Catholic Sociology

Extract

Catholic sociology may perhaps best be described as the mind of the Church on social questions. It is the application to social life (man in society) of the universal concepts of the faith. This is the first thing to be grasped about Catholic sociology, that it is essentially an inference from Catholic theology, and such as could be made therefore by anyone having a perfect knowledge of the faith.

As a matter of fact, however, the social implications of Catholic theology have been worked out at a very high level, so that there is in existence today a code of social principles which may be correctly described as the authoritative teaching of the Church on social questions. The corpus or main body of such teaching is to be found in various Papal encyclicals from the time of Leo XIII.

The nature and scope of Catholic sociology are well indicated in the following passage from Quadragesimo Anno in which Pope Pius XI asserts the right of the Church to pontificate on social questions:

We must lay down the principle long since clearly established by Leo XIII, that it is Our right and Our duty to deal authoritatively with social and economic problems. It is not, of course, the office of the Church to lead men to transient and perishable happiness only, but to that which is eternal; indeed the Church believes that it would be wrong for her to interfere without just cause in such earthly concerns. But she never can relinquish her God-given task of interposing her authority, not indeed in matters of technique, for which she has neither the equipment nor the mission, but in all those that fa11 under the moral law. With regard to these, the deposit of truth entrusted to Us by God, and Our weighty office of declaring, interpreting and urging, in season and out of season, the entire moral law, demand that both the social order and economic life be brought within Our supreme jurisdiction.