Against this, though, at every stage of the Church’s development, at every stage of the Papacy’s development, the Church has continued stolidly to repeat and apply the provisions of justice and mercy contained in natural law and divine revelation to the economic and political actions and systems of the day. This is not at all a glorious or sexy job; it has always fallen far short of the radical economic systematizing and critique of revolutionaries and theorists. When Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum, he did little more than to insist, against economic utilitarians and materialist Marxists alike, that the ethical norm of justice was still the basis for all economic and political relations, and the Papacy still the authoritative interpreter of this justice for Christians. All of his deductions from this principle (workers are owed the natural resources to maintain their lives and families, contracts made out of a fear of starvation are coercive and illegitimate, owners of capital could not claim all of the proceeds from the sale of items made by workers, workers had the right to band together in associations) are, from a philosophical standpoint, utterly obvious or even tautological. The same is true, more-or-less, for his successors—although some of them were forced to address more technical and speculative questions. Most of what the Popes over the last century have done is simply to repeat the same basic points, and then to apply them to new developments. The latest document by Pope Francis is no exception to this role; given the terms, its conclusions about modern finance are little more than obvious. What was revolutionary, what is revolutionary, in Catholic Social Teaching, is simply the claim that in a world of technocratic experts, the moral law of justice still applies, and the Papacy is still its most authoritative interpreter.
Divine Revelation, as Aquinas insisted, exists for many reasons; but one of the most important is to provide the authoritative moral guidance necessary for man’s natural moral perfection, and through that his supernatural salvation. If Divine Revelation has no bearing upon the natural virtue of justice, then it is impotent at its goal, and ought to be rejected. And if the Church on Earth, if the Successor of St. Peter, has no authority to interpret and apply natural law and Divine Revelation as they pertain to the requirements of justice in the economic and political spheres, then one ought to become a Protestant.
I invite you, then, to read the new Vatican document concerning the modern financial system. Its deductions and applications of ethical norms and past teaching are, in all cases I can understand, simple and unexceptionable. What it proposes, what it sets forth, is not, as you may think, some dubious economic proposals by an amateur; it is the divine voice of the Church’s Magisterium telling us about the requirements of justice in our own society and our own lives. It is by this standard of justice, far stricter and more all-encompassing than Pope Francis’, that we will all be judged:
Then he will say to those on his left: ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you did not give me to eat, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ […] And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the just into life eternal. (Matthew 25:41-43,46)
Still, even if we fall short of the bar of divine justice, we can always ask for the mercy of God, for ourselves and each other and the whole world. Let us not fail to do so.
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