HOW SOCIAL JUSTICE CAME IN FROM THE COLD

One of the anomalies of English Catholicism is that Catholics working for social justice have in the past been made to feel they are oddities, peripheral to the main life of the Church, worship, sacraments, and prayer, a troublesome  add-on, sometimes vaguely threatening.  Yet the St Vincent de Paul Society active in every parish and  the red boxes of the Pontifical Mission Societies (MISSIO today) in Catholic households were a constant reminder of belonging to a Church rooted amongst the poor throughout the world.

Pope John XXXIII and Pope Paul VI were clearly concerned about global poverty.  But the subject was not directly addressed in a discrete document by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).  This was, to some degree,  remedied by Pope Paul VI’s  Populorum Progressio in 1967, his Apostolic Letter to the laity and the Pontifical  Justice and Peace Commission in 1971, Octogesima Adveniens, alongside  "Justice in the World", a document dealing with the issue of justice and liberation of the poor and oppressed, produced by a Synod of Bishops (established by Paul VI as a follow-up to the Council) meeting in Rome that year .

It was Liberation Theology with its theme of “the preferential option for the poor” emerging  from Latin America in the late 1960s and 1970s which brought a distinctive development in what was an unbroken tradition whose origins lie in the New Testament and the early Church, and carried forward by bishops and theologians through to the 5th century, and by Religious Orders after that.  It might be summed up as a demand on Christians to make “a decisive and radical choice in favour of the weakest”. 

Yet, so little is done to make ‘ordinary’ adult Catholics aware of what any Pope has to say, mass-going Catholics may yet be unaware of how central to faith is Church teaching about poverty and the poor. And this is a Church which has, at least since  the 1950s, taught Catholic social teaching in its schools based on papal encyclicals dating back to the Pope Leo’s XXIII’s Rerum Novarum on capital and labour, and  workers’ rights.

Priests and Sisters working in barrios, or supporting peasants under semi-feudal conditions, alarmed a powerful minority of Latin American bishops who saw proximity to power, dinner with the oligarchs and generals, as a sign of the Church’s influence.  And some, such as Francis before he became Pope, believed they could garner some protection for their radical clergy.  Others steered clear but did not speak or act decisively. Martyrdom awaited those who did. 
 
Because of its work in Latin America,  the London-based CIIR (the Catholic Institute for International Relations) challenged British Foreign policy and promoted the theology of liberation from the mid-1970s. As the 1980s progressed, more development agencies and charitable bodies alleviating poverty also began advocating anti-poverty measures.   By 1985 it was the Foreign Office’s  opinion that CIIR’s staff were communists.  None were. 

Alleviating  poverty remained an official mission of the church.  But trace the development of charities such as The Passage set up in 1980 for homeless people.  Or CAFOD, the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, part of the international Caritas family in the same period.  They too moved on to advocacy of pro-poor policies.   Such official flag-ship Catholic charities –– could be distinguished from “free range” NGOs in more adversarial relationships with government which expected a degree of suspicion.

Neither Pope John Paul II with his grudging acceptance of  liberation theology’s key themes, nor Pope Benedict XVI, set out resolutely to dissipate this sense that work for justice outside episcopal or Vatican control was seen as a potential problem.  Then along came Francis, a Pope who himself seemed to many conservatives – dangerously - out of control and who himself tried to demonstrate what the Church’s relationship with the poor should be.

Pope Leo XIV set out immediately to act in such a way as to heal divisions and to calm Vatican and conservative anxieties. He had been heralded by commentators as a missionary Pope sharing, alongside Pope Francis, a Latin American vision of a Church of the Poor born of many years in Peru.  The publication of  an Apostolic Exhortation on the Love of the Poor, Dilexi Te (I have loved You) addressed to all Christians just six months after the Conclave that elected Leo, revealed that the commentators had been right.

Dilexi Te develops a document Francis had been preparing before he died. Even the title had been chosen by Pope Francis, to follow his – longer – encyclical published in October 2024,  Dilexi Nos (He loved Us).  Leo indicates his intentions quoting from Dilexi Nos in the second paragraph, writing that in contemplation of the love of Christ “we too are inspired to be more attentive to the sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our efforts to share in his work of liberation [my italics] as instruments for the spread of his love”.   His intention is continuity as much as dispelling any idea of incompatibility between popular piety, traditional Christian practice and work for justice.

At 20,000 words Dilexi Te is more user-friendly, the language clearer than papal writings before Francis.  Popular movements are affirmed.  Solidarity “also means fighting against structural causes of poverty and injustice: of lack of work, land and housing” and denial of rights.  This demands  working “with the poor not for the poor” - re-iterating the theme of the poor as subjects of their own history which is so distinctive in liberation theology.

Pope Leo charts in detail how the Church’s option for the poor  runs throughout history.  He discusses the role of education in the eradication of poverty, the extraordinary contribution of women serving  the poor,  work with immigrants and in prisons, their spiritual needs, the importance of listening to the poor not neglecting or devaluing popular piety, and continuing almsgiving.   Sharp phrases such as  “the absolute autonomy of the market-place”, ”the dictatorship of an economy that kills”, “the empire of money”, cultures “that discard others” make the message politically clear.

Leo repeats the Church’s call for all Christians to take “a decisive and radical choice in favour of the weakest”.  But who is going to hear this call, reflect on its political implications, and act on it?  How many parishes will find it even mentioned in their weekly newsletter or bulletin?  How many sermons will share the message of Dilexi Te with congregations.  And how many bishops will write a special letter to all parishes about it?  How many mass-goers will even know the Bishops’ Conference has a website and provides a summary?
 
It’s an odd approach by bishops to the teaching authority of the Petrine Office.   Meanwhile the little and large  platoons working for social justice will be getting on with it, feeling a lot less peripheral to the mainstream than in the past.