308 - Social Ethics: Agenda for the Future

Social Ethics: Agenda for the Future
By Charles E. Curran

IN the light of eschatology and of the fullness of the kingdom, present social, political, and economic conditions are shown to be imperfect and in need of change. The status quo can never be totally accepted by one who has an eschatological vision. The call to improve the structures of our world must always beckon the Christian.

At the very minimum, eschatological vision provides a negative critique of existing structures. However, ultimately such a critique should also call for a positive response which works to bring about change….

An eschatological vision calls for a continual effort to change the social, political, and economic structures in which we live. However, the fullness of the eschatological vision will never be totally achieved. The Christian recognizes the power of sin in the world and the need to struggle continually against the forces of sin. The kingdom will never be perfectly present in this world; its fullness lies beyond our grasp. Imperfection and lack of completeness will characterize our structures. Likewise, one must reject the naive optimism of Protestant liberalism, which identified any change as necessarily good.

Too often in the immediate past some people readily accepted the need for social action and social change, but they quickly became disillusioned when such change did not occur. If the experience of the last decade teaches us anything, it is the need for a long-term commitment to bring about the kinds of social changes which are necessary. Romantic visionaries might be willing to give a bit of their time or a certain amount of effort in trying to bring about change, but they too readily become discouraged in the light of the long-haul situation. Consequently, the virtue of hope strengthens the individual to continue commitment to the struggle even when success seems all too absent. Relatively oppressive and unjust structures will not be changed readily, quickly, or overnight.

Since the fullness of the eschaton serves as a negative critique on all existing structures, the Christian recognizes that the kingdom cannot be totally identified with any one specific approach. The Christian must always be willing to criticize all things-including one's own vision and tactics in the light of the eschaton. Too often Christians have too readily identified the gospel or the kingdom with their own cause,

Charles E. Curran, a former President of the Catholic Theological Society, is Professor of Theology at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.
This excerpt is taken from the volume Toward Vatican III: The Work That Needs to Be Done, edited by David Tracy, Hans Küng, and Johann B. Metz ©1978 by Stichting Concilium and The Seabury Press, pp. 151-155. Used with the permission of the publishers.

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country, or philosophy. Specifically in the United States, older Protestants too readily identified the kingdom of God with the United States.¹ Immigrant Catholics at times strained too mightily to prove there was no incompatibility between being American and Catholic.²

Such a critical eschatological perspective calls for continual vigilance and self-criticism. The danger, however, always remains that people will use this as an excuse to do nothing and thus accept the status quo. Eschatological vision should never be employed as an excuse for non-involvement. Christian theology must be willing to criticize all ideologies and their approaches, but there are still some approaches which are more adequate than others and must be adopted in practice. The Christian eschatological vision must be willing to become incarnate in concrete historical, cultural, and political circumstances even though one recognizes the risks involved….

Although eschatological considerations are most important, I do not think eschatology alone (especially apocalyptic eschatology) can serve as an adequate basis for the development of moral theology or social ethics. I have proposed that the stance or logical first step in moral theology embraces the fivefold Christian mysteries of creation, sin, incarnation, redemption, and resurrection destiny. The failure to incorporate all of these aspects stands as a negative critique of such past approaches as Catholic natural law, Lutheran two-realm theory, liberal Protestantism, and Neo-Orthodoxy. More positively, such a stance provides the basic horizon or perspective within which moral theology and Christian social ethics should be developed.

Catholic social thought in general and especially since the nineteenth century has emphasized the need and importance of structural change. It is not enough merely to call for personal change and a change of heart. Catholic ethics has traditionally recognized structures and institutions as necessary aspects of human existence, even calling them natural organizations in the sense that human beings are social by nature and thus called to form groups, institutions, and structures to creatively accomplish what human beings alone are incapable of doing. Liberal Catholic social thought in the United States has often been associated with the call to reform the. social, political, and economic structures of society . ³ At times some elements of radical Catholic social reform have so stressed the personal element they have not given enough importance to the need for a change of structures.⁴

From my perspective both changes of heart and changes of structure are necessary in social ethics. Unfortunately these two aspects

¹ Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970).
² David J. O'Brien, The Renewal of American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).
³ Aaron I. Abell, American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963).
⁴ E.g., Paul Hanly Furfey, Fire on the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1936); see also William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (Garden City: Image Books, 1974).

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too often are separated, and the need for both is not stressed. The "Call to Action" conference sponsored by the American bishops in Detroit in the fall of 1976 rightfully called for structural changes but said little or nothing about the need for change of heart and all the educational and motivational aspects that can help bring about such a change.

The present nature of economic change required in the world is of such a nature that it cannot be accomplished without a somewhat radical change of attitude on the part of individual persons, and especially individual persons existing within the more wealthy nations of the world. When change itself is not too radical, then there is no need for great personal change of heart and attitudes. This has been the assumption and the premise of liberal social reformers in the United States. The myth of ever greater growth insisted that change means that more people share more equitably in the ever-growing progress-especially material progress. Progress implied more for everyone with no need for anyone to give up what one already enjoys.⁵

Already there are signs even in the United States that such an approach cannot deal with the extent of the problems that are being faced today. The energy crisis will call for a great change in life-styles and attitudes of many Americans. Ecological problems have made us very suspect of the older notion of progress and the fact that the future will be bigger and better than the present or the past. Especially in the context of the international economic order, rich nations of the world are called to a more radical type of change which cannot be accomplished without a change of heart of individuals and all that is entailed with such a change. Americans must be willing to give up some of their high material standard of living in order that other people on the earth might have an equitable share of the goods of creation. Recent proposals to the effect that "small is beautiful" remind us of the profound kinds of changes that are necessary. Thus, good theological ethical theory combined with the understanding of the magnitude of the problems that we are facing, especially in the areas of socio-economic ethics, remind us of the need for both personal change of heart and structural change. Any theological ethics which fails to recognize both will tend to be inadequate.

Catholic social thought, with its traditional emphasis on the natural law as an ordering of reason, has tended to see the world and society in general in terms of order and harmony rather than in terms of conflict and opposition. Catholic theory has seen no true opposition but rather concord between law and freedom. Good law does not restrict our freedom but rather tells human beings to do that which by nature they are called to do. Hierarchical ordering dominated our understanding of

⁵ Such an assumption in my judgment lies behind many aspects of the social reform ideas of John A. Ryan, especially his theory of underconsumption. See George C. Higgins, "The Underconsumption Theory in the Writings of Monsignor John A. Ryan" (M.A. Dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1942).

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human nature as well as our understanding of human society and of the Church, with the lower aspects serving the higher. All the individual parts work together in proper coordination and subordination for the good of the whole. When applied to the economic order, this called for the cooperation of all the individual elements and units in the economic order-capital, labor, and management working together for the common good. The corporate society proposed by many Catholic theorists and espoused by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno inculcates such an emphasis on hierarchical ordering and working together for the common good.⁶ At times in practice there was an innate realism which recognized the existence of problems and the need for some conflict in such questions as war, strikes, and disagreements; but the heavy emphasis in Catholic theory was on order and harmony.

The harmony-conflict question surfaces above all in views of society and the relationship among classes existing in society. In the economic order, Marxism talks about a class struggle between the poor and the rich. How should Catholic ethics look at such conflictual understandings of human existence? In general, Catholic social thought in my judgment must give more importance to conflict with a somewhat decreased emphasis on order and harmony. A recognition of the presence of sin, as well as a more historically conscious methodology, will put less influence on order and harmony than in an older Catholic approach. However, a greater recognition of the role of conflict does not mean that all social relationships should be seen in terms of conflict or that conflict is the ultimate and most fundamental way of viewing the human scene.

Christianity ultimately calls for love and reconciliation. Love of enemies has been a hallmark of Christian teaching and preaching-if not, unfortunately, of Christian action. Christian social ethics can never forget the appeal to the human person as person to change one's own heart and to work for a change of social structures. Conflict for the Christian cannot be the ultimate nor can it be accepted for its own sake. However, on this side of the fullness of the eschaton, at times conflict can and will be an acceptable strategy in Christian social ethics. As a strategy, it can never become an ideology or an ultimate explanation of reality. However, there will be more conflictual situations than Catholic social ethics was willing to admit in the past. Thus, for example, conflict among classes might be a necessary strategy in bringing about social change, but conflict can never be the first or the ultimate or the most important reality.

⁶ Harold F. Trehey, Foundations of a Modern Guild System (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1940).