A mission to all the community
THE TABLET., London
03 July 2014
Shortly after his
appointment last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby described
Catholic Social Teaching as “one of the greatest treasures that the Churches
globally have to offer”, sentiments he has since repeated. Nearly 20 years ago,
under Archbishop George Carey, the Church of England gave a warm reception to
the statement by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales on “The Common Good
and the Catholic Church’s Social Teaching”, and this interest has continued to
build. It is not altogether surprising that the General Synod is to hold a
full-scale debate on the common good at its meeting in York later this month.
Anglicans are finding the principle, which derives from classical Greek
philosophy and from the Bible, to be a valuable concept in understanding what
is happening in society today. And they have discovered in Catholic Social
Teaching a toolkit to show how certain negative tendencies can be exposed to
the redeeming influence of the Gospel.
The common good principle does not stand alone. It leads naturally to the virtue of solidarity, which needs balancing by the concept of subsidiarity and hence of a civil society that is controlled neither by the market nor the state. This underlines the key importance of human dignity, especially the preferential option for the poor by which the Church extends its particular concern to what Jesus called “the least of these my brethren”. Catholic Social Teaching is thus a web of interlocking ideas with the common good at its heart.
By virtue of its status as the national Church established by law, the common good is natural Anglican territory. This is more so even than the Catholic Church in England and Wales, which has a tradition of looking after its own rather than putting the concerns of society as a whole at the heart of its mission. But both Churches can see the way individualism has taken hold in Britain to the detriment of civil society, and are alarmed by the extent to which belief in “rational self-interest” as the guiding principle of modern economic theory has spread in society to justify selfish or greedy behaviour.
Anglicans will want to put their own gloss on the teaching so it becomes common property. In return, the Catholic Church can learn from Anglicanism the habit of mind that sees its mission as being to the whole community and not just the Catholic part of it.
The common good principle does not stand alone. It leads naturally to the virtue of solidarity, which needs balancing by the concept of subsidiarity and hence of a civil society that is controlled neither by the market nor the state. This underlines the key importance of human dignity, especially the preferential option for the poor by which the Church extends its particular concern to what Jesus called “the least of these my brethren”. Catholic Social Teaching is thus a web of interlocking ideas with the common good at its heart.
By virtue of its status as the national Church established by law, the common good is natural Anglican territory. This is more so even than the Catholic Church in England and Wales, which has a tradition of looking after its own rather than putting the concerns of society as a whole at the heart of its mission. But both Churches can see the way individualism has taken hold in Britain to the detriment of civil society, and are alarmed by the extent to which belief in “rational self-interest” as the guiding principle of modern economic theory has spread in society to justify selfish or greedy behaviour.
Anglicans will want to put their own gloss on the teaching so it becomes common property. In return, the Catholic Church can learn from Anglicanism the habit of mind that sees its mission as being to the whole community and not just the Catholic part of it.
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