#268: Benedict Goes Outside the Box

EXCERPT: Benedict XVI’s new social encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” ("Charity in Truth") largely confirms and updates previous Catholic social teachings, without breaking dramatic new ground. But he does so in a way that greatly surprised me.

Modern Catholic social doctrine has been largely shaped by papal encyclicals, beginning with Leo XIII’s "Rerum Novarum" ("Of New Things," 1891) and continuing with major contributions by Pius XI, John XXIII, Paul VI, and John-Paul II.

Rerum Novarum launched this modern era in Catholicism's worldview by focusing the Church's attention on "the social question." This phrase, a household word among thinkers and leaders between 1870 and 1914, questioned the circumstances in which Europe’s newly-emerged working classes were laboring and living. Those raising "the social question" -- including Pope Leo XIII -- wondered why the emergence of competitive market societies (modern capitalism) had not produced the "liberty, equality, fraternity" expected of modern democracies. With Rerum Novarum, the Catholic Church joined forces with those who believed that social reforms and political intervention might be required to correct the injustices of "unbridled capitalism."

Paul VI: Prophet of Globalization. Papal encyclicals after 1891 amplified or updated Rerum Novarum, but Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio (1967) attempted a more radical project: Totally re-framing the social question in light of the new global era emerging in the 1960s due to decolonization, air transportation, mass media, and multinational corporations.

While American politics was still obsessing over tensions between capitalist West and communist East, Pope Paul was already focused on relations between the rich North and the poor South, and he re-set the social question on a new basis: development. "Development," he famously said, "is the new name for peace."

Paul did not use the term "globalization," but his vision of an emerging new world order scared off many readers, so that Populorum Progressio has languished in a neglected state, even as globalization itself has blossomed into a dominant force in our social, political, and economic lives.

Benedict's surprise move is to refocus attention squarely on Populorum Progressio, even calling it "the Rerum Novarum of our time." In effect, this conservative pope, writing in the enormous wake of John-Paul II, has ironically cast himself as the champion of Paul VI’s world vision.