
○Remembering difference is ok, but focus on what brings us
together which is core humanity
-Margaret Fyfe
○Empowerment of people to take their role in society, full fulfilled
themselves and to give to society
○When we work together we strenghtening the whole community
and can develop our talents
-Catholic Social Teaching
○The Dignity of the Human Person
§Recognised the sacredness of life and the dignity of each
indivdual human person as invioable
§Every person, reasonable access to more than just bacsic
necessities of life
§Promtoes human rights, expecially whom lack accesses to
services, or whom may not be able to paricipant in
significant community activities
§Bring with it natual rights and duties
□God has imprinted his own image and likeness on
human beings (cf. Gen 1:26), conferring on them
an incomparable dignity ... In effect beyond the
rights which one acquires by one's own work,
there exist rights which do not correspond to any
work performed, but which flow from one's
essential dignity as a person
®John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991, #11
□
The Church sees in men and women, in every
person, the living image of God himself. This
image finds, and must always find anew, an ever
deeper and fuller unfolding of itself in the mystery
of Christ, the Perfect Image of God, the One who
reveals God to the human person ... The whole of
the Church's social doctrine, in fact, develops from
the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of
the human person.
®
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 105, 107
○
The Common Good
§
Seeks confitions that enhance the good of all an contributes
to the achievemment of common life
§
Poor and marginalised should be focus of concern
§
Response to injustice at local and global levels
§
Issue of poverty beyond caritable act and into the questioing
and challenging of social vales and structure
§
Collabortation rather than hierchical
§
Resonsibility for the environment
□
it grows increasingly true that the obligations of
justice and love are fulfilled only if each person,
contributing to the common good, according to
one's own abilities and the needs of others, also
promotes and assists the public and private
institutions dedicated to bettering the conditions of
human life
®
Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #30
□
The principle of the common good, to which every
aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain
its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity
and equality of all people. According to its primary
and broadly accepted sense, the common good
indicates "the sum total of social conditions which
allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to
reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily".
®
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 164
○
Subsidiarity
§
Enables partiipantion of and amoung thoes who make up the
community or organisation
§
Pariticpantion in decision-making processess affecting
personal and organisational life
§
Promotes decision-making that is empowering of thoes
involved in and affected by process
§
Ensures decision-making processess include consultation
with thoes who wil be most affected
□Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals
what they can accomplish by their own initiative
and industry and give it to the community, so also
it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil
and disturbance of right order to assign to a
greater and higher association what lesser and
subordinate organisations can do.
®Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #79
□The principle of subsidiarity protects people from
abuses by higher-level social authority and calls
on these same authorities to help individuals and
intermediate groups to fulfil their duties. This
principle is imperative because every person,
family and intermediate group has something
original to offer to the community
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 187
○Solidarity
§Acknowlwdgws that our responsibilities to all other cross all
differences
§Respects and promotes all rights
§Represents a spiritual and material solidarity with all, giving
priority to thoes in greatest need
□Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue ... In
the light of faith, solidarity seeks to go beyond
itself, to take on the specifically Christian
dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness and
reconciliation. One's neighbour is then not only a
human being with his or her own rights and a
fundamental equality with everyone else, but
becomes the living image of God the Father,
redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed
under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit.
®John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 1987 #
4
□Solidarity highlights in a particular way the intrinsic
social nature of the human person, the equality of
all in dignity and rights and the common path of
individuals and peoples towards an ever more
committed unity.
®Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church par. 192
3.2 Common Good and Community
3.2.1 Further Reflection on the Common Good
-Christiaan Jacods-Vandegeer
○Creating world that is more just
○Creating world that takes care of everybody
○Discerning in our activities in creating a social order, political order
and economic order
○So the preferential option for the poor has to do with much more
than just charity, it has to do with creating a world that’s genuinely
just and that takes care of the people who suffer the most.
3.2.2 The ides of the Common Good has Several Dimensions
1. Mean that needs of all people are met
2. Includes the flourishing and fulfilment of al people in all different
dimensions of humanity
3. What is good that can only come about by being shared, 'in common'
3.2.3 The Common Good is the Responsibility of Each Person as Well as
Institutions
-The common good] implies that every individual, no matter how high or
low, has a duty to share in promoting the welfare of the community as
well as a right to benefit from that welfare. Common implies ‘all
inclusive’: the common good cannot exclude or exempt any section of
the population. If any section of the population is in fact excluded from
participation in the life of the community, even at a minimal level, then
that is a contradiction to the concept of the common good and calls for
rectification. Bishops of England and Wales, The Common Good and the Catholic Church’s Social
Teaching (1996), n.70.
3.3 What is Subsidiatity?
-David Carter
○About participant, making decisions as close as possible to the
people that they’re affected
○That includes questions like, “Can people be involved in those
decisions?” “Can they understand them?” And then, “Will the
people who’ll be offering services, for example, or implementing
those decisions be able to actually meet with those people one on
one in doing so?"
3.3.1 What Does it Facilitate?
1. Enables participation of and among those who make up the community or
organisation
2. Fosters life within the group, without undue social control and unwarranted
interference
3. Ensures participation in decision-making processes affecting personal and
organisational life
4. Promotes decision-making that is empowering of those involved in and
affected by the process
5. Ensures that decision-making processes include consultation with those who
will be most affected by them.
-Kath Boyle
○Subsidiarity means that decisions should be taken at the closest
possible level to those people who are going to be affected by
them. I think the best way to get to understand this is to think of
some examples.
○One example might be that we wouldn’t really want the federal
government in Canberra to make a decision about where to put
speed humps in my suburb. They wouldn’t know. Instead, that sort
of decision is best made by local council in consultation with the
people who live in my particular area.
-http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/themes/
-https://www.catholic.org.nz/social-action/principles/
-https://www.cctwincities.org/education-advocacy/catholic-social-
teaching/
-https://leocontent.acu.edu.au/file/8e8cfd0c-0c07-4862-92c1-118b46d20
3d4/28/notes-transcripts/promoting-human-flourishing.pdf
○Human Dignity
§All brothers and sisters which requires us to respect, value
and uphold common dignitiy for ourselves and eachother.
Human beings created in image and likeness of God -
inherent worth and distinction
§This is the most important principle because it is from our
dignity as human persons that all other rights and
responsibilities flow.
○Human Equality
§Equality of all people comes from their inherent human
dignity
§Differences in talents are part of God's plan, but not social,
cultural and economic discriminations
○Respect for Human Life
§All people every stage of life inherent dignitity and a right to
life that is consistent with dignity
§Every human stage is precious and worhty of protection and
respect
○Community and Participantion
§Community linked with history, not created to live alone
§Participnat in pursying common good for community
○Solidarity
§One human family
§Work globally for justice
§Be aware of what is going on in world around us
○Preferential Protection for the Poor and Vulnerable
§Put them first
§Look at public policy decision in terms of how they afffect
the poor
○Stweardship
§Responsibility to care for all God has given us
○Universal Destination of Goods
§The earth and all it produces is intended for every person.
Private ownership is acceptable, but there is also a
responsibility to ensure all have enough to live in dignity. If
we have more than we need, there is a social mortgage to
pay to ensure others do not go without.
○Care for Creation
§Respecting all of Gods creation
§Reengage with envirnoment and trake responsibility; lvie
substainable
○Dignity in Work
§Balnace for home and work
§Catholic Social Teaching work is not durdgery, but creative,
postiive and intrinsic good
§Play our part in being co-creators in God's loving act of
creation
○Peace and Reconciliation
§Central to the gospel
§Pope Benedict XVI challenges to be true peacemakes
bringing forgiveness and non-violent soutions to situations of
hurt and violence
-9 Catholic Social Teachings
1. The Common Good
2. Dignity of the Human Person
3. Preferential Option for the Poor
4. Subsidiarity
5. The Universal Purpose of Goods
6. Stewardship of Creation
7. Promotion of Peace
8. Participation
9. Global Solidarity
Module 3
Friday, 22 June 2018 4:53 PM
Document Summary
The history and principles of catholic social thought. Learning outcome 1: describe coherently in writing the principles of catholic. Social thought (cst), and through a personal written commentary on each one, explain that the concepts of "self" and "community" are interrelated. Graduate attribute 1: demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity. Graduate attribute 2: recognise your responsibility to the common good, the environment and society. Graduate attribute 4: think critically and reflectively. Graduate attribute 7: work both autonomously and collaboratively. Graduate attribute 8: locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information. Graduate attribute 9: demonstrate effective communication in oral and written english language and visual media. 3. 1. 1 catholic social teaching and cathlic social thought (cst) Cst has had a significant impact on developing more peaceable and compassionate societies over the centuries. Catholic social teaching offical teaching of church. Cst embraces this "no-official" material that emantates from catholic school. Universial principle importance of emapthy, recirocity and solidarity.
