Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is generally considered to have started with the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII The Condition of Labor (Rerum Novarum). This encyclical called out the wretched conditions of industrial workers and articulated the rights and duties of workers and employers, including the rights of workers to organize. On this foundation, the social teaching of the Church has evolved over the past century through a series of papal writings, Vatican II documents, and pastoral letters from bishops’ conferences. Some dominant themes in these documents include the inherent dignity of each person, the rights of workers to a job with decent working conditions and a just wage, the social mortgage on private property, the responsibility to work for the common good, and a “preferential option for the poor”.
The tradition has also recommended a particular way of applying the principles of Catholic social teaching. In the 1961 encyclical Christianity and Social Progress (Mater et Magistra), Pope John XXIII recommended a process being developed with young workers (Jocists) by church leaders in Belgium through which lay people could change unjust social and economic conditions. The process involved three steps: (1) Observe: examine the current situation; (2) Judge: evaluate the situation in terms of the Gospel and the social teaching of the church; and (3) Act: decide how one can change the situation to better conform to CST. This brief article introduces and applies this process: (1) summarizing some facts about rural poverty in the U.S. (Observe), (2)examining how Catholic Social Teaching has evaluated this situation (Judge), and (3) reviewing how CST calls for actions that “change hearts and change structures.”(Act)
Rural Poverty in the United States: geographically concentrated, persistent, and segregated and concentrated by race/ethnicity
Poverty in the United States is not evenly distributed across the landscape. Official poverty rates are higher in nonmetropolitan counties than in metropolitan counties and rural poverty is spatially concentrated in certain regions.
High poverty is very often persistent in rural counties with high concentrations of Black, Hispanic and Native American populations. Many of these persistent poverty counties appear to be poverty traps, in which escape from poverty is uncommon. The dark red areas on the absolute upward mobility map are those where the upward economic mobility of children from low-income households is very low.
Over the past half century, the U.S. poverty rate has been reduced, in part because the U.S. has created a social safety net that reduces income poverty. Because safety net is more effective in reducing poverty in rural areas, poverty has declined more in rural areas than in urban areas. But the structures that produce low wages and inequality have not changed. Wages in the U.S. have stagnated for both urban and rural workers without college degrees. and income inequality has increased dramatically since the early 1980s. The nation has not succeeded in developing policies that substantially change the structure of economic opportunity, reduce income/wealth inequality, increase upward mobility out of poverty, or make wage-enhancing investments in people and places.
Catholic Social Teaching on Poverty: A preferential option for the poor
Jesus was raised in a religious tradition in which prophets condemned oppression and economic injustice, and psalmists reminded the Jewish community that “God hears the cries of the poor.” It is clear from Jesus’ life and teachings that he identified with the poor and that he expected his followers to care for the poor, Indeed, he preached that one’s salvation depended on caring for the “least of these.” (see Matthew, Chapter 25)
Catholic Social Teaching is the evolving authoritative reflection of the church on how Christians ought to respond in our own times to the Gospel message. Of the several major CST themes mentioned in the introduction, the most directly relevant to rural poverty is the “preferential option for the poor,” articulated by Latin American theologians and bishops in the latter third of the twentieth century and confirmed as a central tenet of CST in writings of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis.1
The concept of the preferential option for the poor plays a prominent role in the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (1986), in which the church is called to “see things from the side of the poor.” In a special section devoted to poverty in the U.S., the bishops decry the increasing numbers of women, children and minorities who lack “sufficient material resources required for a decent life.” They judge that alleviation of poverty will require “fundamental changes in social and economic structures”, “programs that enable the poor to help themselves”, and elimination of stereotypes that stigmatize the poor. And they go on to suggest a number of elements of a national strategy to reduce poverty, including structural changes that would be needed to “build and sustain a healthy economy that provides employment opportunities at just wages for all adults who are able to work.”
A Call to Conversion and Action: Changing hearts and changing structures
CST challenges us to act. In his apostolic letter A Call to Action (1971), Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the need for lay Christians to reflect on the condition of the world and apply Gospel principles to the situation they observe. Lay people, he asserted, “should take up as their own proper task the renewal of the temporal order.”
Ten years later, a world Synod of Bishops strongly affirmed in Justice in the World that “action for justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel.”
One of the clearest statements of the challenge to each of us in CST is “A Call to Conversion and Action” in Economic Justice for All:
“The challenge of this pastoral letter is not merely to think differently, but also to act differently. A renewal of economic life depends on the conscious choices and commitments of individual believers who practice their faith in the world.… We cannot separate what we believe from how we act in the marketplace and the broader community, for this is where we make our primary contribution to the pursuit of economic justice.” (25)
“The transformation of social structures begins with and is always accompanied by a conversion of the heart… But personal conversion is not gained once and for all. It is a process that goes on through our entire life. Conversion, moreover, takes place in the context of a larger faith community: through baptism into the Church, through common prayer, and through our activity with others on behalf of justice.” (325)
Bruce Weber
Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics
Oregon State University
1 Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1988) and Centesimus Annus (1991) and Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013).
