Applying social teaching to real life

On the front page this week, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard calls on Catholics to learn and apply the Church's social teaching. He summarizes that complex and rich teaching in three sentences:

1. Every person has been endowed by God with a dignity that is unique, sacred and inviolable;

2. From that dignity, certain rights flow: life, food, clothing, shelter, employment, education and health care; and

3. A solidarity exists among the members of the human family.

We would guess that all Catholics concur with those declarations -- in the abstract. It's when they get applied to real life -- especially to their own real lives -- that some Catholics begin to flinch:

* If every person is endowed with God-given dignity and enjoys the right to life, then abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment are wrong, and Catholics must work to end them by doing such things as marching for pro-life legislation, publicly condemning Dr. Kevorkian's actions and urging legislators to repeal death penalty laws;

* If all humans have a right to adequate food and shelter, then welfare reform is anti-Christian when it forces needy people to sleep in the streets or go begging for meals;

* If a solidarity exists among all people, then racism and anti-Semitism are sins, and powerful nations cannot launch missiles at weaker ones, especially when there's even the appearance of using force to distract attention from a president's crisis of leadership.

Two other articles on the front page demonstrate how Catholic social teaching can be applied to real-life situations. First, Pope John Paul II, in his statement on the World Day of Peace, condemns not only the arms trade and the recruitment of children as soldiers, things which most of us will never do, but also unbridled consumerism, which all of us are tempted to. The Pope, in fact, calls such consumerism "no less pernicious" than Marxism, Nazism or fascism -- tough words for Catholics as they face January bills for Christmas spending.

The second article applying social teaching concerns the pre-Christmas bombing of Iraq by President Clinton. Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, the head of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services, said the bombing "should cause serious moral concern for all Americans."

As the chaplain for all American military personnel around the world, Archbishop O'Brien declared: "Once civilian leadership decides a policy requiring military action, it is the sworn obligation of all in our armed forces to execute their mission in complete obedience -- unless in a specific instance the required action is judged clearly illegal or immoral. In executing orders that might violate just war requirements, military personnel face a serious moral challenge. Any individual who judges an action on his or her part to be in violation of the moral law is bound to avoid that action."

In the case of the bombings of Iraq, he continued, officials of the U.S. bishops' conference had raised "serious questions as to the justifiability of military action."

In short, it's fairly easy being Catholic if we simply profess abstract beliefs and then go about our business without regard for them. Catholicism is not so simple, however, if we strive seriously to apply those beliefs to our personal and civic lives.

(01-07-99)

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