Is the Social Teaching of the Church the "Forgotten Teaching?"

Though it is true that Jesus did not tell the Disciples how to vote, He certainly did instruct them on how to live.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Why is it that whenever the issue of voting is raised, red flags are raised with some people?

Though it is true that Jesus did not tell the Disciples how to vote, He certainly did instruct them on how to live. Part of living involves discharging our obligations of faithful citizenship.

So too, His Body, the Church, speaking through her Teaching office, continues His redemptive mission on the earth.

She therefore properly instructs the faithful concerning how to live.

Again, living involves the entirety of the human experience. That includes the social dimension of life. We live in the human community, in society.

The Catholic faith is meant to guide our social, economic, cultural and political participation within that society. That Social teaching of the Catholic Church helps us to inform our conscience so that we can participate effectively.

The Forgotten Teaching?

In one of the Missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul to the Greek City of Ephesus, recorded in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, he encountered some of the Disciples of John the Baptizer (See, Acts 19:1-10). He asked them: "Did you receive the holy Spirit when you became believers?"

They answered him, "We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." Well, Paul quickly catechized them and laid his hands upon them so they encountered the living presence of the Holy Spirit.

That passage has often come to my mind as I have tried for years to assist Catholics (and other Christians) in informing their consciences in accordance with Catholic Social teaching.

This rich wellspring of teaching, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is often unknown to many Catholics. It is as though they "...have never heard that there even was a Social teaching".

Or, when they become aware of the existence of the Social teaching, some very good Catholics begin with politically partisan positions and then try to use Catholic Social teaching as a sort of "proof text" to support their own positions.

We need to start the entire process with the Social teaching.

After all, who are baptized into Christ now live our lives, in a real sense, 'in the Church' and go into the world. We are members of a redemptive community on mission.

Increasingly, Christians across the confessional spectrum are coming to see the limitations of some recent models of political and social action such as what was called the "religious right".

I wrote an article on how the religious right went wrong entitled " How the Religious Right lost its 'Religion', lost its way and went wrong". https://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=26843

However, people are now searching for a deeper response to the cultural mission, including the political, legal and social task, one that is first, last and always, subordinated to their Christian vocation to carry on the redemptive mission of the Lord whom they follow and not one which puts political ideology or political party first.

Catholic Social teaching offers just that kind of deeper response. It insists that Christians are called, in those words of the second century "Letter to Diognetus", to become the "soul of the world."

Or, to use the Biblical imagery, we are called to be "leaven" worked into the loaf of human society (Mt. 13:33) and "salt" (Mt 5:13), seasoning human culture from within, in whatever country we live in.

Christians are still called, in the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels of St. John and St. Mark, to "go into all the world" which God loves(John 3:16, Mk. 16:15) because it is the Risen Lord who still goes into the world through us.

The Christian mission to go into the world has social implications because the Incarnation, Life, death, Resurrection, Ascension and Return of the Lord Jesus Christ, has social implications and brings with it obligations.

As the Lord told His early followers, the "fields are ripe for harvest".

Those fields include the fields of economics, culture, and, yes, even politics!

Christians carry on the redemptive work of the Lord, in part, by humanizing, transforming and elevating all of human society.

This article is adapted from material from Deacon Fournier's timely booklet "Catholics, Voting and the Common Good" available now through Catholic Online.

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