How Should Catholic Social Teaching Be Taught to Seminarians?

In addressing the question posed in the title, this essay presumes Catholic Social Teaching (hereafter, CST) should be taught as a compulsory part of priestly training curricula. John Paul II famously taught that CST "belongs to the field … of theology and particularly of moral theology."¹ All moral theology investigates and clarifies the implications of the truths of faith for living the Christian life. Upper-level seminary courses in applied ethics, such as sexual ethics and bioethics, examine in the light of the Gospel large areas of Christian living such as sex, marriage and family, or health and its care and promotion. CST examines the largest of these areas, overlapping with all the others, inasmuch as it includes in its scope all the goods of life in society, especially, but not exclusively, goods pertaining to the struggle for economic subsistence. The topic is so broad that instructors might find it difficult to identify a clear end to pursue in teaching a course in CST. More will be said on this below, but this much can be said at the outset. All courses in CST should aim to impart a substantive and clear Catholic understanding of the concepts of justice and the common good, and many of the ways these can be protected and promoted in communities, especially through the ministry of priests.

This essay argues that all courses in CST for seminarians should be developed, taught, and assessed according to at least five interrelated measures: the theological, theoretical, pastoral/evangelical, interdisciplinary, and ecclesial. Before outlining each, I want to state a presupposition of the essay, which could be argued for, but for which, in the interests of time, no argument shall be given. In using the shop term "Catholic Social Teaching" (or Modern Catholic Social Teaching/Doctrine²), the essay presumes that most, though not all, of the materials drawn upon in teaching a corresponding course will be from the Church's "social documents"—chiefly papal encyclicals—published over the past 130 years.³ Limiting the essay in this way implies nothing about the value of other courses taught in Catholic social ethics, with titles such as "Faith and Justice," "Catholic Social Morality," "Traditions of Social Justice," and the like. It merely specifies a characteristic that I think should be part of seminary courses.

Five Measures

Theological

Conceptually, CST is thoroughly theological and so it should be taught that way. Christian social ethics must never be detached conceptually from the truths of faith, especially its eschatological truths. Although CST inquires into and practically applies the principles of justice and the common good, and these principles can be derived from philosophical reflection on the requisites of human flourishing, nevertheless, Christian revelation teaches us truths about the nature of the universe, the human condition and possibilities for choice that are inaccessible to natural reason and yet are necessary for rightly assessing social questions and proposing adequate solutions. It teaches that the "social order" in which all participate and upon which CST reflects is at once created, fallen, and redeemed. Humans are made "little less than God" (Ps 8:5); but they "all have sinned and fall short of God's glory" (Rom 3:23); and even after baptism, they do not do the good they want but the evil they do not want (see Rom 7:19); and yet this present suffering "is preparing for [them] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Cor 4:17); and so they "look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen" (2 Cor 4:18) in which they hope (Heb 11:1); they "walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:7), awaiting with eager longing, together with all creation, "the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom 8:21), never forgetting that they "must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body" (2 Cor 5:10), especially for how they have treated the hungry, the thirsty, the...