Author Edward Hadas Counsels of Imperfection: Thinking through Catholic Social Teaching
by Edward Hadas (Catholic University of America Press, $34.05/£36.50 paperback)
Frank Litton
This is not a propitious moment for Catholic social teaching (CST) in Ireland. Not only is there no serious conversation on the condition of our society and the future of our politics; if there were the Church would hardly be a welcomed interlocutor.
It is hard to gauge the influence of Catholic social teaching on politics and policy-making. The exigencies of capitalism managed in a liberal democratic order have largely determined the trajectory of our history.
Impact
The impact of the Church was minor and largely supportive of the dynamics. We could perhaps point to the ‘social partnership’ of the 1980s and 1990s that is credited with making way for the Celtic Tiger.
Certainly, this exercise in ‘neo-corporatism’ had echoes of the corporatism favoured by the Church in the inter-war years. Its immediate inspiration, however was the ‘Nordic model’ popular with small European states. Our version did have a unique feature: representatives of the unemployed, the marginalised and excluded joined the unions and employers in search of the common good.
Anti-capitalist
Overall, the anti-capitalist element in CST was muted and the decision to open the economy to the forces of international capital and rely on foreign direct investment (FDI) for our economic prosperity went unchallenged. It is hardly surprising that we endorse the neoliberal mindset with its individualism even if we sometimes grumble at its policies.
Such unreflective satisfaction is not found in other liberal democracies. The prospect of catastrophic climate change, the growing inequality of a capitalism untethered from the control of national states and a changing political landscape where traditional political parties lose members and supporters, displaced by populists, both left and right unsettles expectations. A lively debate is emerging on the limitations of the liberal order that brought Europe peace and prosperity after the Second World War.
Edward Hadas, a research scholar at the Dominicans’ Blackfriars Hall in Oxford, provides an excellent guide to what CST can contribute to this debate. Dr Hadas is clear: CST does not – as Marxism and neoliberalism do – promise to solve all the world’s problems. We cannot escape the imperfections of this fallen world. We are, willy-nilly, complicit in them and they dim our vision. We can, however, learn to see them for what they are, taught by revelation and the Church’s moral tradition.
The book opens with a chapter outlining the guiding ideas of CST and the context in which they emerged. Subsequent chapters discuss how these play out in practice, starting with a review of their biblical and philosophical bases. Dr Hadas is well informed on both. Thanks to his work as a journalist, he knows how the world works. This gives the book its particular strength. As he discusses economics, Church and state, war and peace and ecology we learn of the strengths and failures of the Church as a teacher who was often slow to catch up with the realities confronting her students.
Dr Hadas points to the many positives of the modern world and the liberal democratic order while noting the Church’s reservations: democracy, human rights that acknowledge human dignity, an economic order that brought comfort and prosperity to many and has reduced the afflictions of poverty across the world. There is light but there are also shadows. As these become more threatening, CST becomes more relevant even if it goes against the grain of neoliberal culture.
CST cannot be ‘a laying down of the law’; it is a conversation in which the world of faith encounters the business of making a living and finding peace, seeking a merging of horizons that brings the ‘Kingdom’ closer. Dr Hadas inspires us to join that conversation.