On Friday 11 October, at 9.00 pm, the National School of Social Doctrine of the Church will begin, which the Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (The Daily Compass) and the Cardinal Van Thuân Observatory have been organizing for several years now. Here you can see the program and how to participate. In these lines we would like to make an overall reflection on the status of the Social Doctrine of the Church to motivate our insistence on planning continuous training in this field. In fact, every year two moments are organised, one in spring dedicated to fundamentals, and one in autumn dedicated to applications. Last spring it was presented the social magisterium of Leo XIII and in spring 2025 we will do the same with that of Pius XI, given the centenary anniversary of the encyclical Quas primas with the institution of the Feast of Christ the King. This autumn we propose the topic of overcoming the human in its natural dimensions to replace it with artifice. Changing or eliminating human nature requires the exercise of enormous power which, objectively, is quite worrying. The general title of the lessons is the following: “Prisoners of an algorithm. The virtual imposed as real”.
But why do the two promoters insist on training in the Social Doctrine of the Church, while, if we look around, we don’t see a great interest in it to the point that it seems forgotten? Is ours a backwards position? To tell the truth, with this we have already touched on one of the motivations that push us to continue, namely the forgetfulness into which the Social Doctrine of the Church seems to have fallen. If we observe the criteria with which the Church has recently intervened on the main social and political dynamics, we cannot fail to notice how it has always avoided using, explicitly or implicitly, the principles of its Social Doctrine, which was therefore the great absentee in the debate. We can easily give some examples. Interventions on immigration have not taken into account the moral obligation to govern them, both outgoing and incoming, nor the fundamental criteria for doing so, concerning the common good of both immigrants and the host societies. An indiscriminate welcome does not respect the indications on duties and rights of the social teaching. The climate issue has been addressed uncritically, with excessive concessions to the dominant narrative, without making due distinctions between the scientific, moral and political levels, and sliding towards a “personification” of the natural environment to the point of questioning the centrality of man in Creation. The gender agenda has also been addressed in a confused way, with the admission of the legal and political recognition of civil unions even of homosexual couples, with the reception according to a pastoralism devoid of ideas of all forms of family and with the acceptance positive about transgenderism. Also in this case the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church on man and woman, on the theology of the body, on marriage and on the family have not been applied in the correct way. On the healthcare side, unfortunately, an absence of the Church had to be noted, which had become useless. Finally, let us remember the question of the European Union, with the episcopates of the continent aligned to support the new ideology of Europeanism.
In all these areas the Church could have accompanied and guided, insisting on the traditional principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church, avoiding hastily espousing reductive or tendentious ideologies, without giving in to the temptation to make direct interventions in the political field and also avoiding making only generic speeches set around buzz words with little theological and practical meaning, such as welcoming, integrating, accompanying, dreaming… The principle of subsidiarity, for example, could have been used both in relation to Europe and to provide a judgment on the reality of some nations, such as Italy, where political and institutional problems have emerged – the premiership or differentiated autonomy – which could have drawn valid clarifications from that principle.
Moreover, we must also note that this forgetfulness regarding the existence of a Social Doctrine of the Church is not accidental, but results from a new approach to the relationship with the world. Among the many elements of this new approach we recall only one here, namely the idea that there is an existential brotherhood between men – we are all in the same boat – which precedes any choice of reason and faith and which represents the non-transcendable background that everything conditions. If we are all brothers a priori, then all religious choices are the same, like all political choices and the Church no longer has a social doctrine with the claim of telling an original and unique truth. The Social Doctrine will only be an interpretation, valid like many others, of that common and previous existential fraternity. It will no longer be the Church that gives light to that existential brotherhood, but the opposite and the Church will no longer have anything to teach, but everything to learn by walking together with all men.
This is why we insist on our national schools of Social Doctrine of the Church. For the same reason we also invite you to attend the one in Autumn 2024
Riccardo Cascioli and Stefano Fontana
