Christian Economic Ethics: History and Implications

15 Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI

15 Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI The mid-twentieth century saw further development in this tradition of Catholic social thought by means of the encyclicals Mater et magistra (“Christianity and Social Progress”) and Pacem in terris (“Peace on Earth”) by Pope John XXIII and Populorum progressio (“On the Development of Peoples”) by Pope Paul VI. And it was in 1965 that the Second Vatican Council issued Gaudium et spes (“The Church in the Modern World”). All of these documents related the church’s social principles to the problems of contemporary life. The situation The situation We are filled with an overwhelming sadness when we contemplate the sorry spectacle of millions of workers in many lands and entire continents condemned through the inadequacy of their wages to live with their families in utterly sub-human conditions. Pope John XXIII, Mater et magistra 68 While the fundamental moral commitments held steady, the world situation had changed in important ways since the time of Leo and Pius. Perhaps most important among those changes was the vivid awareness in the 1960s of the issues of poverty in “the third world,” particularly in many newly independent nations emerging out of their colonial past. Dire poverty engulfed hundreds of millions of people all over the planet. Because the Catholic Church was present in all these nations, the popes felt a special responsibility to take a global view, rather than being locked into the concerns of Europe and North America only. P Pope John XXIII ope John XXIII Angelo Roncalli was born in 1881 to a farming family in northern Italy. He was ordained a priest at the age of twenty-six and served in World 257 War I as a medical corpsman and chaplain. He was made an archbishop at age forty-four, spending many years in various positions within the Vatican diplomatic corps. He served as Archbishop of Venice for five years before his unexpected election as pope in 1958, at age seventy-seven, quite old by traditional standards. He chose the name John, more than six hundred years after the death of Pope John XXII. Down to earth and known for his personal visits to Rome’s prison and to sick children, he was deeply loved by ordinary people, both Catholics and others. John XXIII surprised the church and the world in calling the Second Vatican Council, a meeting of all Catholic bishops from around the world, which ushered in significant reforms in liturgy, ecumenism, and the mission of the church to the world. He did not live to see the end of the three-year Council, as he died in 1963 at age eighty-two. Integrating faith and economic concern F Faith and ec aith and economic lif onomic life e The moral order has no existence except in God; cut off from God it must necessarily disintegrate. Moreover, man is not just a material organism. He consists also of spirit; he is endowed with reason and freedom. He demands, therefore, a moral and religious order. Let men make all the technical and economic progress they can; there will be no peace nor justice in the world until they return to a sense of their dignity as creatures and sons of God, who is the first and final cause of all created being. Pope John XXIII, Mater et magistra 208 & 215 Like the many voices we have heard earlier in this volume, Popes John and Paul were vividly aware of the importance of integrating economic life into the broader perspective of faith. This faith in God does two things simultaneously that look contradictory to many nonbelievers but in fact are complementary. First, faith requires that all of our actions on this earth should be ordered toward our ultimate destiny of eternal life with God. Second, faith commits Christians to an intense engagement with the world, in particular with a commitment to assisting those whose lives are most endangered by the excesses of our economic system. The same God who invites us to an eternal fulfillment provides a 258 | Christian Economic Ethics foretaste of that promise in this life, to the extent that human finitude and sin do not stand in the way. Development The pr The problem of development of nations oblem of development of nations Probably the most difficult problem today concerns the relationship between political communities that are economically advanced and those in the process of development. Whereas...