I having been writing a series of posts on Catholic Social Doctrine in recent weeks, taking from the Compendium of The Social Doctrine of the Church to do so.
Underscored in those posts, and one of the firm bases on which the Church’s social teachings rest, is the principle of subsidiarity and the primacy of the human person.
I have also posted a couple of excerpts from Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Deus Caritas Est that so well expresses in summary fashion the essence of the social doctrine of the Church. If you have not read Deus Caritas Est, log on to the Vatican’s website and read it.
I want to include today, another quote from this encyclical.
Love – caritas – will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person – every person – needs: namely, loving personal concern… Deus Caritas Est, n. 28
In other words, as we work for social justice within politics and economics, we cannot, ever, cease from giving of our material possessions to the poor man or woman next door. The immediacy of need seen in the faces of the human person who is within our sight demands a loving, concrete response. This is not an optional thing. It is imperative. This is another reason why we must protect the unborn child within us….. he or she requires us to respond with love to his or her very presence….. even if the child’s conception and generation appears to have been from injustice or creates economic imbalances to us or to society at large.
I was reminded of this yesterday as I was visiting the Minnesota Zoo up in the Twin Cities. A young mom and dad were enjoying the sights with their son who was in a stroller. The young lad, I would guess about a year old, suffered from a condition, (the proper name of which I cannot recall) in which he lacked the frontal lobe of his brain. I was left thinking of how relaxed this family looked, and happy. I have thought several times since of the life-long responsibility they share in loving and nurturing this child. If I have to guess, these parents were not thinking of any sense of injustice befalling them, but rather the demands of love which brought joy to their lives.
