Is There a Catholic Social Ethic?

Extract

In the May local council elections in the borough of Congleton, Cheshire, I stood as a Labour Party candidate in one of the wards. It consisted of rich Cheshire farmland and the result was quite predictable. I received 106 votes to the Tory 432. If Labour had won in the ward of Brereton, it would have signalled “the end of civilization as we know it”, and, to employ the phrase of Caspar Weinburger, U.S. defence spokesman, when interviewed on BBC World Service, the capitulation of the west to “Soviet hordes”. That, however, is not the point of this article. I am a “practising Catholic”, by which is meant a Catholic holding to the teaching of the Church and attending the sacraments. Now, a little down the road on which I live there happen to be a number of Catholic families, also “practising”, indeed pillars of the local Church. But in contrast to me two of these families supplied the bulk of the ten signatures the local Tory candidate required for his nomination. That is quite a public commitment because their names went up in print on the town hall and local parish notice boards, where I spotted them. As a political commitment it is second only to standing as a candidate. It was this which set me thinking if in fact we can talk about a Catholic social ethic.