The social teaching of the Church

Choose an option and you are told at once whether it was right. The answer and the reason wait behind “Show the answer”.

A watercolor of lambs building a stone well, carrying planks and a wheelbarrow, and sharing cups around a low table beside the stream flowing from it

What kind of teaching is “the social teaching of the Church”?
1. A set of directions telling us which party and which policies the Church is backing
2. A specialist field that studies economics and politics, and so a separate thing from faith
3. A moral teaching that throws the light of the Gospel on human life and society and judges them by it
4. Nothing but an internal rulebook for the clergy to keep, with no bearing on ordinary believers
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Answer ③ A moral teaching that throws the light of the Gospel on human life and society and judges them by it
Social teaching is not a party platform, and it is not a branch of economics either. It belongs to morality: wherever the basic rights of the person and the salvation of souls are at stake, it judges by the light of the Gospel. It is not the Church's place to supply the technical solutions.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2419-2423
Which of these best states what the common good is?
1. What the majority wants — if more people end up satisfied, that is the common good
2. The sum total of the conditions of social life that let people, each of them, reach their own fulfilment more fully
3. The strength and the interest of the state — once the country is strong, its people are better off in turn
4. The total you get by adding up the private interests each person has secured
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Answer ② The sum total of the conditions of social life that let people, each of them, reach their own fulfilment more fully
The common good is not settled by a majority vote, and it is not arrived at by totting up private interests. The first choice leans toward a utilitarianism that sacrifices the minority to satisfy the many; the fourth leans toward individualism. The common good holds together respect for the person, the well-being of society and peace, and inside it not one person is turned into a means.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1905-1912
What does the principle of subsidiarity mean?
1. It is more efficient for the larger community to take everything on, so the smaller ones step back
2. A smaller community has to stand on its own, taking neither help nor interference from the larger one
3. The state must never, under any circumstances, lay a hand on the affairs of individuals and families
4. A community of a higher order must not take away what a lower one can do, but should support it in doing it itself
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Answer ④ A community of a higher order must not take away what a lower one can do, but should support it in doing it itself
Subsidiarity is neither collectivism nor leaving people to fend for themselves. The first choice swallows the smaller community; the second and third let go just where a hand was needed. Subsidiarity gives help without living the smaller community's life for it, and when the common good calls for it, a community of a higher order stepping in becomes a duty rather than an intrusion.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1883-1885
Solidarity is only a generous impulse we act on when we have something to spare; it is not a duty that justice demands.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ② No
No. Solidarity is not a feeling that rises and falls with your circumstances or your mood; it is a Christian virtue. And because it calls for the sharing of goods and a just return for work, it is a matter of justice as well. That is why it also goes by the name of “social charity”.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1939-1942, 1948
Which of these states the Church's teaching on private property correctly?
1. The right to private property is legitimate, but it stays bound to the fact that the goods of creation were made for everyone
2. Private property is an absolute right, bound to nothing else whatever
3. Private property is theft in itself, so doing away with it is the way of the Gospel
4. Property is a worldly business, and not something faith is in a position to judge
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Answer ① The right to private property is legitimate, but it stays bound to the fact that the goods of creation were made for everyone
The Church recognizes private property without making it absolute. The second choice turns ownership into a right with no limit at all; the third condemns ownership itself as sin and leans toward the collectivism the Church has rejected. The universal destination of goods comes first, and ownership stands in the position of serving it.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2402-2406
Why does the Church speak of a “preferential love for the poor”?
1. Because poor people are better and less sinful than rich people
2. Because only the poor enter the kingdom of God and the rich are shut out of it
3. Because it is one activity among many, taken up when the Church has resources to spare
4. Because God looks to the poor first, and Christ identified himself with them
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Answer ④ Because God looks to the poor first, and Christ identified himself with them
Poverty does not make anyone holy of itself, so the first choice is a misunderstanding that romanticises being poor. This love is a matter of following the direction of God's own gaze, and it is not an activity picked out when something is left over — it belongs to the mission of the Church.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2443-2448
Which of these describes a just wage correctly?
1. If employer and worker agreed to it freely, then whatever the sum is, that makes it just
2. Agreement on its own is not enough — the wage has to be a share the worker and their family can live on in dignity
3. The price the market sets is the just price, so no other measure is needed
4. The state should fix the same wage for every person
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Answer ② Agreement on its own is not enough — the wage has to be a share the worker and their family can live on in dignity
The bare fact that both sides agreed does not make a wage just. The first and third choices are plausible half-truths that make the contract and the market the last word; the fourth confuses justice with making everybody identical. Before a wage is the price of labor, it is what one household lives on.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2434
How does the Church judge a strike?
1. It shakes public order, so it is a sin in every case
2. It is a worker's right, so it is always legitimate, whatever the aim and whatever the means
3. It is legitimate when it cannot be avoided, or when it is needed to obtain a proportionate benefit, and it is not when violence goes with it or when it turns away from the common good
4. It is a worldly quarrel, so the Church passes no judgment and says nothing at all
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Answer ③ It is legitimate when it cannot be avoided, or when it is needed to obtain a proportionate benefit, and it is not when violence goes with it or when it turns away from the common good
The Church neither forbids strikes outright nor approves them outright. Miss the conditions that are attached and you slide to one of the two extremes, the first choice or the second. A strike loses its legitimacy once violence is mixed into it, or once its objectives have nothing to do with working conditions any more.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2435
Which of these states the teaching on economic activity and profit correctly?
1. Economic activity is there to serve people, and taking profit alone as the one rule cannot be accepted
2. Raising profit is the one rule a business has, and everything else comes as an extra
3. The economy turns by laws of its own, so the judgment of morality does not reach it
4. Making a profit is a sin in itself, so a Christian should not go into business
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Answer ① Economic activity is there to serve people, and taking profit alone as the one rule cannot be accepted
Profit is a sign that a business is alive, so it is no sin in itself. But the moment it becomes the only measure, the human being is pushed aside and made into a means. The second and third choices are the misunderstanding that wants the economy kept outside morality; the fourth overshoots in the opposite direction.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2424-2426
Helping poor nations is not a kindness rich nations hand out when they can afford it, but a duty they carry.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ① Yes
Yes. Faced with nations that cannot find a way to develop by themselves, rich nations carry a heavy moral responsibility. It does not stop at direct aid when disaster strikes: it is a duty of solidarity and love that has to go as far as putting right the unjust structures that keep producing the poverty.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2437-2440
Whose part is it to take a direct hand in putting the structures of society and politics right in the spirit of the Gospel?
1. It is for the clergy to take the lead and head the political parties themselves
2. It is nobody's part, since Christians do better to keep out of worldly affairs
3. It is the proper vocation of the lay faithful, and the pastors give light for judgment by setting out the principles of faith and morals
4. The Holy See should settle the concrete policies country by country and hand them down
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Answer ③ It is the proper vocation of the lay faithful, and the pastors give light for judgment by setting out the principles of faith and morals
Taking a direct hand in political structures is not the pastors' part but the vocation of the lay faithful. That does not shut faith away in private life, though, so withdrawing from the world, as the second choice does, is no answer either.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2442
Put the institutions and the structures right and a just society comes about of itself.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ② No
No. Reforming the structures is genuinely necessary, but on its own it is not enough. If the human heart does not change, a new institution soon repeats the old injustice. And the other way round, talking only about the heart while leaving the structures as they were is not the conversion the social teaching is asking for either.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1886-1889