The consequences of the gospel are loving service. We, the community formed by the command of Jesus Christ for mutual love, have always embraced service of others as essential to the gospel life. A “Jesus-and-me” notion has never been adequate alone; we don’t work out our relationship with Christ devoid of our brothers and sisters. Similarly, the Faith has never held that works without faith was adequate alone. The Catholic position, I believe, has been that works of such great charity cannot be done without faith; therefore, look at my works if you wish to gauge my faith.

“Charity” comes from the Latin caritas which is love. The connotation of charity is to meet the basic needs of another. A good place to find some of those basic needs is in the parable of Judgment in Matt. 25. At the final judgment, the Lord will distill the worthy by means of their corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, slaking thirst, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, and visiting the sick and the imprisoned; traditionally, burying the dead is added to this list. As Christians practiced charity over the millennia, other kinds of care have been added, such as caring for widows and orphans, paying decent wages to workers, and providing education of the youth.

In modern times a new aspect of charitable action has emerged. The context for investigating such action is social in nature. We have discovered that social arrangements make an impact on the capacity of persons to exist and to thrive. Using a colloquial image: charity is saving the babies by pulling them out from the river; justice (or social concern) is going up-river to see why the babies are getting there in the first place. This “new” arena of justice/social concern involves the effects of governance (e.g., policy, law) and economic norms that create a context that directly affects individuals and their abilities to survive and/or thrive. Let me give an example: East St. Louis, IL was once a thriving industrial city. Because industrial jobs were abundant it attracted many “blue collar” Whites and Blacks. Although it was hard work these folks were able to mortgage houses and establish themselves. In the 1980s and 1990s the corporations closed these plants and relocated, many to China, where labor was very cheap. The workers were stuck: they lost their jobs and they could not sell their homes which now lost all of their market value, yet they owe on the mortgage. How culpable are they for their predicament? Corporate decisions changed their world. The realm of social justice analyzes this “meta-personal” realm of doing justice.

This is new territory for the church. It is a cumbersome realm of activity because there are so many variables of human choice. Choices are embedded in large systems with mega-power based on the concentration of finances and influence. Frequently, the Church is chided for saying anything about economic or political matters, in part, because addressing principals seems to simply too much the complexity of issues. Yet she must be a voice for those individuals whose voice alone is obliterated by the din of strategic systemic action.

The body of thought that the Church has developed regarding social concerns is called Catholic Social Teaching. It is derived from a loosely-grouped corpus of Church texts, mostly papal encyclicals, which can be dated from 1891. This summer, the Corner will probe aspects of this Teaching in order to dispel what has been dubbed “the Church’s Best Kept Secret.” This moniker is the result of a lack of public knowledge. So, let’s crack this secret a little this summer.