What Ails Catholic Social Teaching? By Fr. Desmond de Sousa CSsR, SAR NEWS
PANAJI, Goa (SAR NEWS) -- When the Pope speaks on Catholic sexual morality, the priests set the pulpits on fire in communicating authoritatively to the faithful in the pews. When the Popes for over 100 years speak authoritatively on Catholic social morality, the priests in the pulpits are cold and indifferent. Why so? One cynical reason is that teachings on sexual morality are usually for married people to practice. Priests are silent on social morality because they will have to practice what they preach and that is a rather uninspiring prospect! But an example from personal experience may be closer to the truth. A whole night prayer vigil with healing service -- which is non-essential to Catholic faith -- needs minimum propaganda to draw more than 10,000 devotees. A lecture or discussion on Catholic Social teaching - which is essential to Catholic faith -- draws just handful of participants. Why so? Is it that our famed Catholic (universal) spirituality is skewed in favour of introverted, individualistic, "miraculous" solutions to mere personal problems rather than the self-sacrifice, universal concern and solidarity for the "others," like the poor, deprived, marginalised and oppressed? Again from experience, one thing is certain. Novenas to Our Lady and the saints, which have the possibility of personal favours "miraculously" answered, draws far more crowds of Catholics than the Eucharist, which challenges devotees to share in the self-sacrifice of Christ for others. Do devout Catholics, so sensitive to any perceived "desecration" of the consecrated host or the person of Christ in films, not feel outraged when human persons are degraded, and thereby God is insulted!? In the early 1980s, at an FABC meeting, I remember Cardinal Stephen Kim of Seoul, South Korea, posing a prophetic question. Is the role of the Church in the world to build up its own kingdom, or to die in building up God's Kingdom? Maybe the centuries old dualism in spirituality between the Church as the "place of salvation" and the world as "the place of damnation" is far more engrained than the more recent Catholic faith perception, that the Church is the sign and symbol of God's Kingdom irrupting in the world. After all, God so loved the world that God sent Jesus, that all who believe in him, may have eternal life. Therefore participation in the genesis of the Kingdom of God in the world, and not the expansion of the institutional Church, is the only absolute value worth living and dying for. For when the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness, the institutional Church will have served its role and disappear! A recent article had another possible reason for what ails Catholic Social teaching. It lacks the fiery breath of the Spirit, the Spirit of fire that characterized the proclamations and denunciations of the prophets. Even Pope Benedict confesses, "It must be admitted that the Church's leadership was slow to realize that the issue of the just structuring of society needed to be approached in a new way…Faced with new situations and issues, Catholic Social teaching thus gradually developed, and has found a comprehensive presentation in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church published in 2004. (God is love, n.27). Does the monumental Compendium fit Jesuit Bernard Lonergan's pithy remark, "The Church arrives on the scene a little late and breathless!?" Will it become, like all past Catholic Social encyclicals, "The Church's best kept secret!?" The challenge to Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is to inspire the faithful to "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world as a constitutive dimension of preaching the Gospel, or of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation."(Justice in the World, introduction). But there are drawbacks to fulfilling its purpose. In content CST is to Euro-centric in its perspective of global and local issues When the axis of Christianity has shifted from North to South, the burning, life-threatening issues of the struggling peoples of the South should get highlighted. India, for example, is crippled by the cataclysmic urban-rural chasm, imminent ecological catastrophe, 93% of the work force unorganized with no social security. Family values and indigenous cultures are eroded by intrusive, western cultural imperialism like mass and luxury tourism, "Americanization" of the media through aggressive advertising. In method, CST is too deductive rather than inductive, providing little inspiration to grassroots efforts of people's struggles, social movements and associations in civil society. It needs to draw inspirational resources from Indian history and tradition that enable the formulation of public policies, rather than merely propounding "doctrine" and "teaching." It is only when the local Church is rooted in the daily struggles of the people in the country that prophetic proclamation and denunciations will emerge. Such genuine prophetism through rootedness in the death-dealing struggles of the poor, deprived, marginalized and oppressed will liberate the Church in India, especially her leadership, from disproportionate attention to liturgical questions and sexual morality. Only when the social morality becomes transparent, then will the concerned and compassionate face of Christ be apparent in the ministers and ministries of the Church.
