Conference on the Christian social order given in 1946

Two types of problems consistently concern a Catholic. One type looks to the interior life of a member of the Church which consists of a faith to preserve, dogma to know and understand, commandments to observe and a spiritual calling to nourish. The second type concerns him as a member of an earthly society who must fulfill his responsibilities to the State and to his fellow citizens and as Christian citizens to reach an agreement between the demands of his social conscience and those of his religious conscience.

The first problem is certainly that of his interior life: from here and from here alone will come the solution, the strength and the dynamism to confront the great sacrifices. The crusaders who only carry the cross on their shields will not save the world… The world doesn’t need activists but rather witnesses.

The demands of the interior life do not stop at the commandments which consider only our personal and family morals… All of that certainly, but it must be clear that we cannot become integrally Christian if we content ourselves with fidelity to certain practices and remain uninterested in the common good, if we loudly profess the virtues of justice and charity yet do not ask ourselves constantly about the demands laid upon us by our lives as members of society. When a society becomes profoundly paganized, as is happening to ours, it is not enough to reject evil in the abstract; it must be recognized in concrete cases, which is more difficult. The environment provokes the temptation to desert the spirit in order to adhere to the material.

More than anyone else the Catholic must be the friend of order, but not the immobility imposed from without but rather the interior balance realized by the fulfillment of justice and peace. It is not enough to achieve an apparent tranquility, as a result of pressure and force, what is needed is that each occupy the place belonging to him, in conformity to his human nature, in order that he participate in the work but also in the common satisfactions that result.

In order to know in what this interior balance consists we have the light of natural reason, a powerful light that puts us in contact with the truth. But we also have a brighter light, that of Christian revelation which serves as the highest principle of orientation. The Church, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, applies these principles of orientation to concrete cases, to the circumstances in which we live.

We priests can, like Judas, betray the cause of Jesus and we do so when we do not defend it where it is being attacked. There can be no reason that authorizes us to be silent, nor make us fear offending those to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, nor make us timid before any power, nor fearful of being misinterpreted.

Preaching resignation and charity in the face of great human suffering is a cover up for injustice. We must preach resignation and charity always but likewise, simultaneously, the responsibility to struggle with all the just means at our disposal to attain justice.

The religious aspect of the social problem is that it is almost impossible to preach the Gospel to empty stomachs. One bishop with Christian prudence said: “Do not preach too much on virtue unless the circumstances of your listeners make it easy to practice it.” Here he was simply following St. Thomas who insisted that a certain amount of material goods was necessary in order to practice virtue.

The falling away of workers from a religious life responds in great part to their absorbing concern with the struggle for life. The first thing that interests them is how to feed their wives and children, how to struggle against the rising cost of living, how to assure themselves of relative tranquility in old age and ill health that hang over them like a constant threat.

For them religious concerns seem separate from daily life, the only one real to them. If the Church were to speak to them not only of heaven, something unknown to them, but also of the earth, the only reality they know and appreciate, the Christian apostolate would have a very different result. The prejudices concerning the Church’s inability to understand their problems would disappear.

Social action well deserves the enthusiastic help of all Catholics since its goal is to reestablish the harmony of the plan of divine providence for our society with neither revolutions nor disturbances, but rather through the valiant and sustained application of all legitimate means. Social action like this has God as ally. The success belongs to Him.