All Catholic social teaching, all Catholic teaching about how we should conduct our lives, is founded on it. That is the “anchoring truth” (to borrow a phrase from my friend Hadley Arkes). And let me begin with what I believe is the most important, most foundational principle of Catholic teaching about how we should conduct our lives and order our lives together: the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. That doesn’t mean that there is no room within the Church for conversation and debate-but there are some important things that are settled. There are truths to which we reliably repair because they are taught definitively by the Church. So we need to get at the truth, and here we’re blessed to know that the Church is a teacher of truth. If, for the sake of unity or anything else, we unite around a principle (or set of principles) that isn’t true, our unity will be pretty worthless, and it won’t last. But we know some deep and powerful truths, and they’re truths that are taught to us by the Church-including truths about how we should conduct our lives and how we should order our lives together. Not the whole truth, of course it is not given to mortals to know the whole truth. And as Catholics we believe that we know something about the truth. We should first be focused on the question, “What is true?” Then we can unite around true principles, precisely because they are true. We experience this polarization so intensely that it’s an understandable temptation to think, “Gosh, we’ve got to do something about it now! Let’s look to see if we can find a principle (or set of principles) that can then be the thing(s) around which we unite.”ĭesiring unity is not a bad thing but let’s not get the cart before the horse. It is sometimes said to pit “liberal” social-justice Catholics against “conservative” pro-life and pro-family Catholics. And today we find the same polarization, or something uncomfortably like it, in the Church. The polarization of our politics and culture is much remarked on. There is one unified, integrated teaching about how we as Catholics should conduct our lives in this world and what we should promote to our fellow citizens as the just, love-affirming, liberating, life-giving way. We need to begin treating this way of speaking (and thinking) as unacceptable. It is a mistake-a common one, yet a profound error-to speak and think of “social” and “moral” teaching as separate and distinct categories. Catholic social teaching is Catholic moral teaching Catholic moral teaching includes Catholic social teaching.
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