Persons

and Liberal Democracy

Persons and Liberal Democracy
The Ethical and Political Thought of
Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II
Edward Barrett
Published by Lexington Books
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Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books

Cover photo courtesy of the Catholic News Service: Bishop Karol Wojtyla walks among the ruins of the Parthenon temple in
Athens, Greece, 1963.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barrett, Edward, 1961-
Persons and liberal democracy : the ethical and political thought of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II / Edward Barrett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7391-2114-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. John Paul II, Pope, 1920-2005. 2. Christianity and politics--Catholic Church. 3. Liberalism--Philosophy. 4. Liberalism--
Religious aspects--Catholic Church. 5. Christian sociology--Catholic Church. I. Title.
BX1378.5.B36 2010
261.7--dc22
2010006400

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To my parents
 Contents

Preface

Introduction: Catholic Social Thought and Contemporary Political Theory

1. The Roots of Modern Catholic Social Thought: Social and Liberal Catholicism

2. Christian Personalism: The Ethical and Anthropological Thought of Karol Wojtyla/John

Paul II

3. Anthropology, Ethics, and Recent Catholic Social Theory: The Liberalism of John Paul II

4. John Paul II in Conversation with Catholic Social/Political Theorists

5. John Paul II in Conversation with Secular Social/Political Theorists

Conclusion: Future Directions for Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Democratic Theory.

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

 Preface

This book was written with several intellectual goals in mind. Because of the richness and
significance of John Paul’s thought, several scholars have produced helpful studies of his
philosophical and theological methods and ethical and social conclusions.1 However, these
works—while excellent in many respects—leave important intellectual gaps that this book
seeks to fill. First, I wanted to offer a more systematic account of John Paul’s ethics and
anthropology, paying particular attention to their philosophical and theological foundations.
Specifically, previous analyses of John Paul’s philosophical efforts have failed to clearly
describe his unique appropriation of the phenomenological method and subsequent ethical and
anthropological conclusions. Additionally, these studies have not adequately explored the
relationship between his phenomenology and Thomism—consistencies between his
phenomenologically derived conclusions about personhood and those of Aquinas, deviations
from Aquinas, and the ways in which he simply appropriates Thomistic philosophical methods
and conclusions. Previous studies have also failed to highlight which of his ethical and
anthropological conclusions are purely theological—dependent solely on Christian revelation.
A second distinguishing characteristic of this book is its systematic elucidation of the
theoretical relationship between John Paul’s ethical/anthropological thought and his political
philosophy/theology. Third, previous studies have failed to clearly describe the basic elements
of his social thought—his defense of specific human rights, his nuanced position on the role of
the state vis–à–vis these rights, and his related stress on the significance of non-state
institutions. Finally, other analyses of John Paul’s ethics and politics have failed to bring John
Paul’s social thought into conversation with some important strands of contemporary political
theory, particularly those deliberating the nature and legitimacy of classical liberalism.
Completed as a dissertation in 2003, this project owes to the talents and generosity of
many others. First, I thank the key intellectual mentors of this project: Rocco Buttiglione,
Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, George Weigel, Nathan Tarcov, Jean Bethke Elshtain,
Francis Cardinal George, and David Tracy. Financially and administratively, my crucial
supports were the John M. Olin Center, the Earhart Foundation, Kathy Andersen of the
University of Chicago Department of Political Science, and the Stockdale Center for Ethical
Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. Key to my sanity were the friendly confines of
Nookies and Savories in Chicago, my musical friends at St. Michael’s in Chicago, and my
brothers and sisters in arms at the 95th Airlift Squadron in Milwaukee. Above all, this book
owes to the steadfast love and encouragement of Melanie and my family.

Notes
 1. Most noteworthy are Andrew N. Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Personalism (New
Britain, Conn.: Mariel Publications, 1980); George H. Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: The Origins of His Thought and
Action (New York: Seabury Press, 1981); Ronald D. Lawler, The Christian Personalism of John Paul II (Chicago:
Franciscan Herald Press, 1982); Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology
of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993); Rocco Buttiglione,
Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1997); John M. McDermont, ed., The Thought of Pope John Paul II (Roma: Editrice Pontificia Universita
Gregoriana, 1993); and Peter Simpson, On Karol Wojtyla (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001).
 Introduction

Catholic Social Thought and Contemporary Political

Theory
“[H]istory is not simply a fixed progression towards what is better, but rather an event of freedom, and even a
struggle between freedoms that are in mutual conflict. . . .” (John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio)

Most fundamentally, this book is an explication and defense of classical liberalism. Since its
appearance in human history as a social theory and practice, liberalism has been continuously
associated with a number of phenomena considered problematic by its critics. European
conservatives in the 1800s assailed liberalism’s apparent rejection of a number of traditions,
including religious establishment, monarchy, permanent social positions, Christianity, moral
realism, and tradition itself. Marx accused economic liberalism and its cultural superstructure
of temporarily relegating the majority of human beings to poverty and alienation. Romantics
and fascists lamented, among other things, liberalism’s erosion of social solidarity.
The recent past and present are replete with similar critiques. Civic republicans and
communitarians argue that liberalism’s emphasis on individual freedoms discourages citizens
from shouldering necessary social responsibilities. To socialists and environmentalists, liberal
economies permit the abuse of workers and nature. Christian and Islamic fundamentalists
dispense the most recent critique: the globalization of a corrosive secular and permissive
culture must be resisted and, if possible, reversed.
Throughout this debate over the nature and legitimacy of liberalism, the Catholic Church
has leveled or at least echoed all of the above criticisms. Most striking was Pius IX’s 1864
Syllabus of Errors excoriating liberalism’s embrace of the following notions: “[e]very man is
free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider
true”; “[t]he Church ought to be separated from the state, and the state from the Church”; “[i]n
the present day it is no longer considered expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as
the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of other forms of worship”; and “[t]he Roman
Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with, progress, liberalism, and
modern civilization” (Syllabus of Errors, #15, 55, 77, 80).
Given this harsh condemnation, the content of current Catholic social thought is perplexing.
Throughout his pontificate, John Paul II consistently defended the existence of “inviolable”
human rights. Perusing the official literature since the Second Vatican Council, one discovers
that the Church now supports religious freedom, liberty of thought, expression, and association,
democracy, private property, and a relatively free market—the hallmarks of classical
liberalism. On the other hand, the Church remains adverse to secularism, ethical relativism,
unemployment, and the abuse of workers and the environment. The fact that liberalism’s critics
—and even many of its adherents—associate the supported rights with the listed adversities
makes the Church’s position all the more curious.
 The challenge of this book is to explain and defend the relatively recent shift in the
Church’s social theory, and, in the process, defend what could be deemed a non-statist form of
welfare liberalism. I focus on John Paul II for the following reasons: he wrote extensively on
epistemology, the relationship between faith and reason, ethics, and social theory; he was in
conversation with myriad Catholic and non-Catholic thinkers; and his long and recent tenure as
Pope established him as the primary source of the current “official” Church position on the
issues at hand.
Chapter 1 contextualizes modern Catholic social thought by briefly examining its
premodern form and then delving into the controversy and logic attendant to its shift to a more
modern stance. The conventionally cited reasons for this rather puzzling shift are pragmatic: in
the face of post-Reformational religious pluralism, waning popular support for monarchy,
secularism, and the hostility of totalitarian regimes, the Church endorsed liberalism in order to
promote its independence and even survival. I will argue, however, that the shift is better
explained by the thought and efforts of two nineteenth century groups: social Catholics and
liberal Catholics. While purposes and analyses of the two groups were somewhat different,
they coalesced in concluding that under the circumstances, certain economic and political
aspects of liberalism would offer the best solutions to reigning economic and cultural
problems. Their analyses, in turn, led to a re-examination of the relationship of Catholicism to
modernity that culminated this century with a qualified acceptance of economic and political
liberalism for non-circumstantial, ethical reasons appropriated from within the tradition.
Chapter 2 details John Paul’s appropriation and development of these ethical reasons as
both a philosopher and theologian. The first section will examine the phenomenologically
inspired aspects of his philosophical anthropology and ethics. As a young philosopher, Wojtyla
responded to the modern “turn toward the subject” with both lament and curiosity. A focus on
consciousness had led some to ethical relativism, but Wojtyla also considered it to be a
potentially positive development, one capable of supplementing older philosophical
approaches. We will trace how his evaluation of Scheler led to his own phenomenological
method and subsequent reflections on human action, conscience, fulfillment, and value.
The next section investigates the Thomistic character of Wojtyla’s philosophy—a task
complicated by disputes over the nature and primacy of Thomism. Given the available
evidence, I argue that while his initial encounter with Thomism organized and supplied “deep
reasons” for his existing commitments, his subsequent phenomenological efforts used Thomism
as a guide in order to demonstrate the experiential basis of venerable ethical notions. The third
section turns to John Paul’s theology by first exploring his well-developed thought on the
relationship between reason and revelation, and then discussing several theologically derived
notions whose implications are consistent with and augmentations of his philosophical
anthropology. These notions include the ethical rules revealed through the Decalogue and the
life of Christ; the centrality of the virtue of charity; our creation in the image of a trinitarian
God; the dual nature of Christ; and human sinfulness. The final section of this chapter previews
the central anthropological and ethical premises informing his social thought
Chapter 3 focuses on three key aspects of John Paul’s social thought that emerge from these
philosophically and theologically derived anthropological and ethical notions: first, his
defense of negative and positive human rights, including the rights to family-oriented and fully
human work and an authentic culture or “human environment”; second, his call for a liberal
state that is nevertheless concerned with securing positive economic and cultural rights in the
face of market failures; and third, his conception of the roles of, and relationship between, the
liberal democratic state and selected institutions of civil society in constraining the market and
softening its economic and cultural effects. Concerning this third point, a central purpose of
this book is to examine the arguments undergirding the principle of subsidiarity: while direct
state intervention is warranted in many cases, reliance on and state support of local, voluntary
institutions not only moderates state corruption and promotes effective market restraints and
public services, but also has the moral/cultural effect of encouraging and allowing citizens to
freely give of themselves for the good of others, and thus truly become persons. John Paul’s
vision of the unique moral/cultural roles of the family and Church are examined in this context.
Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that John Paul’s political/social theory is a situationally
sensitive sort of “third way,” a hybrid that—due to his ethical and anthropological premises—
seeks to accomplish the goals of welfare liberalism with the help of a relatively limited but
nevertheless effective state.
The next two chapters bring this social thought into conversation with Catholic and non-
Catholic interlocutors. In chapter 4, the dialogue is with four groups of Catholics who advance
various critiques of liberalism. The first group is comprised of so-called theoconservatives
such as Schindler who, echoing the arguments of many anti-liberal Catholics of the late 1800s,
insist that a negative rights-based politics—particularly one enshrining religious freedom—
results in a culture marked by secularism, moral relativism, and consumerism. While John Paul
shares their contempt for many of the cultural attributes found in liberal societies, I argue that
he dissents from the theoconservative assertion that these features are the basis and/or effects
of political liberalism. The second antiliberal school is one with which John Paul had a
protracted debate: liberation theology. After laying out the basic tenets of liberation theology
as understood by John Paul, we survey his characterization of its virtues and vices. While John
Paul commends this movement for its attention to human liberty, the plight of the poor, unjust
political and economic structures, and Christian activism, he is strongly critical of liberation
theology’s soteriological narrowness, economic analysis, and preferred means to liberation.
Third, we delve into the popular economic analysis and prescriptions contained in the
1986 U.S. National Council of Catholic Bishops letter, entitled Economic Justice For All:
Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy. Curiously, while the
bishops celebrated the negative or state-limiting aspect of the principle of subsidiarity, they
recommended a permanent expansion of the central state’s economic justice–promoting
activities. I argue that their political prescriptions stemmed from under-defined, under-
theorized, and empirically dubious assumptions about the effects of “complex
interdependence”—assumptions that John Paul does not share. Finally, the fourth section
briefly surveys the school of thought known as distributism, to which John Paul is largely
sympathetic.
Chapter 5 brings John Paul into conversation with three influential non-Catholic schools of
social/political thought: communitarianism, civil society advocates, and federalism. While
John Paul shares communitarianism’s fundamental concern with modern individualism and its
corresponding attention to human sociality, his relationship to communitarianism’s different
strands—represented by Taylor, MacIntyre, and Etzioni—varies according to their respective
understandings of human sociality and commitments to human rights. Ultimately, his thought is
shown to be critical of important facets of Taylor’s and MacIntyre’s ethics and politics, and
remarkably consistent with Etzioni’s liberal, civil society–oriented school. The next section
surveys the history of civil society and then outlines current debates over it. Most discussants
agree that civil society is important and too weak, but differently assess the roots of this
weakness and the optimal relationship of the state to civil society, deeming the state either too
involved or uninvolved. By making a strong case for a generally limited but nevertheless
situationally dependent role for the state vis–à–vis civil society, John Paul’s thought on the
principle of subsidiarity serves as a corrective to this debate’s either/or heuristic. The last
section investigates the relationship of central state to other political bodies—the concept of
federalism. After a synopsis of the evolution of the concept’s theory and practice, we discuss
the unfortunate failure of Catholic social thought to extend the logic of subsidiarity to relations
between differing state levels.
Finally, the conclusion will evaluate his legacy, first suggesting his most significant ethical
and political accomplishments, and then highlighting areas of his thought requiring further
development.
 1

The Roots of Modern Catholic Social Thought:

Social and Liberal Catholicism

Introduction
This chapter elucidates the historical circumstances that generated a reexamination of the
Catholic tradition, a re-examination that ultimately led to new and somewhat surprising
positions within the Church’s social theory.1 While official Church proclamations throughout
most of the 1800s excoriated liberalism, John Paul II’s 1991 Centesimus Annus was a
qualified but unmistakable endorsement of liberal economic and political thought.2 Much to the
consternation of many Catholics, the Church now champions a “free economy,” a panoply of
other human rights (including religious freedom), and a limited and democratic state.
As noted in the introduction, the conventionally cited reasons for this rather puzzling shift
are pragmatic: in the face of post-Reformational religious pluralism, waning popular support
for monarchy, secularism, and the hostility of totalitarian regimes, the Church endorsed
liberalism in order to promote its independence and even survival. These prudential
considerations, however, are only a partial explanation. This chapter will argue that although
these considerations were operative, the shift is better explained by the influential thought and
efforts of two nineteenth century Church groups: social Catholics and liberal Catholics. While
the purposes and analyses of the two groups were somewhat different, they coalesced in
concluding that under the circumstances, the economic and political aspects of liberalism
would offer the best solutions to what they deemed to be reigning economic and cultural
problems. Their analyses, in turn, led to a re-examination of the relationship of Catholicism to
modernity that culminated in the twentieth century with a qualified acceptance of economic and
political liberalism for non-circumstantial, anthropological reasons—philosophically and
theologically grounded—that now constitute the foundation of the Church’s favorable view of
liberalism. The next chapter will examine key assertions constituting this anthropology, while
Chapter 4 will draw out their implications for social theory—specifically, the claim that
liberal democracy is the social order most consonant with the dignity and nature of human
persons.3

Post-Constantinian Political Theory

The initial incarnation of the Catholic Church’s political theory developed during the Patristic
period in response to Constantine’s conversion. Prior to Constantine (306-337), the Church
had little to say about the role of the state and, as a persecuted sect, had even less to do with
politics. Guiding its approach to politics was Jesus’ appeal to “Give to Caesar what is
Caesar’s, and to God what belongs to God” (Matthew 12:17) and the related assertions that the
state’s authority is legitimate and should be respected unless it transgresses God’s law
(Romans 13:1-4, 7; Acts 5:29). Its political theory was therefore largely negative, focusing on
what the state should not do—to include interfering in the religiously inspired affairs of
Christians and the Church.
Constantine and Theodosius thrust the Church into a more complex situation. Not only was
the Church first tolerated and later established, but it now, through the Christian ruler, was
presented with new opportunities to both influence and be influenced by politics. Initially, the
latter issue proved most contentious. The comfort with Constantine’s role in internal Church
affairs was replaced with rancor over the interventions in the West and East by subsequent
emperors Constantius (337-361), Valens (365-378), Gratian (375-383), Valentinian II (383-
392), and Theodosius (379-395). Under the leadership of bishops Athanasius, Basil, and
Ambrose, the Church soon adopted the position that its innermost, doctrinal sphere was outside
of the state’s competence—a norm that was not seriously challenged in the West until the
investiture crisis (1075-1122).4
The controversy over the Church’s precise political role was more intractable. While
arguing against state interference in Church affairs, bishops and theologians gravitated toward
the position that the Church ought to influence political affairs and civil law. Pivotal to this
position were Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzuz, and John Chrysostom.5 Understanding itself as
the one true religion entrusted by God through his Son to foster the earthly moral development
and subsequent eternal salvation of all souls, the Church regarded its establishment and legal
expression as essential to its mission. Caesar and the Church had their separate competencies
and rightful tasks, but—echoing Aristotle’s political theory—because authentic moral
development required the force embodied in state laws, the Church had a singular and
legitimate role in statecraft.
This role was justified not only by the need to legislate morality. Additionally, as
Augustine argued in his City of God, the state’s tasks of providing for collective goods such as
peace and security themselves required the success of the Church’s mission. The Roman
Empire was not falling to the barbarians because Christianity had weakened the character of its
citizens and their resolve to improve life in this world—an accusation later leveled by
Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Marx. On the contrary, argued Augustine, the empire had not been
Christian enough. The heart of every person, he maintained, is divided, restlessly oscillating
between inordinate love of self and proper love of God and others—between the city of man
and the City of God. A habitual turn toward the self results in what the Empire was
experiencing: lethargy, crime, corruption, overextension, and weakness. Only an orientation of
one’s love toward God—a process made possible by the Church—provides the grace
necessary to orient one’s will correctly, perfect our human nature, and build a viable human
community. The state’s success, therefore, depended upon the success of the Church’s mission,
which, in turn, required a role for the Church in politics.
 The degree of Church involvement in politics was, of course, theoretically and practically
contested throughout the Middle Ages, and the balance of power between Church and state
shifted several times. After Charlemagne tilted the balance toward himself, Popes Stephen,
Nicholas I and John VII—affirming Pope Gelasius’ formulation of 492—asserted the primacy
of the Church in the late 800s. Following the revival of the Holy Roman Empire by Otto the
Great in 962, the struggle re-emerged most visibly in the conflict between Emperor Henry IV
and Pope Gregory VII precipitated by the lay investiture controversy. Committed to the
“freedom of the Church,” Gregory outlawed investiture in 1075, a practice allowing secular
authorities to appoint bishops and other Church officials. Henry protested, was
excommunicated in 1076, submitted in 1077, was again excommunicated in 1080, and
responded by invading Rome. While Gregory died in exile, Henry himself soon died an
outcast, and Pope Urban II reclaimed papal supremacy, rallied the lords of Europe around the
papal banner, and began the Crusades in 1095. The investiture crisis was officially resolved in
an 1122 conference at Worms, with the emperor surrendering the right to appoint but retaining
the right to veto. But despite the ebb and flow of relative influence over political affairs, there
was relatively little debate throughout the Middle Ages about the separation of the Church from
politics or about the validity of Christian revelation and derived doctrine. The perspective on
culture, politics and economics was relatively stable: Church-mediated doctrine and grace
were necessary for the wounded human person to make the best out of this life and achieve
union with God in the next; the Church therefore had some influence over politics; and each
person occupied an inherited station within a social hierarchy, with enforced duties that flowed
both up and down.
In addition to the necessity of some degree of Church influence over politics, three other
political issues were relatively uncontroversial: the origin, purpose, and optimal form of the
state. Aquinas’ thought on politics and civil law, which drew from several theological,
philosophical, and juridical sources, articulated the consensus view on these issues. The
coercive state has its origin in human sinfulness. While human sociality draws men together
into association, sinfulness ensures that without a “single controlling force” responsible for the
good of all, this association will be accompanied by a conflict between the “private good” and
“common good of all the members.”6 The purpose of the state, therefore, is to promote this
common good. More precisely, human sociality and sinfulness mean that force, legally
threatened or actual, is to some degree necessary for promoting the preconditions for the
fulfillment of all, namely virtue and the peace and material goods necessary for virtue.7 While
the cultivation of virtue is often achievable through the combination of inclination (born of
disposition, custom/culture, and grace) and parental persuasion, the inclinations of many
persons render such persuasion insufficient. Left to their own devices, these dissolute
individuals will not only effect their own ruin, but thwart the preconditions that others require
for their fulfillment. The common good therefore requires politics: a state that promulgates and
executes laws that both habituate one to eventually choose rightly and deter or restrain those
from within and without the polity who would otherwise do evil.8 The form of the state most
likely to promote this common good is a mixed regime of kingship, aristocracy and
democracy.9 Although the rule of the one most virtuous is theoretically most desirable, kingship
in practice is fraught with problems: absolute power may corrupt even a virtuous man,
resulting in tyranny, the regime most antithetical to the common good; the many are often
incapable of recognizing and unwilling to accept the one most virtuous, resulting in civil strife;
and subjects perceive that work for the common good will benefit only the king, and are
therefore more reticent to work for the common good.10 Citing the precedent of the ancient
Hebrew polity and Aristotle’s arguments, Aquinas therefore endorses the rule of both the one
and the few virtuous chosen from among and by the many—although his recommendations lack
specificity about the respective functions of the king and aristocracy and do not address the
problem of the selection of un-virtuous rulers by the many.

The Catholic Church and Modernity

By the early 1800s, this orthodoxy about Church-state relations and the purpose and optimal
form of politics was being challenged by a broad intellectual and social movement that it,
ironically, helped create. This movement—the nature and legitimacy of which we are still
exploring—was, of course, the Enlightenment or modernity (I will use these terms
interchangeably). While multivocal and thus difficult to define, modernity has at least the
following two premises at its core.
First, all persons possess a dignity or value requiring (using Kant’s formulation) that they
never be treated as mere means. All human beings, in other words, ought to be free from
unfulfilling conditions imposed upon them by other human beings—including governmental
actors. While the nature of, and specific conditions conducive to, personal fulfillment are still
subjects of great debate, particularly in a “post-metaphysical” era wary of teleology/ontology
and thus of any universal conception of fulfillment, these debated conditions are generally
referred to as universal or human rights.11 Given its emphasis on liberty from being used, this
first strand of modernity has been aptly named “liberalism” and centrally concerned with
identifying and securing human rights.
The second core premise of modernity concerns a method of knowing that was the
proposed means to liberation not only from the unjust strictures of other human beings, but also
from the constraints of the law-governed (i.e., unfree) material world: science. As much as it
was about rights, the Enlightenment was about science as the means to human rights and
fulfillment. Through the controlled observation of sensed objects and inductive logic, the
causal laws of the human and material worlds could be progressively known, and thus ordered
to the gradual perfection of life in this world. Assumed in this epistemology was an empirical,
materialistic criterion of what can be “known” and thus “true” which therefore tightly
circumscribed metaphysical and ethical claims. Since ancient and medieval artifacts such as
“superstitious” religious doctrines and universals neither promoted rights nor—more
importantly—complied with the epistemological rules of the scientific method, they were
consigned to the status of interesting examples of historical consciousness made irrelevant by
human progress.
These two strands of modernity—liberalism and science—did not, of course, emerge ex
nihilo. Their precursors are well known, and are located in the Christian Middle Ages.
Enlightenment thinkers appropriated or radicalized, and then combined, what had been
bequeathed to them: humanism, nominalism, the scientific revolution, and the implications of
the Reformation. From humanism came the Enlightenment celebration of the universal dignity
and rights of the individual and a commitment to perfection in and of this world. From
nominalist philosophers they inherited philosophical materialism and a subsequent skepticism
about universally valid metaphysical and ethical concepts—a human telos, virtues, and natural
law precepts—and all theological claims. From the scientific revolution came a supreme
confidence in science as the primary means through which the improvement of this life would
proceed. From the Reformation and subsequent religious pluralism came an added incentive to
political secularization: revealed religious claims were not only untrue, but antithetical to
peace.
These precursors of the Enlightenment are mentioned in order to highlight the fact that in
their less radical forms, two of them—humanism and the scientific revolution—arguably have
Christian roots. The gradual recognition of the dignity of all men and their capacity for
responsible freedom may be traced, at least in part, to the gradual working out of the
implications of the Incarnation. Likewise, a commitment to understanding and controlling
nature may have emerged from a worldview that stipulates a God-ordered cosmos governed by
laws amenable to human reason. In other words, from a Christian perspective, the
Enlightenment was not devoid of semina verbi. The challenge for the Church would lie in
distinguishing erroneous aspects of modernity from those that were compatible with, and even
developments of, Christian philosophy and theology.
The distinguishing process did not go well at first. The first major European political
instantiation of the Enlightenment project—which the Church first simply referred to as
“liberalism”—was the disastrous French Revolution. The Church fared badly throughout: the
required oath to the nationalist and democratic Civil Constitution of the Clergy split the French
Church; Church property was seized; hundreds of “nonjuring” clergy were imprisoned,
deported, tortured, and killed; “dechristianization” efforts attempting to uproot the tradition and
establish cults of “Reason,” “philanthropic Deism,” or “the Supreme Being” soon led to
anticlericism and secularism; and Napoleon twice imprisoned the Pope and firmly controlled
the French Church. These memories, subsequent hardships (including the struggle for control
over the Papal States with Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Cavour), and the association of liberalism
with theological and philosophical skepticism determined the Church’s negative attitude
toward liberalism over the next one hundred years.
This attitude was formally expressed both before and after the French Revolution through
the release of papal encyclical letters, a practice begun by Benedict XIV (1740-58) in order to
“preserve the Catholic faith and either preserve or restore the discipline of morals.”12 While
some of these documents denounced liberalism explicitly and wholesale, others did so only
implicitly and partially. Some level of critique appeared in the following: Ubi Primum (on the
breakdown of clerical discipline), A Quo Primum (on Christian-Jewish relations in Poland),
Nimiam Licentiam (on mixed and civil marriages), Quanta Cura (on avarice and usury), A
Quo Die (on the justice of almsgiving), Christianae Reipublicae (on censorship), Cum Summi
(on Church-state separation), Charitas (on the French clergy’s civil oath), Charitate Christi
(on the rise in drunkenness), Traditi Humiltati (on marriage), Mirari Vos (1832, on religious
freedom), Singulari Vos (on religious freedom), Quanta Cura and its Syllabus of Errors
appendix (1864), Qui Pluribus (on socialism), Nostis et Nobiscum (on socialism and
prostitution), Inscrutabili Dei (1878, on social ills), Quod Apostolici Muneris (1878, on
socialism), Aeterni Patris (1879, on Thomism), Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae (1880, on
matrimony), Diuturnum (1881, on the task of authority and democracy), Humanum Genus
(1884, on socialism and freemasons), Immortale Dei (1885, on spiritual and temporal spheres
and their relationship), Libertas Praestantissimum (1888, on freedom), Sapientiae
Christianae (1890, on the duties of Christian citizens), Longinque Oceani (1895, on the
Church-state separation model), and Testem Bonevolentiae (1899, against “Americanism”).
Popes were not, of course, the only reactionary Catholics. Others such as Maistre and
Bonald welcomed the post-1814 Restoration and Metternich’s Holy Alliance. These
conservatives—like the more liberal Tocqueville—lamented not so much the Enlightenment’s
empiricism and subsequent atheism and moral relativism as its (perhaps related) atomism or
individualism. But they—unlike Tocqueville—recommended a return to the social order of the
ancien régime, to a hierarchically organized community of mutual aid in which members with
defined roles (i.e., duties versus rights) and powers worked together to secure the “common
good.”
But in the midst of the controversy and siege mentality, a number of Catholics began to
more clearly distinguish and assess the various aspects of modernity—political, economic, and
cultural. The names are familiar to students of modern Church history: Lamennais, Lacordaire,
Montalembert, Ozanam, Mermillod, Vogelsang, Perin, Tour du Pin, Hitze, Ketteler, Döllinger
Acton, Newman, Pecci (Leo XIII in 1878), Manning, and Gibbons. While each thinker’s
analysis was unique, one can discern among them two broad schools that diverged on the
question of the primary problem facing the Church and society, but converged in their
assessment that certain aspects of liberalism were part of the answer.

Social Catholicism
On the one hand were the “social Catholics”—Bonald, Baader, Buchez, Mermillod, Vogelsang,
Perin, Tour du Pin, Hitze, Ketteler, Leo XIII, Manning, Ozanam, Gibbons—responsible for the
social Catholicism movement that fully emerged in the mid-1800s.13 Comprised of groups of
concerned lay aristocrats and clergy primarily in the Germanic states, France, and Italy, this
movement generated the analyses that deeply influenced the positions eventually espoused in
Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum—the Church’s first social encyclical.14 Their primary
concern was economic—specifically, the abject poverty of the new and growing industrial
working class. According to their simple but insightful analysis, the causes of the intolerable
conditions were: the centralized ownership of the new means of production; the owners’
callous disregard for the workers’ humanity; and the predominance of laissez faire policies
toward the market—including the market for labor—on the part of the ruling class due to their
vested interests or belief that the free market best served consumers. The increasingly popular
Marxist response was problematic not only because it would abnegate the benefits of
ownership and the market, but also because its atheism and recommended class struggle
threatened to draw the working class away from the Church and into violent conflict.15 Both the
economic and moral/spiritual well-being of the worker (and the Church) thus demanded that
the Church offer not only an immediate and practical response, but also a more far-reaching
analysis with public policy ramifications.
According to the accounts of Mueller, Misner, and Moody, a relatively small number
within these groups prescribed state ownership of the means of production (socialism), joint
and therefore decentralized ownership and/or management of firms (a form of corporatism
romantically harkening back to the medieval guild and considered unlikely given new
production methods), or labor unionization (then seen as possibly promoting social conflict).16
Instead, the two most popular and competing solutions were labor legislation generated by the
ruling class and the moral formation of the owning class—with the latter involving the
promotion of Christian charity to increase wages and support for “paupers,” and an attendant
social role for the Church.17 In other words, the two dominant factions within social
Catholicism disagreed over whether the solution to plight of the working class was political or
cultural, the purview of justice or charity.

Liberal Catholicism
On the other hand were the “liberal Catholics” such as Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert,
Acton, Döllinger and Newman. For them, the central problem was not economic poverty, and
culture was not one possible solution. For liberal Catholics, the central problem facing
European society—one affecting all classes—was spiritual poverty. The problem was not the
material condition of one class but the state of the souls of all, and the cause was cultural.
More precisely, Christendom was increasingly skeptical about the metaphysical and ethical
claims of theology and philosophy that had comprised the core of Western culture since
Constantine. Since liberal Catholics regarded these ideas—about the existence and essence of
God, the immaterial and immortal human soul, the human telos and its contributing virtues and
moral precepts, and the human need for and access to God—as necessary for happiness in this
life and the next, the crisis had both temporal and eternal ramifications.
At least two reasons for this modern skepticism were offered. The first was best
elaborated by Tocqueville: the ascendancy of democracy (a political phenomenon) that was
ultimately the result of the liberal idea (a cultural phenomenon) of equal human dignity.
America was the place where “the precepts of Descartes [doubt] were least studied and best
followed” because the possibility of social mobility and the loss of social hierarchy had
undermined reliance upon others—who might be more intellectually competent—for
metaphysical and ethical concepts.18 This self-reliance would combine with an overconfidence
resulting from success “in resolving unaided all the little difficulties they encounter in practical
affairs” to produce a “democratic man” prone to “rely(ing) on the witness of their own eyes”
for truths, one with “little faith in anything extraordinary and an almost invincible distaste for
the supernatural.”19
A second cited cause of the new skepticism was science. Due to its accessibility and
success, the scientific method was gradually attaining epistemological hegemony. As
mentioned earlier, an epistemology limited to the controlled observation of sensed objects and
induction would necessarily limit the “known” and “true” to the material. While human pride,
desire, and freedom had always threatened man’s openness to and cognizance of moral truths,
science had thus made the human condition more problematic. Increasingly, non-scientifically
derived ideas were considered to be merely self-serving constructions of those in power.
However, despite the cultural problems promoted by liberal democracy and science, these
early liberal Catholics did not propose the rejection of democracy and science. Tocqueville,
for example, discerned many positive aspects of democratic life, and regarded the movement
toward “the equality of conditions” as inevitable anyway. His focus was thus on ways in which
democracy could be saved from individualism and subsequent tyranny: educating in order to
enlighten self-interest, promoting religious belief, and promoting participation in local
political and voluntary associations.
Regarding science, liberals such as Döllinger regarded its method as a valid expositor of
material and efficient causes, and its project as promising—as long as it was conducted within,
and oriented toward, philosophically and theologically derived normative criteria. The
Church’s philosophical and theological tasks were thus to identify and assimilate valid aspects
of the new intellectual currents—including the scientific method, philosophical schools
sensitive to the subjective dimension of consciousness and acts, related methods of interpreting
texts, and new historical data—while offering new and more convincing defenses of timeless
normative truths concerning the human person.20 Accompanying the call for this validation and
assimilation process was a call for new freedom within the Church, for new independence for
philosophers, theologians, and historians. Given concerns with the compatibility of the new
intellectual currents with timeless truths and with the motives of such scholars, such a call was
controversial. It is this context of concern and controversy that explains ultramontanism, the
neo-Scholastics of Mainz, the ultra-reactionary Syllabus of Errors, Vatican I, and Leo XIII’s
call for a Thomistic revival in the encyclical Aeterni Patris.21
The apogee of this internal controversy over attempts to assimilate the new intellectual
currents and more convincingly defend Church doctrine occurred during the modernist crisis.
Late in the 1800s, the heirs of early liberal Catholics—Blondel, Loisy, Duchesne, von Hügel,
Tyrrel, and Murri—formulated a rather radical response to their perception of the increasing
dominance of a narrow form of neo-Scholasticism. Much like their mentors, modernists argued
that the Church must respond to certain intellectual developments, especially in history,
science, and philosophy. Historian Wellhausen, for example, convincingly asserted that Moses
did not write the Pentateuch. Darwin’s scientific work cast into doubt extant interpretations of
the Biblical stories of creation and human origins. Philosophical materialism was increasingly
well regarded. Unanswered, these developments would render implausible or impossible the
historicity of revelation and the Catholic doctrine derived from it—including Christ’s divinity,
moral and sacramental theology, and papal authority. The modernist response to these
challenges, however, was understandably too accommodational for the Vatican. Modernist
claims included the following: faith begins not with God’s self-revelation, but with man’s need
for the experience of the divine (immanentism); dogma is valid if it meets the needs of the time,
and thus changes accordingly; and the Church’s structure should be more democratic and
composed of representatives who articulate an evolving community consensus.22 The Vatican’s
response—led by the “integralists” and comprised of official documents, journal articles,
vigilance committees, spies, oaths, and punishments—to full-blown modernists, and even to
those who evinced tepidity toward Thomism or sympathy toward religious freedom,
interconfessional unions, Christian democracy, or ecumenism, was withering and effective.23
However, the breach between moderate liberals such as Döllinger who called for more
freedom and openness within the Church and conservatives was narrower; the former merely
wanted adjustments and more effective substantiations, not broad accommodation.
Additionally, moderate liberals shared with ultramontanists the conviction that the cause of the
spiritual crisis was culture, and that cultural transformation by the Church was the solution. At
issue were the ideas and social arrangements that would best conduce to this transformation.

Shared Solutions: Economic and Political Liberalism

It was on this issue of the optimum social conditions within which the Church could best
transform modern culture that agreement occurred between liberals calling for freedom within
the Church, certain ultramontanes, and social Catholics who emphasized the cultural solution to
the problem of the working class. Common to each group was the conviction that only an
unhindered, engaged, and convincing Church could solve the developing cultural problems.
And in their analysis of how to promote such a Church in the midst of increased state power
and religious pluralism, they began to question the Church’s thought on the political and
economic aspects of liberalism. While state-protected religious freedom—which denied the
Church its guaranteed influence over education, the press, and marriage—had been associated
with indifferentism and immorality (and Church poverty), they pointed out that religious
establishment also held the potential for state interference and even suppression, and for
Church corruption.24 They argued that religious freedom would make the Church more
effective, and supported this conclusion by pointing to the American experience.25 And in
order to protect the mission of a disestablished and unfettered Church, other liberal freedoms
—such as private property, association, and speech—would also be necessary. Finally, as
Lamennais argued in the early 1800s, these freedoms would be best secured through universal
suffrage—an argument that eventually encouraged the formation of Christian democratic
parties.
Social Catholics interested in promoting economic justice through state action added other
arguments that pointed toward a more favorable posture toward liberalism. Rights language
could be appropriated not only to protect private property and the free market, but also to
protect against their misuse by capitalists. All persons, in other words, possessed rights to a
wage adequate for themselves and for a dependent family and to humane working conditions.
As the ultimate guarantor of rights, the state had the duty to exercise concern for the poor and
family life and act appropriately—to include limiting both market freedom and ownership—
when necessary. And a democratic state, albeit a representative and well-constituted one,
would be more likely to exercise concern and act appropriately.26 These arguments were in
large part responsible for the emergence of early Christian democratic parties in Belgium and
Germany.
The Church’s assessment of liberalism that began with these nineteenth-century social and
liberal Catholics continued throughout the next century, adding new rationales and nuances.
Prudential considerations regarding the Church’s independence and survival were, of course,
not absent from the process. But ultimately more important than expedience for the evaluation
process were the conclusions by social and liberal Catholics that there were distinct aspects—
economic, political, and cultural—of liberalism, and that under the reigning circumstances, the
Church would more effectively address the main problems of modern economies and culture
from within liberal democratic societies that secured a host of human rights, including
religious freedom. This logic nicely summarizes that of the Second Vatican Council: religious
liberty (Dignitatis humanae) will allow the communion which is the Church (Lumen gentium)
to encounter and thus transform the modern world (Gaudium et spes) without simply
accommodating the faith to the age.
However, since the Second Vatican Council, and especially during the pontificate of Pope
John Paul II, the non-circumstantial, anthropological justifications for religious freedom and a
limited liberal democratic state have been emphasized and more deeply developed. It is these
philosophical and theological developments that the next chapter will examine.

Notes
1. “[T]he Catholic Church’s social theory” here denotes the “official” position which is dialogically formulated (a book in
itself) and expressed mainly through periodically issued papal social encyclical letters such as Pope John Paul II’s 1991
Centesimus Annus.
2. The content of “political thought” is often difficult to define, particularly because of inevitable state involvement with all
social institutions, including economic ones. I here construe political thought as thought about the ends of politics and the means
—including the type of state—employed to secure these ends. Purely “economic” thought concerns descriptive and predictive
assertions about various economic institutions. Since the Church is interested in the effects of and relationships between all
social institutions, it usually employs the term “social” thought. Thought about the normativity of ends and means is the purview
of philosophy and theology.
3. The word “nature” is here understood in both the teleological/normative and behavioral/descriptive senses.
4. See Athanasius, Hist. Ar., 44; and Ambrose, Sermo c. Auxentium, 36 in Johannes Quaston, Patrology, vols. 1-4
(Westminster: Christian Classics, 1986).
5. See Ambrose, Ep. 20.19; Gregory of Nazianzuz, Orat. 17, 8; John Chrysostom, I Ep. 2 ad Corinth., Hom. 15, c. 4-5 in
ibid.
6. Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, ch. 11
7. Ibid., ch. 15
8. Aquinas, Summa, I-II, q. 95, a. 1. Aquinas asserts that since the majority of men are not perfectly virtuous and therefore
not capable of abstaining from many vices, the effectiveness of human law is maximized by limiting its purview to serious vices
from which the majority can abstain—especially those that harm others. See Summa, q. 96, a. 2.
9. Ibid., II-II, q. 105, a. 1
10. Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, chs. 2-6; Commentary on the Politics, II, lect. 5, no. 212; Summa Theologica, I-
II, q. 105, a. 1.
Portions of the following section have been used with permission by Francis Cardinal George, for whom the author worked
as speech writer from 1999 to 2001.
11. Nussbaum, attempting to focus this debate and building upon Rawls’ conception of “primary goods” that all are due, has
developed a fairly detailed list of conditions or goods that is “thick” but considered by her to be non-metaphysical/non-
teleological/deontological and thus “vague.” See, for example, her “Aristotelian Social Democracy,” in Liberalism and the
Good, ed. Bruce Douglass (New York: Routledge, 1990).
Similarly, the Grisez-Finnis attempt to oppose the utilitarian reduction of the ethical to individual or aggregate pleasure and
formulate a new account of natural law posits self-evident and irreducible goods for which it is rational to strive—without
relating these goods to a general telos. Their account of basic goods, however, is supplemented by moral principles forbidding
selfishness and the sacrifice of one basic good for another. For a helpful description of this new account of natural law, see
Russell Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).
12. While modern Catholic social thought is traditionally dated from Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum, Michael Schuck has
made a convincing case for the existence of a “pre-Leonine” period stretching from 1740 to 1877, followed by “Leonine” (1878-
1958) and “post-Leonine” (1959-present) periods. See That They May Be One: The Social Teaching of the Papal
Encyclicals, 1740-1989 (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991).
Although Schuck’s recognition of a period of Catholic social thought prior to Leo XIII is insightful, his criterion for
delineating the three periods is problematic. According to Schuck, pre- and post-Leonine periods were ethically
particularistic/personalistic and therefore inductive, while the Leonine period was universalistic and deductive—natural law
based, in other words. There are at least two problems with these characterizations, however. First, Catholic ethical theory has
never been particularistic or “territorially communitarian.” Second and similarly, Catholic personalism makes ontological claims
that are consistent with, not opposed to, traditional natural law ethics. No Pope attempted to reverse the erosion of unity or
“community” stemming from Enlightenment materialism and moral relativism by defending local ethical conceptions and a notion
of the “embedded self.” Appeals to local tradition were made, but on the grounds that these traditions were truly fulfilling, not
because they were local.
13. For a concise historical account of social Catholicism, see Franz H. Mueller, The Church and the Social Question
(Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984) and Edward Cahill, S.J., “The Catholic
Social Movement: Historical Aspects,” [1932] in Readings in Moral Theology No. 5: Official Catholic Social Teaching, ed.
Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1986). For more detailed historical account, see
Joseph M. Moody, ed., Church and Society: Catholic Social and Political Movements, 1789-1950 (New York: Arts, Inc.,
1953); Paul Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe (New York: Crossroad, 1991); and Alec Vidler, Social Catholicism
(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1964).
14. The three most influential groups were the Geneva Alliance (1870), the Union de Fribourg (1884), and the Freie
Vereinigung (1883). See Mueller, The Church and the Social Question, pp. 70-76.
15. Socialist parties proliferated in Europe in the late 1800s: Germany by 1875; Austria and Switzerland by 1888; Holland
by 1889; and Italy, Poland and Finland by 1892. By the 1880s, the French hierarchy conceded that the Church had lost the
working class to socialism.
16. Earlier theorists of “workingmen’s associations” in the 1830s—i.e., Lefort, Kolping—had emphasized the educative
and social functions of such groups. Christian trade unionism began in earnest in the late 1880s in Belgium and Germany.
Originally, these unions were often run by priests and focused on providing basic services to laborers; by 1920, the International
Federation of Christian Trade Unions was lay run and had 3.5 million members. After World War II, Christian trade unions were
in some cases as strong as the other two major union types—Communist and Social Democratic—and were affiliated with
Christian Democratic parties. But while Christian trade unionism was strong in practice at the turn of the century, and although
Leo XIII laid the groundwork—based on Thomas’ teaching on the legitimacy of private societies—for its acceptance in Rerum
Novarum (paras. 36-49), it was not theoretically popular until later in the twentieth century. The standard Catholic position,
evidenced in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), was to support joint unions of employers and workers.
17. See Mueller, The Church and the Social Question, pp. 72-83 and Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe for detailed
analyses of the various groups and individuals. Generally, those who disliked state intervention emphasized culture (Perin), while
those who deemed intervention necessary emphasized a political solution (Ketteler). It should be noted, however, that the
thought of these individuals was multifaceted and shifting. Influenced by Malthus, Perin’s cultural program also included the
inculcation of frugality on the part of all and abstinence/family planning on the part of the working class. Ketteler’s 1865 thought
emphasized state measures, but his 1848 sermons focused on charity, and by 1869 he was endorsing state protection of trade
unions.
18. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, George Lawrence, tr. (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1969), p.
429.
19. Ibid., p. 430
20. Since German theological schools existed within secular universities, German theologians were the most aware of the
need to answer modern critiques and confident that these critiques could be successfully addressed.
21. In reaction to Enlightenment hostility to Aristotle and Thomism, a neo-Scholastic revival occurred in the 1800s—most
notably in Italy and Germany. Among its leaders were Pecci (later Leo XIII) in Italy and Mainz-based scholars led by Bishop
Ketteler. By the mid-1800s, two competing theological schools had emerged in Germany: ultramontanes, led by the neo-
Scholastics of Mainz and arguing for Catholic protection from modern culture and the strengthening of papal authority; and the
Munich school, led by Dollinger and arguing for a dialogue with modern culture and increased internal freedom. A debate
between the two schools in Munich in 1863, combined with a meeting of French liberal Catholics in Malines the same year, form
part of the background to Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors condemnation of liberalism. The conservative position was
bolstered by the doctrine of papal infallibility approved at the First Vatican Council (1869-1870). Leo XIII (1878-1903) added to
his predecessor Pius’ gains by declaring Thomas’ teachings to be definitive in the 1879 Aeterni Patris. For a summary of these
groups and events, see Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1990), pp.
261-294.
One could argue that John Paul II’s papacy has combined the nineteenth century liberal Catholics’ openness to new
methodologies and their conclusions with the ultramontanist emphasis on the ultimate evaluatory authority of the papacy.
22. See Alfred Loisy, My Duel With the Vatican (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1924); A. Vidler, A Variety of
Catholic Modernists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); and L. Barmann, Baron von Hugel and the Modernist
Crisis in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
23. Official Vatican documents included Providentissimus Deus (1893), Lamentabili (1907), and Pascendi (1907). While
the Vatican overstated the coherence of modernist ideas, Loisy and Tyrell admitted that it highlighted their main ideas.
Technically, “integralism” came to mean both the conviction that all areas of both private and public life should be regulated
by the Church and its hierarchy and that such regulation should abide by the neo-Thomistic edifice.
24. These arguments first surfaced in the 1682 Gallican crisis, when the French Assembly of the Clergy enacted a four-
point program denying the Pope’s jurisdictional primacy. Napoleon attached the same four Articles to his 1801 Concordat. While
Maistre, in his 1819 Du Pape, argued that “society” depended upon religion and that religion depended upon the Pope, liberal
Catholics added the link between the papal authority and religious freedom. A seminal text on this thesis is Felicite Lamennais’
1829 Des Progres de la Revolution et de la Guerre contre l’Eglise.
25. While the emphasis of early liberal Catholics seeking a rapprochement with economic and political liberalism was on
the freedom of the Church, some—like Montalembert—agreed with Protestant Guizot that the real issue was freedom of
conscience: “The principle of religious freedom such as every truly Christian and liberal man ought to understand it and practice
it . . . consists uniquely in the recognition of the right of the human conscience not to be governed, in its relation with God, by
human decrees and chastisements.” James Finlay, The Liberal Who Failed (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968).
The turn of the century “Americanist crisis” was fought over whether the American model of a non-confessional state
protecting religious freedom was merely acceptable or optimum. The official shift from the former to the latter view occurred at
Vatican II (see Dignitatus Humanae and Gaudium et Spes), and was due in large part to the arguments of American Jesuit
John Courtney Murray.
26. Among the first to make this connection between democracy and just legal regulation—including the right to unionize—
was Coux, who in a 1831 L’Avenir article wrote, “Give the worker the right to vote and this undercover warfare that drains our
economy will end by itself. . . . [The industrial bourgeoisie] will need to assure itself not only the workers’ labor, but also of his
friendship, in order to carry some weight in public matters” (from Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe, p. 45).
 2

Christian Personalism: The Ethical and

Anthropological Thought of Karol Wojtyla/John
Paul II

Introduction
In 1968, in the midst of Soviet political repression and Western cultural upheaval, Cardinal
Karol Wojtyla wrote his friend Henri de Lubac about his commitment to an intellectual project
that would soon appear as the book Person and Act:1
I devote my very rare free moments to a work that is close to my heart and devoted to the metaphysical sense and
mystery of the person. It seems to me that the debate today is being played out on that level. The evil of our times
consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each
human person. The evil is even more of the metaphysical order than of the moral order. To this disintegration planned
at times by atheistic ideologies we must oppose, rather than sterile polemics, a kind of “recapitulation” of the inviolable
mystery of the person.2

The future Pope had similarly described his earlier anti-collectivist philosophical work
with the Catholic University of Lublin: “For nearly 20 years, against the background of a
worldwide discussion, it has become evident in Poland that in the heart of the matter lies not
cosmology or a philosophy of nature, but philosophical anthropology and ethics: the most
important and fundamental dispute on man.”3
After his installation as Pope John Paul II, this focus on the person became more
theological and less philosophical; hermeneutically sensitive biblical exegesis increasingly
underpinned his “personalistic” ethical and anthropological assertions.4 Unchanged, however,
was his commitment to articulating “a correct view of the person,” a view that he insists was
the foundation of the Second Vatican Council and is the “guiding principle . . . of all the
Church’s social doctrine.”5 Given the Catholic position that reason and faith agree with and
support one another, also unchanged were his conclusions about the human person.6
Because of John Paul’s longstanding focus on the person, several scholars have produced
helpful studies of his philosophical and theological methods and humansitic conclusions.7
However, these works, while excellent in many respects, leave four important gaps that this
chapter will seek to fill. First, previous analyses of John Paul’s philosophical efforts have
failed to clearly describe his unique appropriation of the phenomenological method and
subsequent ethical and anthropological conclusions. Second and related, these studies have not
adequately explored the relationship between his phenomenology and Thomism—consistencies
between his phenomenologically-derived conclusions about personhood and those of Aquinas,
deviations from Aquinas, and the ways in which he simply appropriates Thomistic
philosophical methods and conclusions. Third, previous studies have failed to identify which
of his ethical and anthropological conclusions are purely theological—dependent solely on
Christian revelation. Fourth and most centrally for the purposes of this book as a whole,
analyses of John Paul’s social thought have insufficiently described the elements of his
“correct view of the human person” that are necessary for explaining the various elements of
his social thought.
This chapter will address each of these issues in turn, with an emphasis on the first three.
The first section will examine the phenomenologically inspired aspects of John Paul’s
philosophical ethics and anthropology, while the second will attend to the relationship between
his phenomenology and Thomism. The third section will explore ways in which his conception
of the human person is both consistent with and dependent upon his interpretation of Christian
revelation, attending especially to his position on the relationship between reason and
revelation. The fourth section will preview the aspects of his anthropological and ethical
thought necessary for understanding his social thought.

John Paul II and Phenomenology: Method and

Ethical/Anthropological Conclusions
Genesis of Interest in Subjectivity and Phenomenology
John Paul’s interest in phenomenology grew out of his analysis of the history of Western
philosophy and culture during his undergraduate, seminary, and graduate education (much of it
done underground despite Nazi and Communist regimes) in the 1940s and 1950s. According to
the future Pope’s analysis, the crucial development undermining philosophical anthropology
and ethics—and thus undermining our ability to act in a manner fulfilling to both ourselves and
others—was one of the defining features of modernity: the shift from what can be called a
“philosophy of being” to a “philosophy of consciousness.”8 Much of ancient and medieval
philosophy, such as that of Aristotle and Aquinas, asserted that things possessed essential
attributes that the human mind could discern. Regarding things that develop when supported by
certain preconditions allowing them to actualize their potential, it was maintained that one of
these known attributes was the object’s telos—which coincided with its well-being.
Additionally, in the case of the object called “human being,” it was eventually maintained that
this telos, its attendant virtues, and its preconditions were known to possess normative
significance. In other words, besides knowing what human flourishing and its preconditions
are, we also know that these ought to be secured.
While it is impossible to assess whether Descartes, through his Discourse and
Meditations, was responsible for the modern “turn toward the subject,” his thought was
certainly influential, and at least emblematic of a gradual cultural shift from the previous
confidence in reason’s ability to know how one ought to act. The Cartesian “method of doubt”
concluded that we are certain about our thinking (and thus our existence) but uncertain of the
correspondence between our thinking (and feeling) about things and the things themselves—
including ourselves. Subsequent philosophers attributed the contents of our consciousness to
sensory experience (empiricists such as Hume) or to innate and universally possessed concepts
that determined our perceptions of things and any duties toward them (Kant).
Wojtyla’s faith in Christian revelation, life experiences during and after World War II, and
encounter with Aquinas convinced him that Cartesian subjectivism and its relativistic progeny,
including emotivism and formalism, were both harmful and false.9 However, he also
considered a turn toward the subject and interiority to be a potentially positive development,
one that could fruitfully supplement the older, cosmologically based, and objective
philosophical approach. While this older approach supported ethical ideas—such as virtue
and natural law theories—that John Paul endorsed, he was convinced that there were alternate
methods capable of both confirming these aspects of experience and arriving at others. For
example, he regarded Boethius’ definition of persons as “an individual subsisting in a rational
nature” as incapable of capturing important anthropological aspects such as human uniqueness
and value, and the personal significance of freedom.10

Evaluation and Influence of Scheler

A habilitation thesis sabbatical provided Wojtyla with the opportunity to investigate
phenomenology as one such methodological alternative. Between 1946 and 1948, he had
completed a theological dissertation at the Angelicum under neo-Scholastic Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange on St. John of the Cross’ doctrine of the human encounter with God.11 After
two subsequent parish assignments, Archbishop Baziak of Krakow decided in 1951 that
Wojtyla should begin a two-year academic sabbatical in order to qualify for university
teaching. His parish assignments, particularly his tenure as a student chaplain challenged with
explaining Christian ethics (especially sexual ethics), had piqued his interest in new
approaches to philosophical ethics, and at the suggestion of former theology professor Ignacy
Rozycki, he decided to explore the thought of German phenomenologist Max Scheler (1874-
1928).12
The phenomenological movement was founded by German philosopher Edmund Husserl
(1859-1938), who, influenced by his mentor Franz Brentano’s theories of intentionality
(“directedness”) and value, sought to counter the prevailing climate of post-Kantian
idealism.13 Kant’s epistemology resulted in the assertion of a radical divide between
consciousness and reality, between things as they appear to us (phenomena) and things in
themselves (noumena). Husserl, at least in his earlier works such as Logical Investigations
(1900-01), posited that such a divide could be breached through a suspension of the
convictions that comprise one’s “natural attitude” toward things and a precise description of
consciousness’ phenomena or appearances.14 The first step in such a description was the
recognition that one’s conscious experiences are always “intentional.” In other words,
conscious acts are always of or about something, focused on independently existing things
given to one’s consciousness. The next descriptive step was “imaginative variation,” through
which one removes various features from the objects of consciousness. While the removal of
some features leaves the object intact, the removal of other features is experienced as
eliminating the object and thus an aspect that is essential to the thing. Husserl deemed this latter
experience to be an “eidetic intuition,” an insight that such features belonged to the eidos or
essence of the object.
Scheler appropriated Husserl’s phenomenological method and insights as correctives to
modern individualism and Kant’s rule-limited ethical formalism.15 Like many social critics of
his time and the present, Scheler lamented the individualism and alienation besetting modern
societies.16 Influenced by moral philosopher Rudolph Eucken, who argued that the human
purpose and social unity were realized by ascribing to timeless spiritual values, Scheler sought
to employ the phenomenological method ethically in order to more precisely describe these
values and their mode of apprehension.17 Our experience of the essential features of an object
of consciousness, he argued, is always accompanied by affectivity—by an attraction or
repulsion indicative of a value or disvalue. While Kant contended that our moral life was
properly divorced from freedom-impairing inclinations vis-à-vis objects, and instead
grounded in the subject’s categorical imperative to treat persons “never simply as a means, but
always at the same time as an end,” Scheler maintained that the phenomenological method
disclosed that value and thus ethical mandates emerged from one’s experience of things in
themselves, including other persons.18
John Paul’s formal analysis and appropriation of phenomenology thus began in his
habilitation thesis’ critique of Scheler’s ethics, and was later deepened and expressed in
numerous published essays and lectures, and two major philosophical works: Person and Act
and Love and Responsibility.19 According to John Paul, three elements of Scheler’s ethical
thought were attractive to Catholics. First, Scheler opposed the Kantian claim that the mind
lacks direct access to reality and moral values, a claim which undermined the objective and
therefore binding ethical systems explicated by St. Paul, Aristotle, and Aquinas. Second,
Scheler asserted the pedagogical importance of “following”—the appropriation of another
person’s ethos—for the apprehension of values.20 Third, Scheler paid serious attention to our
capacities for knowledge of, and emotional responses to, not only other things but also other
persons, examining phenomena such as sympathy, empathy, and love.21
For two related reasons, however, John Paul concluded that “the ethical system
constructed by Max Scheler is not at all suitable as a means of formulating a scientific
Christian ethics.”22 First, while John Paul agreed that affective responses are indeed
intentional, he did not agree that such responses were always an accurate reflection of value,
and that the subject’s valuation of an object is limited to such responses. According to Scheler,
a thing’s value is grasped in emotional experience, and the highest value is that which elicits
the most intense positive emotional response.23 Reason, on the other hand, “only apprehends
being; it does not apprehend the good. Only the ‘thing-like’ structure of objects manifests itself
to reason.”24 John Paul, however, asserts (with Aquinas) that reason plays a complementary
and more definitive role than emotions in grasping the value of an object of consciousness.25
While emotions or appetites may accurately reflect the values at hand and enhance the
experience of value and self-determination, one often rightly acts against the appetites and in
accordance with value judgements and an objective sense of duty derived from one’s
conscience.26 Scheler, in his attempt to counter Kantian mistakes—ethical “negativism,”27
denigration of the inclinations, and the assertion that the value of persons implied in our sense
of duty toward the moral imperative does not issue from knowledge of the thing-in-itself—has
over-emotionalized the process through which we discern value.28
John Paul argues that Scheler’s over-emphasis on the role of emotions in ethical
discernment leads to a second defect: an inadequate treatment of human agency or efficacy.
Simply stated, Scheler’s analysis implies that we are not free. In Scheler’s system, emotions,
which arise spontaneously in response to value, determine how a person will subsequently
behave. As a result, “the person as causal originator finds no place in the framework of
phenomenological intuition. . . . The whole dynamic character of the person is lost . . . The
person remains only the subject of experiences, and indeed is strictly a passive
subject. . . . [For Scheler], the person is not the originator of action, he does nothing.”29
In fact, regarding the will, John Paul finds more merit in Kant’s ethical theory, in which
one’s reverence for the a priori moral imperative is a summons to action and which posits
freedom as a precondition for acting against inclination and in accordance with the moral law.
However, he takes issue with two aspects of Kant’s theory of human action. First, Kant asserts
that emotion—one’s feeling of respect or reverence for the moral law—motivates one to act
rightly, whereas “in real ethical experience, duty is something more than just this feeling of
respect for the law.”30 Second and more fundamentally, because of Kant’s epistemology and
metaphysics, “the will has no proper object to which it would naturally turn its activity.”31
Ethical life therefore becomes “not a matter of molding one’s actions to conform to the
requirements of an objective good crystallized in the moral law, but only of allowing one’s
practical reason to live by the moral law.”32 Kant’s analysis of the faculty of the will in the
Critique of Practical Reason and the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals thus reveals
that he merely appropriates the term [will] “from the Scholastics, not the reality that the term
signified in their philosophy.”33
John Paul’s affirmation of Scholastic thought on the person and ethics should not be
misconstrued, however, as a rejection of the phenomenological method (or Kant). Ultimately,
he concluded that Scheler’s two errors—inattention to the phenomena of conscience and the
will—were the results not of phenomenology and an inadequate reference to Aquinas, but of an
inadequate reference to experience, from which all human knowledge is derived.34
Conscience, on the one hand, “is the experience of the person and [thus] the object of
phenomenological experience.”35 On the other hand, since “we experience ourselves as the
efficient cause of our own acts,” the “initial discovery of the will takes place in the context of
phenomenological experience.”36 On both accounts, therefore, Scheler must be reproached
“from the perspective of phenomenology itself.”37
John Paul thus emerged from this encounter with Scheler with three convictions relevant to
his future philosophical work. First, phenomenology could provide a theoretical bridge
between consciousness and being. More specifically, the intentional character of conscious
acts and our capacity for eidetic intuition (i.e., genuine knowledge) meant that the things of
which we are conscious—which are not limited to sensed objects and include aspects of our
being as persons—exist as we experience them.38 Second, descriptions of experience (and thus
things) must nevertheless be complete and accurate. Third, phenomenologists had failed to
adequately explore the existence, implications, and effects of human action.

Implications and Effects of Human Action

This third issue became the central topic of numerous academic articles and his major
philosophical work, Person and Act. Independent of any possible meaning-obscuring
translation problems, Person and Act is a difficult book—and not only because of its difficult
and complex subject matter.39 The book’s central assertions, however, are not difficult to
extract, particularly given the clarifications offered in articles published before and after the
book. John Paul’s phenomenologically grounded thought about human action ultimately focuses
on three issues germane to his social theory: the reality of human action, the anthropological
implications of such action, and the effects of human action.
John Paul approaches this first issue—the existence of action—by first describing two
capacities of consciousness itself.40 Consciousness, he asserts, first has a “mirroring” function
through which we are made aware of our acts (including cognitive acts) and experiences. We
do not just perform acts or undergo experiences; consciousness, through its mirroring function,
keeps these acts and experiences present to us.41 This awareness makes possible a second,
“reflexive” function of consciousness, through which the subject turns back toward oneself and
is made aware that these acts and experiences are one’s own.42 Some phenomena of which we
are aware or conscious—feelings and psychosomatic functionings, for example—are
experienced as one’s own, but as nevertheless happening in and, in a sense, to us. However,
other phenomena—“acts”—are experienced as both one’s own and caused by oneself.
John Paul argues that this experience of ourselves as an efficient cause, this capacity for
“self-determination” or “vertical transcendence,” is pregnant with at least two anthropological
implications. First, because such acts are experienced as activity that one may or may not do,
persons are—at least to some degree—free.43 In other words, persons are conscious of
possessing not only feelings and a conscience, but also a will—a faculty permitting one to
choose, for example, the direction of one’s thoughts and how to respond to that which is felt
and cognized.44 Second, this experience and thus evidence of freedom imply that purely
materialistic conceptions of the human person are incorrect. The body is indeed an integral
part of the human person, and, like all material things, functions in deterministic ways that are
describable as “laws.” Some of its functions are unconscious and uncontrolled (i.e., digestion
and gestation), while others are conscious and capable of being oriented toward the fulfillment
of oneself and others (i.e., eating and sexual acts); but both nevertheless happen in us. In our
experiences of acting, on the other hand, we recognize that persons also possess a unique
aspect that is not reducible to matter.45
The relationship that we experience between this “irreducible,” free aspect of the person,
on the one hand, and somatic and psychic/emotional happenings, on the other, connotes the
third salient issue within John Paul’s analysis of human action: the effects of a person’s acts.
The “structure” of acting is such that we are not only its cause, but also its effect—which is a
core insight of virtue ethics.46 In his words, persons are not only “subjects” but also “objects”
of their own will because actions are “intransitive:” they inhere in the actor and affect one’s
ontological status and subsequent orientation vis-à-vis human fulfillment.47 For example, acts
that address physical and emotional phenomena happening in us (i.e., one’s sexual urges and
activities) can result in either a lack of fulfillment in oneself and others and a limitation of
one’s freedom, or the fruitful “integration” of these phenomena into one’s being and subsequent
choices such that the body and emotions positively reinforce the will’s movement toward the
right and the good.48

Implications of Conscience and Fulfillment

As these references to normative realities—“the right,” “fulfillment,” and “the good”—
indicate, John Paul asserts that some formative choices are experienced as better than others.
Prior to the moment of willing in order to attain a perceived good, we experience both the
cognitive and normative dimensions of conscience—which combine to produce an “inner
conviction about the moral goodness or badness of a deed.”49 While the cognitive dimension
reveals the rightness of a proposed deed, the normative dimension presents this truth to the will
as a norm, as a command or prohibition, as an obligation or duty to act or refrain from acting.50
This normative dimension is responsible for the “transition from the ‘is’ to the ‘should’—the
transition from ‘X is truly good’ to ‘I should do X.’ ”51 After the act, it is also responsible for
the realization that one has either misjudged or knowingly willed against an obligation through
the phenomenon otherwise known as guilt.52
John Paul argues, however, that the most important effect of conforming one’s will to the
dictates of a well-formed conscience is not a lack of guilt, but a recognition of one’s own
fulfillment as a human being.53 In a 1969 article (the same year that The Acting Person was
published) exploring the perceived conflict between teleological and rule-based ethical
conceptions, he asserted that “the opposition between the ethics of value and the ethics of duty,
which became dominant at the end of the nineteenth century, deforms the human experience of
morality by placing an artificial emphasis on only one of its aspects. The goal of a theory of
morality consists in the correct unification of these two aspects as found in human
experience.”54 According to his analysis of the relationship between acting and fulfillment,
action not only continually constitutes the person, but also reveals the perfection of the person
to oneself. More specifically, through acting in accordance with the normative dimension of
conscience, one discerns and attains “the fulfillment of freedom through truth.”55 While the
indication of this fulfillment is conventionally deemed happiness or eudaimonia, his
description of the moral life differs from (at least some versions of) eudaimonism in two ways.
First, as something that happens in the person, felicity is more akin to an abiding sense of joy
than to transient physical or psychological pleasure. Colloquially, it might be described as a
deep sense of well-being. Second, although happiness so-described is experienced as a
consequence of right acting, it is neither right action’s verification principle nor, more
importantly, its motive. As with the fruitful integration of physical and emotional happenings
into the dynamic of willing, this phenomenon of happiness can reinforce authentic responses to
one’s conscience, but is not the primary motive behind them. While John Paul’s moral theory
thus posits a causal relationship between the right and the good, its emphasis on the roles of the
right and duty distinguishes it from consequentialist/teleological theories such as Mill’s
utilitarianism and Dewey’s pragmatism—and even Aristotle’s virtue-based theory.
This relationship between freely acting in accordance with normative truths and the
fulfillment of the actor is epistemologically significant because it indicates the specific
character of human fulfillment. The precepts that conscience recommends to the will embody,
negatively, the duty to not deny oneself or another specified pre-moral or moral goods; and,
positively, the duty to act within one’s capacities to ensure these goods are available.56 While
the former requires doing no harm, the latter requires acting to promote the good of others—as
specified by the theologically grounded commandment to serve one’s neighbor as oneself. In
other words, John Paul asserts that the nature of the truths that, when freely acted upon, result
in felicity indicate that persons are fulfilled through “the free gift of self.”57 Reflection on
ethical cognition and action thus establishes the anthropological fact that we are social beings
not only in the senses that we are affected by our human environment or need the contributions
of others to secure the goods necessary to (using Aristotle’s typology) mere life and the good
life. Human sociality includes these aspects, but is most deeply understood as our vocation to
love—to will the good of the other. The social/political ramifications of this human vocation
will be developed in the next chapter, but worth noting here is his assertion that in societies
where “participation”—acting with and for others—and a resulting “community” are either
considered an impediment to fulfillment (“individualism”) or coerced (“totalism”), persons
are “alienated” from their being as persons, as beings fulfilled through the free sharing of their
gifts for the good of others.58
In addition to the social nature of human fulfillment, John Paul highlights a second
anthropological fact—one that reveals the metaphysical basis of the duty to seek this
fulfillment—that generates one’s experience of normative truths: the fact of human dignity or
value.59 One’s duty to encourage the flourishing of persons, which is supported by the basic
goods identified in conscience’s commands, is grounded in the apprehension that all persons
have a non-relative value or ontological (versus moral) goodness. As stated eventually in
Veritatis Splendor, these universally valid norms, traditionally understood as the precepts of
the natural law, “express the dignity of the human person.”60 In Love and Responsibility, his
earlier philosophical work on applied sexual ethics, John Paul associates this dignity with the
“personalistic norm” upon which “all human relationships are posited:” “The norm, in its
negative aspect, states that the person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and
cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end [i.e., sexual pleasure]. In
its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the person is a good towards which the
only proper and adequate attitude is love.”61
“Seek[ing] the basis of this dignity within the human being,” John Paul focuses on two
related aspects of persons. First, the human being “continually transforms nature, raising it in
some sense to that being’s own level” and thus “holds a position superior to the whole of
nature and stands above everything else in the visible world” because of two capacities:
reason and freedom.62 In his words, “Intellect and freedom are essential and irrevocable
properties of the person. Herein . . . lies the whole natural basis of the dignity of the person.”63
Second and more importantly, through these capacities, one has the potential to pursue “distinct
personal ends” and thus transform oneself into something “unique and unrepeatable.”64
Regardless of the persuasiveness of these capacity-based attempts to ground human dignity,
John Paul regards it as given in our experience of moral norms.65

John Paul II and Thomism

The Stakes over John Paul’s Evaluation of Thomism
Given John Paul’s eventual rise to the papacy, the relationship between his philosophical
thought and various interpretations of Aquinas has been hotly debated.66 At least two issues are
at stake. The first is the veracity of Church teachings. In response to the perceived moral and
cultural crisis discussed in the previous chapter, Leo XIII in 1879 initiated the neo-Thomistic
movement by proclaiming the incomparable value of Aquinas’ philosophical-theological
synthesis.67 However, any backsliding on such a bold proclamation—that a philosophical
method and its conclusions are matchless and definitive—runs the obvious risk of undermining
similar Church pronouncements. If John Paul is not a Thomist, if he is a phenomenologist who
derives anthropological and ethical conclusions that differ from Aquinas’, then he risks
undermining the Church’s teaching authority. Second, in part because of neo-Scholasticism,
many Catholic clergy members and academics are committed Thomists who also regard
modern philosophical currents such as phenomenology as wrong and potentially dangerous to
their worldviews, flocks, and academic careers. Given these stakes, there have been
continuous and helpful scholarly attempts to demonstrate that, ultimately, John Paul is a
Thomist—and even a Thomist of a certain kind.

Endorsement of Thomism
Is John Paul, philosophically, a Thomist? And if so, what kind? The answer to this first
question is obvious: “Yes, but not entirely.” Fortunately, in addition to indirectly providing this
answer through the content of his philosophical thought, John Paul answers it directly on
several occasions. Most unequivocal is his statement in the introduction to the Acting Person:
“The author of the present study owes everything to the systems of metaphysics, of
anthropology, and of Aristotelian-Thomistic ethics on the one hand, and to phenomenology,
above all in Scheler’s interpretation, and through Scheler’s critique also to Kant, on the other
hand.”68 Another direct endorsement of philosophical diversity occurs in his Fides et Ratio
papal encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason. After highlighting “the need for
a philosophy of a genuinely metaphysical range, capable . . . of transcending empirical data,”
John Paul also asserts that he is not “speak[ing] of metaphysics in the sense of a specific
school or a particular historical current of thought.”69 Instead, he recommends that
philosophers develop their thought “in organic continuity with the great tradition which,
beginning with the ancients, passes through the Fathers of the Church and the masters of
Scholasticism and includes the fundamental achievements of modern and contemporary
thought,” to include “the perspective of the phenomenological method.”70

John Paul’s Critique of Thomism

But despite this endorsement of phenomenology, misunderstandings have arisen over the
relationship between John Paul’s phenomenologically informed anthropological and ethical
inquiry and his frequent references to Thomistic philosophy—especially Thomistic
metaphysics. In short, some interpreters have insisted that John Paul regards phenomenological
analyses of experience to be insufficient, ultimately requiring augmentation by “a philosophy of
being (such as that of St. Thomas).”71
According to this account, John Paul employs phenomenology merely in order to explore
human interiority, including consciousness and self-consciousness. Post-Cartesian philosophy
has mistakenly tended to equate the person with consciousness and thus lapsed into
subjectivism, instead of conceiving of the person as a body-soul unity whose consciousness is
the fruit of a rational faculty that is, in turn, a property of an underlying spiritual substance.72
But while St. Thomas avoids this mistake, according to John Paul, he offers no direct analysis
of consciousness and self-consciousness. “He shows us the particular faculties, both spiritual
and sensory, thanks to which the whole of human consciousness and self-consciousness—the
human personality in the psychological and moral sense—takes shape, but that is also where he
stops.”73 Instead of closely analyzing these phenomena “as totally unique manifestations of the
person as a subject” and as “that in which the person’s subjectivity is most apparent,” Aquinas
merely implies their existence through the concept of actus humanus and points out their
source.74 John Paul thus regards the development of the philosophy of consciousness and the
phenomenological method as promising means of “enriching the concept of the human person in
terms of the whole subjective, ‘conscious’ aspect, which had in some ways been leveled by
metaphysical ‘naturalism.’ ”75

Misinterpretations of John Paul’s Critique of Thomism

However, some accounts of John Paul’s thought insist that he regards phenomenology as
inadequate to the task of substantiating the existence and characteristics of a variety of human
realities, such as a suppositum, the intellect, and freedom.76 According to this interpretation,
John Paul realizes that only traditional metaphysics—which does not separate subjectivity and
objectivity, and in which the philosopher “consults experience as offering him evidence from
which he can reason and infer” and then “resolves the evidence into principles and causes
which provide an explanation of the evidence”—is capable of validating such concepts.77 Said
to be hampered by limitations not endemic to metaphysics, phenomenological inquiry is
deemed incapable of apprehending such explanatory concepts and universal features of being
from experience, and instead merely complements metaphysics by illuminating, for example,
“the experienced inner drama of responsible liberty.”78 John Paul himself seems to endorse
this interpretation of the relationship of phenomenology to metaphysics (and, by extension,
Thomism) in Fides et Ratio, where he asserts: “We face a great challenge at the end of this
millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation. . . . We cannot stop short at experience
alone; even if experience does reveal the human being’s interiority and spirituality, speculative
thinking must penetrate to . . . the ground from which it arises.”79
There is no doubt that John Paul repeatedly endorses many of the conclusions of Thomistic
metaphysics. Thomistic philosophical concepts permeating his works include: the person as
essentially suppositum; human dignity; the distinction between amor concupiscentiae and
amor benevolentiae; human freedom (actus humanus versus actus hominus); the will as an
appetitus rationalis and source of movement from potency to actuality; conscience; natural
law; virtue; teleology; and the human person as relational.80 One should not, however, interpret
his frequent references to Thomistic philosophy as indicative of deep reservations about
phenomenology. To the contrary, John Paul asserts that through properly modified
phenomenological analyses of conscious experience—especially of human action, given the
fact that operari sequitur esse—one can derive the same anthropological and ethical
conclusions as Aquinas does through his so-called philosophy of being.81 Regarding the person
as suppositum, for example, he asserts: “The human being is . . . given to us not merely as a
being defined according to species, but as a concrete self, a self-experiencing subject. Our
own subjective being and the existence proper to it (that of a suppositum) appear to us
precisely as a self-experiencing subject.”82 Similarly, regarding the will:
Although I have arrived at the concept of the “human act” within the framework of a phenomenological inquiry of
Husserlian orientation, it has to be pointed out that it coincides with the notion of “actus humanus” as elaborated by
Thomas Aquinas. “Actus humanus” follows from the nature of the acting person, from man understood as subject
and author of his action. Indubitably the most valuable element in Thomas’ concept of “actus humanus” is that it
expresses the dynamism of a concrete being. . . . That specific dynamism finds further elaboration in Thomas’ studies
of “voluntarium” for the dynamism proper to the activity of man . . . and to the human act . . . finds its roots in the
will.83

As these quotations indicate, John Paul does not regard phenomenological inquiry as
devoid of objectivity and thus of real evidence from which one can reason and infer, but
conceives of it as a legitimate way of disclosing the universal features of the human being
asserted by traditional metaphysics.84 In fact, as his friend and colleague Swiezawski points
out, beginning with John Paul’s Catholic University of Lublin affiliation, a central focus of his
philosophical project was to demonstrate the experiential basis of Thomistic anthropological
and ethical notions.85
Thus, whether one considers him a Thomist depends upon one’s assessment criteria. If
carrying the Thomistic mantle entails defending metaphysical realism and concurring with most
aspects of Aquinas’ philosophical anthropology and ethics, then John Paul is surely a Thomist.
But if being a Thomist means relying solely on Aquinas’ philosophy of being and its associated
methodology to do the heavy metaphysical and ethical lifting, then he is not a Thomist.
Ultimately, the best way of viewing his project, and the relationship between the Thomistic and
phenomenological strands of his philosophical thought, is to see Aquinas as the guiding
background of his description and analysis of human experience—especially the interior-life
experiences of consciousness and acting. This heuristic does imply that John Paul is guided by
conclusions derived from a philosophical method that he himself regards as greatly inferior.
While regarding Thomistic philosophy as inattentive to one’s experiences of consciousness and
acting, John Paul nevertheless deemed its methodology as capable of deriving important
anthropological and ethical conclusions. Since this methodology and its conclusions were the
first to substantiate what John Paul had previously only “felt and lived,” one can reasonably
assume that Thomism served as a trusted guide to his subsequent philosophical investigations.

John Paul II and Christian Revelation

On the Relationship between Reason and Revelation
This interpretation—that John Paul uses Thomistic philosophy to guide his phenomenologically
informed anthropological and ethical inquiry—is consistent with his endorsement of a more
general aspect of Aquinas’ thought: his analysis of the natures of, and proper relationship
between, revelation and reason. In Fides et Ratio, subtitled “On the Relationship Between
Faith and Reason,” John Paul reviews and reaffirms several relevant assertions comprising
this traditional analysis. First, faith is both a body of truths revealed by a God who does not lie
and a human act wherein one trustingly assents to these truths.86 Faith thus begins with the
historical experience of God’s initiative and revelation and then ends with a surrender of one’s
mind and will to what God has revealed. Second, reasoning—both philosophical and scientific
—begins not with the direct experience of God but with careful observation and reflection
upon our experiences of God’s creations, including ourselves.
Third, John Paul affirms that faith and reason are harmonious in that they do not contradict
one another. Each is a window into reality, and since reality and the truthful statements which
describe it accurately are, respectively, one and thus cannot contradict one another, faith and
reason ought to agree. In affirming the validity and harmony of both faith and reason, John Paul
II criticizes two alternative theses that posit a contradiction between them by denigrating the
validity of either reason or faith, forcing us to choose between them. One thesis is that offered
by Tertullian, who posed the question “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”87 He regarded
reason as predominantly a source of error, and he recommended that we simply receive the
truths of revelation without subjecting them to intellectual scrutiny. This position is referred to
by John Paul as fideism, biblicism or fundamentalism. The other problematic thesis is what he
calls rationalism, a stance that accepts only the conclusions of reason and regards the claims of
faith as perhaps emotionally comforting but not necessarily true.88 John Paul instead espouses a
thesis that has been part of the Catholic tradition since Justin the Martyr and was later
developed by Aquinas: much of what is discerned by valid reasoning is also asserted, and
even completed, by faith.89
 This notion that reasoning is completed by faith introduces a fourth and functional aspect
of the relationship between faith and reason discussed in Fides et Ratio. Faith and reason are
not only harmonious or in agreement. Because they are methodologically distinct, they can also
be complementary and mutually reinforcing. Reason serves faith in at least two ways. First,
since God’s revelation occurred within particular cultural contexts that imbue it with particular
meanings and is often allegorical, reason is required in order to interpret and communicate the
articles of the faith. Second, the mind can “acquire a . . . knowledge of created realities—the
world and man himself—which are also the object of divine revelation,” knowledge which, in
turn, promotes “an acceptance of God’s revelation.”90
But reason has natural limitations that are exacerbated by sin and the limitations of one’s
environment or culture, and therefore needs the support of revelation. In John Paul’s words,
“Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects
reason. Illuminated by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from
the disobedience of sin” and, while ascribing to its own rational methods, is able to consider
“truths which might never have been discovered by reason unaided, although they are not in
themselves inaccessible to reason.”91 He thus recommends “philosophical speculation
conceived in dynamic union with the faith,” and cites Aquinas as a model for this enterprise.92
Given Aquinas’ model use of revelation to guide his reasoning, it is thus not surprising that
John Paul’s phenomenological philosophical work would be guided by and in agreement with
Thomistic philosophy—despite the methodological differences.

Anthropological and Ethical Notions Derived from Revelation

However, John Paul’s relationship to revelation is not merely indirect, mediated by his
reference to Thomistic philosophy. Especially (and understandably) during his pontificate, he
has directly employed Christian revelation—occasionally in ways not emphasized by Aquinas
—in order to guide and supplement his anthropology and ethics. Specifically, he has focused
upon five anthropologically and ethically salient theological notions.
First and most obviously are the ethical precepts of the natural law as also revealed and
articulated in the Old and New Testaments, specifically in the Decalogue and the pertinent
words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth—whom John Paul regards as one of the persons of a
trinitarian God and thus especially definitive.93 Although revealed as “inscribed” in the heart94
and thus accessible to reason, John Paul asserts that through divine law, ethical truths are
“written in a new and definitive way upon the human heart (cf. Jer 31:31-34), replacing the
law of sin which had disfigured this heart (cf. Jer 17:1).”95 In accordance with the Christian
tradition, he regards the New Law not as superceding the Old Law, but as radicalizing and
fulfilling it.96 One is commanded to not only avoid harm to oneself and others, but to actively
love even one’s enemies. The scope of what love demands is broadened, and includes internal
dispositions.97 Additionally, Jesus makes explicit the relationship between right acting and
fulfillment, between rule-oriented and teleological ethical theories, thus affirming the nature of
fulfillment as self-giving.98
 This conception of fulfillment is also affirmed by a second theological notion emphasized
by John Paul: the centrality of the virtue of charity.99 The disposition to love another for their
own sake was not absent from ancient thought: as Aquinas points out at the beginning of his
examination of charity, Aristotle’s treatment of friendship describes such a disposition as
occurring between equals and as necessary to the good life.100 Christian revelation, however,
elevates this virtue as the greatest, the “form of all the virtues,” further clarifying the nature of
human fulfillment.101
Third, in order to further defend this teleological conception and the dignity that makes it
normative, John Paul—in concert with other “Christian personalists”—has significantly
developed and thoroughly employed the theologically derived notion of person.102 Two
conceptual moves comprise this defense. First, in the Priestly account of creation of the first
chapter of Genesis, man is revealed as made in the image of God—in imago Dei: “Then God
said: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ . . . God created man in his image, in
the divine image he created him; male and female he created him.”103 John Paul therefore
maintains that revelation discloses the ultimate basis of the intrinsic and incomparable value of
the human being: our creation in God’s image.104
Discerning the specific meaning of this imago Dei notion is the second task within this
formulation of a theological anthropology with teleological and normative components. Two
sub-tasks are pertinent to accomplishing this task: grasping the essence of God, and the ways in
which human beings reflect—are images of—this essence. In order to address both of these
issues, John Paul has extensively relied upon and developed a venerable notion of Christian
theology: “person.”
The formulation of the concept of person in reference to God resulted from the theological
controversy that eventually generated the Council of Nicea in 325. While the notions of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each divine—existed in the early Church, the Hebraic and
Hellenistic emphases on the unity of God had, by the third century, resulted in
“monarchianism” (a stress on the unity of God) and forms of “modalism” (explaining the three
as temporary modes or aspects of, or even names for, the one arche). Arius of Alexandria
interpreted revelation in the light of these theological and philosophical assumptions and
concluded that Jesus was the Logos but not God, and thus not God’s definitive and final
revelation to man. And since “there was a time when the Son was not,” the Word had a
beginning and was thus even liable to change and sin. At stake were the gravity of Jesus’
words and acts, the nature of the God in whose image human beings are created, and the unity
of the Church.
Convinced that Jesus was God, other Christian theologians of the Patristic period—
Tertullian, Origen, and Novatian—attempted to understand this possibility by developing a
Logos Christology which accorded with statements in John (“And the Word became flesh.”)
and Proverbs (8:22-31) and with the prevailing neo-Platonic philosophy. Jesus was affirmed
to be the pre-existent Word who participated with the Father in creation, and who co-redeemed
creation by becoming flesh. Tertullian (and Hippolytus) thus stressed an economy (oeconomia,
organization or distribution) of divine life: salvation history involved God’s self-distribution,
an “economy . . . which distributes the unity into trinity.”105 This is the first known use of the
word “trinity.” The word he selected for the three components of this divine economy was
“person” (persona), which, like the Greek term prosopon used by Hippolytus, was a
commonly used word for the human individual that specifically connoted the distinctiveness or
individuality established by one’s social role.106
The Council of Nicea affirmed this conception of God, one still held by most Christian
denominations. Jesus was “begotten, not made, one in being with the Father” (homoousios:
“one in substance”). However, this characterization of God as a being of equal persons, one of
whom possesses two natures, remained controversial. Between 325 and Council of
Constantinople I in 381, a number of Arian positions on Christ’s nature existed: the Son is
unlike the Father (Anomeans); the Son is similar to the Father (Homoeans); and the Son was
“of like substance” to the Father (Homoiousians). In the meantime, the controversy stimulated
reflection on the nature of the Holy Spirit, with Macedonius teaching that the Holy Spirit was
not a person (hypostasis) but simply a power (dynamic) of God, and therefore inferior to the
Father and the Son. In 381, the first council of Constantinople both reaffirmed the Nicene
formulation and declared the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit, thus defining the Trinitarian
doctrine of one God in three persons (hypostases). But Christological controversies were not
laid to rest until the sixth ecumenical council. The third, Ephesius in 431, countered the
Nestorian assertions that Jesus was not the Logos, but only the human bearer of God
(Theophoros), and that Mary was not the Mother of God (Theotokos). The fourth, Chalcedon in
451, countered the Monophysite (one nature) assertion that Christ was not both God and man,
but was only divine. The fifth, Constantinople II in 553, readdressesed the respective
Nestorian and Eutychian (Monophysite) positions that in Christ, divinity was separate from, or
compromising to, humanity. Finally, the sixth, Constantinople III in 680, adjudicated the
Monothelite (one will) controversy over the relationship between Christ’s divine and human
wills.107
John Paul asserts that the subsequent Thomistic reflection on God that drew upon this
doctrinal tradition correctly emphasized both the substantial and relational aspects of the
divine Persons.108 In Aquinas, the three Persons of the trinitarian God are distinct, but are also
related—united—through unique instantiations of self-giving love that are the essence of each.
However, he also maintains that Aquinas fails to adequately incorporate the notion of
relationality into his theological anthropology. “[I]n St. Thomas’ system the person performs
more of a theological function. . . . We encounter the word persona mainly in his treatises on
the Trinity and the Incarnation, whereas it is all but absent from his treatise on the human
being.”109 When Aquinas does characterize the human being as a person, he continually relies
on the Boetheian definition of person as “individual substance of a rational nature” which,
while devoid of the objectification inherent to Aristotle’s characterization of man as a
“rational animal,” fails, according to John Paul, to capture both the uniqueness and
relationality inherent to the theological understanding of personhood.110 Given this
shortcoming, John Paul has continually sought to articulate a theological anthropology that
more fully explicates two implications of the imago Dei notion emphasized by the Second
Vatican Council: the human person’s relational and self-donative telos, and the dignity that
makes this teleology normative.111 He has thus continually stressed that our creation in the
image of divine Persons means that our faculties—including those of the body—are capable of
facilitating, and through right action are oriented toward, the “free gift of oneself” that gives
due respect to oneself and others, and creates—mirroring the Trinity—a communion of persons
(communio personarum).112 In his words, “Human beings are like God not only by reason of
their spiritual nature, which accounts for their existence as persons, but also by reason of their
capacity for community with other persons.”113
John Paul’s focus on a fourth notion derived from Christian revelation—the dual nature,
divine and human, of Jesus—attempts to allay any doubt that we are persons in the same sense
as the Persons of the Trinity. According to John Paul, Christology is directly relevant to
anthropology because Jesus was also a human person. Because of this humanity, Jesus is “the
new Adam [who] . . . reveals man to himself” and becomes the basis of an “authentic
humanism.”114 Jesus reveals this authentic humanism as personalism: the human being is a
human person, a composite (body-soul) individual who is nevertheless social or, more
specifically, relational—meant for participation and unity through the free gift of oneself for
the good of others and God.
Finally, John Paul emphasizes—particularly in his papal thought—a fifth revealed
anthropological notion in order to explain both our difficulty with conforming the will to
normative realities and the subsequent need for grace, including revelation: original sin or
human sinfulness. While the human propensity to act wrongly (sin) and thus effect a “privation
of the good” (evil) is a common feature of history and experience, John Paul insists that the
source, effects, and mitigation of this condition are best understood in the light of revelation,
particularly the Genesis account of the Fall.115 Because of pride and the subsequent desire to
be radically autonomous and self-legislating, every person is prone to acts that rebel against
the limits of creatureliness and therefore against known metaphysical and ethical givens.116 A
perverse love of oneself—of one’s capacities, especially the will—results in an unfulfilling
attachment to other goods, the deformation of one’s will and reason, and antagonism within
persons and that gives rise to antagonism between oneself and God, others, and the natural
environment.117 Since the will and reason are affected by one’s social environment, the
“structures of sin”—detrimental social institutions—that result from personal sins make
fulfillment through human effort alone even more difficult.118 Ultimately, God’s justifying and
sanctifying grace—imparted through a variety of means, including our participation in
revelation, the sacraments, and prayer—is necessary to perfect nature and create a society
where the personalistic norm is respected and all can flourish.119 Consistent with the tradition
regarding the relationship between grace and nature (and thus the relationship between faith
and works), John Paul steers a middle position between Pelagian optimism about human nature
and pessimistic, predestinarian forms of Protestantism. While our fallen condition makes grace
necessary to achieve even natural virtues and our natural end, human capacities are also part of
the process of perfection.120 This middle position enables him to simultaneously posit the
intractability of self-interest, the necessity of grace, and human freedom:
Moreover, man, who was created for freedom, bears within himself the wound of original sin, which constantly draws
him towards evil and puts him in need of redemption. Not only is this doctrine an integral part of Christian revelation; it
also has great hermeneutical value insofar as it helps one to understand human reality. Man tends towards good, but
 he is also capable of evil. He can transcend his immediate interest and still remain bound to it.121

Ethical and Anthropological Foundations of John Paul’s

Social Thought
Consistent with his early conviction that collectivist and individualist social theories must be
countered through better anthropological and ethical thought, John Paul declared in Centesimus
Annus that the “guiding principle . . . of all of the Church’s social doctrine is a correct
understanding of the human person.”122 As the previous analysis indicates, much of his
intellectual effort has been devoted to attaining such an understanding, resulting in an array of
stipulations that philosophers and theologians will be unpacking and evaluating for many years.
However, despite this complexity, I would argue that three elements of his personalism are
necessary to understanding the central tenets of his social thought, which are the topic of the
next chapter.
The first pillar is the assertion of human dignity or value. As we have discussed above,
John Paul musters several arguments in defense of this normatively significant quality, but
focuses on two facts: the implications of conscience’s grasp and God’s confirmation of the
natural law; and the revelation of three aspects of our relationship to God—God’s love for
each person, our destiny to be united with God, and our likeness to Him. As we will see in the
next chapter, these convictions give rise to his defense of human rights and a liberal state
charged with securing these rights.
The second foundational element of his social thought is the teleological notion that we are
fulfilled through the free gift of ourselves to others and God. While John Paul argues that this
vocation is implicit in the relationship between one’s experience of acting in accordance with
moral norms and the content of the norms themselves, his most cited argument is theological:
through Jesus Christ, God has revealed that we are persons and therefore fulfilled through
communion with others and God. The next chapter will examine the relationship between this
notion and several aspects of his social thought, including his emphases on certain freedoms,
democracy, a limited state, and the principle of subsidiarity.
Third, as we will see in the next chapter, his social thought is thoroughly indebted to the
doctrines of human fallenness and the necessity of grace for attaining our status as persons in
communion with others in this life and God in the next. Emerging from this doctrine are his
commitments to human rights, an effective but limited democratic state, a relatively free
market, and religious freedom.

Notes
1. Karol Wojtyla, Osaba I Czyn (Crakow: Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne, 1969). The title of the English translation is
The Acting Person (Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, 1979). In addition to altering the title, philosopher and publisher
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka made other controversial changes that resulted in a corrected English edition that has yet to be
published. For a clear and full account of the controversy, which revolves around the accusation that the changes mitigated
Wojtyla’s Thomistic bent, see George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper
Collins, 1999), pp. 174–175.
2. Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), pp. 171-172.
3. Quoted from Andrew N. Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Personalism (New Britain,
Conn.: Mariel Publications, 1980).
4. Although the philosophical and theological literature sometimes conflates “ethical” and “anthropological” (with the
former as a subset of the latter), I will attempt to distinguish between the normative claims about the human person—ethical—
and those descriptive—anthropological.
Taken together, John Paul’s normative and descriptive claims about the human person place him within the orbit of
personalist thought. Two basic versions of personalism exist: the United States’ version developed by (among others) Borden
Parker Browne (1847-1910) and centered at Boston University; and the French version, first attributed to Maine de Biran, Felix
Ravisson-Mollien, and Henri Bergson (“vitalism”), and later developed by and/or influencing Emmanuel Mounier (who drew
from Pascal, Bergson, Kierkegard, and Marcel), Maurice Blondel, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Romano Guardini, Jean Danielou,
Henri de Lubac, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, John Courtney Murray, Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and others
(including non-Catholics such as Protestant Paul Ricoeur and Jews Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas). John Paul II was
influenced by the latter anthropological project, which sought to defend human dignity and freedom against collectivism and
defend human relationality/sociality against certain forms of individualism.
Not all European-style personalists are phenomenologists (and vice versa). For example, Gilson and Maritain, stimulated by
Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 call for a revival of Thomism in Aeterni Patris, were part of the broad Neo-Thomist movement (that
catalyzed the recent return of virtue ethics), and used Thomistic thought to defend personalistic assertions (in addition to
exploring the possibility of reconciling Aquinas and Kant, i.e., transcendental Thomism). But what became known as the Polish
school of personalism—centered at the Catholic University of Lublin and involving John Paul II—employed phenomenological
methods in order to buttress personalistic themes, many of which were consistent with or developments of Thomistic notions.
5. Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus [CA], para. 11.
6. For an extended reflection of the relationship between faith and reason which defends and deepens Aquinas’ well-
known position, see John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1999).
7. Most noteworthy are: Woznicki, A Christian Humansim; George H. Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: The Origins
of His Thought and Action (New York: Seabury Press, 1981); Ronald D. Lawler, The Christian Personalism of John Paul
II (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982); Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical
Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993);
Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Cambridge: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997); Jaroslaw Kupczak, O.P., Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the Philosophy
of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000); John M. McDermont, ed.,
The Thought of Pope John Paul II (Roma: Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 1993); and Peter Simpson, On Karol
Wojtyla (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001).
8. Modernity is, of course, a “contested concept.” While there is vast agreement that the now dominant modes of Western
(and, because of globalization, increasingly human) thought and action are vastly different from those of the ancient and
medieval past, there are numerous scholarly characterizations and explanations. See, for example, Hans Blumenberg, The
Legitimacy of the Modern Age, tr. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).
While philosophers tend to regard Descartes as representative and seminal, political theorists tend to emphasize
Machiavelli. Common to both of these schools is the idea that modern life is characterized by a de-emphasis on the data of
revelation. See the previous chapter for a discussion of modernity.
9. His first encounter with Aquinas, as a clandestine seminarian, was through a difficult 1926 neo-scholastic textbook
Metaphysics, written by Louvain-inspired transcendental Thomist Kazimierz Wais: “After two months of hacking my way
through this vegetation I came to a clearing, to the discovery of the deep reasons for what until then I had only lived and
felt. . . . What intuition and sensibility had until then taught me about the world found solid confirmation.” Andre Frossard and
Pope John Paul II, Be Not Afraid! (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 17.
10. See Boethius, De Persona et Duabis Naturis, ch. 3.
11. English edition: Karol Wojtyla, The Doctrine of Faith According to St. John of the Cross, tr. Jordan Aumann (San
Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1981).
12. The habilitation thesis, Ocena mozliwosci zbudowania etyki chrzescijanskiej przy zalozeniach systemu Maksa
Schelera [An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler]
(Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 1959), primarily examined the ideas in Scheler’s second major work, Formalism in
Ethics and a Non-Formal Ethics of Value: A New Attempt Toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism, tr. Manfred
S. Fings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973). The thesis has been translated into Italian
(1980), German (1980), and Spanish (1982).
13. The two major philosophical movements of the twentieth century were analytic philosophy, founded by Frege and
influencing Russell, Wittgenstein, and others; and phenomenology, founded by Husserl and influencing Heidegger, Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty, and others (to be discussed). See Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), “Husserl.”
For a comprehensive account of the phenomenological movement, see Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological
Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971).
14. Husserl’s technical term for such a suspension, “phenomenological attitude,” or “phenomenological reduction” was
epoche.
15. Scheler was among several of Husserl’s students—including Adolph Reinach, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, and
Dietrich von Hildebrand—who regarded Husserl’s later thought as moving away from realism, broke with their mentor, and—
like John Paul—employed phenomenology to support realist metaphysical and ethical conclusions.
16. Other critics of modern individualism include Tocqueville, Sombart, Dilthey, Troeltsch, Tonnies, Durkheim, Marx, Hegel,
Weber, Buber, Horkheimer, Adorno, Lukacs, and contemporary communitarians.
17. See Rudolph Eucken, Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life, tr. Alban A.
Widgery (London: Black, 1909), and The Meaning and Value of Life, tr. Lucy Judge Gibson and W.R. Boyce Gibson (London:
Black, 1916).
18. Understanding Eucken and Scheler requires a brief comment on the linguistic convention of using the word “value” for
two distinct but related concepts. Similar to contemporary political theorists who defend the importance of “civic virtues” for
liberal societies, Eucken was concerned with defending the social importance of human qualities commonly referred to as
“virtues.” Scheler’s primary concern was to demonstrate how these values or qualities were known to be of value (i.e., through
a positive affective response to them). John Paul’s appropriation of phenomenology sought to establish, among other things, not
only the value of certain personal qualities, but also the value of persons as a whole.
19. The best English compilation of the salient essays and lectures is Karol Wojtyla, Person and Community: Selected
Essays, tr. Theresa Sandok, OSM (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), which is the fourth volume of the Catholic Thought From
Lublin series.
The inclusion of these works in a series devoted to thought from Lublin requires a brief explanation. After completing his
habilitation thesis and between 1954 and 1958, John Paul, in addition to his pastoral duties in Krakow, was a member of the
relatively new philosophy department at Lublin. The courses he taught were “The History of Ethical Doctrines” and “Ethical
Act and Ethical Experience” (1954-55); “Good and Value” (1955-56); “The Problem of Norm and Happiness” (1956-57); and
“Love and Responsibility” (1957-58). Although not originally intended for publication, his class notes and synopses were
eventually published in German and Polish (Karol Wojtyla, Lubliner Vorlesungen [Lublin Lectures] (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag,
1981) and Wyklady lubelskie (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego KUL, 1986).
John Paul and three others—Stefan Swiezawski (history of philosophy), Jerzy Kalinowski (logic and philosophy of law),
and Mieczyslaw Krapiec (metaphysics)—constituted the initial cadre of what eventually became known as the school of “Lublin
Thomism.” The members of this school were committed to four projects: historical studies that illuminated “the enduring value
of classical philosophical reflection”; an “affirmation of a rational approach to philosophizing”; metaphysical realism; and the
development of a philosophical anthropology guided by Christian revelation. (Stephan Swiezawski, “Introduction: Karol Wojtyla
at the Catholic University of Lublin,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community.) On Lublin Thomism, see Francis J. Lescoe,
Philosophy Serving the Needs of the Church: The Experience of Poland (New Britain, Conn.: Mariel Publications, 1979)
and Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, pp. 144-151.
Milosc i Odpowiedzialnosc [Love and Responsibility] (Lublin: KUL, 1960) is John Paul’s major work on sexual ethics.
English translation: Love and Responsibility, tr. H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981).
20. See Max Scheler, “Vorbilde and Fuhrer,” in Schriften aus dem Nachlass, vol. 10 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Maria
Scheler (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1956).
21. See Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, tr. Peter Heath (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), and “Liebe
and Erkenntnis” in Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre, vol. 6 of Gesammelte Werke.
22. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla, p. 60.
23. Ibid., p. 58.
24. “The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 35.
25. See “The Problem of the Will in the Analysis of the Ethical Act,” in ibid., pp. 5, 14-15.
26. On John Paul’s analysis of the ethical role of the psyche and emotions, see The Acting Person, pp. 220-242. His
description of conscience will be discussed later.
Regarding the roots of Scheler’s mistaken aversion to duty: “The intentional element that resides in every ethical
experience is value. On behalf of value, Scheler declares war on the ethics of Kant, who detached the whole ethical life of the
human being from values, from goods, and confined it to the noumenal sphere, relegating it entirely to duty. . . . The possibility
that duty might be an objective content of experience is something Scheler does not even consider, and the notion that duty could
arise in this objective content from value itself is something he refuses to admit into his system at all. Value and duty oppose one
another and are mutually exclusive. It would be difficult to deny that Scheler here set himself in extreme opposition to Kant; on
the other hand, he lost touch with the real, organic, empirical whole of the ethical experience. There can be no doubt that this
experience includes the element of duty. I do not, of course, mean duty as merely a feeling of respect for the law, as a
psychological factor detached from the lived structural whole of ethical experience. I mean the element of duty within the
structural whole of the ethical experience of the human person” (“The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in
Ethics,” in Wojtyla, Person: Subject and Community, pp. 34-35).
27. “Scheler attempts to exclude obligation from his ethical system because he wants to eliminate any source of negativism
from ethics” (Wojtyla’s Ocena, p. 79).
Kupczak, citing Ocena, nicely explains John Paul’s analysis of Scheler’s antipathy to such “negativism”: “For Scheler, an
ethical obligation is always associated with a negative value. It is true that sometimes an obligation does consist in a prohibition
of a negative value, e.g., ‘do not steal.’ Even, however, if the obligation demands the existence of a positive value, as in the
commandment ‘love your neighbor,’ it points out the present absence of this value. . . . Therefore, a demand or an ethical norm
presupposes in the person the existence of an attitude hostile to the suggested value. Even when the person is convinced about
the moral rightness of a proposed value, a demand or norm leads naturally to the person’s reticence, because of the obligation’s
negative character. Scheler’s solution is, one has to create an ethics without obligation, an ethics of value” (Kupczak, Destined
for Liberty, p. 16).
28. See “The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 38.
29. Wojtyla, Lubliner Vorlesungen, p. 45. Again: “Scheler’s phenomenology loses the whole dynamics of the human
person who is, for him, only a passive subject of feelings, and not an active cause of his own actions” (Wojtyla, Wyklady, pp.
32-33).
See also “The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics, in Wojtyla, Person and Community, pp.
38-39.
30. Ibid., pp. 30-31, 40.
31. Ibid., p. 27.
32. Ibid., pp. 27-28.
33. Ibid, p. 27.
34. See “The Problem of the Will in the Analysis of the Ethical Act,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 3.
35. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla, p. 61.
36. “The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 39.
John Paul adds that experimental psychologists such as Narziss Ach and Albert Michotte confirm this discovery using the
“empirical-deductive method” (see ibid., p. 39).
37. Ibid., p. 39.
38. John Paul’s methodology is significantly different than Husserl’s. Husserl employs three kinds of reduction: eidetic
(abstraction of essential characteristics); phenomenological or transcendental (suspending belief in the actual existence of the
phenomenon); and philosophical (neutrality regarding preceding philosophies). (See Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological
Movement, p. 724.)
John Paul endorses the concept of eidetic reduction, which he sometimes calls “description,” but conceives of it differently
than Husserl (i.e., imaginative variation). For John Paul, one discerns essential characteristics through a process of “induction”
(citing Aristotle) whereby one compares the multiplicity experiences (including those of others) of an object and grasps their
essential sameness, thus achieving a “stabilization of the object of experience:” “The transition from the multiplicity and
complexity of ‘factual’ data to the grasping of their essential sameness, previously defined as the stabilization of the object of
experience, is achieved by induction” (Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 14). See also ibid., pp. 7, 15-17, 78.
On the other hand, he rejects the notion of phenomenological reduction or epoche. Regarding the latter: “Objectivity
belongs to the essence of experience, for experience is always an experience of ‘something’ or ‘somebody’ (in this case,
‘somebody’). The tendency to retreat toward a ‘pure subjectivity’ of experience is characteristic of the philosophy of
consciousness. . . . In reality, however, objectivity belongs to the essence of experience, and so the human being, who is the
subject, is also given in experience in an objective way. Experience, so to speak, dispels the notion of ‘pure consciousness’ from
human knowledge, or rather it summons all that this notion has contributed to our knowledge of the human being to the
dimensions of objective reality” (“The Person: Subject and Community,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 221).
As we will discuss later, he does use philosophical reduction, particularly vis-à-vis Aquinas’ philosophy.
39. After reading the book’s first draft, Father Styczen, John Paul’s protégé, told him, “ ‘It’s a good first draft. Perhaps it
could be translated first from Polish into Polish to make it easier to understand for the reader—including me.’ A generation of
Krakow clergy joked that the first assignment in Purgatory for priests who misbehaved would be to read Person and Act”
(Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 174).
40. He begins, in other words, by “bracketing”—focusing solely on—consciousness (Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 30).
41. Ibid., p. 31. See Simpson, On Karol Wojtyla, pp. 24-25, for a helpful analysis.
42. Ibid., pp. 31-48.
 43. Ibid., pp. 96-101. This “to a large degree” qualification will be discussed later.
44. Ibid., pp. 105-135, 152. See also “Participation or Alienation,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 199.
45. Ibid., pp. 179-186, 255-258. According to John Paul, the “basic irreducibility of the human being to the natural world,”
including the “revelation of the person as a subject experiencing its acts and inner happenings, and with them its own
subjectivity,” undergirds the “belief in the primordial uniqueness of the human being” (“Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the
Human Being,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, pp. 211, 213).
46. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, pp. 96, 149-154. For earlier analyses, see “Ethical Act and Ethical Experience” and
“Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation” (1959), both in Wojtyla, Person and Community.
47. On the venerable status of this transitive-intransitive distinction: “As I understand St. Thomas’ thought, human activity
(action) is simultaneously transitive and intransitive. It is transitive insofar as it extends beyond the subject, seeks an expression
and effect in the external world, and is objectified in some product [culture]. It is intransitive, on the other hand, insofar as it
remains in the subject, determines the subject’s immanent quality or value, and constitutes the subject’s essentially human fieri.
In acting, we not only perform actions, but we also become ourselves through those actions—we fulfill ourselves in them” (“The
Constitution of Culture Through Human Praxis,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, pp. 265-266).
See John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens (1981), paras. 4-6, for a later employment of this notion of
intransitivity to describe the importance of the “subjective” dimension of human labor or work.
48. On “integration,” see Wojtyla, The Acting Person, pp. 189-260.
49. Wojtyla, Ocena, p. 77. His treatments of conscience are in Ocena and The Acting Person. John Paul does not
explicitly endorse Aquinas’ (through St. Jerome, St. Bonaventure, and Albert the Great) distinction between synderesis—that
capacity to know basic principles of morality—and conscience—which guides us vis-à-vis particular cases. See Summa
Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 12.
50. See “Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 98; and “On the
Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis of the Moral Norm,” in ibid., pp. 91, 93.
Given the assumption that an act is right because it ought to be done (and vice versa), one could argue that the difference
between these two dimensions of conscience is slight. Ultimately, Wojtyla perceives moral discernment to be a two-part process
in which acts are evaluated universally and then subjectively.
51. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 162.
52. Ibid., pp. 135-143.
53. John Paul’s discussions of fulfillment are found primarily in ibid., pp. 174-178 and “The Problem of the Theory of
Morality,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, pp. 146-150.
Note: Two of John Paul’s articles—“The Problem of Experience in Ethics” and the above “The Problem of the Theory of
Morality”—are the first and second chapters of an unfinished work entitled The Conception and Methodology of Ethics
meant to complement The Acting Person.
54. Ibid., p. 131.
55. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 175. See also “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Wojtyla,
Person and Community, p. 215: “Our decisions of conscience at each step reveal us as persons who fulfill themselves by going
toward values accepted in truth and realized, therefore, with a deep sense of responsibility.”
Again: “Only God can answer the question about the good, because he is the Good. But God has already given us the
answer to this question: he did so by creating man and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end, through the love
which is inscribed in his heart (cf. Rom 2:15), the ‘natural law’ ” (Veritatis Splendor, para. 12). See also ibid., paras. 6, 17, 35-
37, 19, 41-42, and 51.
56. “The commandments of which Jesus reminds the young man [Mt. 19:16-21] are meant to safeguard the good of the
person, the image of God, by protecting his goods” (Veritatis Spendor, para. 13). See also ibid., para. 79.
57. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, para. 41; cited from Second Vatican Council Ecumenical Council,
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, para. 24.
58. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, pp. 267-299, 323-355; and “Participation or Alienation,” in Wojtyla, Person and
Community, pp. 197-207.
59. While Spaemann has argued that “dignity”—rather than “value”—more reliably conveys the notion of inviolability, I will
use the terms interchangeably. See Robert Spaemann, Basic Moral Concepts, tr. T.J. Armstrong (London: Routledge, 1991), p.
73.
60. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, para. 51. See also paras. 13, 96-101.
For an earlier analysis of natural law and related confusions, see “The Human Person and Natural Law,” in Wojtyla,
Person and Community, pp. 181-185, where—in the context of the debate over the licitness of artificial means of contraception
—he discusses the mistake of equating the “natural” in “natural law” with biological functionings instead of with the capacity for
reason to “participate” in (but not be determined by) the eternal law.
On this topic, see also Veritatis Splendor, para. 42: “It also becomes clear why this law is called the natural law: it
receives its name not because it refers to the nature of irrational beings but because the reason which promulgates it is proper to
human nature.”
The classical exposition of the nature and content of natural law is Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 90-97. See also
I-II, q. 100, a. 1, where he asserts that the ten commandments contain the whole natural law.
61. Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, pp. 24, 41. See also pp. 21-23, 26-27.
62. “On the Dignity of the Human Person,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 178.
63. Ibid., p. 178.
64. Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, pp. 27-28.
65. Capacity-based arguments for human dignity are fraught with problems, including: the validity of the premises that
power over nature or uniqueness impart a high value; the facts that other species possess a degree of transformative capacities
and uniqueness; and the implication that a diminished capacity would reduce one’s value.
66. For a summary of this debate, see Lawler, The Christian Personalism of John Paul II, pp. 44-49. Existing versions
of Thomism include: the structured, traditional Thomism of Garrigou-Lagrange at the Angelicum; the transcendental Thomism of
Marechal at Louvain; the existential-historical Thomism of Gilson; the existential Thomism of Maritain; the “act” Thomism of
Finance; the participatory Thomism of Fabro; and Polish/Lublin Thomism. (Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p.
34.)
For an overview of contemporary Thomism, see Gerald A. McCool, From Unity to Pluralism (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1989).
67. Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Aeterni Patris (1879).
68. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. xiv.
69. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, para. 83.
70. Ibid., paras. 85, 59.
71. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 50. See also Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, p. 66.
72. “Thomistic Personalism,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, pp. 168-170.
73. Ibid., pp. 170-171. Aquinas’ treatise on man begins with an exploration of the soul’s essence. See Summa Theologica,
I, q. 95, a. 1, versus an exploration of the nature of consciousness and what one’s consciousness of efficacy reveals.
74. Ibid., p. 170. See also Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 35, and Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla, pp. 129-130.
75. “Ethics and Moral Theology,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 104.
76. Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, pp. 142-143.
Suppositum: the underlying substance that is ontologically prior to whatever it sustains.
77. Ibid., pp. 143, 126. This description of Thomistic methodology is similar to John Paul’s in Fides et Ratio, para. 22.
78. Ibid., p. 143.
79. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, para. 83.
80. On the types of love, see Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, pp. 80-84 (on Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 23, a.
1).
On the distinction between actus humanus versus actus hominus, see “Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation”
(1959), in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 96. (In Aquinas, see Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 6.)
On the nature of the will as an appetitus rationalis possessing an appetite for the good, open to reason’s input, and
capable of choice and movement of other faculties, see ibid., p. 97.
On vice and virtue as the effects of willing on the will itself, see ibid., p. 99.
On human dignity: “For as famous men were represented in comedies and tragedies, the name ‘person’ was given to
signify those who held high dignity. Hence, those who held high rank in the Church came to be called persons. Thence by some
the definition of person is given as ‘hypostasis distinct by reason of dignity.’ And because subsistence in a rational nature is of
high dignity, therefore every individual of the rational nature is called a person” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 29, a. 3, ad. 2).
On the Thomistic concept of sin as a privation of good, see “The Problem of the Theory of Morality” (1969), in Wojtyla,
Person and Community, p. 137. For an excellent discussion of Wojtyla’s theory of evil, see Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, pp.
54-55.
For an attempt to highlight the notion of the person as both substance and relation in Thomistic philosophy, see W. Norris
Clark, S.J., Person and Being (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 1993).
81. For an analysis of the concept of operari sequitur esse, see “Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation”
(1959), in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 96.
82. “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 213.
83. Wojtyla, “The Intentional Act and the Human Act, that is, Act and Experience,” Analecta Husserliana 5 (1976), p.
279. See also “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, pp. 214-215, and
Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla, p. 129.
 84. “One might immediately ask whether, by giving lived experience such a key function in the interpretation of the human
being as a personal subject, we are not inevitably condemned to subjectivism. Without going into a detailed response, I would
simply say that, so long as in this interpretation we maintain a firm enough connection with the integral experience of the human
being, not only are we not doomed to subjectivism, but we will also safeguard the authentic personal subjectivity of the human
being in the realistic interpretation of human existence.” (“Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Wojtyla,
Person and Community, p. 213.)
85. See Stefan Swiezawski’s introduction in Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. xiv.
86. The problems attendant to this assent have traditionally been twofold. The first involves the historicity and thus
legitimacy of this revelation, since revelation is expressed to or witnessed by human beings, and human beings are fallible and/or
prone to lying. Second, even assuming the legitimacy of revelation, deriving the meanings of revealed words or actions requires
contextually sensitive interpretation, which, in turn, requires possibly difficult-to-access facts, accurate reasoning, and goodwill.
87. Tertullian, On the Proscription of Heretics.
88. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, paras. 52-56.
89. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, chs. 7-8.
90. Fides et ratio, paras. 66, 67.
91. Ibid., paras. 43, 76. See also paras. 16, 22, 28, and 73. Aquinas enumerates three reasons why reason fails to possess
the knowledge of God (i.e., God’s existence) of which it is capable: “physical disinclination,” lack of contemplation due to
temporal affairs, and laziness (Summa Contra Gentiles, ch. 4).
92. Ibid., paras. 76, 78.
93. John Paul often characterizes the ethical content of the Old and New Testaments as, respectively, the Old and New
Law, and regards the “Sermon on the Mount” as “the most complete formulation of the New Law.” (Veritatis Splendor, para.
12.)
94. Rom 2:15.
95. Veritatis Spendor, para. 12. For an early description of how revelation allows a full interpretation of known moral
norms and virtues, see “Ethics and Moral Theology,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 105-106.
96. “In the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ . . . Jesus says: ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I
have come not to abolish but to fulfill them’ ” (VS, para.15). See also Rom 13-9-10.
97. For an extended example of the way in which Christian moral theology builds upon the Decalogue, see United States
Catholic Conference, tr., The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1994), Section Two (“The Ten
Commandments”) of Part Three (“Life in Christ”). The first three commandments are subsumed under Christ’s commandment
to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,” while the fourth through tenth are related to the commandment to “Love your
neighbor as yourself.” An example of this scope broadening: included under the prohibition against adultery are offenses against
chastity, including homosexuality (paras. 2351-2359).
98. See John Paul’s lengthy exegesis of Jesus’ dialogue with the rich young man, in which perfection is revealed as
involving conformity to the Old and New Laws in the radical ways exemplified by Jesus. (VS, paras. 6-23.)
99. As an alternative to the rule-based Christian ethical framework, which became bogged down by the debate between
moral absolutism and proportionalism/revisionism (Grisez/Finnis versus Fuchs/McCormick/Curran), Stanley Hauerwas
resurrected “virtue ethics” with his work A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
Hauerwas’ moral theory differed from Aquinas’ (and the traditional Catholic view) in two important respects, however.
First, the Hauerwasian virtues were relative to a community instead of grounded in a general theory of the human good. Second,
rigid rules were seen as inconsistent with virtues instead of related to them. In Thomistic moral theory, “morally good kinds of
actions are conceptually linked to the virtues, in that certain determinate kinds of actions are characteristic of particular virtues
and tend to promote them in the individual.” Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox
Press, 1990), p. 105.
John Paul is sharply critical of forms of revisionism, grounds the virtues in a general theory of the human good, and agrees
with Porter’s assessment of the relationship between rules and virtues (see Veritatis Splendor, paras. 65-83, 16-17).
100. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, a. 23, and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX.
101. See Cathechism, paras. 1822-1829, 1889, 2346.
102. Catholic treatments of personhood include Josef Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (New York: Herder &
Herder, 1970), pp. 132, 137, and “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology, in Communio 17 (1990), pp. 442, 445; C. De
Vogel, “The Concept of Personality in Greek and Christian Thought,” in J. Ryan, ed., Studies in Philosophy and the History
of Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963); and M. Mueller, A. Lois Haider, J. Moller, and
K. Rahner, “Person,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969).
For a Protestant treatment of human relationality, see T. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish
Academic Press, 1985).
 For a Jewish treatment, see Martin Buber, I and Thou, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner, 1970).
103. Gen 1:26-27. The first Biblical account of creation (although deemed chronologically second by scholars) occurs in the
first chapter of Genesis, and has been deemed the Priestly account due to research that indicates that it was authored or edited
by priests. The second account emphasizes man’s original solitude and details the creation of women and the original
transgression of God’s law. Since it uses the name “Yahweh” for God, it has become known as the Yahwist account of
creation. For John Paul’s exegesis of these accounts, see the compilation of his first series (9/5/79 to 4/2/80) of “Wednesday
Talks,” Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Genesis (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1980),
especially the 9/5/79 and 9/12/79 talks.
104. Two other relevant but less emphasized aspects of our relationship to God appear in John Paul’s works: the depth of
God’s love for each man and woman, particularly as revealed by the Incarnation, and our ultimate destiny to be united with God.
105. Tertullian, Against Praxeas, para. 2.4 in Johannes Quaston, Patrology, vols. 1-4 (Westminster: Christian Classics,
1986).
106. Note that this separate identity was nonetheless defined in reference to one’s relationship to others.
107. Each of these councils is an example of intra-Church apologetics that serve as an excellent example of apologetics in
general. Behind the results of each are reasoned arguments about how to interpret divine words and actions, about what
meanings these interpretive methods yield, about how the contents of revelation can be understood using available philosophical
concepts, and about the cultural errors exposed by such revelation-supported thought.
The great apologists of these councils included Athanasius, the Capadocians, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of
Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and Andrew of Crete. They were preceded and
followed by others who defended the faith not internally, but from both paganism and non-Catholic sects: Clement of Rome,
Ignatius of Antioch, The Epistle to Diognetus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian,
Eusebius, Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas.
When the Reformation split the Church, a new era of intra-Christian apologists—many of them Jesuits and Franciscans—
sought to reform, defend and propogate the faith. When Enlightenment thinkers again challenged Christianity generally,
Lamennais, Maistre and Bonald countered with an apologetical political theology.
108. Aquinas’ analysis of the notion of personhood and its theological implications is found in Summa Theologiae, I, qq.
29-43 (especially q. 29, a. 1-3) and III, q. 2, a. 2; “De Potentia,” q. 9; and “De Unione Verbi Incarnati” in Quaestiones
Disputatae De Potentia Dei.
See also U. Deleg’ Innocenti, O.P., Il problema della persona nel pensiero di S. Tommaso (Rome: Pontificia Universita
Lateranense, 1967); and J. Reichman, “St. Thomas, Capreolus, Cajetan and the Created Person,” in New Scholasticism 33
(1959).
109. “Thomistic Personalism,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 166.
110. See “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in ibid., pp. 211-212; and “Thomistic Personalism,” in ibid.,
pp. 166-168.
111. Gaudium et Spes, para. 24.
112. See “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination, in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 194 and “Thomistic
Personalism,” in ibid., pp. 171-173.
113. “The Family as a Community of Persons,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community, p. 318. Also: “The true personalistic
interpretation of the commandment to love is found in the words of the Council: ‘When the Lord Jesus prays to the Father so
that “they might be one” (Jn 17:22), He places before us new horizons impervious to human reason and implies a similarity
between the union of divine persons and the union of the children of God in truth and charity. This similarity shows how man,
who is the only creature that God wanted for his own sake, can fully discover himself only in the sincere gift of himself
(Gaudium et Spes 24).’ . . . In this sense the person is realized through love.” John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
114. Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, paras. 9, 19. This “Christocentric” theme and methodology pervaded his
intellectual career: see “Mystery and Man” (1951), in Aby Chrystus sie nami poslugiwal [“To Serve Christ” anthology]
(Krakow: Znak, 1979), p. 31; Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 66-84; Sign of Contradiction (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), pp. 101-109, 117-119;
Centesumus Annus, paras. 24, 51, 55; Veritatis Splendor, para. 2; Letter to Families (1994), para. 2; Evangelium Vitae,
paras. 29-31; and Tertio Millenio Adveniente, para. 4.
For an analysis of this Christocentrism, see John Seward, Christ Is the Answer: The Christ-Centered Teaching of Pope
John Paul II (New York: Alba House, 1995).
The inclusion of this theme in Gaudium et Spes was in large part due to Cardinal Wojtyla’s interventions and participation
in the redrafting subcommittee (with, among others, nouvelle theologians Yves Congar and Jean Danielou). On John Paul’s
related Vatican II interventions, see Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, pp. 164-188; Schmitz, At the Center of the Human
Drama, pp. 108-115; and Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage in the Light of
John Paul II’s Anthropology, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), pp. 73-79.
 115. John Paul concurs with Augustine’s and Aquinas’ characterizations of evil as a privation of good, which developed in
response to the Manichaean and Gnostic solutions to the theodicy problem. Evil is not a being, least of all a creative being who
produces the material world. Consistent with the creation story in Genesis, the mere act of existing is good. In contrast to the
Platonic participation and Aristotelean teleological theories of the good, “in Thomas’ theory of the good the existence is prior to
the end,” rendering his theory “existential” (Wojtyla, “Good and Value,” in Wyklady lubelskie [Lublin lectures], p. 142). Since
being in any state possesses an intrinsic goodness, “evil itself cannot exist or act. It exists always in the good as in its subject,
and forms a certain lack in it” (Wojtyla, “Good and Evil,” in ibid., p. 131). Thus, “evil consists in a lack (privatio) of a good that
should exist in a particular being because of its nature.” (Ibid., p. 132; also “The Problem of the Theory of Morality,” in Wojtyla,
Person and Community, p. 137.)
116. See Catechism, paras. 374-412, 1264, 1426, and 1846-1869, especially 1850, 396, 397; and Fides et Ratio, para. 22.
Technically, Catholic doctrine cites the source of the original sin as an interplay of the devil’s suggestion that we can “be
like God” and human pride. This original sin is, in turn, transmitted to subsequent generations, and even when it is removed in
baptism, its “wound” remains part of (now “fallen”) human nature (see Catechism, paras. 397-398, 404-405; and Summa
Theologiae, I-II, q. 81). What is transmitted is understood not as only a fallen environment or culture, but its nature and mode
of transmission are regarded as “a mystery that we cannot fully understand” (ibid. para 404). Given that only one’s genes are
transmitted, and the scientific refutation of the Lamarkian theory of “acquired characteristics” as transmissible, this doctrine is
indeed mysterious, and might be amended to emphasize the interplay of pride and culture.
117. On the “darkening” effect of sinful acts on the conscience and the subsequent need for faith in revelation and other
forms of grace, see Catechism, para. 1865, and Fides et Ratio, paras. 22, 43.
118. On structures of sin, see Catechism, paras. 408, 1869, 1887.
119. See Evangelium Vitae, para. 21; Dominum et Vivificantem, paras. 37-38, 44, 47; Centesimus Annus, para. 25; and
Catechism, paras. 306-308, 1810-11, 1987-2005.
The history of the Christian “theology of grace” is complicated, but distills into three issues: the nature of grace (God’s
assistance); the degrees to which grace is necessary in order to attain one’s natural and supernatural ends; and the means
through which grace is imparted, including the role of human efforts (“works”) to attain it. For a summary of this history, see
Quentin Quesnell, “Grace,” in Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, Dermot A. Lane, eds., The New Dictionary of Theology
(Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1987).
120. For the classic formulation of the relationship between grace and natural virtues, see Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 109,
a. 2.
Pelagianism was vociferously opposed by Augustine and condemned at the Council of Orange (529), while the idea that
original sin radically perverted man and made his will inefficacious was condemned at the Council of Trent (1546). Secularism is
the remaining form of the former strain of thought, while the latter has survived throughout the centuries in some Protestant
sects and even in the Catholic Church—largely because of Augustine’s influence (i.e., the internal controversy between the
Jesuits (Molina) and Jansenists (Jansen, Arnaud, Pascal, Quesnel) in the 1600s).
121. Centesimus Annus, para. 50.
122. Ibid., para. 11.
 3

Anthropology, Ethics, and Recent Catholic Social

Theory: The Liberalism of John Paul II

Introduction
Having surveyed the key aspects John Paul’s anthropology and ethics, we now turn to this
book’s central question: “Which aspects of his social and political thought flow from, and are
thus explained by, these presuppositions?”
This chapter will examine the three most fundamental elements of John Paul’s social
thought: first, his defense of human rights, both their existence and substance; second, his
qualified embrace of (classical) liberal political and economic claims regarding the purpose
and form of the state; and third, his defense and development of the principle of subsidiarity
which governs the roles of, and relationships between, the state and non-state associations of
civil society.

Human Rights
With good reason, John Paul has been characterized as a champion of human rights.1 In
hundreds of published articles and speeches, he has specified them, defended the ground of
their existence, and recommended the means through which they might be respected. One of his
boldest defenses of their existence and substance occurred in his 1979 speech to the United
Nations in which he linked the peace-promoting mission of that organization to the promotion
of human rights:
. . . In this titanic labor of building up a peaceful future of our planet the United Nations Organization has undoubtedly
a key function and guiding role, for which it must refer to the just ideals contained in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. For this Declaration has struck a real blow against many of the deep roots of war, since the spirit of
war, in its basic and primordial meaning, springs up and grows to maturity where the inalienable rights of man are
violated. . . .

Permit me to enumerate some of the most important human rights that are universally
recognized: the right to life, liberty and security of person; the right to food, clothing, housing,
sufficient health care, rest and leisure; the right to freedom of expression, education and
culture; the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and the right to manifest one’s
religion either individually or in community, in public or in private; the right to choose a state
in life, to found a family and to enjoy all the conditions necessary for family life; the right to
property and work; to adequate working conditions and a just wage; the right of assembly and
association; the right to freedom of movement, to internal and external migration; the right to
nationality and residence; the right to political participation and the right to participate in the
free choice of the political system of the people to which one belongs. All these human rights
taken together are in keeping with the dignity of the human being, understood in his entirety, not
as reduced to one dimension only. These rights concern the satisfaction of man’s essential
needs, the exercise of his freedoms, and his relationship to others; but always and everywhere
they concern man, they concern man’s full human dimension.2

Contemporary human rights thought3

In publicly adopting such a stance, John Paul has brought the Church more in line with a
major current of Western ethical thought. Since the Enlightenment, and with added urgency
imparted by the tragic events constituting the two World Wars, the concept of human rights has
been a pervasive theme of ethical thought, discourse, and practice.4 The venerable debate
between moral realists and relativists continues; disagreements persist over whether normative
statements are “facts,” and, if so, whether these facts are insights about human goodness
(teleological/virtue ethics) or rules (rule-based ethics). But even postmoderns who critique
universally applicable normative claims as foundationless epiphenomena of self-interest have,
at the core of their critique, a concern for the abuse of the “oppressed” by the powerful that
(inconsistently) presupposes a normative claim: the weaker should not be abused because they
have rights. In the words of Derrida, the “condition for the possibility of deconstruction is a
call for justice.”5 Increasingly, it is acknowledged that all persons are due certain things
necessary for their fulfillment, and that they consequently possess legitimate claims against
others who therefore inherit certain duties.
There are, of course, both moral realists and skeptics who explicitly deny the existence of
human rights. MacIntyre, a virtue ethicist, asserts that rights are an Enlightenment product, and
a faulty one at that. In his words, “(T)here is no expression [for rights] in any ancient or
medieval language correctly translated until near the close of the middle ages. . . . (F)or the
truth is plain: there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in
unicorns.”6 However, in erroneously associating liberalism and rights with the problematic
notion of the “autonomous moral agent” who is “unconstrained by the externalities of divine
law, natural teleology or hierarchical authority,” he undermines—theoretically and practically
—his own concerns for constraints on the treatment of persons. On the other hand, and as
mentioned above, relativists who deny the existence of rights are similarly inconsistent. To
them, rights are a problematic “Western construct.” The problem with this construct involves
autonomy, but in a different sense than that employed by MacIntyre: the Western notion of rights
is said to issue from and promote individualism and thus economic injustice.7 However, as
previously highlighted, a lack of concern for others is problematic only if others have rights.8
Thus, moral realists and relativists who critique rights necessarily presuppose them in making
their critiques. Common to these critiques are misunderstandings about the foundation and
nature of rights, an issue we shall revisit later.9

Christianity and the ascendance of human rights

Conservative and postmodern critics notwithstanding, much contemporary secular ethical
thought has been positively disposed to rights. However, as discussed in the second chapter,
liberalism and rights have been more coolly received by the Catholic Church due to a variety
of legitimate concerns and misunderstandings. The next chapter will examine compunctions
about liberalism currently expressed by Catholics who are somewhat critical of John Paul’s
penchant for “rights talk.” Both past and present Catholic critics converge in their judgment
that the Church, in firmly aligning itself with the “human rights movement,” has broken with its
tradition and appropriated an erroneous and harmful concept as the centerpiece of its social
thought. This critique is flawed, however. Contrary to MacIntyre’s assertion, the concept of
rights predates the Enlightenment, and does so in large part because the Christian tradition
nurtured it. Christianity is not only compatible with rights, but played an important historical
role in their ascendance. John Paul II’s defense of human rights is thus not a break with
tradition, but an appropriation, clarification, and reorientation of it. To be fair, one must admit
that the concept of rights is not solely a Christian discovery.10 While Plato’s investigation into
the relationship between the good life and justice in the Republic never directly mentions
rights, the concept is narrowly implied by his analysis and recommendations. Individual
perfection (attainable by the gifted few) and domestic peace and prosperity (which benefit all)
depend upon a proper or “just” relationship between soul parts and individuals—specifically,
the rule of reason and reasonable philosophers over, respectively, other soul parts and most
individuals. In other words, because of their capacities and ability to benefit all involved,
philosophers ought—have a right (and duty)—to rule. Correspondingly, others have a duty to
obey their commands.
Aristotle is less circumspect and narrow than Plato about rights in his discussion of
citizenship and rule. He directly mentions the concept, and is more inclusive about eligibility
for political participation, which includes the right to free speech celebrated in Thucydides
(2.40.2 and 8.66) and Demosthenes (3.11-12). The purpose of politics is the promotion of the
virtues and subsequent human fulfillment or eudaimonia, and those capable of contributing to
such a state have “political rights” to select and/or be lawmakers in proportion to the degrees
of their contributions to this purpose.11 Since the preconditions for the good life (including
political stability) are multiple, the wealthy, the free many (capable of wisdom when
deliberating), and the virtuous all have political rights.12
However, our contemporary understanding of rights deviates from that implicit in Plato
and Aristotle in at least two important ways. First, all persons are today considered to possess
political rights. Second, all persons are considered to possess a panoply of rights beyond those
political, other “natural” rights that no political process and state can contravene and that
governments must secure in order to be considered legitimate. Since Aristotle asserts that a
legitimate, just, or “right” state is one that attempts to promote the truly good human life and
that this life universally requires certain “pre-moral” and “moral” goods—external, bodily,
and virtues of the soul—one is tempted to conclude that he conceives of these goods (and their
preconditions, such as a moral education) as rights.13 Aristotle, however, never explicitly
describes these goods as rights, as do contemporary theorists. And even if we assume that he
regards them as such, he severely limits their possessors since he regards many—“natural
slaves,” women, and non-Greeks, for example—as rationally deficient and thus incapable of
the goodness that these goods facilitate.
Nevertheless, marks of the inclusive and thick modern understanding of rights were
present in ancient thought and practice, both Jewish and Greek.14 The Hebrew Scriptures
contain rules mandating protections for all Jewish innocents, property owners, workers,
spouses, widows, orphans, accused, lenders, borrowers, weak, aged, poor, and even slaves—
protections that imply a more universal and broader notion of individual rights (negative and
positive) and corresponding duties.15 Although the Jewish people regarded themselves as the
uniquely chosen recipients of God’s revelation, this revelation also afforded rights to non-
Jews, and even animals.16 For their part, non-Jews were, through reason, considered by
Judaism to themselves be capable of discerning universally applicable normative demands
contained in the Noahide laws.17 In other words, precepts of both divine and natural law—
such as the prohibition again stealing property—that secured goods necessary to fulfillment all
implied particular rights.18
The Stoic philosophers were one group of non-Jews who substantiated this Jewish
confidence in reason by developing a cosmologically grounded doctrine of natural law that
influenced Roman jurisprudence and legislation.19 Compared to earlier Greeks, and perhaps
because of the influence of Alexander the Great, their thinking about rules and rights was
deeper and more cosmopolitan.20 Cicero, for example, tempered the right to private property
on the ground that all men have a right to property and a corresponding duty to help each
other.21 Musonius Rufus argued that rights were more broadly possessed in his invective
against slavery.22
However, these thicker and more inclusive understandings of rights were decisively
developed in Christian thought, and were spread through the interaction of Christianity and the
Roman Empire. As the Council of Chalcedon eventually proclaimed, Christians regarded Jesus
as simultaneously God and human. As such, his words and actions could (properly interpreted)
be taken as divine commands. Foremost was his command to “love one another” in ways that
extended and deepened the requirements of the Old Law, and thus implied a more robust
conception of human rights. Underpinning this command was the incomparable value of all
persons, a fact revealed not only through the imago Dei notion or the particular events Christ’s
life, but also through the Incarnation itself. In the very act of becoming human, God had
definitively revealed the depth of his love for, and thus the value of, human persons. Through
the lens of this event, Saint Paul and the Patristic authors reinterpreted and augmented Jewish
Law, drawing out new duties with new implications for human rights.23
Slavery, for example, received new attention. Deeply imbued with the spirit of the age,
few early Christian thinkers interpreted the Incarnation as revealing the illegitimacy of owning
persons for one’s use.24 God created human beings equally free, but slavery was regarded as
the unfortunate but necessary result of sinfulness.25 In Augustine’s words:
 He [God] did not wish the rational being, made in his own image, to have dominion over any but irrational creatures,
not man over man, but man over beasts. Hence the first just men were set up as shepherds of flocks, rather than as
kings of men, so that in this way also God might teach us that the normal hierarchy of creatures is different from that
which punishment for sin has made necessary. . . . That is why we do not hear of a slave anywhere in the Scriptures
until Noah, the just man, punished his son’s sin with his word (Gen 9:25). . . . The first cause of slavery, then, is sin,
whereby man was subjected to man in the condition of bondage. . . . [S]lavery is penal in character and is ordained by
that law which enjoins the preservation of the order of nature, and forbids its disturbance.26

Slaves were, nevertheless, regarded by early Christian thinkers as deserving of certain

goods—particularly those necessary to fulfillment in an afterlife. In his letter to Philemon, Paul
implored a Christian master to receive his runaway and converted slave “no longer as a slave
but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord.”27 According
to Augustine, if slaves “cannot be set free by their masters,” they should be treated humanely,
and with “equal affection . . . in respect of the worship and service of God, as if they were all
their children, longing and praying that they may come to the heavenly home.”28
The specific right of all non-slaves to necessary material goods also received new
attention in early Christianity. While some Patristic writers—such as Ambrose, St. John
Chrysostom, and Salvian—can be interpreted as highly critical of private ownership in the
context of human equality, most early Christian thinkers clearly endorsed ownership.29 Private
property, in addition to being implied by the revealed prohibition against stealing, held several
potential benefits, including the promotion of economic security, peace of mind, sharing to
those in need, and friendship.30 Therefore, according to early Christian theology, the crucial
task vis-à-vis private property was not its abolition, but the promotion of its proper use in
order to secure both the good of the possessor and the right of all others—especially the poor
—to adequate material conditions.31
While most of this early Christian thought on human rights was theologically grounded,
reason and the related natural law were also employed. Perhaps influenced by Stoic
philosophy, St. Paul famously asserted the notion of a law “written in the heart” of all that
endorsed or condemned certain acts toward all others.32 Justin Martyr similarly spoke of pagan
authors—Plato, the Stoics, poets, and historians—who “were able to see the truth darkly,
through the implanted seed of reason (Word) dwelling in them.”33 This reason, he insisted, was
the inheritance of all:
For God sets before every race of mankind what is always and universally just as well as all righteousness. And every
race knows that adultery, fornication, homicide, and such like, are sinful. Though they commit such acts, they do not
escape the knowledge that they act wrongly whenever they do so, with the exception of those who are possessed with
an unclean spirit and corrupted by bad education, wicked customs, and perverse laws, and who have lost . . . their
natural ideas. The proof for this is that such persons are unwilling to endure the same things which they inflict upon
others, and reproach others with hostile consciences for the acts they themselves perpetrated. Hence I think our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ spoke well when he summed up all righteousness and piety in two commandments: “You shall
love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself.” . . . And the man who loves his neighbor as himself will
wish for him the same good things that he wishes for himself, and no man will wish evil things for himself.34

This affirmation of human rights as grounded in realities given by revelation and reason
did not disappear during the medieval period.35 Among Jewish thinkers, Saadiah Gaon (882-
942) and Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) exemplify this affirmation. Gaon’s reflections on the
theodicy problem led him to emphasize both the ability of reason to discern moral rules and the
legitimacy of human freedoms. On this latter point, he argued that freedoms were presupposed
by moral responsibility: since revelation and reason indicated that all are culpable in this life
and the afterlife for the moral quality of our choices, we are both metaphysically free and
deserving of political freedoms.36 Maimonides likewise affirmed the moral capacity of human
reason and the relationship between metaphysical and political freedom.37
Among medieval Christian thinkers who encouraged the theoretical and practical
endorsement of human rights, particularly positive rights, Aquinas was the most important. In
his “Treatise on Law,” Aquinas defended in depth the natural law concept intimated by
Aristotle, and developed by Cicero, the Christian canon, the patristic authors, and the
Decretists.38 Law “is a rule . . . by which one is led to action or restrained from acting,” and
the “natural inclination” of human beings to reason allows them to “participate in” that portion
of the eternal law necessary to discerning “proper actions” and attaining one’s natural end.39
This unchangeable natural law consists of both a “first principle”—“good is to be done and
pursued, and evil is to be avoided”—and “other precepts of the natural law.”40 These latter
precepts that specify particular good or evil acts, such as “the killing of the innocent, adultery,
and theft,” are “based on this [first principle]” and on the goods related to human fulfillment.41
Because all persons are similarly endowed, fulfilled, and valuable, the first principle and its
precepts are “the same for all” in two senses: all can know them, and they apply to all
persons.42 Given the natural law’s universality in time and space, Aquinas further asserts the
existence of a law of nations (jus gentium).43
Most often credited for drawing out the implications of revelation and natural law for
human rights and arguing for their political implementation are Hooker, Grotius, Pufendorf, and
especially Locke.44 The generally accepted account of human rights depicts them as a secular
product, the discovery (or invention) of Enlightenment figures such as Locke who, in turn,
informed the liberal democratic revolutions of 1776 and 1789. However, consistent with the
thesis that human rights are both compatible with and a product of Christianity, significant
earlier work was accomplished by Spanish Scholastics—Las Casas (1474-1566), Vitoria
(1485-1546), and Suarez (1548-1617). In response to missionary reports of abuses of
indigenous peoples in the New World, and appropriating resources from the canonists and
Aquinas, these Catholic thinkers began considering the issue of human rights over 150 years
prior to Locke, and even prior to Hooker, Grotius and Pufendorf.45 Dominican friar Las Casas’
efforts decisively influenced Pope Pius III’s Sublimis Deus condemnation of attempts to
enslave the Indians. His work, along with theological developments at the University of
Salamanca, was instrumental in framing the Spanish New Laws of 1542 that mandated broad
protections for the natives. Las Casas later defended the rationality and humanity of the natives
at the 1550 theological commission appointed by the Spanish crown at Valladolid. Taking his
cues from the Scholastic tradition, especially Aquinas, Dominican Vitoria forcefully defended
the full human rights of the Indians, laying the foundation for modern international law in the
process.46
John Paul II on human rights
Given this relationship between, on the one hand, the notions of equal human dignity and
the natural law advocated by Christian theology and philosophy, and, on the other hand, the
theoretical recognition and practical defense of human rights, it is not surprising that the
Catholic Church eventually embraced the concept of human rights. As discussed in a previous
chapter, this endorsement was initially motivated by the desire to enhance the ability of the
Church to flourish and transform modern culture. Eventually, however, the logic underpinning
its defense of human rights became less focused on the freedom of the Church, and more
focused on the rights of the individual whom the Church was committed to serve.
As documented at the beginning of this chapter, John Paul has consistently and
unambiguously articulated the specific rights that he regards to be the possessions of all
persons. Broadly construed, these rights may be categorized as “negative” and “positive.”
Negative rights are the freedoms that delineate and protect the social space within which
persons may act, while positive rights are things that ought to be received from others because
they condition how a person is able to act within this social space. The negative rights
consistently cited by John Paul include: the right to life, the rights to establish and practice
one’s religious faith, the rights to form and follow one’s conscience, the right to associate, the
rights to marry and beget a family, the right to express oneself, and the rights to possess and
exchange material goods.47 Positive rights include: the rights to family-supporting and fully
human work, the right to sustenance when unable to work, the right to an authentic “human
environment” or culture, and the right to live in a united family.48
John Paul’s defense of these rights rests on three premises. First, certain conditions are
necessary to human fulfillment. Second, because of their dignity or value, both implied by the
natural law and directly revealed by God, human beings are due these preconditions. In his
words, “The root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent
dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his
very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate, no individual, group, class, nation,
or state.”49 Third, because of the sinful human propensity to disregard this dignity, these
preconditions must be theoretically and practically circumscribed as “rights.” While this
second premise (human value) is the basis for the “dueness” or “oughtness” and thus the
normativity of human rights, the first (the conditions necessary to human fulfillment) is the
basis of their substance, i.e., which particular rights exist. Given the controversy over this
latter issue, which issues from the controversy over fulfillment itself, and the related dispute
concerning the tension between negative and positive rights, some elaboration of the reasoning
behind John Paul’s list of rights is in order.

Negative rights
The right to life is seemingly uncontroversial: without the basic condition of security
against violence to one’s body, any conception of human fulfillment would be impossible to
attain. However, two aspects of John Paul’s thought on the right to life, both of which concern
the question of who possesses this right to life, have been sources of contention for both
secular and religious interlocutors. The first concerns the right of unborn persons to life. As
Pope, John Paul repeatedly called abortion at any stage of pregnancy and in any context
(including poverty, rape and incest) an “unspeakable crime.”50 His most forceful statement
concerning abortion occurred in Evangelium Vitae:
Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors, and in communion with the bishops
of the Catholic Church, I conform that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely
immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf.
Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the tradition of the church and taught by the ordinary
and universal magisterium.
The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit
either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end.51

Underlying this position are three premises. First, the unborn are persons. Instead of
relying on the venerable (but perhaps purely theological) notion of “ensoulment” to designate
personhood, John Paul argues that because the fertilized ovum “would never be made human if
it were not human already,” the life of a human being is a continuum that begins at
conception.52 Second, unborn persons are “innocent”: in the rare cases in which they present
possible harm to anyone, they do so without knowledge and choice. Third, revelation and
reason dictate that one may never knowingly and freely kill an innocent person, even as a
means to accomplish good ends.53
The second “right to life” controversy concerns the rights of those who seek to harm the
innocent, and are therefore not innocent themselves. John Paul has concurred with the
tradition’s thought on the permissibility of using harmful and even lethal means against external
(just war theory) or internal (death penalty) aggressors in order to prevent harm to the
innocent.54 Consequentialist logic, which he condemns, is not employed: the act of harming a
person who threatens innocent life is not “intrinsically evil” (and thus prohibited in all cases),
and is therefore permissible. However, such acts are not unmitigated goods. The aggressor is
still a person, one who is capable of change and may even “not be morally responsible
because of a lack of the use of reason”; and the unnecessary killing of an aggressor adversely
affects the actor.55 Therefore, John Paul has repeatedly emphasized the “means of last resort”
and “if bloodless means are sufficient” provisos of, respectively, just war theory56 and death
penalty thought.57 In other words, even those with the capability and intention to harm the
innocent have the right to life unless their death is necessary to protect the innocent.
John Paul’s defense of the right to religious freedom is grounded in three aspects of his
anthropological thought.58 First, in addition to an earthly existence and natural state of
fulfillment, human persons also possess a supernatural existence and end—namely, union with
God.59 Second, because of our sinful human nature, nature requires grace in order to attain both
its natural and supernatural ends.60 Religious freedom—“understood as the right to live in the
truth of one’s faith and in conformity to one’s transcendent dignity as a person”—is thus “the
source and summit of [all] rights.”61 Third, even though grace is necessary to fulfillment, God
respects the capacity of the person to constitute himself through choice—in this case, the
choice to accept or reject grace.62
 Like the right to religious freedom, the Church’s celebration of the rights to form and
follow one’s conscience is a relatively new development. Dignitatis Humanae contained the
first definitive insistence that persons be allowed to “decide on their actions on grounds
of . . . conscience, without external pressure or coercion.”63 Not surprisingly given his struggle
with two totalitarian regimes, John Paul has nurtured this doctrinal development, going so far
as to assert that the freedoms of religion and conscience together constitute the “foundation of
the cumulative rights of the person.”64 The logic of his defense of a free conscience is
comprised of two elements of his anthropological and ethical thought.65 First, one is
constituted and therefore fulfilled (or not) only through free acts. Second, all acts are
accompanied by a prior act that must therefore also be free: the evaluation of the rightness and
subsequent goodness of possible courses of action that occurs within one’s conscience.66
However, despite his unequivocal endorsement of this right, he labored throughout his papacy
to counter common and overly capacious understandings of the freedom proper to conscience.
According to John Paul, the fact that one should be free to form and follow one’s conscience
does not imply two widespread but erroneous notions of conscience and thus freedom. One
view asserts that the universally valid moral norms supposedly available to one’s conscience
are in fact nonexistent or unknowable, and that one’s conscience is thus a radically free
“source of values.”67 Another less radical view asserts that while one’s conscience indeed
discerns general rules, the situational particularities surrounding concrete acts may free one—
and by implication even require a deviation—from what the general rule recommends.68 John
Paul insists that the former view discounts an alternative explanation: the fallibility of
conscience and/or human sinfulness.69 One’s conscience may be inadequately formed. In some
cases this inadequacy is not imputable to the person (“invincible ignorance”), while in other
cases one’s sinfulness and subsequent lack of concern for truth makes one culpable for the
deficiency. Additionally, one may knowingly act against a well-formed conscience and become
“by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.”70 In response to the second
and less radical misunderstanding of conscience, John Paul asserts that the general rules of
morality invariably promote the good of those affected by choices, and thus apply to all
particular cases.71
The freedom to associate is broadly construed in John Paul’s thought to include the right to
form and participate in a variety of “societies” or institutions, ranging from the family to
businesses to unions to the state.72 Undergirding this right is the “social nature” of persons. As
discussed in the previous chapter, social institutions are necessary to individual fulfillment in
three general ways. First, persons are affected (although not entirely determined) by
institutional ideas and practices which constitute a “human environment” or “culture.” Human
beings are not only “subjects” but also “objects” of associations and their cultures: a person’s
thinking, feeling, and acting are “conditioned by the social structure in which he lives, by the
education he has received and by his environment.”73 Personal fulfillment is thus partially
dependent upon the pedagogical effect of associations and their artifacts, including laws.
Second, individuals are limited and complementary, and associations allow one to benefit from
others in a variety of necessary ways.74 For example, businesses provide a source of income
and products, marriages provide companionship for spouses, and political units provide
security and other public goods. Third, the human vocation to freely love others can be
developed and expressed only through association with others.75 All associations—including
economic and political ones—are potential vehicles for living out this vocation. But the
characteristics of certain institutions—such as the family—make them especially salient to
fulfilling this aspect of the person’s social nature.76 In fact, since each association uniquely
promotes one or more of these three general aspects of our social nature, John Paul insists that
groups have a “rightful autonomy” that derives from the rights of individuals.77 These unique
institutional functions and rights ultimately give rise to his endorsement of the principle of
subsidiarity, which we will treat later in a section on John Paul’s construal of the proper
relationship between the state and civil society.
Family rights, which issue from the general right to associate, are highlighted by John Paul
because of their crucial relationship to these various ways in which persons are social.78 The
freedoms to marry and have children are necessary not only for spousal companionship, but to
allow the possibilities of expressing spousal love, forming a communion of persons
(communio personarum), and thus realizing the fundamental vocation of persons.79 The
freedom to educate one’s children allows this love, in turn, to become “the model and norm for
the self-giving that must be practiced” within and outside of the family.80 While John Paul
points out that the “natural bonds of flesh and blood” contribute to the capacity of the family
(and, by extension, an ethnicity) to develop into a communion, he insists that this capacity
exists in all interpersonal relationships. However, the family’s unique characteristics—
especially spousal love and biological proximity—make it a crucial “schoolhouse of love”
that, through example and concrete acts, promotes communion within neighborhoods, civil
society, states, regions, and an emerging global community.81 Family-related freedoms are thus
intimately related to personal formation and the subsequent development of what John Paul
calls a “culture of love” or, more broadly, a “civilization of love.”82
Another freedom that John Paul links to the social nature of persons is that of expression.83
The various forms of expression allow individuals and associations (including the Church) to
convey their normative conceptions to others.84 The ensuing dialogue (especially the “dialogue
between faith and culture”) is important to John Paul for at least three reasons, two of them
having to do with human sociality and the other with creativity. First, as mentioned earlier,
persons are the objects of culture: we are both affected by others, and need to be affected in
positive ways in order to flourish.85 Similar to the logic employed by J.S. Mill in On Liberty,
John Paul argues that freedom of expression permits access not only to necessary truths, but
also to errors that can confirm one’s understanding of and commitment to presently held
truths.86 Second, the freedom to express truths allows one to serve others with these truths.
Third, persons are creative in a more specific artistic sense than “creating oneself through
one’s acts.” One aspect of human fulfillment is the ability to, mirroring God’s creativity, use
one’s gifts to discover truths and then create ways to embody them in various forms of
expression. John Paul is particularly fond of artistic forms or expression in which an artist
works the “givens” of creation into forms that convey the beauty of goodness and are thus
uniquely capable of eliciting a free response to conform oneself to the good.87
John Paul employs many of his arguments defending the rights to associate and express in
order to ground the freedom to work. Understood “objectively,” work is activity through which
an object—a good or service—is produced and then exchanged in the market for other goods
and services. However, work is imbued with normativity because of its “subjective”
dimension, because it is activity for, with, and of persons.88 As mentioned earlier, persons are
limited and complementary, and the freedom to work allows one to benefit from (assuming the
freedom to exchange and an adequate wage) the fruits of another’s gifts. Additionally, work
allows one to freely give of oneself to a variety of persons, including consumers, co-workers,
one’s family, and God.89 Finally, besides serving the social dimensions of persons, work—
when adequately structured—is an activity through which one can creatively and appropriately
“subdue the earth.”90
Closely related to the ability of work to be fulfilling to both the worker and others are two
other freedoms: the freedom to possess and use the fruits of one’s labor (i.e., the right to
private ownership of property) and the freedom to exchange what one owns (i.e., the free
market). Since these two freedoms are separately legitimized by John Paul because of their
differing, albeit often overlapping, effects on human fulfillment, we will treat them
separately.91
In the background of John Paul’s defense of private property are both Church tradition and
his experience under Polish Communism. The curtailment of the freedoms to think, believe, and
associate were not the only casualties of Marx’s “scientific materialism” and reasons for the
fall of oppressive regimes. Another factor was “inefficiency of the economic system, which is
not to be considered simply as a technical problem, but rather as a consequence of the
violation of the human rights to private initiative, to ownership of property and to freedom in
the economic sector.”92 Specifically, John Paul highlights four aspects of the relationship
between private property and fulfillment. First, in the context of human sinfulness (i.e., the
propensity to steal), private ownership secures the material goods needed for the sustenance
and development of oneself and one’s dependents.93 Second, private property is a precondition
for self-giving to others.94 Third, private property accounts for self-interest and thus promotes
social order, minimizing confusion and conflict.95 Fourth, and also related to the permanence of
self-interest, the possibility of owning promotes effort, innovation, and thus productivity.96
John Paul also endorses the free market, although somewhat more ambiguously. He asserts
that “on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most
efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs”—but does not
thoroughly explain these claims.97 One can surmise that his logic is similar to that developed
by economic liberals such as Smith and Mises. According to economic liberalism, the freedom
to bring a product to market and exchange it for a mutually acceptable price encourages
efficient resource utilization—the maximum output per input—because producer competition
increases effort and innovation, and also rewards the producer with the most suitable factors of
production. This freedom effectively meets needs because the price system indicates the
relationship of demand to supply and rewards those who produce what is needed. Combined,
these characteristics of the free market promote the availability of an adequate quantity of
desired goods and services at a relatively low cost.
Positive rights
If this depiction of John Paul’s thought on human rights were complete, he could be safely
deemed a libertarian. However, in addition to arguing that certain freedoms are due
preconditions of human fulfillment, he also argues that these freedoms ought to be exercised in
ways that are fulfilling to others.98 Formulated differently, John Paul argues that persons
possess positive rights—due preconditions for fulfillment that ought to be received from others
—for three anthropological reasons.99 First and once again, the value inherent to persons
means that they are due these preconditions. Second, the nature of human sociality means that
more than certain freedoms (i.e., to work, express, marry and raise children) are required. In
addition to the freedom to act in these ways, human fulfillment is also contingent upon the
effect of this activity, which, as social activity, is often dependent on what is received from
others. In other words, persons have a right not only to interact, but also to be fulfilled through
these interactions. Third, because of human sinfulness, what is received from others will often
be detrimental, an unfortunate fact making the delineation of positive rights necessary in the
first place. The human condition thus complicates the practical relationship between two
necessities: negative and positive rights. Freedom is a condition for the possibility of both
fulfillment and the lack thereof. Ultimately, however, since all freedoms are legitimized by
their relationship to fulfillment, John Paul insists that one only has the right to act in ways that
are fulfilling to others. In cases where others are harmed and positive rights are thus
contravened, the freedom that makes such acts possible can be legitimately curtailed through
some form of force if persuasion is ineffectual.100 Specifically, John Paul focuses on three such
cases: economic freedom, freedom of expression, and the freedom to be married.
The existence of positive economic rights—work itself, an adequate wage, humane
working conditions, leisure/recreation time, and even sustenance when one is unable to work
—thus partially accounts for John Paul’s equivocation vis-à-vis private property and the free
market.101 A “free economy” offers certain advantages, as discussed above. But the
combination of human sinfulness, the private ownership of the means of production, and a free
market will also result in inevitable “market failures,” leaving certain human needs unmet.102
Underdevelopment, business cycles, consumer demand changes, and shifts to alternate labor
sources mean that the labor market will be accompanied by some degree of unemployment.103
Centralized capital ownership and a free market for labor prices mean that wages will be
determined not by lifelong needs, but by the relationship of labor supply and demand.104
Theologically, the payment of an adequate wage is specifically indicated by the God-ordained
“universal destination of material goods” described in Genesis and by the Decalogue
prohibition against stealing.105 John Paul is especially concerned with the need for a “family
wage”106 that allows at least one spouse to be present to children (who ought not work
themselves) at home.107 Economic freedoms will also permit inadequate working conditions
and free time—with the latter adversely affecting one’s religious and family activities.
Regarding working conditions, John Paul focuses not only on workers’ physical safety and
“moral integrity,” but also on more subtle qualities of the work itself. Since human fulfillment
involves self-giving and creativity, work should be structured so that workers are both fully
cognizant of their contributions to the production process and society, and able to influence the
production process itself. 108 Finally, he argues that the market, which fundamentally requires
labor reciprocity, cannot address the rights of those unable to work.109 Thus, despite its
advantages, the market possesses both permanent and potential inadequacies that must be
addressed. Likewise, John Paul asserts that in extreme situations, ownership—particularly of
the means of production—becomes “illegitimate.”110
A second positive right defended by John Paul—one in tension with free expression and
economic freedom—is the right to an authentic culture.111 Four previously discussed
anthropological realities are germane to this right. The first is, of course, the right of persons to
be fulfilled. Second, persons are fulfilled by acting in accordance with relevant
anthropological and ethical truths. Third, one’s conscience must be formed in order to be
effectively oriented toward these truths and develop pertinent virtues. Fourth, human sociality
means that this moral formation and thus fulfillment are partially dependent upon one’s cultural
milieu or “human environment,” which “can either help or hinder his living in accordance with
the truth.”112 Together, these realities mean that persons have a right to receive truth from those
in the institutions that are the sources of culture.113 Respect for others, in other words,
precludes lying and scandal.114
This right to an authentic culture thus forms the background of John Paul’s consistent
critiques of certain uses of two otherwise legitimate freedoms. First, he is particularly
condemnatory of what is often freely expressed via the mass media, especially via television.
For example, instead of fostering an awareness of the needs of the weak and promoting critical
intelligence and authentic human values, the media skew their depiction of reality in order to
secure market share or promote a postmodern sensibility.115 This sensibility he sees as
particularly evident in depiction of issues related to the formation and stability of families—
such as human sexuality and divorce.116 Second, he is highly critical of certain uses of
economic freedom. Private ownership of the means of production and the free market allow the
sale of harmful goods and services. Additionally, and often in conjunction with mass media,
even beneficial products are marketed in ways that encourage unfulfilling behavior.117
Specifically, John Paul has consistently targeted advertising that, “through carefully
orchestrated repetition,” encourages one to think of life in crudely utilitarian terms, as “a series
of sensations to be experienced rather than as a work to be accomplished.”118 Such an attitude
—a form of “alienation” that he calls “consumerism”—in turn promotes a utilitarian posture
toward others, with particularly serious ramifications for family life: “The result [of such an
attitude] is a lack of freedom, which causes a person to reject a commitment to enter into a
stable relationship with another and bring children into the world, or which leads people to
consider children as one of the many ‘things’ which an individual can have or not have,
according to taste, and which compete with other possibilities.”119
These potential effects of free expression and economic freedom on family life are related
to potential conflict with a third positive right: the right to a united family.120 Consistent with
much recent social scientific research on marriage and the family, and explicating the
teleological and descriptive bases of what traditionally has been deontologically asserted,
John Paul argues for the decisive economic and moral importance of marriage indissolubility
for spouses and especially children.121 As noted earlier, he regards spousal and parental
commitment as the crucial precondition for authentic personal and cultural development.122
The freedom to be married thus does not necessarily include the freedom to leave even a
challenging valid marriage. While his position on divorce is nuanced enough to allow for
separation and civil divorce in certain cases, he asserts that the well-being of children and, by
extension, a culture hinges in large part upon families consisting of a man and woman who
actively and permanently love each other and their children.123
As this analysis of positive rights discloses, John Paul ultimately posits a causal
relationship between the abuse of negative social and economic rights and the erosion of
positive cultural, family and economic rights. Ideally, families, churches, and educational
institutions promote a culture that favorably conditions the use of the freedoms to express and
market products. If, however, these freedoms are used in ways corrosive to culture and these
institutions, an erosion of positive economic rights will follow. Given this model, John Paul
logically argues that the protection of positive economic rights can occur in two ways. The
first and most direct means is to alter the ownership of the means of production and/or labor
market behavior. Second and more indirectly, a society can promote a more favorable culture
by limiting what is expressed and produced, or by enhancing the capacities of culture-forming
institutions. Given that John Paul regards culture as important in itself, in addition to being
crucial to securing positive economic rights, he not surprisingly recommends both approaches.
The role of the state in effecting such alterations, limitations, and enhancements is the issue to
which we now turn.

Origin, Purpose, and Form of the State

John Paul’s liberal credentials transcend his philosophically and theologically grounded
defense of the existence of human rights. In regards to the origin and purpose of the state, he is
also a liberal, unambiguously asserting that that “the state exists in order to
protect . . . rights.”124 However, characterizations of John Paul as a political liberal are doubly
perilous. First, vis-à-vis the purpose of the state, there are two general strands of political
liberalism: the classical liberalism of Locke and the welfare liberalism of Mill, Green, and
most recently Rawls. Second, John Paul’s political theory both appropriates and rejects
fundamental aspects of each strand. Similarly, he equivocates regarding the form of politics
most conducive to securing human rights. His endorsement of democracy as the form “most
consonant with the dignity and nature of the human person” is tempered with conditions and
critique.125 Thus, while it is fair to say that John Paul is a liberal democrat, the following two
sections will, respectively, explicate important nuances of his thought on democracy and
political liberalism.

John Paul II on democracy

As indicated above, John Paul often speaks favorably of political rule by all.126
Associated with these frequent endorsements are two arguments, both grounded in the “dignity
and nature of the human person.”127 First, the selection and replacement of state actors by the
many ensures that the rights of the many, in contradistinction to “narrow ruling groups,” are
peacefully secured.128 Second, because of the relationship of participation and choice to human
fulfillment, participation through political choices is itself a good to be pursued.129
However, while arguing that democracy is optimal, John Paul stops short of insisting that it
is a right and therefore necessary. The optimal regime form is that which best secures the
legitimate rights of all, and democracy only does so—and thus becomes “authentic”—when at
least two preconditions are present. The first is cultural: democratically allowed political
choices must be informed by “true ideals,” which presupposes institutions that suitably educate
and form persons.130 The second precondition is institutional. Like Tocqueville, John Paul
stresses the importance of non-state institutions—“structures of participation and shared
responsibility”—that habituate and educate citizens in ways necessary to effective political
participation.131 Absent these preconditions, rights are best secured when rulers are appointed
through non-democratic means deemed acceptable by citizens.132
Even when democracy is a viable option, John Paul recommends measures that address the
dangers that human selfishness creates for both politics generally and democratic politics
specifically. First, the rule of law should be established through a generally accepted
constitution that outlines procedures for selecting rulers, the respective functions of state
actors, and basic human rights.133 Second, counterbalancing legislative, executive, and judicial
powers should exist in order to represent and protect the rights of all.134 Third, democratic rule
should be indirect or representative, again in order to adequately protect the rights of all.135
In addition to advocating the situational use of and certain constraints on democracy, John
Paul frequently voices a Tocquevillian critique of a potential and actual effect of democracy on
culture: democracy can undermine the “true ideals” necessary for its legitimacy as a means
through which human rights are best secured. The argument is subtle but simple, and based on
two related premises. The first is that laws—including laws legitimizing forms of legal
decision-making (i.e., constitutions)—have a pedagogical effect and function. Consciences are
formed not only through culture-forming institutions that affect law, but by law itself.136
Second, constitutionally sanctioned democracies can form consciences, and thus inform
lawmaking and legal interpretation, in a way inimical to even constitutionally articulated
rights. A political decisionmaking system that respects the opinions of all may be
misinterpreted as implying that all opinions are equally valid, resulting in a culture permeated
by moral relativism and agnosticism.137 The majority may gradually believe that such notions
are the foundational principles of democracy and guarantors of its social peace and that less
skeptical viewpoints lead to “intolerance and authoritarianism.”138 In such a cultural milieu,
freedom, instead being understood as possessing an “inherently relational dimension . . . in
service of the person and of his fulfillment through the gift of self and openness to others,” is
deployed in service of one’s autonomously defined conceptions of morality and the good
life.139 Democracy becomes merely procedural and antithetical to liberalism properly
understood: the outcome of democratic procedures becomes the furtherance of the interests of
those most capable of influencing politics and forming opinions.140 This critique
notwithstanding, John Paul does not regard such an antiliberal “culture of death” as a necessary
consequence of democracy. His concern is similar to that expressed in his critique of the
possible cultural effects of economic freedom. Both the market and democracy are systems
allowing choices that may either undermine culture and liberalism or, when tempered by
authentic values and necessary constraints, promote “integral human development.”141

John Paul II on political liberalism

John Paul’s relationship to political liberalism is similarly complex. As Catholic
neoconservatives have highlighted, his defenses of state-secured negative rights—particularly
religious freedom, expression, private property, and the market—appear to solidly align him
with classical political and economic liberals such as Mill, Locke, and Smith. However, his
embrace of freedoms and attendant state limitations is highly qualified.
One qualification concerns religious freedom specifically. Because of his commitment to
the right to freely assent to articles of faith, he rejects the form of Church establishment that
compels compliance with moral theology and participation in sacramental life of the
Church.142 However, invoking Dignitatis Humanae, he qualifies religious freedom in two
ways. The first is consistent with the liberal tradition: religiously inspired acts contrary to
human rights and the situationally determined “public order” ought to be limited.143 The second
qualification might be regarded by some as antiliberal. In some cases, a soft form of
establishment that gives one religious community “special civil recognition. . . . in the
constitutional organization of a state” is permissible, provided the religious rights of other faith
communities are protected.144
A second and deeper qualification involves the general types of rights that the state is
obliged to protect. John Paul not only defends the existence of positive rights (the social,
economic, and cultural rights discussed above), but insists that they are the state’s
responsibility no less than negative rights. This aspect of his political thought distinguishes him
from classical liberals and contemporary libertarians, and places him firmly within the
Catholic tradition’s position that the purpose of the state is to provide for the common good.145
Given the particulars, it also seems to mark him as a somewhat radical welfare liberal. When
necessary, he maintains that the state may and must intervene —“directly and in accordance
with the principle of solidarity”—in order to protect positive cultural and economic rights.146
For example, because of the importance of culture for not only economic justice but also moral
development, he allows for the possibility of state restraints on certain products and forms of
expression.147 In particular, he encourages “appropriate” state measures to “set and enforce
reasonable ethical standards.”148
Regarding positive economic rights, he allows for three general types of direct state
intervention, two involving the labor market and one involving the means of production. First,
the state may constrain the behavior of employers in the labor market through laws that specify
acceptable wages and working conditions.149 By “conditioning the conduct of the direct
employer,” the state thus becomes an “indirect employer.”150 Second, the state may address
unemployment—one of the inevitable effects of the market—in two ways: by preventing it
through fiscal and monetary policies; and by softening its effects through unemployment
assistance programs (i.e., monetary and training/educational support).151 Third and most
radically, John Paul insists that “one cannot exclude the socialization, in suitable [but
unspecified] conditions, of certain means of production.”152 Underlying this recommendation
are the primacies of positive economic rights and “labor over capital” (which correspond to
the traditional notions of the “common use” of private property, the “universal destination of
material goods,” and a “preferential option for the poor”) and the state’s role as the ultimate
guarantor of human rights. In the context of his endorsement of the private ownership of the
means of production and critique of socialism, John Paul views such “socialization” as less
than optimal and a last resort. The state ownership obviates the potential benefits of private
property and runs the risk of merely transferring the source of economic injustice.153
Nevertheless, John Paul envisions cases where these certain and potential costs must be
incurred or risked.

Limitations on the Role of the State: The Principle of

Subsidiarity
John Paul’s credentials as a welfare liberal are compromised, however, by his compunctions
about employing direct state action to secure positive cultural and especially economic rights.
The practical effects of, and reasons behind, this reticence are best understood by examining a
longstanding but evolving principle of Catholic social thought: subsidiarity.154

Subsidiarity in practice
While the principle of subsidiarity was first explicitly articulated by the Church in Pius
XI’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno, its roots lie in the Church’s struggle in the 1800s to maintain
its autonomy, influence culture, and formulate a response to economic injustices. However,
given its supposedly “fixed” status as a principle somehow grounded in natural law, its late
emergence into Church thought is somewhat puzzling.155 One could argue that the early
Church’s identity and circumstances favored the discovery of a principle asserting the
autonomy and primacy of non-state associations. While Greek and Roman political
philosophies were state-centric, the medieval Church consistently struggled to defend the
autonomy and primacy of the Church in both theory and practice. But the seemingly short leap
to applying the same principle to other non-state institutions was not made until the 1800s. At
least three factors account for this delay and shift. The first two factors have been discussed
while the third will be developed here. First, establishment was sought by the early Church in
large part because its state-assisted influence on the activities of other non-state institutions,
and therefore culture, was considered most conducive to human fulfillment. Second, the
modern hostility of culture and politics to the faith made the idea of autonomy for the Church
and the institutions it sought to influence more attractive. Third, the Church’s gradual
appropriation and reworking of the liberal idea of the individual’s right to fulfillment was
combined with new insights into the functions of non-state associations vis-à-vis this
fulfillment.156 By 1927, these ideas had been synthesized by Gundlach—who was deeply
influenced by Molina’s and Suarez’ reworking of Thomistic thought—in order to endorse
liberalism, democracy, and the principle of subsidiarity:
In the Catholic world of ideas we find a democratic line principally in the doctrine of Natural Law taught by the whole
medieval Thomistic philosophy. This line is stressed even more strongly in the specifically Jesuit amplification of this
doctrine which gives the individual a prominent place and culminates in the concepts of the social pact and the
people’s sovereignty. In the doctrine of Natural Law the inalienable rights of the individual are stressed as against
feudalism, absolutism and also as against the authority of the Church and the [Jesuit] Order. We should never forget
that, aside from its natural source, Catholic Democracy has a supra-natural one: the equality of all the saved before
God, through Christ. And in general, the role Catholicism reserves for the individual contains elements that are mush
less hostile to the idea of democracy than is frequently inferred. The supra-national authority of the World Church
through all the ages has set a brake on any undue expansion of the omnipotent and absolute state. Wherever a limit is
set to state omnipotence, a larger role is reserved for the individual, the family, the vocational corporations, in short for
all the living forces of a democratic state built up from below. The conceptual world of Catholicism with the objective
reality implied in the doctrine of Natural Law and Revelation offers indeed the basis for a sound Democracy.157

Intimations of the principle of subsidiarity appeared in official Church documents prior to

Quadragesimo Anno. Rerum Novarum included an analysis of the important but limited role of
the state vis-à-vis the “worker question.”158 But it was in the context of the deepening post–
World War I economic crisis in liberal regimes and the corresponding growing popularity of
communist and fascist forms of totalitarianism that German Jesuit Nell-Breuning drafted
Quadragesimo Anno and provided the first formal rendering of the principle.159
Nell-Breuning’s rendering of subsidiarity is primarily concerned with the relationship
between three entities: individual persons; the voluntary, non-state associations of persons
(sometimes referred to as “mediating institutions”) comprising what is currently called “civil
society”; and the state (presumably the central state). The guiding normative idea is that all
social institutions exist in order to promote the fulfillment of individual persons. In the
encyclical’s words, “[E]very social activity ought of its nature to furnish help [subsidium] to
the members of the social body.”160 The central question to be addressed thus becomes, “How
should the state and non-state associations help a society’s members surmount barriers to
fulfillment?”
The answer given in Quadragesimo Anno is couched in a Tocquevillian lament about
modern individualism. Pius XI asserts that because of “individualism,” there has been an
“overthrow and near extinction of that rich social life which was once highly developed
through associations of various kinds,” leaving the state as the sole institutional answer to the
worker question.161 (In Pius’ opinion, the overthrown associations most germane to the
economic problem were the guilds or corporations, which were constituted not in order to
promote the interest of a class, but to promote the interests of both a particular “Industry or
Profession” and a whole society (i.e., the “common good”)).162 But despite the resulting fact
that “many things that were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now
save by large associations,” Quadragesimo Anno asserts that a “greater and higher
association” should not be permanently assigned tasks which “lesser and subordinate”
associations and even individuals can do.163 Instead, the state should “let subordinate groups
handle matters . . . of lesser importance” while concentrating on “directing, watching, urging,
restraining, as occasion and necessity demands.”164
John Paul’s Centesimus Annus deepens the discussion about the roles of and relationship
between the state and civil society. According to this encyclical, the state has a fundamental
and singular role to play in the preferred “market economy,” which “presupposes sure
guarantees of individual freedom and private property,” “a stable currency,” “efficient public
services,” and the prevention of “improper sources of growing rich.”165 The “principle
[economic] task of the state” is thus to directly secure these ends, so that “those who work and
produce can enjoy the fruits of their labors and . . . feel encouraged to work efficiently and
honestly.”166
But John Paul argues that the state’s role in other aspects of economic life is less singular
and more situational. First, concerning wages and working conditions, the state “has the task of
determining the juridical framework within which economic affairs are to be conducted” so
that “one party would not be so powerful as practically to reduce the other to subservience.”167
As mentioned earlier, democracy recommends itself, in part, based on its suitability for this
task. However, the protection of workers is a task the state shares with “society”—especially
with trade unions, whose role is “decisive.”168 While the early affiliation of unions with both
socialism and anarcho-syndicalism made them an unpopular solution to the problem of the
working class among Catholics, subsequent theoretical and practical developments have led to
the more congenial and moderate position elaborated by John Paul.169 On the one hand, unions
may strive to secure the “just good” of workers, including non-industrial workers, and the state
must protect workers’ rights to associate for this purpose.170 As a last resort to attaining this
end, unions may exercise their right to strike.171 On the other hand, unions should not attempt to
simply maximize short-term social power or eliminate opponents. Union demands and tactics
must account for the rights of other economic actors and prevailing economic realities; and
when union activities are inconsistent with the common good, the state has the duty to intervene
through “appropriate legislation.”172 Additionally, as associations, unions should complement
oppositional activities with other efforts to meet members’ needs, including educational and
social needs.173
Besides unions, another civil society–based means to securing workers’ rights advocated
by John Paul is a “co-partnership” organizational scheme that disperses production
responsibilities and/or benefits.174 Three forms of copartnership are mentioned in Laborem
Exercens: joint (and thus decentralized) ownership of the means of production, shared
management, and profit sharing.175 While focusing on the benefits to workers, he also asserts
that these schemes increase productivity and thus benefit the entire firm and society generally.
Since co-management is difficult to realize in practice without joint ownership, his papal
emphasis has been on the latter form.176
In addition to affecting wages and working conditions, a second situation-ally dependent
economic role for the state concerns the prevention of and reaction to unemployment. Again
invoking the principle of subsidiarity, John Paul insists that the “primary responsibility” for
securing employment (or support for those unable to work) “belongs not to the state but to
individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society.”177 In this
context, the state’s function is to “sustain” economic activity through the measures noted above
—i.e., providing the market freedom, property security, currency stability, and infrastructural
integrity that induce investment and job creation.178 However, when employment problems
arise, the state should act—albeit as indirectly and temporarily as possible. If business
activities are generally “lacking,” the state should “stimulate” the economy through fiscal
and/or monetary policies “aimed at ensuring balanced growth and full employment.”179 If
monopolistic practices create “delays or obstacles to development” in a particular sector or
industry, the state should intervene.180 In “crisis” circumstances, the state may even directly
and temporarily “support” certain business activities.181 Finally, John Paul addresses the
welfare issue in the context of the principle of subsidiarity. When necessary, the state should
“support” and “coordinate” the activities of relevant non-state groups, including families and
religiously affiliated charities.182 In “exceptional circumstances” when “social sectors or
business systems” are inadequate, the state can “exercise a substitute function.”183 As noted
earlier, this substitute function may include unemployment insurance and retraining programs.
However, such substitutions or “supplementary interventions” should be “as brief as possible”
in order to “avoid removing [certain functions] permanently from society and business
systems.”184
John Paul similarly applies the principle of subsidiarity to the protection of positive
cultural rights. While he allows for the possibility of state restrictions on harmful forms of
expression and products, he shows a marked preference for state protection and support of
formative civil society institutions such as families, churches, and schools capable of
positively affecting consumer, producer, and media choices.185 He is especially solicitous of
the family’s contribution to transforming culture. On the one hand, the state should not interfere
with the formative tasks of the family and the mediating institutions upon which it relies,
including churches and schools.186 This non-interference includes allowing families to choose,
without penalty, schools that will reinforce the moral formation received at home—particularly
that involving sexuality.187 On the other hand and more positively, the state should provide the
family necessary aid, including educational assistance.188
This distinction between negative and positive aspects of the state-society relationship has
been employed by Utz to summarize subsidiarity in practice.189 Negatively, the principle calls
for the state to restrain itself from accomplishing the activities appropriate to, and within the
capacities of, non-state institutions. Positively, subsidiarity means that the state should
accomplish those tasks for which it is uniquely suited, to include assisting and temporarily
replacing non-state institutions when necessary.190 Throughout the history of subsidiarity as a
principle of official Catholic social thought, Popes have differently emphasized these two
dimensions, depending upon circumstances and perhaps ideology. In Quadragesimo Anno,
Pius XI stressed the negative aspect; John XXIII later emphasized the positive roles of the
state.191 John Paul’s defense of the primacy of non-state associations and critique of the
welfare state represent a slight interpretive shift toward subsidiarity’s negative dimension.
The logic of subsidiarity
Several interlocking justifications underlie John Paul’s defense of what might be called a
“subsidiarity state” that grants both autonomy and support to non-state institutions.192 The first
is one of the hallmarks of classical political liberalism: a penchant for limiting state
responsibilities and power. John Paul’s logic, however, is not purely anti-statist. Although
wary of the corrupting effects of excessive power in totalitarian states, he is also critical of
ineffectual states.193 John Paul therefore recommends a limited state not only because it is less
likely to be corrupt and dismissive of human rights; but also because it will be less burdened
and therefore more capable of accomplishing the tasks that its centrality, information, power,
and resources facilitate. As previously discussed, these tasks include—but are not limited to—
defense, providing public goods such as infrastructure, protecting basic freedoms, and
regulating the market and providing a social safety net when necessary.
A second argument is derived from liberal economic theory. Using the state to directly
ameliorate the economic and cultural problems issuing from the private ownership of the
means of production and the market not only enlarges the sphere of state action, but also risks
losing the benefits of these economic institutions. If suitably developed, non-state institutions
are equally capable of restraining abuses, and thus capable of avoiding a trade-off between
productivity and justice.
Third, mediating institutions are more capable than the state—and in some cases are
uniquely capable—of performing certain functions necessary to human flourishing. In
Rommen’s words, an “irreplaceable” “plurality of social forms and . . . cooperative
spheres”—including the “family, home, neighborhood, town, homeland” and various
“vocational, professional, educational, and religious” institutions—grow “out of the social
nature of man” and “are produced by the initiative of free persons for the more perfect
realization of their ends or purposes.”194
One such necessary function is closely related to John Paul’s personalist teleology: moral
and cultural formation. Even if direct state initiatives could somehow attain slightly superior
material results, civil society–based initiatives might be preferable for another reason. As
discussed earlier, the autoteleological and social natures of persons that legitimize the freedom
to associate involve more than the need to receive something from others. Associations are
also necessary because persons are most fulfilled when they freely give themselves to one
another. Democratic participation in politics—which normally occurs through voting—only
weakly evokes this latter dimension of human sociality. On the other hand, the voluntary local
associations of civil society are uniquely capable of encouraging and allowing participation
and self-donation, and thus of forming citizens who are human in this deepest sense. Such
moral formation ultimately affects culture (and, in turn, cultural and economic rights), making
civil society more propitious to authentic culture than political democracy or law. This crucial
relationship between civil society and culture does not, however, mean that politics is
unimportant to moral formation and culture. Since state protection and, at times, support is
necessary to the vitality of non-state groups, the state plays an indirect but indispensable
cultural role.
 The autonomy of and support for two institutions are particularly important for promoting
an authentic culture: the family and the Church. The importance of their independence and
vitality, however, does not lie solely in the fact that they are locations where participation and
fulfillment can occur, but also lies in what can uniquely happen within them to encourage these
same phenomena. As John Paul often insisted, the family is the primary “schoolhouse of love,”
the “first school of those social virtues which every society needs.”195 The Church, on the
other hand, is the place where God’s grace can provide the definitive help needed to more
clearly reflect the image of God, and thus promote a culture and society where all are
respected.
Finally, in addition to the participatory and cultural effects of non-state institutions, John
Paul insists that they are often more capable than the state of satisfying other human needs.
Unlike minimum wage and working condition laws, unions can meet workers’ educational and
social needs. Shared ownership and management initiatives humanize work by allowing
workers to creatively participate in production decisions. Families, neighborhood groups, and
charitable organizations are often better social service providers. Local providers have more
at stake, often have a less bureaucratic and more compassionate attitude, and possess better
information about problems and solutions. Additionally, they are able to accomplish tasks that
“call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving a deeper
human need.”196

Notes
1. See George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper Collins, 1999).
Weigel believes that John Paul II’s 1979 address to the United Nations “marked the point at which the Catholic Church
unambiguously committed itself to the cause of human freedom and the defense of basic human rights as the primary goals of
its engagement with world politics,” a commitment he claims was “implicit” in Pacem in Terris (John XXIII, 1963) and
Dignitatis Humanae (Vatican II, 1965) (p. 349).
See also Richard Neuhaus, “The Very Liberal John Paul II,” National Review, August 11, 1997; and Rocco Buttiglione,
Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997).
2. John Paul II, Address to the General Assembly at the United Nations, New York, 10/2/79, paras. 11, 13.
Earlier, citing the two 1966 international covenants (on, respectively, civil/political and economic/social rights), he has
categorized these rights as economic, social, cultural, civil, and political (ibid., para. 9). John Paul consistently invoked these two
covenants, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1975 Helsinki declarations in international settings. On the post
—World War II emergence of human rights discourse between states, see Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor
Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001).
3. A terminological and conceptual note: in some literature, a distinction is made between older “natural” rights and newer
“human” rights (see, for example, the “Rights” entry in Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)). Because of the association of natural law and rights evident since Roman
jurisprudence, and contemporary doubts about divine commands and reasoned natural laws, the idea of “human rights”—rights
universally possessed merely by virtue of one’s status as a human being—has become more popular. These doubts, however,
render problematic the fact that human rights are still considered to be “natural” in that they are inherent. This chapter uses the
term “human rights” in order to emphasize their universal possession, but not their disassociation from divine and reasoned
commands.
4. For definitional purposes, I will stipulate that ethical thought—normative considerations about how human beings ought
to use their internal and external freedom and act—exists in three forms.
The first is teleological (which includes “virtue ethics”): revelation and/or reason disclose a common end (and attendant
dispositions or “virtues”) toward which human effort, including that within political institutions, should be directed. This end is
often associated with a highest form of “happiness” that is not necessarily synonymous with pleasure.
 Second, deontological theories (such as Kant’s): abstracting from purposive claims, these theories instead emphasize
revealed and/or reasoned rules governing acts towards oneself and/or others. These precepts may be positive (“one ought
to . . .”) or negative (“one ought not to . . .”).
The third might better be characterized as anti-ethical thought: a best way of life or moral precepts are either nonexistent
or unknowable. Ethical claims are instead “constructed,” often in order to promote the interests of individuals or groups. This
third form of ethical thought is variously described as: skepticism, nihilism, relativism, some versions of utilitarianism,
postmodernism, empiricism, pragmatism, deconstructivism, post-structuralism, existentialism, Marxism, historicism, naïve
subjectivism, nominalism, pluralism, emotivism, voluntarism, perspectivalism, physicalism, certain forms of linguistic or analytic
philosophy, and projectivism.
5. John D. Caputo, ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation With Jacques Derrida (Bloomington, Ind.:
University of Indiana, 1997).
6. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 66-70.
7. See, for example, Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, “Human Rights: A Western Construct With Limited
Applicability,” in Pollis and Schwab, eds., Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1979).
8. Rorty, who commends solidarity and compassion and abhors cruelty, is a notable example of this inconsistency. See
Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
9. Critics of liberalism misunderstand rights in at least two broad ways. First, negative rights are depicted as grounded in
radical individual autonomy (conservatives) or the interests of the economically powerful (Marxists/postmoderns). Second, and
related to the latter, liberalism is depicted as devoid of positive rights, especially economic.
10. On the presence of rights in classical thought, see Pamela Huby, “Traces of the Theory of Natural Rights in Greek
Thought,” in Synthesis Philosophica 5 (1990); Susan Ford Wiltshire, Greece, Rome and the Bill of Rights (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1992); Fred D. Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995); and A.S. McGrade, “Aristotle’s Place in the History of Natural Rights,” Review of Metaphysics 49
(1996).
11. See Aristotle’s Politics, Book III, Chapters IX, XII-XIII.
12. On the deliberative wisdom of the many, see ibid., Book III, Chapter XI.
13. See ibid., Book III, Chapter VI and Book VII, Chapters I and XII. Similarly, recent natural law theorists have
attempted to make distinctions between “pre-moral” and “moral” goods, and to functionally (but not necessarily
epistemologically) relate these goods—especially pre-moral ones—to human fulfillment. The latter move, combined with their
explicit or implicit assumption that persons have a non-relative value, results in an ethical theory that integrates natural law,
teleological, and natural rights approaches. There is great disagreement, however, over moral goods, obviously because of
disagreement over what constitutes moral goodness. See Finnis’ Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1980) and Grisez’ The Way of the Lord Jesus: Volume 1: Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
1983).
14. On rights in the Jewish tradition, see Lenn E. Goodman, Judaism, Human Rights, and Value (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998); Hayim S. Nahmani, Human Rights in the Old Testament (Tel Aviv: Joshua Chalchick, 1964); Haim
Cohn, Human Rights in Jewish Law (New York: Ktav, 1984); Samuel Stoljar, An Analysis of Rights (New York: St. Martins,
1984); Milton Konvitz, “Conscience and Civil Disobedience in the Jewish Tradition,” in M. Konvitz, ed., Judaism and Human
Rights (New York: Norton, 1972); Abraham Katsch, The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy (New York: Ktav,
1977); James Barr, “Ancient Biblical Laws and Human Rights,” in D.A. Knight and P.J. Paris, eds., Justice and the Holy
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); and Walter Harrelson, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1980).
15. See, for example, Exodus 20-23, Leviticus 19, Numbers 5, and Deuteronomy 15-17.
16. See David Novak, “Non-Jews in a Jewish Polity: Subject or Sovereign?” in Jewish Social Ethics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
17. Ibid.
18. The relationship between natural law and natural rights is thus twofold: natural law rules (precepts, commands, duties,
obligations, or claims) both imply and protect natural rights. Unfortunately, the preface to Strauss’ study of natural law is still
valid: “(T)he issue of natural right presents itself today as a matter of party allegiance. Looking around us, we see two hostile
camps. . . . One is occupied by the liberals of various descriptions, the other by Catholic and non-Catholic disciples of Thomas
Aquinas.” Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). On inferring rights from
commands, obligations, and claims, see Robert M. Cover, “Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order,” Journal of
Law and Religion 5 (1987).
One vexing issue surrounding natural law ethics is the epistemological foundation of natural law rules. Are they
deontological, known without reference to human fulfillment; or are they inferred from either a telos or from normal functioning
and inclinations? The ongoing controversies over the official Catholic moral theological positions on artificial contraception and
artificial conception involve the validity and difficulty of inferring telos-promoting rules from bodily functioning, i.e.,
“physicalism.”
19. See Gerard Watson, “The Natural Law and Stoicism,” in A.A. Long, ed., Problems in Stoicism (London: Athlone
Press, 1971).
Early Stoic thought is known mainly through isolated quotations, secondary sources, and doxographies. The writings of
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius have survived in quantity.
20. Stoic thought about rights was cosmopolitan in two ways: rights were both more universally known and possessed.
21. De Officiis, I, 7.
22. Watson, “The Natural Law and Stoicism.”
23. For a helpful primary source summary of the early Church social thought, see Peter C. Phan, Message of the Fathers
of the Church: Social Thought (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1984).
24. For a wholesale denunciation of slavery, see Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on Ecclesiastes. For exhortations to improve
the lives of slaves, see The Didache, 4, 10; Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Polycarp, 4, 1, 3. See Johannes Quaston, Patrology,
vols. 1-4 (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1986).
25. On primordial equality and freedom, see Ambrose, Ep., 37, 24; John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Letter to
Ephesians, 22, 6, 2 and Homilies on the First Letter to the Corinthians, 15; Gregory of Nyssa, Horn. IV in Eccl.; and Basil,
De Spiritu Sancto, 20. See ibid.
26. City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 15.
27. Letter to Philemon 16. See Quaston, Patrology.
28. City of God, Book XIX, Chapters 15 and 16.
29. For strong criticisms of private property, see Ambrose, De Officiis., I, 28, 132, De Nabutha, 1, 2, 11, 53-54, 56, 58,
Commentary on Psalm 118, Homily 8, 22, Expos. Evang. Sec. Luc. 7, 124 and 247; St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the
First Letter to the Corinthians, 10, 2, Homilies of the First Letter to Timothy, 11, 2, 4; and Salvian, Ad Ecclesiam, I, 5, 26.
See Quaston, Patrology.
For a helpful analysis of Patristic economic thought, see J.A. Ryan, Alleged Socialism of the Church Fathers (St. Louis:
B. Herder, 1913).
30. See Clement of Alexandria, Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved?; St. John Chrysostom, To the People of Antioch,
Homily 2, 6; and Augustine, Letter to Proba, 12. See Quaston, Patrology.
31. On the right of all to material goods and the subsequent distinction between possession and use (which echoes
Aristotle), see The Didache, 1, 5 and 4, 5, 8; Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians, 38, 1 and 59, 4; The Shepherd
of Hermas; Justin Martyr, First Apology; Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies, Book IV; Clement of Alexandria, The
Tutor, The Stromata, and Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved?; Tertullian, The Apology; Cyprian of Carthage, On Works
and Almsgiving; Basil, The Homily on “I Will Pull Down My Barns,” 7, Homily Delivered in Times of Famine and
Drought, and The Short Rules, 92; Gregory of Nazianzus, On Love For the Poor, 25-26; Gregory of Nyssa, Love of the
Poor; St. John Chrysostom, On Lazarus, Homilies of the Gospel of Matthew, Homilies XLIX and LXXVII, and Homilies on
the First Letter to the Corinthians, Homily X; Ambrose, Letters, 2, 11; and Augustine, The Way of Life of the Catholic
Church, I, 35, 78, Letter to Vincent, 50, Letter to Proba, 3, Letter to Macedonius, 26, Our Lord’s Sermon On the Mount, On
the Gospel of St. John, Sermons, 206, 2, The Christian Life, 14; Leo the Great, Sermon 10; and Gregory the Great, The
Pastoral Rule. See ibid.
32. Rom 2: 14-17, 1 Cor 10:32.
33. Justin Martyr, Second Apology, 13. See Quaston, Patrology.
34. Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho, 93. See ibid.
35. See, for example, Francis Oakley, “Legitimation by Consent: The Question of Medieval Roots,” Viator 14 (1983).
36. Saadiah Gaon al-Fayyumi, The Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentary on the Book of Job, tr. L.E.
Goodman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), ch. 15; also The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, tr. Samuel Rosenblatt
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948).
37. Moses Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed, vol. III, chs. 51-54.
38. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 90-97. See also q. 100, a. 3 ad. 1; q. 98, a. 1; q. 99, a. 1, ad. 2; and q. 99, aa. 2. For a
concise explication of Aquinas’ natural law theory and its applicability to human rights theory, see Jacques Maritain, The Rights
of Man and Natural Law (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958), pp. 34-63.
Tierney has rather convincingly argued that the 12th century Decretists’ commentaries on Gratian’s Decretum were not
only the catalyst of Aquinas’ reflections on natural law, but also—through canon law—the impetus behind the Spanish
Scholastics’ derivation of natural rights from Aquinas’ natural law. See Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on
Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150-1625 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), especially Chapters
II, XI, and XII.
39. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 90, a. 1; q. 91, a. 2. It must be emphasized that the “natural inclination” relevant to this
aspect of Aquinas’ natural law theory is the capacity to reason.
 The role of inclinations—especially those related to the body—in reason’s apprehension of specific natural law precepts
has been debated since the days of the Roman jurists Ulpian, Gaius, and Paulus. Like Paulus and Aquinas, John Paul rejects a
physicalist approach. Bodily inclinations serve as “anticipatory signs” (and, when properly “integrated,” reinforcers) of right
acts, but are properly oriented by reason’s grasp of their relationship to fulfillment. See Veritatis Splendor [VS], paras. 5 and 7.
40. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, a. 2, a. 5; q. 95, a. 2.
41. Ibid., q. 94, a. 5.
42. Ibid., q. 95, a. 2; q. 94, a. 4. Aquinas qualifies the universality of natural law precepts in two ways. Exceptions to both
the rightness and knowability of otherwise universal precepts may occur due to, on the one hand, “certain obstacles” (i.e.,
stealing in cases of need or killing in self-defense) and, on the other hand, the corruption of reason by passion or bad habits, or
an “evil disposition of nature” (ibid., q. 94, a. 4).
43. Ibid., q. 95, a. 4; II-II, q. 57, a. 3.
44. For critiques of arguments that natural rights and individualism emerged from a non-natural law, nominalistic foundation
established by Ockham (Villey) or Hobbes (Strauss), see Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, especially Introduction.
45. Mexican historian Rafael Altamira has characterized the 1503 decree of Ferdinand and Isabella granting liberty to the
Indians as the “first recognition of the respect due to the dignity and liberty of all men no matter how primitive and uncivilized
they may be.” See Robert Royal, 1492 and All That: Political Manipulations of History (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and
Public Policy Center, 1992).
On the Spanish Scholastics’ indebtedness to historical context, the canonists, and Aquinas, see Tierney, The Idea of
Natural Rights, Chapter XI.
46. While prevailing postcolonial interpretations of the 500th anniversary of European entry into American history were
negative, John Paul’s response was more balanced. On his 1992 visit to Santo Domingo celebrating the initial evangelization of
the American continent, he lamented the “enormous sufferings inflicted on the inhabitants of this continent during the period of
conquest and colonization.” As Christians, he insisted that the Church “acknowledge in all sincerity the abuses committed due to
lack of love on the part of those persons who were unable to see the natives as their brothers, as children of the same Father.”
On his return to Rome, he characterized his trip as not only a “pilgrimage to the place where evangelization began,” but also as
“an act of atonement” and a “request for pardon . . . addressed to the first inhabitants of the new land, the Indians, and then to
those who were brought from Africa as slaves to do heavy labor.”
But he also highlighted positive aspects of the experience for all involved. In Brazil in 1995, John Paul recognized how the
missionary’s respect for indigenous traditions enriched the faith:

Today we cannot but admire the pastoral sensitivity of the early missionaries who sympathetically accepted the
noblest traits they found in that cultural context, such as the sacred character attributed to creation, respect for
Mother Nature and integration with her, the community spirit of solidarity between generations, the balance between
work and rest, loyalty and love of freedom. They enhanced all this with explicit Gospel teaching, integrating it and
sublimating it into the Christian heritage. These heralds of the Gospel thus achieved a living and original synthesis by
fostering an authentic inculturation of the faith.

For the Indians, on the other hand, the faith corrected cultural flaws beneath their dignity and “recognized and took up all
the more positive aspects of indigenous cultures, promoting their capacities, arts and occupations, pedagogically leading the
Indians to a knowledge of revealed Truth and defending them from those who wished to exploit them.” In their attempts to
prevent such exploitation, Spanish missionaries were catalysts for the recognition of human dignity and thus individual rights that
John Paul considers the common thread of the continent’s culture. It was thus no coincidence that John Paul announced his
desire to promote a more unified American Church through an American Synod during his commemorative 1992 visit to Santo
Domingo.
47. See Centesimus Annus [CA], paras. 6-7, 9, 24, 47.
48. See CA, paras. 6, 8, 11, 36, 40, 47.
49. VS, para. 99. See also para. 97.
50. For example, see Evangelium Vitae [EV], para. 58.
51. EV, para. 57. This quote occurs at the end of a discussion on abortion.
52. EV, para. 60, citing Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Procured Abortion (1974), para. 12.
He continues: “This [humanity] has always been clear, and . . . modern genetic science offers clear confirmation. It has been
demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the program of what this living being will be: a person, this individual
person with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization the adventure of human life begins, and
each of its capacities requires time—a rather lengthy time to find its place and to be in a position to act” (citing ibid., para. 13).
“Even if the presence of a spiritual soul cannot be ascertained by empirical data, the results themselves of scientific research on
the human embryo provide ‘a valuable indication for discerning by the use of reason a personal presence at the first appearance
of a human life: How could a human individual not be a human person?’ ” (VS, para. 60, citing Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, Donum Vitae, 1988.)
53. John Paul’s critique of consequentialism (and its proportionalist form) centers on the effect of an act on the actor, i.e.,
evil acts are evil not only because they might harm another party, but also because they are incompatible with the perfection of
the actor. See ibid., paras. 71-83, especially paras. 71, 72, 78, and 79, in which the relationship between rights acts, freedom, and
perfection—a theme of his earlier philosophical works—is discussed.
54. EV, paras. 55-57.
55. EV, para. 55.
56. EV, para. 56. A few comments on just war theory logic and application are in order. In addition to the last resort jus ad
bellum criterion, John Paul has also emphasized the proper authority and proportionality provisos of the just war tradition. Given
his condemnation of consequentialism, his use of the proportionality criterion—which considers consequences—may seen
contradictory. The two analytic moves are distinct, however. While good consequences cannot legitimize an evil act, the
legitimacy of a permissible act is partially dependent upon a preponderance of good consequences.
While his interpretation of the just war tradition has been uncontroversial, his application of it has not. In an apparent
deviation from the Catechism’s insistence that states are responsible and best suited for evaluating particular cases (as opposed
to, by implication, the Church), John Paul has periodically and publicly judged particular cases (the two Persian Gulf wars
against Iraq, for example). Most often cited are deviations from the last resort and proportionality criteria. Ultimately, one is left
wondering whether he believes that the effects of most modern wars militate against complying with the proportionality
criterion.
57. Catholic thought on punishment traditionally cites four “purposes” or desired effects: public order, deterrence, public
safety, and reform. (See Catechism, para. 2266.) As Pope, John Paul rankled certain conservatives by questioning the necessity
and thus permissibility of capital punishment in cases where penal systems are capable of ensuring public safety through
imprisonment—in other words, most contemporary cases. See EV, para. 56.
58. John Paul often cites (i.e., CA, para. 9) the classic description of this right found in the Second Vatican Council’s
Declaration of Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae, which was the culmination of a major shift in Catholic thought about
religious freedom and the subsequent role of the Church in state affairs: “Freedom of this kind means that all men should be
immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups and every human power so that, within due limits, nobody is
forced to act against his convictions nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his convictions in religious
matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others. . . . This right of the human person to religious freedom must
be given such recognition in the constitutional order of society as will make it a civil right” (para. 2).
This position differs significantly from a previous one formulated by Aquinas. Although Aquinas maintained that
unbelievers must be persuaded to freely accept the faith, he allowed for intolerance of their rites in certain circumstances
(Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 10, a. 8, 11; q. 12, a. 2). However, since heretics and apostates can corrupt others’ faith and
disturb social order, they may be excommunicated and punished (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 11, a. 3; q. 12, a. 2).
59. CA, para. 41.
60. VS, para. 22. Four sub-issues are pertinent to this doctrine about the relationship between nature and grace: one
definitional, two concerning the relationship between grace and fulfillment, and another concerning the relationship between the
Church and grace (and thus fulfillment).
First, what, according to John Paul, is grace? His most concise descriptions of grace are found in Veritatis Splendor
(paras. 19-24), in the context of a Scripturally grounded discussion about the relationships between “eternal life,” perfection,
right actions, and grace. Grace is “the active presence of the Holy Spirit [i.e., God] within us” (ibid., paras. 21-22). Since God is
love, grace is most specifically the presence and experience of God’s love—as imparted through the life of Christ, the
Sacraments, the beauty of creation, and other persons’ love for us (ibid., para. 24).
Second, is grace necessary for attaining only one’s supernatural end, or for attaining both one’s natural and supernatural
ends? In his Catechism discussion of the human and theological virtues necessary for attaining, respectively, one’s natural and
supernatural ends, he asserts that grace is necessary for both ends (Catechism, paras. 1810-1811, 1813).
Third, how, according to John Paul, does grace enable one to attain these ends? Because of the “hardness of heart” that
prevents us from our willing in accordance with what we know to be true, “to imitate and live out the love of Christ is not
possible for man by his own strength alone” (VS, para. 22). Grace—God’s love—thus “heals, restores, and transforms the
human heart” (ibid., para. 23).
Fourth, is the Church the only source of this necessary grace (and thus of salvation)? In his Catechism discussion of
salvation, John Paul reaffirms the doctrine offered in the primary Second Vatican Council document on the Church, Lumen
Gentium (LG). Those who know that a relationship with Christ is necessary for salvation and that Christ is “present to us in his
body which is the Church,” but who refuse to enter or remain in the Church, are not saved (LG, para. 14). However, those who
“do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church” through no fault of their own, but who nevertheless “seek God with a sincere
heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too
may achieve eternal salvation” (ibid., para. 16).
61. CA., para. 47.
 62. VS, para. 24.
63. DH, paras. 1-2.
64. VS, para. 31. In some treatments these two freedoms are distinct, while others depict religious freedom as a sub-
species of freedom of conscience (see Catechism, para. 1782). The latter is more common.
65. In order to avoid repetition, I will assume the background premise common to his defenses of each human right:
persons have a value and therefore a right to fulfillment.
66. See VS, paras. 38-40, 63.
67. VS, para. 32. See also VS, paras. 34-64.
68. VS, paras. 54-56.
69. VS, paras. 62-64.
70. VS, paras. 62 and 63.
71. VS, para. 59.
72. See Catechism, paras. 1879-1882; and CA, para. 7. While John Paul occasionally refers to the rights of groups, he
derives them from the rights of individuals to be fulfilled through association. (See CA, para. 11.) Strictly speaking, individual
persons have rights, not collectivities.
73. CA, para. 38. The concept of culture is difficult to define and thus contested. John Paul defines culture as a shared
“way of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence” (CA, para. 24). See also CA, para. 36.
On this notion of man as both subject and object of culture in John Paul’s thought, see Francis E. George, OMI,
Inculturation and Ecclesial Communion in the Teaching of Pope John Paul II (Rome: Urbania Press, 1990).
74. One could argue that this second way in which persons are social is analytically indistinct from the first, since in both
cases one is fulfilled through something received from others. I am distinguishing them because the “something” received is
rather different, i.e., normative truths versus psychological and material goods.
75. These latter two facets of human sociality ground Maritain’s communitarian personalism, which he lays out most
succinctly in The Person and the Common Good (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966).
76. See Familiaris Consortio [FC], paras. 11, 17.
77. CA, para. 11.
78. See FC, Letter to Families [LF], and CA, para. 39.
79. See FC, paras. 11, 18, 21; and LF, paras. 6-7. The characterization of certain groups as a “communion of persons” or
an “authentic community” is common in John Paul’s anthropological, ecclesial, and social thought. A communion is simply a
group whose members love (emotionally and actively) one another, and is for John Paul the central expression of what it means
to be a person. With this definition in mind, he often (and not without some ambiguity) makes the technical distinction between a
community and communion. A community becomes two or more persons united by a common, and ultimately self-serving,
purpose (i.e., a shared notion of at least some aspect of the good life); while a communion is a group united by love for the
other. In this vein, he describes communities or societies as composed of members conscious of themselves as a “we,” while
members of a communion are conscious of themselves as participating in “I-thou” relationships. (See Wojtyla, “The Person:
Subject and Community.”)
These two types of groups are related in two ways. First, because of mixed motives and multiple purposes, many human
groups are both communities and communions. Second, communities may develop into communions. While communities may
initially be defined and unified by a shared notion of goods or the good, this original foundation may serve as a platform from
which others are discerned and treated as a “thou.”
80. FC, para. 37. In the context of this freedom to educate one’s children for self-donation and holiness, John Paul
expresses particular concern with the ability of parents to give their children a “clear and delicate” sex education. This concern
is consistent with his pre-papal philosophical thought regarding the “integration” of the body into one’s moral life, and with his
papal writings regarding the role of the body vis-à-vis fulfillment and salvation.
81. See LF, paras. 13, 15. Despite this idealism, John Paul’s appreciation of human sinfulness allows him to recognize that
spouses and families will fall short of their potential. See FC, paras. 6, 24.
82. Echoing and updating Augustine’s famous depiction of two interacting “cities” (a “city of man” animated by excessive
love of oneself and a “City of God” based in love of God and others), John Paul juxtaposes a civilization of love against a
contemporary civilization beset by a “crisis of truth” that promotes what he describes as a “civilization of technology” and a
utilitarian “civilization of production and of use, a civilization of things and not of persons, a civilization in which persons are used
in the same way that things are used” (LF, para. 13). (Unlike critics of liberalism such as Marx and Heidegger, John Paul does
not link these maladies to liberal democracy.) In transforming contemporary culture, the Church and family play the pivotal and
related roles in his thought. Ultimately, the Church is seen as providing the guidance and grace for marriages and families to
flourish.
83. John Paul’s treatments of the right to expression and its limitations are found in several speeches, including: Messages
of the Holy Father for World Communications Day, all in May of 1984, 1994, and 2001; Address of John Paul II to Journalists
on their Jubilee, June 2000; Homily in Santiago de Cuba, January 1998; Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the
Celebration of the Day of Peace, January 1981; and thirteen Addresses of John Paul II to the Participants in the Plenary
Meeting of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, all in February or March of 1987-1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001,
and 2002.
84. John Paul is careful to distinguish between the content and vehicle of communication. In terms of content, he broadly
distinguishes between informational, artistic, and entertainment. In terms of vehicle, John Paul distinguishes between mass
media (radio, television, print, cinema, internet) and smaller scale media such as musical performances and plays (which may
themselves be disseminated via mass media). See Address of John Paul II to the Participants in the Plenary Meeting of the
Pontifical Council for Social Communications, March 2002.
85. See Message of the Holy Father for the XVIII World Communications Day, May 1984; and Addresses of John Paul II
to the Participants in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, February 1989, March 1990,
March 1991, and March 1992.
86. See Homily in Santiago de Cuba, January 1998; and Mill, On Liberty, ch. 3.
87. John Paul II, Letter to Artists (1999).
88. See Laborem Excercens [LE], paras. 6-7 and CA, paras. 6, 43.
89. On the notion of work—which is always accompanied by suffering—as redemptive and sanctifying when
accomplished out of love for God, see Catechism, para. 2427 and LE, para. 27.
90. See LE, Preface and para. 4.
91. Additionally, these two freedoms are analytically distinct because private property precedes a free market. In other
words, one cannot exchange what one does not own.
92. CA, para. 24.
93. CA, paras. 6, 12. See also Catechism, para. 2404.
94. CA, paras. 6, 13.
95. CA, paras. 12, 25.
96. CA, paras. 13, 25. The Church’s appropriation of a Lockean explanation for private property—mixing one’s labor with
what is created and originally unowned—has caused some theoretical confusion (Rerum Novarum [RN], paras. 9-10; Mater et
Magistra [MM], para. 43; LE, para. 14; CA, paras. 6, 31, 43; Catechism, para. 2403). The Church and John Paul maintain an
analytical distinction between the good effects that legitimize ownership of what is intended to benefit all, and the means through
which this ownership occurs.
97. CA, para. 34. See also para. 40: “Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help utilize
resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all they give central place to the person’s desires and
preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person.”
98. This distinction—“freedom from” versus “freedom for”—recalls Berlin’s characterization of negative versus positive
liberty, or Strauss’ comparison of the liberty of ancients versus moderns. Separating John Paul from these two thinkers is his
assertion that positive rights exist which, in turn, impart an “oughtness” to certain activities beyond mere respect for others’
negative liberties.
99. Such “primary” or “basic” goods have been emphasized in the past few decades by thinkers as diverse as Rawls,
Nussbaum, Grisez and Finnis.
100. “No freedom, including freedom of expression, is absolute: it is limited, in fact, by its duty to respect the dignity and
legitimate freedom of others” (Address of John Paul II to the Journalists on their Jubilee, June 2000).
101. See CA, paras. 8, 11, 30-35, and 40-43.
102. Normative economic thought traditionally cites four possible market failures: monopolies, non-provision of public goods
(marked by non-excludability and non-rival consumption), negative externalities (such as pollution), and equity. John Paul
focuses on the last two, and broadens the concept of externalities to include effects on the “human environment.” On
monopolies, see CA, para. 35. On pollution, see CA, para. 37.
103. John Paul’s assessment of the causes of underdevelopment is spread throughout his writings and speeches but is
clearly discernable. He is sympathetic to both dependency and free trade explanations and their respective recommendations.
See CA, paras. 20, 28, 33-35; LE, para. 79; and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, paras. 16, 33, 36-40.
104. CA, paras. 4, 8.
105. See CA, paras. 6, 30-31; Catechism, paras. 2401-2404, 2409.
106. The concept of a family wage—popularized in the United States by John Ryan—has a complex analytic history that
can be summed up as follows. Some advocates insisted that a wage adequate for one’s family is a matter of “strict” or
distributive justice, i.e., should be paid by employers regardless of economic circumstances. Others, including Germans Nell-
Breuning and Grundlach, argued that such a wage is first a matter of “social” or commutative justice: the state and society
should strive to create economic conditions allowing a worker to produce the equivalent of a family wage, which then should be
paid; but when these conditions are lacking, social supplements should be provided rather than forcing businesses into failure.
See John F. Cronin, “Forty Years Later: Reflections and Reminiscences,” in Readings in Moral Theology No. 5: Official
Catholic Social Teaching, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1986). John Paul
seems to maintain the latter posture, except in cases where a worker is incorrigibly unproductive.
107. In the context of the family’s economic needs, John Paul at times seems to endorse an unpopular conception of home
life where the father works and the mother stays home with the children. For example: “Just remuneration for the work of an
adult who is responsible for a family means remuneration that will suffice for establishing and properly maintaining a family and
for providing security for its future. Such remuneration can be given either through what is called a family wage—that is, a
single salary given to the head of a family for his work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse having to
take up gainful employment outside the home—or through other social measures such as family allowances or grants to
mothers [emphasis added] devoting themselves exclusively to their families” (LE, para. 19; also CA, para. 8).
At other times, he seems more contemporary and balanced: economic realities should not compel women to work outside
of the home, but women who desire work should have equal employment opportunities. However, his emphases on promoting
both an appreciation for the value of women’s work in the home and a harmonization of their work in and outside of the home
suggest an essentialism that some might find incorrect. Given that he does not suggest parental “flex time” as a suitable
alternative, one could conclude that John Paul is advocating public work for women only after children are not exclusively at
home. (See FC, para. 23 and LE, para. 19.)
108. See LE, paras. 70-71, 93; and CA, paras. 6, 13, 29, 31, 33, 41, 43. John Paul maintains that such work structures, in
addition to being more just, are also more productive. See CA, paras. 31 and 43.
109. See CA, paras. 11, 34, 40.
110. See CA, para. 43 and Catechism, paras. 2404-2405. This assertion is consistent with Aquinas’ distinction (derived
from Aristotle) between possession and use—a distinction that John Paul cites in CA, para. 30.
111. See CA, paras. 36, 40, 47.
112. CA, para. 38. On the importance of culture, see also para. 24.
113. John Paul’s thought on the sources of culture focuses on five institutions: the family, education, religion, the mass
media, and businesses. While not focusing on the state and law as direct “carriers” of culture, he does—consistent with the
principle of subsidiarity—see the state as indirectly necessary to the promotion of a culture capable of supporting liberal
democracy through its defense of the family, schools, and churches against the corrosive effects of certain forms of media and
business activities. More will be said on these points later in the discussion of subsidiarity. For a discussion of the state’s direct,
pedagogical effect on culture, see Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., “Law and Culture,” in Ave Maria Law Review 1:1 (Spring
2003).
114. See Catechism, paras. 2284-2287, 2464, 2469, 2482-2487.
115. See Message of the Holy Father for World Communications Day, May 2001; Address of John Paul II to the
Journalists on their Jubilee, June 2000; Message of the Holy Father for the XVIII World Communications Day, May 1984;
Addresses of John Paul II to the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications, March 1988,
1991.
116. See Message of the Holy Father for World Communications Day, May 1994 (“Television and the Family: Guidelines
for Good Viewing”) and Address of John Paul II to the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Commission for Social
Communications, February 1989.
117. See CA, paras. 36, 40.
118. CA, para. 39.
119. CA, para. 39. On consumerism, see CA, paras. 29, 36, 39, 41.
120. CA, para. 47; Catechism, para. 2385; FC, paras. 20, 26, 46.
121. For a concise summary of much of the recent social scientific research on the impact of divorce on children, see
“Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences” (Institute for American Values, 2002).
122. “The first and fundamental structure for ‘human ecology’ is the family, in which man receives his first formative ideas
about truth and goodness, and learns what it means to love and be loved, and thus what it actually means to be a person. Here
we mean the family founded on marriage, in which the mutual gift of self by husband and wife creates an environment in which
children can be born and develop their potentialities, become aware of their dignity and prepare to face their unique and
individual destiny” (CA, para. 39).
The depiction of culture as a “commons” is especially evident in CA, paras. 38 and 40. For a thorough treatment of this
framework, see Allen D. Hertzke, “The Theory of Moral Ecology,” in Review of Politics, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Fall 1998).
123. See Catechism, para. 2383; Code of Canon Law (1983), paras. 1151-1155.
124. CA, 11. On the purpose and tasks of the state, see also CA, paras. 8, 10-11, 15, 19, 36, 40, 42, 48; LE, paras. 17-19;
EV, para. 71; Catechism, paras. 1897-1898, 1901-1903, 1905-1912, 2104-2109, 2234-2237, 2244, 2401-2436, 2498.
125. CA, para. 46. On the form of the state, especially democracy, see also CA, paras. 22, 44, 46-47; EV, paras. 68-71;
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [SRS], para. 44; Catechism, paras. 1901 1904; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction
on Christian Liberation and Freedom (1986), para. 95.
126. John Paul is careful to distinguish between the applicability of principles such as democracy and subsidiarity to politics
and their applicability to the Church. Notwithstanding his endorsements of the eccesiological notions of collegiality and national
and regional bishops’ conferences; and against arguments developed by Nicholas of Cusa, Bellarmine, and Suarez; he has
maintained the emphases—begun in the twelfth century and furthered in the Counter-Reformation—on the papal selection of
bishops and the importance of the papacy in general. In short, he believes that democracy and subsidiarity are more germane to
political theory than to ecclesiology (and, in turn, to moral theology).
127. For earlier and fuller defenses of democracy as the form of politics most compatible with Christian values see
Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism (Paris: Aubier, 1936), Scholasticism and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1940), The
Rights of Man and Natural Law (New York: Scribner’s, 1943), Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1951); Yves Simon, The Philosophy of Democratic Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950); and Heinrich
Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought (St. Louis: Herder, 1945).
128. CA, paras. 22, 46.
129. CA, para. 46; Catechism, paras. 1913, 1915.
130. CA, para. 46.
131. CA, para. 46. While Tocqueville argues that reciprocal causation exists between local social and political participation,
the effects of social participation on political participation are more central to his thought. See Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, tr. George Lawrence (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1966), pp. 520-521.
132. Catechism, para. 1901. John Paul does not address the problem inherent to this stipulation, i.e., the likelihood of
citizens unprepared for democracy having the wisdom to choose against democracy.
133. CA, paras. 44, 47.
134. CA, para. 44. John Paul, citing Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, here deviates from Aquinas’ political theory by
recommending the employment of “legislative, executive, and judicial powers” instead of a mixed regime of democratic,
monarchical, and aristocratic elements. Conventionally (since Aristotle’s Politics), there are three justifications for a mixed
regime. First, characteristics of different elements are regarded as best suited for certain functions, i.e., the many for
deliberation and legislation, the one virtuous for executing laws. Second, enfranchisement is perceived as just and thus promotes
stability. Third, the presence of opposing groups allows them to counterbalance one another within the government, thus
protecting the rights of all.
In this context, and since his rationale for endorsing three “powers” seems to be the latter, John Paul’s recommendation
seems slightly confused and confusing. Instead of a variety of functions, one would expect him to recommend a mixed regime.
It is possible that he associates functions with social elements (i.e., legislation with the many) and thus attempts to blend both
rationales.
135. CA, para. 46. It should be noted that John Paul never directly expresses concern for the possibility of “tyranny of the
majority,” which is conventionally addressed through limiting suffrage, representation, and federalism. As noted above, his
approval of democracy rests upon its ability to protect majority rights, particularly economic rights. However, he shows a
decided preference for representative democracy: every reference to democracy in his written work and speeches advocates
its indirect form.
136. For an explication of this phenomenon, see Francis Cardinal George, “Law and Culture,” Ave Maria Law Review 1
(2003).
137. See EV, paras. 68-71 and CA, paras. 46-47.
138. EV, para. 70; also CA, para. 46.
139. EV, para. 20.
140. EV, paras. 20, 70; CA, para. 46.
141. EV, para. 70; CA, para. 39.
142. See Catechism, paras. 2104, 2106 and 2108, citing Dignitatis Humanae [DH], paras. 2 and 14. See also DH, paras.
3 and 9.
143. Catechism, paras. 2108-2109, citing DH, paras. 2 and 7. See also DH, para. 4. For an early classical liberal
formulation, see John Locke, Letter on Toleration.
John Paul’s thought on the ability of reason to evaluate religiously inspired but antiliberal acts occurs within his discussions
of the relationship between reason and faith, fideism, and moral theology in Fides et Ratio (1999), especially paras. 42, 43, 52,
55, 66, 68, 73, 77, and 98.
144. Catechism, para. 2107, citing DH, para. 6.
145. Some Catholics have criticized what they perceive to be a major and ill-advised shift in the Church’s political theory.
While the purpose of the state was formerly described as the protection of the common good, official Church pronouncements
throughout the past century—especially those of John Paul—have increasingly conceived of politics in terms of protecting
human rights. This shift has been lamented for two reasons. First, some argue that a general focus on negative rights stems
from and promotes a faulty anthropology, a notion of persons as autonomous and antagonistic individuals who construct their
own moral universe, discern no duties to others, and regard others primarily as threats from whom one needs protection through
a contractually enlisted state. Second, other critics are uncomfortable with the effects of specific freedoms, arguing that
religious freedom and the market are culturally corrosive, encouraging a secularism and consumerism that ultimately degrades
persons.
John Paul is comfortable with conceptualizing politics in terms of human rights for three related reasons. First, as outlined
earlier, he grounds negative rights in a fuller anthropology. Second, he does not believe that acknowledging negative rights
necessarily leads to a faulty anthropology and cultural blight.
Third and most importantly, he strenuously defends the importance of both negative and positive rights as necessary to
understanding and attaining human fulfillment. The common good is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either
as groups or individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” and human rights are precisely these conditions
(Catechism, para. 1906, citing Gaudium et spes, para. 26). This formulation, introduced into papal literature by John XXIII in
Pacem in Terris (para. 60), was first developed by Maritain (the French ambassador to UNESCO for the drafting of the UN
Declaration on Human Rights) in his seminal work The Rights of Man and Natural Law. John Paul’s focus on rights as the
political purpose is thus neither an emphasis on negative rights at the expense of the common good nor a fundamental shift from
previous Catholic thought. John Paul, in fact, uses the two concepts of common good and human rights interchangeably vis-à-vis
the purpose of the state (see Catechism, paras. 1898, 1902-1903, 1905-1912; CA, paras. 47-48).
146. CA, para. 15. Solidarism is most closely associated with Jesuit Heinrich Pesch, who in the late 1800s sought to
contrast a person-centered Catholic social philosophy/theology with (usually economic) individualism and collectivism.
Derivatively, the principle of solidarity means that since persons are by nature deeply social and valuable, one ought to fulfill
their needs—through politics if necessary. See H. Pesch, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, vol. 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1924) and D. von Hildebrand, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft (Ausburg, Haas & Grabherr, 1930).
147. CA, paras. 36, 40.
148. Message of the Holy Father for World Communications Day, May 1994.
149. CA, paras. 8, 10-11, 15, 40, 42, 48. “Working conditions” are here construed broadly to include not only on-the-job
conditions that affect physical and moral health, but also the availability of time for leisure and recreation. Wages are broadly
construed to include access to health care, disability benefits, and a pension (LE, para. 19). Despite his concern for proper
working conditions, he characterizes wages as the key means through which the rights to natural and manufactured goods are
obtained and therefore as the most important indicator of “the justice of the whole socioeconomic system” (LE, para. 19).
150. LE, para. 17.
151. CA, paras. 15, 19, 40, 48; LE, para. 18. Employment-related fiscal (use of tax revenues) policy includes support for
“instruction and education” necessary to work in viable economic sectors. See LE, para. 18.
152. LE, paras. 16, 19. See also Catechism, para. 2406, which cites Gaudium et Spes [GS], para. 71; SRS, para. 42; and
CA, paras. 40, 48.
153. John Paul’s characterization of this risk echoes Bakunin’s critique of Marx:

Therefore, while the position of ‘rigid’ capitalism must undergo continual revision in order to be reformed from the
point of view of human rights . . . it must be stated that from the same point of view these many deeply desired
reforms cannot be achieved by a a priori elimination of private ownership of the means of production. For it must be
noted that merely taking these means of production (capital) out of the hands of their private owners is not enough to
ensure their satisfactory socialization. They cease to be the property of a certain group . . . and become the property
of organized society, coming under the administration and direct control of another group of people. . . . This group in
authority may carry out its task satisfactorily from the point of view of the priority of labor; but it may also carry it out
badly by claiming for itself a monopoly of the administration and disposal of the means of production and not
refraining even from offending basic human rights. Thus, merely converting the means of production into state
property in the collectivist systems is by no means equivalent to ‘socializing’ that property” (LE, para. 14).

154. John Paul’s explications and defenses of the principle of subsidiarity are found in CA, paras. 11, 13, 15, 45, 48-49; LE,
paras. 83-84; Catechism, paras. 1881-1885, 1913-1914, 2208-2209, 2431; FC, paras. 37, 40, 45; LF, paras. 16-17.
Other important primary (Church document) treatments of subsidiarity are Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, paras. 4, 7, 13-16,
30-31, 35-36, 45, 47, 53, 55; Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno [QA], paras. 79-80; John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, paras. 44, 51-
67, 117, 152 and Pacem in Terris, paras. 140-141; Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, para. 33 and Octagesimo Adveniens,
para. 47; US NCCB, Economic Justice for All, para. 124.
Important secondary literature on subsidiarity: O. von Nell-Breuning, “The Drafting of Quadragesimo Anno,” in
Readings in Moral Theology No. 5: Official Catholic Social Teaching, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick,
S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1986) and Reorganization of Social Economy: The Social Encyclical Developed and
Explained (New York: Bruce, 1936) [These two works are especially significant given Nell-Breuning’s role in formulating the
principle as it first appears in Quadragesimo Anno]; Rommen, The State in Catholic Social Thought; Johannes Messner,
Social Ethics (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1949) and “Freedom as a Principle of Social Order,” The Modern Schoolman
XXVIII (January 1951); Arthur Utz, “The Principle of Subsidiarity and Contemporary Natural Law, Natural Law Forum 3
(1958); Joseph Komonchak, “Subsidiarity and the Church: The State of the Question,” The Jurist 48 (1988); Edgar Alexander,
“The Church and Society in Germany,” Church and Society: Catholic Social and Political Thought and Movements, 1789-
1950, ed. Joseph M. Moody (New York: Arts, Inc., 1953); Franz H. Mueller, “The Principle of Subsidiarity in the Catholic
Tradition,” The American Catholic Sociological Review 4 (October 1943) and The Church and the Social Question
(Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Press, 1984); Thomas C. Kohler, “In Praise of Little Platoons,” Building a Free
Society: Democracy, Capitalism and Catholic Social Teaching, ed. George Weigel and Robert Royal (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1993); Jonathan Chaplin, “Subsidiarity as a Political Norm,” Political Theory and Christian Vision (Lanham:
University Press of America, 1994) and “Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignty,” Things Old and New: Catholic Social
Teaching Revisited, eds. Francis P. McHugh and Samuel M. Natale (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).
155. For an insightful discussion of the late development of the principle of subsidiarity, see Franz-Xavier Kaufmann, “The
Principle of Subsidiarity Viewed by the Sociology of Organizations,” in The Nature and Future of Episcopal Conferences, ed.,
Herve Legrand (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1988).
156. Kaufmann points out the similarity of these insights to those of the functionalist and structural functionalist schools of
sociology and anthropology, i.e., Comte, Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, Parsons, and perhaps Hegel. Most functionalist thought,
however, is merely descriptive and emphasizes the importance of institutions and practices for the survival of society generally.
See Kaufmann, “The Principle of Subsidiarity.”
157. Gustav Gundlach, Zur Soziologie der katholischen Ideenwelt und der Jesuitenordens (Freiburg: Herder, 1927),
cited in Edgar Alexander, “The Church and Society in Germany.”
158. See Rerum Novarum [RN], paras. 4, 7, 13-16, 28-31, 35-36, 38, 45, 47, 53, 55.
159. Nell-Bruening considered himself a student of economics and law, and gave Gundlach much of the credit for the
document’s overall political philosophy and the principle of subsidiarity. Both were students of Pesch. See O. von Nell-Breuning,
“The Drafting of Quadragesimo Anno,” p. 62 and Johannes Schwarte, Gustav Gundlach, S.J. (1892-1963) (Munich:
Schoningh, 1975), pp. 36-43, cited by Komonchak, “Subsidiarity and the Church,” p. 300.
160. QA, para. 79.
161. QA, para. 78. Pius XI has in mind two general solutions to the worker question: “the reform of institutions” and “the
correction of morals” (77). The principle of subsidiarity is outlined in his discussion of institutional remedies. The discussion of
morality begins in paragraph 97, and, it could be argued, is also related to the principle of subsidiarity, since the principle supports
the Church’s efforts to promote its moral theology.
162. Catholic social thought after Pius XII de-emphasized Peschian corporatism/solidarism, but maintained its insistence
upon the importance of non-state solutions to social problems.
163. QA, para. 79. John Paul’s characterization of the relationship between the state and non-state associations is devoid
of some of the possible but unintended implications of Pius XI’s characterization, i.e., “greater,” “higher,” “lesser,”
“subordinate,” and “lesser importance.” For example, Calvinist thinker Herman Dooyeweerd mistakenly concludes that the
Greek influence on Catholic social thought precludes a solid basis for the autonomy of “life-spheres.” Roots of Western
Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options (Lewiston, N. Y: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), pp. 122-129.
On this possible source of confusion, see Kaufmann, “The Principle of Subsidiarity.” Further reflection on this issue and the
dearth of Catholic thought about the roles of local political entities will occur in subsequent chapters.
164. QA, para. 80.
165. CA, para. 48.
166. CA, para. 48.
167. CA, para. 15.
168. CA, para. 15.
169. CA, para. 7.
170. LE, para. 20; CA, para. 7.
171. LE, para. 20.
172. LE, para. 20.
173. LE, para. 20; CA, para. 15.
174. LE, paras. 8, 14, 15; CA, paras. 16, 19, 43.
175. LE, para. 14.
176. John Paul does not offer detailed accounts of the structures, effects, and implementation of these organizational
forms. For helpful Catholic accounts, see N. Betton, Catholic Activism and the Industrial Worker (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1971). For non-Catholic thought on co-partnership, which is often called “economic democracy,” see R. Dahl,
A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); D. Ellerman, The Democratic Worker-
Owned Firm: A New Model for East and West (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990); and J. Vanek, Self-Management: The
Economic Liberation of Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).
177. CA, para. 48.
178. CA, para. 48.
179. CA, paras. 15, 48. John Paul displays no overt preference for supply-side versus Keynesian fiscal policies. One might
venture the guess that his endorsement of the principle of subsidiarity would make him more amenable to tax relief versus
government spending.
180. CA, para. 48.
181. CA, para. 48.
182. CA, 48-49; FC, para. 44.
183. CA, para. 48.
184. CA, 48.
185. CA, para. 36.
186. FC, para. 40.
187. FC, para. 37.
188. FC, paras. 40, 45.
189. Arthur-Fridolin Utz, Sozialethik, 1 Teil: Die Prinzipien der Gessellschaftslehre (Heidelburg: Leuven, 1958), pp.
279-280.
Utz has respectively articulated principles of “noninterference” and “assistance.” Utz, “The Principle of Subsidiarity and
Contemporary Natural Law,” in Natural Law Forum 3 (1958), p. 177.
190. See also Chaplin, “Subsidiarity as a Political Norm,” p. 88; Rommen, The State in Catholic Social Thought, pp. 143-
144, 270; and Messner, Social Ethics, p. 574.
Similarly, Maritain advocates an “instrumentalist” versus a “paternalist” conception of the state. See Maritain, Man and
the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 12-19.
191. See Mater et Magistra, paras. 58, 150-151.
192. I am indebted to Ken Grasso for this term.
193. CA, paras. 12-13, 44-45.
194. Rommen, The State in Catholic Social Thought, pp. 142-144, 256.
195. FC, para., 36. For this reason, Messner asserts that “to make possible for families which form the political community
the fulfillment of their natural functions is the primary function of the state” (Messner, Social Ethics, pp. 288-289).
196. CA, para. 48.
 4

John Paul II in Conversation with Catholic

Social/Political Theorists

Introduction
Throughout the Church’s history, Catholic intellectuals have engaged in spirited doctrinal
debates, especially about how human beings ought to act. From the Christian perspective
highlighted in John Paul’s Fides et Ratio, these debates are to be expected. The same human
condition that makes revelation necessary also makes its acceptance and interpretation
difficult. Although God’s nature ensures the truth of revelation, human cognitive and moral
limitations are such that reports of what God allegedly conveyed at a particular historical
moment must be examined carefully. Additionally, even assuming revelation’s historicity, its
interpreters—who rely on historical, scientific, and philosophical reason in order to clarify
and augment—are hobbled by the same limitations besetting authors. Because the human mind
and will deeply impinge upon the understanding of revelation at any given time, competing
interpretations and resulting doctrinal positions are inevitable.
Modern Catholic social doctrine—inasmuch as it is partially grounded in revelation—is
no exception to this rule. As a branch of moral theology concerned with how one ought to act,
with the licitness of ends and their means, this docrine has proven to be especially contentious.
The recency of the Church’s embrace of certain aspects of political and economic liberalism
only adds to the contention. With previous chapters as background, this chapter will assess
some of the controversy by bringing John Paul’s social thought into conversation with four
influential schools of Catholic social thinkers united by their misgivings about liberalism:
theoconservatives, liberation theologians, state-centric liberals, and distributists.1 Each of the
following sections will outline these schools’ respective arguments and then consider John
Paul’s evaluation of such claims.

Theoconservatism
Analysis and prescriptions
The theoconservative position was developed and disseminated through a protracted debate
with Catholic neoconservatives, who offer a generally favorable evaluation of liberal
institutions.2 In response to issues raised in a 1986 interview with Cardinal Ratzinger,
neoconservative Weigel initiated the debate by asserting that American culture is not
predominantly secular and bourgeois (i.e., self-centered and consumeristic).3 Schindler’s first
response to Weigel countered that inasmuch as Americans demonstrated generosity, it was
rooted in a faulty Cartesian body-soul dualism that supports merely an “ontology of
extroversion” versus a Catholic form of selflessness that emerges from a “Thomistic onto-logic
of Incarnational introversion.”4 The debate continued throughout the 1990s, eventually focusing
on interpreting and evaluating Schindler’s 1996 book Heart of the World, Center of the
Church.5
Schindler’s argument is a development of the late nineteenth century Catholic anti-liberal
claim that liberalism both issues from and promotes indifferentism—what John Paul calls
“practical atheism.” As discussed in an earlier chapter, the early Catholic opposition to liberal
ideas—especially religious freedom and freedom of conscience—was based on a particular
understanding of their foundations and effects. According to this analysis, the Enlightenment
had promoted skepticism about the validity and worth of a host of important theologically and
philosophically grounded claims. Liberalism was the logical social-political response to such
skepticism. Liberals mistakenly believed that the freedoms to believe and think would free
individuals from dubious ideas and progressively promote individual fulfillment and social
peace. Catholic anti-liberals argued that because of the pedagogical effect of positive law,
state protection of these freedoms would, in turn, promote their foundations: religious
indifferentism, moral relativism, and a faulty—negative—conception of freedom.
Contemporary theoconservatives such as Schindler share their predecessors’ deep
compunctions about the origin and effect of religious freedom. Law, again, is pedagogical.
Laws protecting religious liberty constitute an “initial moment of silence” about the veracity
and importance of religious ideas and practices. A well-intentioned Catholic such as Murray
who nevertheless defends the First Amendment “fails to build positive relation to God into the
first meaning he accords the human act in his proposals for the public (constitutional) order.”6
This failure stems from a previous and ontological error: an inadequate understanding of our
“creatureliness.” Liberalism understands the “basic act” of the human being to be “ ‘creativity’
or ‘self-determination,’ ” while “creatureliness properly understood implies that our being is
constitutively related to God . . . not by virtue of what the self first does but by virtue of what
is first done to the self by God (the divine Other).”7 The effects of such an ontology extend
beyond those of the capitalist market, which derives from an anthropology extolling creativity
and initiative and thus encourages selfishness and domination.8 The resulting “initial silence”
about religion means that “worldviews that favor silence about God in the affairs of the earthly
or temporal order therefore always retain a theoretical advantage over worldviews that favor
speech about God.”9 Since God’s grace is necessary for the perfection of nature (specifically,
for the guidance of reason and proper orientation of the will), this political silence about
religion concretizes a deadly “nature-grace dualism.” Shorn of grace, the human condition
degrades into skepticism about all but the material, consumerism, moral relativism, self-
centeredness, unhappiness, and social conflict that preferences the strong. The “ontological
self-centeredness and hence implicit atheism” at the core of “even the most benign forms of
Anglo-American liberalism” are thus “the source of what John Paul II describes as the ‘culture
of death’ and Balthasar as the culture that results from the abstraction of nature (human being)
from its original creaturely context.”10
Reinforcing these effects of liberalism’s religious “neutrality” is another aspect of its
“implied view of the self.” A political theory and resulting state in which individual rights are
the sole normative goals have both faulty origins and effects. Liberal theory is not only a
critical enterprise grounded in skepticism about the veracity and value of philosophical and
theological ideas. It is also a constructive project that translates this skepticism into a
“Lockean” anthropological conception of morally and behaviorally autonomous, but somewhat
antagonistic, individuals who therefore possess rights and associate via a social contract.
Given, again, the pedagogical effect of laws, the liberal state—even if not explicitly grounded
in this anthropology—will encourage such a self-conception. Thus, attendant to this
anthropology is not only a negative conception of rights, but a negative conception of freedom,
i.e., freedom from versus freedom for.11
Given this analysis of the problematic origins and effects of liberalism, one might expect
theoconservatives to prescribe religious establishment. Schindler’s prescription, however, is
less bold. Grace, he maintains, is indeed indispensable to the perfection of nature and
cultivation of a “civilization of love.” Additionally, the necessary political role in the
perfection of nature subsequently requires the state to be itself permeated by grace. Citing
Lubac and John Paul, Schindler insists that effecting a “civilization of love” requires “the
whole world [to] be inserted within the mission of Jesus Christ,” who is the source of grace.
But this relationship between grace, politics, and perfected nature does not require theocracy.
Instead, Christians should merely “seek to actualize the state in terms of grace . . . If the state
and the Church are to remain ever distinct as juridical entities, they nonetheless maintain this
distinctness now only from within nature’s internal relation to grace.”12 Concretely, such a
graced political entity would possess at least three characteristics. First, it would be animated
—to some unspecified degree—by believers who, as both voters and representatives, would
bring their religiously inspired convictions to “the public square.” Second, it would not be
silent about the relationship between human beings and God. Although respecting religious
freedom, such a state would be constitutionally explicit about the fact that this freedom not
grounded in theological skepticism. Third, it would counter liberalism’s implied view of the
self by being more explicit about the ends toward which freedom ought to be oriented—even if
these ends are derived from revelation. For example, Schindler maintains that “proposals for
public life” based on the Beatitudes would affirm a proper relationship to both God and
others.13

John Paul II on theoconservatism

As indicated above, most theoconservatives tightly align themselves with John Paul,
especially with his critique of modern culture. But although John Paul never directly addressed
the theoconservative analysis of liberalism’s origins and effects, his extensive writings on
human rights and the liberal state serve as an indirect critique of the project’s central
arguments.
 First, John Paul is far more sanguine about the foundation and effects of existing laws
protecting the right to religious freedom. On three salient issues, John Paul and Schindler
agree: both thinkers insist that the perfection of nature requires grace, that one’s assent to grace
and its sources must be free, and that laws are pedagogical. John Paul, however, parts with
Schindler in his analysis of the basis of laws protecting religious freedom, and thus in his
analysis of what these laws teach. For John Paul, the legal protection of such a right is neither
grounded in nor implies “a-theism.” As discussed in the previous chapter, his endorsement
religious of freedom is based on his evaluation of the preconditions to human fulfillment.
While maintaining that a relationship to God is the most important of these preconditions, John
Paul also insists that the formative effect of human action means that one is due the freedom to
enter into such a relationship. Additionally, since this relationship with God is enhanced by
entering into an ecclesial relationship with others, one is also due the freedom to associate
within a church that, in turn, is itself due freedom from interference by others—including the
state. While this arrangement may deny the state a pedagogical moment officially affirming the
validity of a religious worldview, it also affords individuals and churches the ongoing
possibility of publicly proposing their worldviews, even in political contexts.
Second and more broadly, John Paul does not consider a rights-based polity to be the
product or cause of theological/philosophical skepticism and a resulting odious self-
conception. On the contrary, he argues that a commitment to protecting certain rights is
necessarily the product of prior theological and philosophical commitments, i.e., the validity of
normative principles such as the dignity of all persons. The anthropological conception
undergirding and suggested by John Paul’s analysis of human rights is thus far different from
that attributed to liberalism by Schindler. Liberal societies put theoretical and practical limits
on self-legislation and the use of one’s freedom. Positive rights mean that one has the duty to
do more than just leave others alone; citizens, acting individually or through non-state and
political associations, also have responsibilities to the “common good.” Finally, associational
rights imply that human beings are not merely conflictual monads.
Thus, while John Paul shares the theoconservative disdain for certain cultural attributes
found in liberal societies, he has consistently argued that these attributes are neither the basis
nor result of political liberalism. A “culture of death” is not an epiphenomenon of liberal
politics. On the contrary, he has insisted that secularism and moral relativism are inconsistent
with liberal theory and practice. At worst, liberal states merely permit one to be an atheist or
immoralist. However, liberal states also imply that all persons possess God-given dignity and
protect a host of preconditions to authentic human fulfillment—including the abilities to freely
enter into a relationship with God, describe this relationship to others, and share the fruits of
such a relationship with others.

Liberation Theology
Analysis and prescriptions
Like theoconservatives, liberation theologians are concerned with the origins and effects of
negative rights.14 For the latter, however, the central problem is not skepticism and a
subsequent negative rights–induced cultural morass. Much like social Catholics of the 1800s,
liberation theologians are primarily concerned with eliminating lower-class material poverty.
But unlike their predecessors, their analysis and proposals are decidedly Marxist. For
liberation theologians, material poverty is the result of a specific negative right—land/capital
ownership—that legitimizes and protects the interests of the powerful.
Liberation theology differs from Marxism in at least three important ways, however. First,
it is overtly normative. While Marx (at least in his later writings) purports to merely explain
and predict the inevitable evolution toward a new state of affairs, liberation theologians
consistently condemn the unjust status quo and celebrate the possibility of a more just future.
Second, liberation theology is not historicist. The new and better state of affairs is merely
possible, and must be brought into existence through a combination of divine and human action.
Third, it is—as the name indicates—theology. While stressing the importance of human
reflection on experience and subsequent social scientific reasoning, liberation theology derives
normative assertions and much of its analysis from a certain interpretation of God’s revelation.
According to this interpretation, God has revealed, through the historical events
documented in the Old Testament—especially Exodus—and the Gospels, that the salvation He
desires is the this-worldly liberation of the oppressed and materially impoverished. While
God also reveals aspects of the proper means to this end, “praxis”—concrete “action in
solidarity with the poor”—is necessary to fully determine which measures are adequate and
thus how to interpret revelation.15 Theology is therefore “critical reflection on praxis in light
of the Word.”16 Since those who are engaged in such action and themselves poor are best able
to understand the world, they are also in a privileged position to obtain a “truer interpretation
of what faith means.” These methodological premises have ecclesiological consequences. The
clergy—despite their education, ordination, and lifestyle—have no necessary claim to
theological competence. The hierarchy, while still helpful for “informing [an] individual’s
experience of the Word” and directing the “social weight of the Church to attack social
problems,” is therefore denied its traditional interpretive and regulative roles.17 The
“individual Catholic . . . now does his/her own critical reflection on his/her praxis in the light
of his/her experience of the Word.”18
Ultimately, individual theological reflection and social scientific inquiry disclose that the
powerful impoverish through social “structures of sin”—specifically, through possession of the
means of production and control of the state that protects this ownership.19 The proper means
of liberation is thus the elimination of these structures. Since the powerful will resist necessary
economic and political reforms, persuasion will prove inadequate. Liberation will occur only
through class warfare—including self-defensive violence against the “first violence” of the
powerful—that eliminates sinful social structures.20 Human history, however, need not be
characterized by perpetual class struggle. In the words of Boff, “Jesus’ project is a
utopia. . . . Jesus, with the announcement of the Kingdom of God, did not postulate another
world, but rather a new world; this old and broken world would be totally transfigured.”21
Informed by both revelation and Marxist social science, the human struggle to replace sinful
structures promises the “creation of a new type of human being.”22
John Paul II on liberation theology
Because liberation theology appealed to a large number of Catholics—particularly in
Latin America—during his initial years as Pope, John Paul felt a need to directly address its
strengths and shortcomings. His first public comment occurred in 1979 at the Third General
Assembly of CELAM (Conferencia Episcopal Latinoamericana) in Puebla.23 Subsequently, he
oversaw the creation of two documents published by Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith in 1984 and 1986. The first, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the
“Theology of Liberation,” is predominantly an overview and critique of liberation theology.
The second, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, is a broad elaboration of the
meaning of, and modern threats to, human freedom.
John Paul’s evaluation of liberation theology is mixed. On the one hand, he is favorably
disposed to several facets. He regards the broadening human aspiration for liberation as both a
positive and misunderstood “sign of the times,” and sees the debate about liberation theology
as a vehicle through which the Church can develop and disseminate its theologically influenced
understanding of liberty. He lauds the Church-based attempts to address the plight of the Third
World poor. He also commends the identification of “structures of sin”—institutions and
practices through which injustices may occur.24 While not inattentive to the ways in which poor
states are responsible for their own situations, he also affirms the role of unjust practices of
developed nations.25 Finally, he regards the efforts of related “base communities”—small,
laity-led parish groups focusing on prayer, Gospel study, political analysis, and social action
—as positive instantiations of the Second Vatican Council calls for a deeper integration of the
faith into one’s life and a deeper appreciation for the laity’s transformative role.26
On the other hand, John Paul has deep disagreements with certain aspects of the liberation
theology espoused by many of these base communities. First, he argues that its proponents have
an overly narrow interpretation of Christianity’s salvific end. Revelation clearly indicates that
God desires more than our liberation from others and nature in this life. “Liberation is first and
foremost liberation from the radical slavery of sin,” the most crucial consequence of which is
eternal happiness in an afterlife.27 Second, inasmuch as God does convey a desire for the
elimination of material poverty, the analysis and preferred means of liberation theologians are
flawed in several ways. In some cases, the poor themselves—not the powerful—are the cause
of their own poverty. In other cases, the powerful may indeed be abusing the weak with the
assistance of unjust structures. But this abuse is not merely the result of these structures, the
elimination of which will alleviate human sinfulness and subsequent abuse.28 Enslaving
“structures of sin” are the result of the same “radical slavery of sin” that imperils eternal life.29
Simply replacing sinful structures is thus not enough; hearts must also be converted.30
Additionally, God has revealed that this conversion requires more than human effort; grace is
also necessary.31 But since conversion is nevertheless both a necessity and distinct possibility
for persons of all classes, efforts to eliminate unjust structures must involve more than struggle
and violence against the powerful.32 Loving persuasion is a possibility that must be
attempted.33 Finally, in many cases, the powerful may be merely sinning within otherwise
beneficial and morally acceptable structures. Liberating the poor in these cases thus involves
leaving some structures intact (i.e., the private ownership of the means of production),
changing others (i.e., promoting liberal democracy and adequate market restrictions through
state and/or non-state efforts), and persuading the powerful to act differently.

State-Centric Liberalism
Analysis and prescriptions
Like liberation theologians, state-centric (i.e., welfare state) liberals such as the drafters of the
1986 U.S. National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) are deeply concerned with the plight
of the poor. This concern is evident throughout their 1986 publication on domestic and
international economic policies—Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic
Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy—that was meant to serve as a counterweight to
Reagan administration initiatives. At a time when “supply-side” fiscal policies, welfare
program cutbacks, and export-oriented developmental theories were being debated and tested,
the NCCB perceived a need to keep public policy focused on appropriate ethical ends.
Unlike most official Catholic social thought pronouncements, the NCCB document also
evaluated particular public policy means to these ethical ends. In a section entitled “Selected
Economic Policy Issues,” the U.S. bishops of the time discuss four areas of concern:
employment, poverty, food production, and the U.S. role in the global economy. The bishops
caveat this section by insisting that their “treatment of these issues does not constitute a
comprehensive analysis of the U.S. economy”; they have instead selected “illustrative topics
intended to exemplify the interaction of moral values and economic issues in our day.”34 A
second and insightful caveat warns of a peril of policymaking:
In focusing on some of the central economic issues and choices in American life in the light of moral principles, we
are aware that the movement from principle to policy is complex and difficult and that although moral values are
essential in determining public policies, they do not dictate specific solutions. They must interact with empirical data,
with historical, social, and political realities, and with competing demands on limited resources. The soundness of our
prudential judgments depends not only on the moral force of our principles, but also on the accuracy of our information
and the validity of our assumptions. Our judgments and recommendations on specific economic issues, therefore, do
not carry the same moral authority as our statements of universal moral principles and formal church teaching; the
former are related to circumstances which can change or which can be interpreted differently by people of good will.
We expect and welcome debate on our specific policy recommendations. Nevertheless, we want our statements on
these matters to be given serious consideration by Catholics as they determine whether their own moral judgments are
consistent with the Gospel and with Catholic social teaching.35

The subsequent policy recommendations are not those of liberation theology. At no time do
the bishops advocate the forced and permanent socialization of the means of production.36
Instead of force, the bishops counsel “a spirit of mutual respect and open dialogue.” Like John
Paul, the U.S. bishops argue that, generally, positive economic rights should be promoted
through respect for private property coupled with market interventions, social programs, and
cultural improvements. But while limiting the central state’s role in producing consumer goods,
the bishops envision a large political role in correcting market failures and thus in distributing
these goods. For example, the bishops call on the state to remedy unemployment through,
among other measures, “direct public service employment and also public subsidies for
employment in the private sector.”37 In response to poverty, the federal government should
reverse “cutbacks in federal programs for the poor in recent years [that] have contributed to the
increase in poverty,” mandate a twenty-four percent increase in the minimum wage, establish
more progressive tax policies, invest more heavily in public education and child care, and
expand welfare program coverage to include two-parent families.38 Recommended
governmental action vis-à-vis agricultural producers includes increased credit access, debt
relief, and various forms of income support.39

John Paul II on state-centric liberalism

One possible explanation for this high degree of governmental intervention into the market
is that the bishops interpret the principle of subsidiarity differently than John Paul. Consistent
with his predecessors and as discussed in the previous chapter, John Paul views the principle
as recognizing both negative and positive dimensions of the state’s social role. However, at
one point in Economic Justice for All, the bishops seem to deemphasize the negative aspect of
the principle. After reiterating much of John Paul’s characterization of the moral significance
of work, the bishops assert that such goods should “govern the activities of many different,
overlapping communities and institutions that make up society: families, neighborhoods, small
businesses, giant corporations, trade unions, the various levels of government, international
institutions, and a host of other human associations including communities of faith [emphasis
added].”40 They immediately follow with their first discussion of the principle of subsidiarity:
“The need for vital contributions from different human associations—ranging in size from the
family to government—has been classically expressed in Catholic social teaching in the
‘principle of subsidiarity . . .’ ” [emphasis added].41 After citing applicable portions of
Quadragesimo Anno and warning that the “meaning of this principle is not always
understood,” the bishops continue: “This principle guarantees institutional pluralism. It
provides space for freedom, initiative, and creativity on the part of many social agents. At the
same time, it insists that all these agents [i.e., including the state] should work in ways that
help build up the social body.”42 At this point in the document, the emphasis is on the positive
contributions of all institutions, including the state. Little has been said about state limitations.
However, the bishops later express an appreciation for the negative aspect of the state-
society relationship, thus indicating that their interpretation of the principle does not differ
significantly from John Paul’s. At the end of an extended discussion about personal and
institutional rights and duties, they insist that the principle means that the “government should
undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups
acting independently. Government should not replace or destroy smaller communities and
individual initiative. Rather it should help them to contribute more effectively to social well-
being and supplement their activity when the demands of justice exceed their capacities.”43
Given this orthodox interpretation of the principle of subsidiarity, one could logically
postulate another explanation for the bishops’ interventionist prescriptions: temporary
circumstances require such measures. Later in the document, however, the bishops reveal that
such measures should not be considered temporary. A “long-term” “New American
Experiment” for securing economic rights that requires more state activity is warranted by
permanent social changes.44 The principle of subsidiarity “calls for government intervention
when small or intermediate groups in society are unwilling or unable to take the steps needed
to promote basic justice”; and the bishops—citing John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra—argue
that “the growth of more complex relations of interdependence among citizens” has denigrated
the efficacy of these groups and thus requires “an increased role for government in modern
societies.”45 One of these roles is to “work in partnership with the many other groups in
society” in order to assure “a reasonable coordination among the different parts of the body
politic.”46 This conclusion is consistent with their perception of increased complexity and their
construal of the demands of the principle of subsidiarity, and John Paul’s Laborem Exercens is
cited in defense.47 But additionally, the bishops assert that complex interdependence requires
more than increased state coordination. When one considers the “appropriate balance of
private and local initiative with national economic policy,” one should conclude that “high
levels of government spending, and many other forms of government regulation are here to stay.
A modern economy without the interventions of the sort we have alluded to is
inconceivable.”48
Unfortunately, two related and crucial issues are left unexplained: exactly what complex
interdependence is, and why this new situation necessitates a permanent shift in the way the
principle of subsidiarity is practiced. While the cited John XXIII does not himself provide a
precise definition, he, in fact, critiques it as “at once a symptom and a cause of the growing
intervention of the State, even in matters which are of intimate concern to the individual, hence
of great importance to the individual and not devoid of risk.”49 According to him, the resulting
“multiplicity of restrictive laws and regulations in many departments of human life . . . narrows
the sphere of a person’s freedom of action.”50 In other words, potentially helpful coordinative
efforts on the part of the state have morphed into undue intervention—a problem that must be
remedied by allowing intermediate bodies to be “really autonomous” and promoting “the
timely coordination and encouragement by the State of these private undertakings.”51 Assuming
that the same phenomena are being discussed, the divergent conclusions are perplexing. Given
their professed appreciation for the perils of state intervention, one wonders whether the
bishops lack confidence in the efficacy of non-state institutions—a doubt shared by neither
John XXIII nor John Paul II.

Distributists
Analysis and prescriptions
Led by British Catholics Belloc and Chesterton, an influential “distributist movement”
emerged in the early 1900s.52 The movement centered around The Distributist journal,
published between 1934 and 1937 by the League for the Restoration of Liberty and the
Distribution of Property (later called The Distributist League). At its height, the movement
claimed about twelve thousand adherents, and in the United States influenced both devotees of
The Catholic Worker and Southern agrarians partial to The American Review.
As the League’s original name indicates, distributism was a somewhat original synthesis
of the Anglo-Saxon commitment to social and political liberties and egalitarian social Catholic
criticism. Several major themes dominate its literature. First and foremost, distributism was
committed to the equal and diffuse private ownership of the means of production.53 From this
perspective, capitalism and socialism were equally flawed, with either capitalists or the state
enslaving and immiserating the majority. This preferred economic arrangement would
simultaneously secure individual liberties, a family wage, and a productive process enabling
work to serve as an avenue for human expression.54 Second and somewhat related was an
emphasis on smallness. Economically, a wide distribution of capital would mean fairly small
productive units, a change that might, in turn, facilitate the recovery of smaller and more
fulfilling social and political units. Third, short of decentralized ownership of the means of
production, Gill counseled shared or cooperative (but private) ownership. Fourth, distributists
celebrated the moral effects of agricultural work and life, and thus wished to encourage small
farming when possible. Fifth, Belloc and Chesterton espoused free expression as a means to
social critique and reform. Sixth, when necessary to escape caustic cultural influences,
distributism recommended separation from mass society. Finally, distributism demonstrated a
fondness for the ancien regime culture-influencing institutions of monarchy and religious
establishment.

John Paul II on distributism

As is evident from a previous chapter, John Paul is a proponent of—and was perhaps
influenced by—many distributists ideas. Most generally, he endorses the distributist
combination of liberal and egalitarian goals. He is a strong defender of private ownership, a
family wage, and “fully human work.” His endorsement of the principle of subsidiarity is in
part grounded in an appreciation for the face-to-face interactions that local institutions
facilitate. He consistently insists on the importance of human interaction with and respect for
nature that is integral to agricultural work. John Paul is also extremely solicitous of free
speech.
But John Paul also parts with distributism on several fronts. First, his under-appreciated
corporatism regards shared private ownership of the means of production as more
economically viable than a decentralized system of small scale producers. He is also loath to
adopt a strategy of separation, instead highlighting the potential benefits of “socialization” and
globalization and calling for the non-coercive evangelization of culture. Finally, John Paul
forcefully defends the benefits of democracy and religious freedom.

Notes
 1. Other Catholic social thinkers that could be brought into conversation with John Paul are neoconservatives such as
Novak (briefly treated in the previous chapter and implicitly addressed in this chapter’s section on theoconservatives), “radical
orthodoxy” proponents (some of whom are Catholic), and divergent views on international issues such as war (i.e., pacifism and
strategic nonviolence) and development (i.e., dependency theory).
Somewhat influential is Kraynak’s critique of the shortcomings of “Kantian Thomism” and, generally, “rights talk.” While
spirited, well-intended, somewhat insightful, I believe his work misinterprets Kant, the philosophical foundations of human rights,
and John Paul’s work; and is similar to Schindler’s more careful critique. See Robert P. Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern
Democracy: God and Politics in a Fallen World (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).
Another potentially interesting conversation would be between John Paul and certain Protestant social theorists, many of
whom operate from different premises about human nature, human reason, exegesis, ethics, and thus politics. An obvious group
of interlocutors would be Calvinist “sphere sovereignty” proponents influenced by Kuyper.
A final possible but here unaddressed social/political conversation would be between John Paul and non-Christian faiths.
2. For a summary of the neoconservative-theoconservative debate, see Mark Lowery, “The Dialogue Between Catholic
‘Neoconservatives’ and Catholic ‘Cultural Radicals:’ Toward a New Horizon,” in The Catholic Social Science Review Volume
III (1998).
A disclaimer: the complexity of this debate will preclude a full treatment here. A complete description of the
theoconservative position would, for example, require discussions of not only Schindler’s and Milbank’s thought on nature, grace,
and social institutions, but also of their influences, which include de Lubac and von Balthasar. The latter theologian initiated the
Catholic theological journal Communio, which Schindler edits.
3. See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, interview with Lucio Brunelli, 30 Days (April 1986) and George Weigel, “Is America
Bourgeois?,” Crisis (October 1986).
4. David Schindler, “Is America Bourgeois?,” Communio (Fall 1987).
5. Important sources include (chronologically) George Weigel, “Is America Bourgeois? A response to David Schindler,”
Communio (Spring 1988); David Schindler, “Once Again: George Weigel, Catholicism, and American Culture,” Communio
(Spring 1988); David Schindler, “U.S. Catholicism: A ‘Moment of Opportunity’?” 30 Days (May 1989); Richard John Neuhaus,
George Weigel, Michael Novak, “America Is Not a Secular Society,” 30 Days (June 1989); David Schindler, “The One True
American Religion,” 30 Days (June 1989); Robert Connor, “Relation, the Thomistic Esse, and American Culture: Toward a
Metaphysic of Sanctity,” Communio (Fall 1990); Editorial, Crisis (October 1990); Michael Novak, “Mystique and Politique,”
Crisis (May 1991); Mark Lowery, “The Schindler/Weigel Debate: An Appraisal,” Communio (Fall, 1991); George Weigel and
David Schindler, Responses to previous article; David Schindler, “The Church’s ‘Worldly’ Mission: Neoconservatism and
American Culture,” Communio (Fall 1991); Michael Novak, “Schindler’s Conversion: The Catholic Right Accepts Pluralism,”
Communio (Spring 1992); David Schindler, “Christology and the Church’s ‘Worldly’ Mission: Response to Michael Novak,”
Communio (Winter 1992); Statement signed by fifteen individuals affiliated with various journals and periodicals, “A Civilization
of Love: The Pope’s Call to the West” (with introductions by David and Stratford Caldecott), Communio (Fall 1994); David
Schindler, “The Culture of Love” (interview), Catholic World Report (October 1994); Letters in response to previous interview,
with response by David Schindler, Catholic World Report (December 1994); Michael Novak, Concluding address to Catholic
Campaign for America’s first National Leadership Conference and Campaign’s “Principles of ‘Public Catholicism,’ ” Crisis
(December 1994); Matthew L. Lamb, “Modernism and Americanism Revisited Dialectically: A Challenge for Civilization,”
Communio (Winter 1994); Michael Novak, “Civilization of Love, Yes, but Not a Utopia,” Crisis (January 1995); David
Schindler, “Economics and the Civilization of Love,” The Chesterton Review 20 (May-August 1994); Various authors, Special
Issue on Distributism, The Chesterton Review (1995); Richard John Neuhaus, editorial on distributism, First Things (April
1995); David Schindler, “Christological Ethics and Evangelium Vitae: Toward a Definition of Liberalism,” Communio (Summer
1995); and David Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and
Liberation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
For a charitable and politics-centered review of Heart of the World, with responses by Michael Novak and David
Schindler, see Michael J. Baxter, “Catholicism and Liberalism: Kudos and Questions for Communio Ecclesiology,” Review of
Politics (Fall 1998).
6. David Schindler, “Communio Ecclesiology and Liberalism,” Review of Politics (Fall 1998), p. 775
7. Ibid., p. 775.
8. On economics, see Schindler, Heart of the World, chs. 2-3.
9. Schindler, Heart of the World, p. 69.
10. Schindler, “Communio Ecclesiology,” p. 778.
11. For another treatment associating liberalism with secularism, moral relativism, and selfishness, see Robert P. Kraynek,
Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2001)
12. Schindler, Heart of the World, p. 84.
13. Schindler, “Communio Ecclesiology,” p. 778.
 14. Liberation theology, also like theoconservatism, is comprised of multiple analytical and prescriptive perspectives that
nevertheless share certain characteristics. This treatment will emphasize these commonalities.
Definitive works include Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis, 1973); Juan Luis Segundo, The
Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis, 1976); and Hugo Assman, Theology for a Nomad Church (New York: Orbis,
1975).
15. See Christine E. Gudorf, “Major Differences: Liberation Theology and Current Church Teaching,” in Charles E.
Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., eds. Readings in Moral Theology No. 5: Official Catholic Social Teaching (New
York: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 444.
16. Ibid., p. 442.
17. Ibid., p. 445.
18. Ibid., p. 445.
19. Gutierrez admits his socialist analytical framework owes more to scientific than theological reflection on experience:
“[M]y personal option for the socialist way is not a conclusion drawn from Evangelical premises. It comes from my socio-
political analysis, which is the starting point for this option.” Gustavo Gutierrez, “Terrorism, Liberation, and Sexuality,” in The
Witness (April 1977), p. 11.
20. See Phillip Berryman, “Latin American Liberation Theologies,” Theological Studies 34:3 (September 1973)
21. Leonardo Boff, “Statement of Leonardo Boff,” Theology in the Americas, eds. Sergio Torres and John Eagleson
(New York: Orbis, 1976), p. 295.
22. Gudorf, “Liberation Theology,” p. 444. See also Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 236 and Assman, Theology
for a Nomad Church, pp. 67-68.
23. See John Paul II, “Address to the Third General Assembly of CELAM,” in Puebla: A Pilgrimage of Faith (Boston:
St. Paul Editions, 1979).
The first and second CELAM general assemblies were in Rio de Janeiro (1958) and Medellin (1968).
24. On structures of sin, see Catechism, paras. 408, 1869, 1887.
25. As discussed in the previous chapter, John Paul’s assessment of the causes of underdevelopment is spread throughout
his writings and speeches but is clearly discernable. He is sympathetic to both dependency and free trade explanations and their
respective recommendations. See CA, paras. 20, 28, 33-35; LE, para. 79; and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, paras. 16, 33, 36-40.
26. On base communities, see John Paul II, “Message for Base Christian Communities,” Origins 10 (1980).
27. Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation,” preface, section IV.
28. Ibid., sections IV, XI, XI.
29. Ibid., section X.
30. Ibid., section XI.
31. Ibid., section IV.
32. Ibid., sections VIII, IX, XI. According to John Paul, liberation theology narrowly characterized “Jesus as politically
committed, as one who fought against Roman oppression and the authorities, and also as one involved in class struggle. This
idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as a subversive Man from Nazareth, does not tally with the Church’s
catechesis. . . . The Gospel clearly shows that . . . [Jesus] unequivocally rejects recourse to violence. He opens his message of
conversion to everybody. . . .” (John Paul II, “Address to the Third General Assembly of CELAM,” pp. 100-101).
33. Ibid., section XI.
34. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching
and the U.S. Economy (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, Inc., 1986), para. 133.
35. Ibid., paras. 134-135.
36. Citing John Paul, the bishops maintain that while the Church “opposes collectivist and statist economic approaches,” it
does not rule out the socialization of “productive property” when necessary. See ibid., paras. 114-115.
37. Ibid., paras. 162-165.
38. Ibid., paras. 190-192, 197, 202, 205, 208, 210-214.
39. Ibid., paras. 241-245.
40. Ibid., para. 98.
41. Ibid., para 99.
42. Ibid., para. 100; see also para. 297.
43. Ibid., para. 124.
44. Ibid., paras. 95, 295.
45. Ibid., para. 314.
46. Ibid., paras. 314, 317.
47. Ibid., para. 315.
 48. Ibid., paras. 317-318.
49. John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, para. 60.
50. Ibid., para. 62.
51. Ibid., paras. 65-66.
52. Seminal literature includes Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State (London: Constable, 1927), An Essay on the Restoration
of Property (London: The Distributist League, 1936); G.K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity (London: Methuen, 1926), The
Well and the Swallows, “Reflections on a Rotten Apple,” The Napoleon of Notting Hill (novel); E. Gill, Work and
Property (London: J.M. Dent, 1937); and V. McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos (London: Bums, Oates, & Washbourne,
1933).
More recent distributist thinkers include E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New
York: Harper & Row, 1975, c1973) and A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); David Schindler,
“Economics and the Civilization of Love,” The Chesterton Review 20 (May-August 1994); various authors, Special Issue on
Distributism, The Chesterton Review (1995); and Joseph Pearce, Small is Still Beautiful (London: HarperCollins, 2001) and
Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief (London: HarperCollins, 1999).
For a helpful summary, see John A. Coleman, “British Distributism,” in Judith A. Dweyer, ed., The New Dictionary of
Catholic Social Thought (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1994).
For an incisive critique, see Richard John Neuhaus, editorial on distributism, First Things (April 1995).
53. “If Distributism stands for anything, it stands for decentralization of control and for the majority as independent owners
of the means of production. . . . Thus distributism looks to a guild of masters while trade unions [look] to a guild of employees.”
John A. Coleman, “British Distributism,” p. 96, quoting V.N. Lukas in The Distributist (September 1934).
54. This latter goal was emphasized by Gill, who was influenced by Mounier (see Coleman, “British Distributism,” p. 97).
 5

John Paul II in Conversation with Secular

Social/Political Theorists

Introduction
This chapter resembles the previous one in purpose and method. The goal is to bring John
Paul’s social thought into conversation with influential schools of social/political thought, and
each section will outline respective arguments and then consider John Paul’s evaluation of
such claims.
However, while each of the previous chapter’s interlocutors explicitly invoked the data of
Christian revelation, this chapter’s derive their premises and conclusions solely through
philosophical and scientific reason. While many of them may have been religiously influenced,
none appeal to the putative authority of Christian revelation or any particular religious
tradition.
Given his Fides et Ratio perspective on the necessary relationship between faith and
reason, one should not be surprised that John Paul would disagree with some of the fruits of
“rationalism”—particularly those involving ethical claims. But Fides et Ratio also argues that
philosophy and the sciences are due a certain disciplinary autonomy from theology. As
discussed in the third chapter, he insists that philosophical methodologies may independently
yield metaphysical and ethical conclusions coinciding with those of theology. Furthermore,
these disciplines are capable of inquiry into matters beyond the competence of theology.
Theology, for example, legitimately describes the origin and purposes of matter but not its
structure or behavior. Similarly, theology legitimately stipulates how persons ought to act
without specifying all of the political and economic activities and forms consistent with such
norms. Therefore, one should also be unsurprised when certain strands of contemporary social
science are consistent with John Paul’s social thought.
The breadth of his thought would allow dialogues with myriad secular schools and topics,
including communitarianism, civil society, federalism, libertarianism, welfare liberalism,
civic republicanism, identity politics, deliberative democracy, the Frankfurt School, church-
state relations, and international political and non-governmental organizations. This chapter
will focus on John Paul’s implicit critique of certain aspects of the communitarian critique of
liberalism, and on the confluence between his thought on subsidiarity and contemporary
inquiries into the importance of civil society and federalism.

Communitarianism
Analysis and prescriptions
“Communitarian” is a term embraced by or ascribed to sundry contemporary political theorists
who agree on at least three general points: “community” is a good thing, liberalism erodes it,
and the resulting problem must be addressed.1 While divining a precise definition of
community from the literature is often difficult, one can safely assert that the term is used to
indicate a state of affairs where individuals within a group are not stricken with individualism
—the tendency to isolate oneself from a broad network of social relations and concerns.2
Instead, individuals in a community readily interact and attend to the provision of necessary
public goods.
Discrepancies emerge between communitarians, however, when they explain why
community is necessary to human fulfillment or, in other words, why individualism is a
problem. On this issue, one discerns at least three positions that are based upon differing
notions of the relationship between self-fulfillment and others. The first is one emphasized by
Sandel and Taylor, and asserts that persons are social inasmuch as they are constituted by ends
given by their social environment or culture. Beginning with the reception of the worldview
implicit in one’s language, persons are “embedded” within, or “encumbered” by, “constitutive”
goods that may even be unapparent or “latent.”3 Social relations are therefore necessary to
discovering and/or living out one’s identity. MacIntyre holds a similar position that is
nevertheless very specific about the good life through which persons are fulfilled. Persons are
not only constituted by culture, but ought to be constituted by certain cultural characteristics.
For him, the Western tradition—particularly its Aristotelian and Thomistic aspects—offered an
authentic conception of the good life and its related virtues and moral rules.4 A second
communitarian position on human sociality, found in Taylor’s, MacIntyre’s and especially
Etzioni’s writings, focuses on human interdependence: certain ends necessary to fulfillment—
security, for example—can only be attained through self-sacrifice, ascription to social roles,
and broad cooperation.5 A third conception of human sociality is one introduced by Etzioni and
is influenced by Aristotle’s and Christianity’s treatments of, respectively, friendship and
neighbor love. Individualism is a problem because human beings are fulfilled not just through
the products of self-sacrifice, but through self-sacrifice itself. If the good life is one “dedicated
to love and caring,” then “communities” (i.e., non-state institutions) and their associated
“particularistic obligations” are “pivotal.”6
Promoting individualism, and thus thwarting these various dimensions of human sociality,
is liberalism. Communitarians assert that liberalism is a political philosophy that, for a variety
of reasons, extols individual autonomy or separation from others, and circumscribes this
autonomy through state-protected individual rights. Such an atomistic anthropology, imparted
and/or reinforced through pedagogically significant laws, is obviously antithetical to the
various ways in which persons are social. A political emphasis on individual rights—in
contradistinction to an emphasis on the good and one’s duties to contribute to the provision of
certain goods—will promote a notion of an “unencumbered” self who constructs his own
identity and moral universe, has no need to cooperate with others, and is fulfilled through self-
promotion.
 Communitarian solutions to this predicament vary, depending upon their understanding of
human sociality and commitment to other ethical issues such as the validity of
Aristotelian/Thomistic ethics and human rights. One answer is offered by Taylor: a shift from a
“politics of rights” to a “politics of the common good.” Instead of a politics of fair procedures
and individual rights, Taylor recommends a form of identity politics in which the “higher
unity” of the state orients a group toward its shared conception of the good life, and thus
channels joint efforts to attain any requisite goods.7 Because the sphere in which a shared
conception of the good life is small, such communitarians recommend a focus on local politics.
A second option is advocated by MacIntyre, who is less relativistic than Taylor and appeals to
Aristotelian/Thomistic ethical and political ideas. The good to be recovered is that embodied
in the virtues of the Western Greco-Roman and Christian tradition, virtues that require the force
of politics for their creation and sustainment. MacIntyre also recommends small-scale political
activity, but for a reason different and more circumstantial than Taylor. Since “the new dark
ages are already upon us,” he argues that “what matters at this stage is the construction of local
forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be
sustained.”8
A third and multifacted solution is offered by Etzioni and other communitarians associated
with the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies.9 This group is less critical of liberty and
liberalism that other communitarians. In fact, their desire to encourage self-sacrifice and
cooperation is heavily indebted to a commitment to human rights, and to the assumption that
because of the “social dimension of human existence” (i.e., human interdependence), “the
rights of individuals cannot long be preserved without a communitarian perspective.”10 For
three reasons, the non-state institutions of civil society are highlighted as especially crucial to
promoting human rights and fulfillment. First, non-state institutions—particularly families,
schools, and religious institutions—are especially effective at conducting the moral education
and character formation conducive to self-sacrifice and cooperation.11 Non-state institutions
promote selflessness and cooperation not only because of their educative capacities and
ethical content, but also because of their abilities to impart practical knowledge and “habits of
the heart” necessary to social participation.12 Second, as mentioned earlier, if acting for the
fulfillment of others is itself part of human fulfillment, then non-state institutions are crucial
vehicles of self-fulfillment. Third, non-state institutions have proven to be extremely effective
providers of necessary social services—including job training, food assistance, medical care,
child care, mentoring, counseling, addiction treatments, and even security. This effectiveness is
due, in part, to their “comparative advantage in dealing ‘close-up’ with community
members.”13 “Faith-based organizations” are accented as especially effective providers.
This importance of civil society vis-à-vis human rights and fulfillment creates certain
political imperatives. There are certainly tasks that require national and even international
political efforts. But because of the participatory effects and competencies of non-state
institutions, the state should not unnecessarily interfere with them. Government should “step in
only to the extent that other social subsystems fail” or, when appropriate, establish partnerships
that empower private groups “by strategies of support, including revenue-sharing and technical
assistance.”14 State assistance to religious institutions, even those employing religious
concepts, is deemed constitutional as long as “recipients are not required to engage in religious
observances and secular alternatives to religiously based services” are available.15 Even
within civil society, large non-state institutions should not be allowed to usurp small ones.16
Ultimately, this strand of communitarianism is guided by “the key communitarian principle of
subsidiarity—which posits that no unit of society should perform functions appropriately
performed by a smaller entity. The neighborhood should not usurp the normal function of the
family; the city the function of the neighborhood; the state the function of the city; the federal
government the function of the state.”17

John Paul II on communitarianism

While John Paul never explicitly commented on communitarianism, his ethical and social
thought implicitly critiques, commends, and supplements the analyses and solutions outlined
above. His thought is somewhat consistent with each of the three broad communitarian
solutions (Taylor’s, MacIntyre’s, and Etzioni’s) to the problem of individualism, but is closest
to the strand represented by Etzioni. We will treat each of these strands in turn.
As discussed in a previous chapter, John Paul affirms the basic premise of Taylor’s
communitarianism: persons are embedded within, and to a degree constituted by, ends given by
their social environment or culture. The importance John Paul assigns to culture is reflected in
his defense of a right to culture and his sympathy for state efforts to influence culture.
However, despite these similarities, his thought critiques some of Taylor’s central claims and
recommendations. First, Taylor’s ethics and epistemology are, respectively, far more
relativistic and subjectivistic than John Paul’s. John Paul insists that the constitutive ends given
by a culture may be false and harmful to oneself and others, a fact attested to by one’s
conscience. In fact, he maintains that all cultures contain both truths that must be defended and
errors to be refuted. An elaboration of this point is found in his Ecclesia in America
characterization of the “initial evangelization” of the Americas. While denying neither
European vices nor indigenous virtues, he nevertheless rejects the noble savage myth.18 Mixed
with Indian virtues were tremendous vices: ritual human sacrifice, cannibalism, torture, and
militarism. Limited scientific and technological knowledge curtailed the development of
material culture. Contrary to myths, they were not unmitigated environmentalists with a
Romantic appreciation of nature. The initial evangelization thus corrected cultural flaws
beneath the Indians’ dignity and “recognized and took up all the more positive aspects of the
indigenous, promoting their capacities, arts and occupations, pedagogically leading the Indians
to a knowledge of revealed Truth and defending them from those who wished to exploit
them.”19 John Paul’s appreciation for the constitutive effects of cultural elements inconsistent
with human fulfillment and rights thus makes him a critic of Taylor’s rather undifferentiated
advocacy of a politics of the common good or identity.20 A second and related critique of
Taylor concerns the relationship between shared norms and social cooperation. Since John
Paul’s ethical thought posits a relationship between moral truths, authentic human fulfillment,
and social participation, he would regard some shared ends as antithetical to solidarity and
conducive to individualism. In other words, a politics of the common good does not guarantee
the cooperation necessary to its success. A third departure from Taylor concerns the role of
politics in fostering identity formation and cooperation. While John Paul is not entirely against
enlisting the state in order to affect culture and encourage participation, his appreciation for
potentially selfish political actors, human freedom, and the value of non-state institutions
means that he is far more reticent than Taylor to address these issues through direct state
action.
John Paul’s evaluation of MacIntyre would be similarly mixed. Although MacIntyre is less
specific than John Paul about the philosophical/theological bases of Aristotelian/Christian
ethics, and about the ways in which these traditional norms produce social solidarity, both
thinkers nevertheless subscribe to traditional Western characterizations of human virtue and
teleology. But there are also important ethical and political differences between the two
thinkers. First, while MacIntyre considers human rights to be fictitious Enlightenment
constructs, John Paul considers them to be valid cornerstones of ethics and political theory.
Second, John Paul’s discomfort with Taylor’s readiness to employ the state for the purpose of
moral formation also applies to MacIntyre. Again, John Paul’s interest in exploring the
intersections of politics and culture is conditioned by his concern for the ways in which states
may unduly restrict constitutive human freedoms and negative rights—rights that MacIntyre
dismisses. Finally, although John Paul shares MacIntyre’s dissatisfaction with many of the
cultural effects of the Enlightenment and his attraction to localism, he rejects MacIntyre’s
suggestion that the latter is an adequate response to the former. John Paul’s enthusiasm for
participation in local social and political activities stems from the previously discussed
relationship between participation and human fulfillment. Additionally, as a “liberal Catholic”
in the nineteenth-century sense, he advocated a critical engagement between faith and culture
that promises to both enrich the faith and catalyze a “new evangelization” of culture.
Finally, there is a remarkable convergence between Etzioni and John Paul. Both thinkers
decry individualism as subverting the cooperation and self-sacrifice necessary to human
fulfillment; both conceive of the preconditions to fulfillment as human rights; and, for many of
the same reasons, both urge political attention to civil society as the best means to securing
human rights and fulfillment. The closeness of their social thought suggests that one is heavily
indebted to the other. Given the influence of Catholic social thought adherents such as Mary
Ann Glendon within Etzioni’s circle, and the explicit appeal to the principle of subsidiarity,
one could argue that the semblance issues from a communitarian reference to John Paul (and
Catholic social thought generally). Ultimately, the two thinkers are complementary: while John
Paul’s philosophical and theological work affirms the validity of normative ends with which
Etzioni agrees, the latter’s use of social scientific methodologies and data makes a strong
empirical case for the validity of certain means through which these ends might be best attained
—many of which John Paul also recommends.

Civil Society
Analysis and prescriptions
One of these means is, of course, civil society. Academic interest in non-state, non-market
voluntary institutions21 bloomed in the 1990s in part because dissidents such as Havel—who
had long been examining the concept—attributed the relatively peaceful end of European
communism in 1989 to the sustenance and anti-state resistance of non-state institutions.22 In the
course of the decade, the civil society literature shifted its emphasis to exploring two issues:
the importance of these institutions within “normal” societies and the ways in which the state
should interface with them.23
Since neither these institutions nor thought about them were entirely new, this literature
drew from previous treatments. Aristotle’s discussion of the family and its relationship to the
state in the Politics is the earliest. Human beings are “social animals” perfected in various
ways by the family: spouses need each other’s moral example and companionship; women and
slaves require the male head-of-household’s reason; childhood education requires parental
discipline; and parents, children, and slaves all need each other for economic survival. But
despite the asserted link between the family and fulfillment, Aristotle never awards to
individuals family-related rights that the state is bound to protect from even its own incursions.
Since fulfillment ultimately results from the state’s coercive and deterrent power, voluntary
associations such as the family—while efficacious—are never granted a modern sense of
autonomy. Differently framed, Aristotle never conceived of a link between an association’s
autonomy and its capacity for fulfilling persons.
This link was made explicit by the early medieval Church. As discussed in a previous
chapter, the early Church Fathers and Popes successfully argued that human perfection
depended upon the Church and its autonomy. For the first time in the West, political theory and
practice recognized the right of individuals within a non-state association to act without
interference from, and under the protection of, the state.24 This autonomy was later claimed by,
and to varying degrees granted to, other institutions such as universities and guilds. But as
developments in productive technology and economic theory were undermining the power of
guilds, critics such as Hegel and Marx questioned the benefits and autonomy of civil society.
Hegel included productive associations within the purview of civil society (bürgerliche
Gesellschaft), and then associated this non-family, non-state realm with potentially destructive
bourgeois self-interest that required not autonomy, but constraint by the state.25 Marx, in turn,
appropriated not only Hegel’s historicism, but also his critique of civil society. Progressives in
the United States—including Lippmann, Croly, and Dewey—would later assert that the modern
erosion of such traditional but ultimately flawed institutions should be accompanied by the
creation of a national community and a bureaucracy of scientifically savvy experts.26
As Marx was developing his critique, however, Tocqueville offered a more positive
assessment of civil society—one that, more than any other, has influenced contemporary
thought. Both resigned to and somewhat encouraged by the “inexorable march” of liberal
democracy, Tocqueville nevertheless warned that there was another and more subtle road to
totalitarianism—what he called “centralization” or “soft despotism”—than Marx’s. Ironically,
liberal democracy could prove to be a threat to itself, undermining rights in ways that
transcended the more simple and limited “tyranny of the majority” problem. An “equality of
conditions” inclined the mind toward an unreflective penchant for “general ideas” and
materialism and disposed the heart toward individualism and consumerism.27 Taken together,
these inclinations threatened to atrophy civic participation and, in turn, create a “flock of timid
and hardworking animals with the [central] government as its shepherd.”28 Tocqueville argued
that individualism’s contribution to this general threat to freedom in liberal democracies might
be, in part, countered by local non-state institutions. The value of private associations lies not
only in their ability to “carry on the vast multitude of lesser undertakings” beyond the
competence of the central state. Through the “reciprocal action of men one upon the other” that
occurs in these groups, “feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the
understanding developed.”29 Additionally, participation in civil associations encourages
participation in local politics, supplying another bulwark against individualism and
centralization.30
Mill, who was intimately familiar with Tocqueville’s work, reiterates and augments his
predecessor’s thought in On Liberty.31 Social projects are often better handled by individuals
or “voluntary combination[s]” “who are personally interested” in them and create the
possibility of “varied experiments.”32 Even when the government can better accomplish tasks,
many cases warrant noninterference as a means of mental and moral development,
. . . strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects
with which they are thus left to deal . . . taking them out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness, and
accustoming them to the comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint concerns—habituating them to act
from public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them from one
another.33

Finally and related, reliance on civil society avoids unnecessary additions to

governmental power that would extend its influence over thought and convert “the active and
ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government”—notions central to his
utilitarianism-based defense of liberalism.34
Mill’s and especially Tocqueville’s positive assessments have been appropriated and
extended by contemporary civil society advocates. Non-state institutions are championed,
especially in liberal democracies, for at least four related reasons (discussed in the previous
section on Etzioni’s communitarianism). First, non-state institutions are often more effective
providers of social services than the state. Second, non-state institutions—especially the
family, schools, and churches—develop the host of virtues necessary to human fulfillment in
any society, but especially in democracies.35 Third and more specifically, social participation
is crucial to the fulfillment of others and oneself, and these institutions provide the requisite
opportunities, habits, and skills. Fourth, the social participation promoted by civil society
helps others without state intervention and thus protects liberty.
Disputes over civil society generally take three forms. Some critics, echoing the
progressives of the past, argue that civil society cannot deliver the promised goods. Civil
society advocates are accused of being too optimistic about the possibility for a renewal of
social participation and/or the ability of non-state institutions to provide social goods. Other
critics argue that any goods delivered by civil society are often accompanied by unacceptable
costs, such as the local abuse of minority races, genders, and moral persuasions. Civil society
proponents are accused by these latter critics of being unwarrantedly nostalgic, reactionary,
dismissive, exclusionary, and even superstitious.36
The most developed debate, however, is over the relationship between civil society and
the state. Assumed are the importance of civil society and the unfortunate paucity of it.37 But
disputed is the reason for the weakness of civil society, along with a general construal of the
proper relationship between the state and non-state institutions. On the one hand are those—
usually deemed conservative and often citing Tocqueville—who assert that the progressive,
interventionist policies of the past century created a welfare state that rendered civil society
activities unlikely and/or unnecessarily difficult.38 State programs, taxes, and regulations are
said to have encroached upon the space and funds required for private initiative to flourish. On
the other hand are those who believe that the state has a constructive role to play vis-à-vis non-
state institutions, and that civil society problems are therefore the result of too little political
intervention.39 Families, for example, are said to need more state protection against caustic
market forces that limit both the availability and formative influence of parents.40

John Paul II on civil society

A previous chapter detailed John Paul’s thought on the importance of various non-state
institutions in the context of human sociality, and on the proper relationship between these
associations and the state in the context of his appropriation of the principle of subsidiarity. As
this treatment indicates, Catholic social thought has a highly developed perspective on the
importance of civil society and its relationship to politics that has undoubtedly affected the
current dialogue (i.e., interlocutors often cite the Catholic ideas, especially the principle of
subsidiarity.). In fact, appreciation for non-state institutions would be strengthened by more
attention to the ethical/anthropological foundations of John Paul’s claims that they are often
better at providing services and have distinct and irreplaceable relationships to human
fulfillment.
Additionally, John Paul’s thought—influenced by the principle of subsidiarity—throws
considerable light upon the debate about the proper relationship between civil society and the
state. Generally construed, the relationship between the two institutional types is one of
mutuality. On the one hand, the state needs civil society to form its citizens in regime-specific
ways, accomplish other tasks that are beyond the capacity of the state, and relieve it of
otherwise overburdening tasks. On the other hand, civil society needs the state in various
ways. At a minimum, all non-state institutions need the internal and external security for
persons and their property that only the state can provide. Less minimally, the state assistance
required by civil society will depend upon specific institutional and environmental
characteristics.41 Families are not neighborhoods, United States families are not Italian
families, and United States families of the 1950s are not those of today. While some state
initiatives may subvert non-state institutions, others may be absolutely necessary—at least at a
particular moment. These necessary initiatives will vary from the mere dissemination of
helpful information from a centralized point to the centralized but temporary provision of a
good or service.42 In other words, from John Paul’s perspective, particularities will determine
which side of the debate has more merit.

Federalism
Analysis and prescriptions
While the drafters of the United States Constitution conceived of themselves as generating a
“new order for the ages,” much of what they did was not new. Plato had delved into the effects
of democracy; Aristotle had advocated the “rule of law” or constitutionalism; Locke’s liberal
theory had synthesized and distilled venerable ethical and political ideas; and Montesquieu
had explained the advantages of a separation of the powers within the central state. On could
argue, however, that their form and theory of federalism was an innovation.43 Up to that time in
both Europe and the United States, power sharing arrangements between central and regional
—state or local—governments were de facto, contested, and unbalanced. Even where identity
and/or interest supported a degree of centralization, regional bodies were reticent to cede
sovereignty (i.e., the rights to legislate and especially tax) and thus desired the autonomy of
alliances, leagues, or confederations. Previous European attempts at power sharing, such as the
Swiss Confederation or the United Provinces of the Netherlands (both mentioned in the
Federalist Papers), suffered from, respectively, a weak center or a lack of regional
autonomy.44
Reflecting upon these Swiss and Dutch projects, Althusius in 1603 formulated a first
defense of federalism based upon the notion of “symbiotics”—individuals and groups united
by common interests. Much like Aristotle, he conceived of the central state as a union of
successive functional (non-state) and territorial (state) unions: families unified into guilds and
villages, villages into towns, towns into provinces, and provinces into the state.45 However,
unlike Aristotle, Bodin, and the later Hobbes, Althusius espoused a somewhat contemporary
and complex view of sovereignty. Since sovereignty perpetually rested with the people as a
whole, it could be divided among them.46 Additionally, since these various unions uniquely
contributed to human fulfillment, each should be treated as sovereign within its functional
sphere, subordinate only to God’s laws—an argument eventually appropriated by Kuyper to
underpin his Calvinist doctrine of “sphere sovereignty.”47 While Bodin had thus responded to
Reformation-induced disorder by crafting a justification for absolutism, Althusius—influenced
by his Reform tradition’s desire for group (i.e., religious) autonomy and subsequent penchant
for small republics—attempted to defend a degree of political fragmentation and social
pluralism.
The United States Articles of Confederation attest to a similar preference for small
republics that was a staple of early American political thought and practice. Echoing
Montesquieu’s republicanism, the so-called Anti-Federalists argued that only small political
bodies were consistent with self-governance, civic mindedness, respect for law, limited
government, and, ultimately, liberty.48 The Federalists were, however, not as enamored of
smallness. The security and commercial advantages of large political arrangements could not
be guaranteed through complete independence. Additionally, the Federalists borrowed from
Hume an argument linking extended republics and liberty.49 The self-governance characteristic
of small republics also held the potential for the local abuse of minority rights—especially
property rights—by majority factions.50 Representation itself, representation of a large area,
and a large number of represented areas could together moderate the legislative effects of such
factions when they arose.51 With these advantages of extension in mind, the Constitution
attempted to create a central government whose power was supreme within its sphere (see
Article Six) but nevertheless limited by the following measures: representation, internally
counterbalancing powers, a Bill of Rights, constitutionally enumerated powers, and the Tenth
Amendment protection against the usurpation of states’ powers or rights. These latter two
measures constituted the pillars of American federalism.52
However, while these pillars remain intact, the theory and practice of American
federalism has evolved. From a theoretical standpoint, the Founders—especially Anti-
Federalists—defended federalism on classical liberal grounds: individuals equally possessed
various negative rights that would be best secured by combining the respective capacities of
central and local control. Local politics was considered crucial to individual liberty. But
during the pre–Civil War debate, federalism was defended on new grounds. The emphasis was
on the limitation of the central government’s power based upon the rights of groups (i.e., states)
to decide, for example, who is fully human and thus due individual rights. In the past few
decades, proponents of federalism have appropriated elements of both approaches,
demonstrating a decided preference for local political control but on the grounds that such
arrangements better secure the negative and even positive rights of individuals. Most
commonly, state control is said to encourage healthy experimentation, foster solutions sensitive
to the situational particularities, and—like the market—reward and thus encourage better
public services.53
Much of this recent thought on federalism has emerged from a dissatisfaction with the
practice of federalism—specifically, with the gradual diminishment of states’ powers. During
the Constitutional ratification debate, the Anti-Federalists were extremely wary of the
proposed Article One, Section Eight legislative powers: responsibility for the “general
welfare,” open-ended taxation authority, and the power to make all laws “necessary and
proper.” Adding to this constitutional avenue of centralization were Justice Marshall’s 1803
Marbury versus Madison assertion of the Supreme Court’s power to review all executive and
legislative acts combined with liberal methods of constitutional interpretation; two world wars
and a long Cold War; and, as Tocqueville argued, tendencies inherent to liberal democracies.
The “new federalism” proposed in Reagan’s 1982 State of the Union Address initiated a
continuing debate about the Founders’ intentions, the proper relationship between the national
and local governments, the most effective state level vis-à-vis particular functions, and the
possible and permissible goals of politics generally. Federalism proponents have favored a
diminution of central state functions for the traditionally cited reasons, while critics maintain
that such devolutionary initiatives are misguided attempts to reverse budget deficits and/or
demonstrate a lack of concern for the poor that may precipitate a widespread “race to the
bottom.”54
 Recent European thought about federalism has occurred within a different context. Rather
than attempting to return a degree of sovereignty—or, at least, functionality—to political sub-
units, European nations have been attempting to cede authority and functions to a new central
state. Given the common concern for protecting national differences and prerogatives,
European thought about federalism has congealed around the notion that powers and functions
ought to be assigned to the European Union only if “lower level” political units are inadequate.
This assumed preference for sub-units—confusingly deemed “subsidiarity” due to its roots in
the Catholic social thought principle governing the relationship between state and non-state
entities—contrasts with thought and policy in the United States, which emphasizes efficiency,
places the burden of proof on the states, and often involves joint federal-state initiatives.

John Paul II on federalism

At this point, it appears that neither John Paul nor Catholic social thought generally have
seriously evaluated the notion of federalism. Inasmuch as the Church has reflected on lower
level (i.e., smaller) institutions within societies, it has confined itself to defending the
autonomy (much like the Calvinist principle of sphere sovereignty) and assistance that non-
state institutions are due from the state.
This omission is unfortunate because, as the European Union’s political appropriation of
the principle of subsidiarity’s nomenclature and logic indicates, the debate over federalism
could benefit from the Church’s well-developed thought on the relationship between, on the
one hand, institutional size, autonomy, and interdependence and, on the other hand, institutional
effectiveness and human fulfillment. Without conflating state and non-state entities, one could
argue that logic underlying the principle of subsidiarity could illuminate at least three
guidelines applicable to interstate relations within a society. First, in some cases, smaller
political units—for reasons previously discussed in the treatment of subsidiarity—will more
effectively fulfill persons. Second, in other cases, the central state’s greater information,
resources, and talent will dictate its greater effectiveness and suitability to accomplish a
particular function—at least temporarily. At times, the relative effectiveness calculation will
be difficult, i.e., commensurating the efficiency of the central state with the self-governance
and participation possible with the local state. Third, the principle of subsidiarity defends
more than functionally based autonomy, instead highlighting that different governmental levels
are in many ways interdependent. In other words, the arrangement most conducive to human
fulfillment may involve some form of central state assistance to a lower state level—which
would perhaps, in turn, assist non-state institutions. A broadening of the principle of
subsidiarity to include a society’s intergovenmental relations would thus allow the Church to
contribute to important ongoing debates about civil society and federalism in the United States
and Europe.
Finally, while one might identify an implicit endorsement of federalism within states in
John Paul’s defense of subsidiarity, his views on relationships between nation-states are more
explicit and somewhat complex. On the one hand, he asserts that the right of a nation to exist—
which he grounds in the formative effects of culture and an attendant emotional attachment to a
particular group—requires respect for fundamental rights, but does not necessarily require
sovereignty and statehood.55 In fact, he argues that “historical circumstances” will sometimes
militate against sovereignty, relegating some international relations to the sphere of
multinational domestic politics (perhaps involving ethnically based federal structures such as
the evolving European Union).56 On the other hand, he never calls for single- or multi-nation
states to cede a portion of their sovereignty to a global political organization—somewhat
surprisingly, given his perennial concerns for nonviolent conflict resolution and international
development. Instead, he envisions the United Nations mainly as a place of dialogue in the
service of both conflict resolution and a deeper sense of international solidarity based on trust,
respect, and “mutual support.”57

Notes
1. The communitarians upon whom we will focus are Sandel, Taylor, MacIntyre. Their primary works involving
communitarian themes are Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982), “America’s Search for a New Public Philosophy,” in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 277, No. 3 (March 1966), and “The
Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, eds. Schlomo Avineri and Avner
de-Shalit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Charles Taylor, “Cross Purposes: The Liberalism-Communitarian Debate,” in
Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), “Atomism,” in
Communitarianism and Individualism, and “Modes of Civil Society,” in Public Culture, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 1990); and Alasdair
MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), Whose Justice? Whose Rationality?
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), “Justice as a Virtue: Changing Conceptions,” in Communitarianism
and Individualism, and “The Privatization of the Good: An Inaugural Lecture,” in The Liberalism-Communitarianism Debate,
ed. C.F. Delaney (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994).
A more policy-oriented group of communitarians exists that includes Etzioni and Bellah, and coalesced around the (now
defunct) journal The Responsive Community. Recommended policy goals include “character education,” community policing,
marriage preparation, and discouraging divorce. Representative texts include Amitai Etzioni, ed. The Essential Communitarian
Reader (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic
Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996), and The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1993).
As discussed later, there is much interaction and cross-pollination between more theoretical communitarians such as Taylor,
policy-oriented adherents such as Etzioni, civil society theorists, and those focused on particular civil society institutions such as
marriage between a man and woman.
Helpful secondary literature on communitarianism includes Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and
Communitarians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
2. This description of individualism—pervasive in communitarian literature—was first formulated by Alexis de Tocqueville.
See Democracy in America, tr. George Lawrence (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1966), p. 506.
In an attempt to both accurately characterize communitarianism and avoid stigmatizations of liberalism, George Kateb
suggested that the “communitarianism-liberalism” debate instead be described as one between “anti-individualism and
individualism.” See his “Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life.
3. See Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pp. 150, 172-173.
4. See MacIntrye, “The Privatization of the Good,” pp. 191, 236.
5. See, for example, Taylor, “Cross Purposes,” pp. 165-166; and MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 212-213, 591.
6. See Amitai Etzioni, “Are Particularistic Obligations Justified? A Communitarian Examination,” in The Review of
Politics, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Fall 2002).
7. See Taylor, “Modes of Civil Society,” p. 114.
8. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 263.
9. Consistent with the Institute’s name, this group is less academic and more policy-oriented than other communitarians.
10. Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Responsive Communitarian Platform,”
www.gwu.edu/~ccps/platformtext.html.
11. On the family: “We must insist once again that bringing children into the world entails a moral responsibility to provide,
not only material necessities, but also moral education and character formation. . . . Moral education is not a task that can be
delegated to baby sitters, or even professional child-care centers. . . .” On schools: “We strongly urge that all educational
institutions, from kindergartens to universities, recognize and take seriously the grave responsibility to provide moral education”
(ibid).
Recalling Hume’s theory of moral sentiments, Etzioni argues that social science data indicates that moral commitments also
need to be continually reinforced; that human beings have a “need for continuous approval from others—especially those to
whom they have thick bonds of attachment”; and that moral reinforcement thus occurs best through the non-state institutions,
especially the family. See Etzioni, “Are Particularistic Obligations Justified?”, p. 594.
12. “A communitarian perspective recognizes that the preservation of individual liberty depends upon the active
maintenance of the institutions of civil society where citizens learn respect for others as well as self-respect; where we acquire
a lively sense of our personal and civil responsibilities, along with an appreciation of our own rights and the rights of others;
where we develop the skills of self-government as well as the habit of governing ourselves, and learn to serve others—not just
self . . .” (Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Responsive Communitarian Platform,” www.gwu.edu/-
ccps/platformtext.html).
13. Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Delivery of Social Services through Faith-Based Organizations,”
www.gwu.edu/~icps/faithb.html.
14. Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Responsible Communitarian Platform,”
www.gwu.edu/~ccps/platformtext.html.
15. Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Delivery of Social Services through Faith-Based Organizations,”
www.gwu.edu/~icps/faithb.html.
16. “Generally, no social task should be assigned to an institution that is larger than necessary to do the job. What can be
done by families, should not be assigned to an intermediate group—school, etc . . . [T]o remove tasks to higher levels than is
necessary weakens the constituent communities” (Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Responsive Communitarian
Platform,” www.
gwu.edu/~ccps/platformtext.html).
17. Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, “Delivery of Social Services through Faith-Based Organizations,”
www.gwu.edu/~icps/faithb.html.
18. On Western faults: during his visit to Santo Domingo celebrating the initial evangelization of the American continent, he
lamented the “enormous sufferings inflicted on the inhabitants of this continent during the period of conquest and colonization.”
John Paul insisted that the Church “acknowledge in all sincerity the abuses committed due to lack of love on the part of those
persons who were unable to see the natives as their brothers, as children of the same Father” (Message to the Indians, Santo
Domingo, October 13, 1992). On his return to Rome, he characterized his trip as not only a “pilgrimage to the place where
evangelization began,” but also as “an act of atonement” and a “request for pardon . . . addressed to the first inhabitants of the
new land, the Indians, and then to those who were brought from Africa as slaves to do heavy labor” (General Audience, St.
Peter’s, Rome, October 21, 1992).
On virtues: in Brazil in 1995, he recognized how the missionary’s respect for indigenous traditions enriched the faith:

Today we cannot but admire the pastoral sensitivity of the early missionaries who sympathetically accepted the noblest
traits they found in that cultural context, such as the sacred character attributed to creation, respect for Mother Nature
and integration with her, the community spirit of solidarity between generations, the balance between work and rest,
loyalty and love of freedom. They enhanced all this with explicit Gospel teaching, integrating it and sublimating it into
the Christian heritage. These heralds of the Gospel thus achieved a living and original synthesis by fostering an
authentic inculturation of the faith. (Meeting with bishops from Brazil, St. Peter’s, April 1, 1995)

19. Ibid.
20. Taylor himself equivocates somewhat on this issue at times. On the one hand, he advocates the
constructivist/interpretivist methodological position in the social sciences. This position derives from the premise that “meanings”
or “norms”—the ostensible bases of community—are socially constructed and expressed through shared symbols, languages,
and practices. Taylor’s “strong reading” of this position asserts that the subject (observer), also possessing his own socially
constructed lens, is thus only able to offer “interpretations” of the meanings and causes of the actions of a “subject-object” of
inquiry. See Charles Taylor, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” in Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, eds.
Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. The implication of this
methodological position is that reality is socially constructed or at least indelibly colored by one’s cultural lens. Hardin takes
Taylor and other “philosophical communitarians” to task for ultimately implying that all cultures are “inherently good.” Russell
Hardin, One For All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 64-69 and ch. 7.
On the other hand, Taylor seems unwilling to embrace such philosophical premises. He endorses an openness to the legal
“recognition” of not all cultures, but only certain ones: “(O)ne could argue that it is reasonable to suppose that cultures that have
provided the horizon of meaning for large numbers of human beings, of diverse characters and temperaments, over a long period
of time—that have, in other words, articulated their sense of the good, the holy, the admirable—are almost certain to have
something that deserves our admiration and respect, even if it is accompanied by much we have to abhor and reject. Perhaps
one could put it another way: it would take a supreme arrogance to discount this possibility a priori.” Charles Taylor, “The
Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, eds. Charles Taylor and Amy Gutman
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 72-73.
21. While all discussants of civil society define it in contradistinction to the state or businesses, some argue that deeming its
institutions “voluntary” is normatively and descriptively perilous. For example, Himmelfarb argues that leaving a marriage with
children involved is, but ought to be less, voluntary; and that entering a union is often not, but ought to be more, voluntary. See
Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The Demoralization of Society: What’s Wrong with the Civil Society,” in Eberly, ed., The Essential Civil
Society Reader, pp. 95-96.
22. See Vaclav Havel, Open Letters: Selected Writings (New York: Knopf, 1991).
For the role of civil society organizations such as Solidarity, Charter 77, and the Hungarian National Forum in undermining
Soviet communism, see Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe After Communism (New York: Free
Press, 1992).
Between the Second World War and the 1990s, non-Catholic academic interest in civil society was relatively low. Classical
liberals—such as Berlin and Talmo—who wished to limit state power invoked, respectively, “a frontier . . . between the area of
private life and that of public authority” and “a variety of levels of personal and collective endeavor, which are altogether outside
the sphere of politics.” I. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958), in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1969), p. 124; J. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Secker & Warburg, 1952). But neither
thinker specifically invoked the idea of civil society; and there was, generally, little focus on developing the concept.
Khilnani suggests that contemporary attention to civil society began in the late 1960s from, ironically, the Left: radicals
dissatisfied with Communism recovered Gramsci’s work and conceived of civil society as the crucial locus of struggle. See Sunil
Khilnani, “The Development of Civil Society,” in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and
Possibilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 16; and N. Bobbio, “Gramsci and the Conception of Civil
Society,” in Which Socialism? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987). Interest in the concept was bolstered by the Right in two
seminal works invoking Tocqueville’s analysis of liberal democracy: Robert A. Nisbet, The Quest for Community (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971) and Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating
Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1977).
23. Don E. Eberly, ed., The Essential Civil Society Reader (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) and America’s
Promise: Civil Society and the Renewal of American Culture (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); E.J. Dionne, ed.,
Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institute, 2000); Nancy L.
Rosenblum and Robert C. Post, eds., Civil Society and Government (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001);
Adam B. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995); Bob Edwards, Michael W.
Foley, Mario Diani, Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001) [on the intersection of civil society and development of necessary
“social capital” (Putman)]; Michael Walzer, ed., Toward a Global Civil Society (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995); John
Ehrenberg, Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Sudipta Kaviraj
and Sunil Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Institute for
American Values, A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths (New York, Institute for American Values,
1998).
24. Charles Taylor argues that the Latin Church’s defense of its autonomy eventually gave rise to the more general right to
associate. See Taylor, “Modes of Civil Society.”
25. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, tr. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 71, 122-125, 129-130,
147-150, 155-156, 160-161, 164-174, 191, 269, 276-279; Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), pp. 24-
25.
26. See William A. Schambra, “The Progressive Assault of Civil Community,” in Eberly, The Essential Civil Society
Reader, pp. 325-336.
27. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. George Lawrence (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966),
pp. 429-433, 435, 437-442, 462, 506-509, 530-534.
28. Ibid., p. 692
29. Ibid., p. 515
30. Ibid., pp. 520-521, Although Tocqueville has been rightly cited by many civil society advocates, his treatment of local
associations also focuses on the ability of the local political bodies to both counteract individualism and encourage effective
participation in civil associations. In other words, his thought is extremely germane to any analysis of federalism, as we will
discuss more fully in the next section of this chapter.
31. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 121-126 (Chapter V).
32. Ibid., pp. 121-122.
 33. Ibid., pp. 121-122.
34. Ibid., p. 122.
35. This is the emphasis of A Call to Civil Society: “But a democracy, the Founders insisted, depends decisively upon the
competence and character of its citizenry. . . . The qualities necessary for self-governance take root in individuals essentially
due to the influence of certain moral ideas about the human person and the nature of the good life. The primary exposure to
these ideas comes from certain forms of association. . . . Together, these moral ideas and person-to-person associations have
historically constituted the seedbeds of civic virtue” (p. 7). The document then lists several key institutions: the family, the
neighborhood, faith communities, voluntary civic organizations, art institutions, local government, schools and universities,
economic institutions, and media institutions (pp. 7-11).
36. See “Symposium On Legal and Constitutional Implications of the Calls to Revive Civil Society,” Chicago Kent Law
Review, Vol. 75, No. 2 (2000), especially articles by McClain/Fleming, Macedo, Fineman, Roberts, Elshtain, and Galston.
37. The seminal work on the dearth of civil society participation and the importance of so-called “social capital” is Robert
Putnam’s “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” in Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (January 1995). Putnam’s
critics offer evidence that participation has merely shifted to other venues. Galston and Levine argue that associations thrive, but
not necessarily the ones best suited to encourage social and political participation (William A. Galston and Peter Levine,
“America’s Civic Condition: A Glance at the Evidence,” in Dionne, ed., Community Works; and The National Council on Civil
Renewal, A Nation of Spectators: How Civil Disengagement Weakens America and What We Can Do About It, pp. 45-49).
38. See articles by Schambra, Coats, and Santorum in Dionne, ed., Community Works; and Schambra, “The Progressive
Assault of Civil Community,” in Eberly, The Essential Civil Society Reader.
39. See articles by Dionne, Wolfe, Skocpol, Dilulio, and Walzer in Dionne, ed., Community Works; Ehrenberg, Civil
Society (especially chapters 8 and 9, which draw upon the critiques of capitalism in Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and
Habermas); Alan Wolfe, Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989); and Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
40. One could argue that the effect of the market on culture is an emerging wedge issue within conservatism in the United
States, which was previously a fairly comfortable coalition between economic liberals and religiously informed moral realists.
41. Institutional differences thus require more analytic specificity than the general notion of civil society allows.
42. In groundbreaking thought on the relationship between the state and civil society, Mill—in the context of his advocacy
of associations based on the possibility of “varied experiments”—develops this idea of the state as “a central depository, and
active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials” (Mill, On Liberty, p. 122). As a general guideline, he
recommends “the greatest possible centralization of information, and diffusion of it from the centre” (ibid., p. 126). He later
broadens his argument: “A government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and
stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of
individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own for theirs; when, instead of informing, advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it
makes them work in fetters, or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of them” (ibid., pp. 127-128).
43. See, for example, Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American
Founders (New York: Knopf, 2003), ch. 1.
44. See Carl J. Friedrich, Trends of Federalism in Theory and Practice (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers,
1968), p. 11.
45. Johannes Althusius, Politica [1603], tr. Frederick S. Carney (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995). Broad historical
backgrounds on federalism include Otto von Gierke, The Development of Political Theory [1880], tr. Bernard Freyd (New
York: H. Fertig, 1966), especially Chapter V; Thomas Hueglin, “Johannes Althusius: Medieval Constitutionalist or Modern
Federalist?” in Publius 9:4 (1979) and Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World: Althusius on Community and
Federalism (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999); Daniel J. Elazar, Federalism as Grand Design:
Political Philosophers and the Federal Principle (Lanham Md.: University Press of America, 1987); and Patrick Riley,
“Rousseau as a Theorist of National and International Federalism,” Publius 3 (1973), “Three Seventeenth-Century Theorists of
Federalism: Althusius, Hugo, and Leibniz,” Publius 6 (1976), and “Federalism in Kant’s Political Philosophy,” Publius 9 (1979).
46. Reginald Whitaker, Federalism and Democratic Theory (Kingston, Ontario: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations,
Queen’s University, 1983), p. 6.
47. The primary source for the doctrine of sphere sovereignty is Abraham Kuyper’s 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton.
The social theory that Kuyper expounded departed significantly from Calvin’s. Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian
Religion, Commentaries on the Decalogue and Belgic Confession of Faith, had identified Mosaic laws that were universally
applicable (as opposed to peculiar to biblical Israel) and fell under the purview of positive law. The state therefore had the duty
to deter and punish rebellion against parents, infidelity, murder, theft, lying (the “Second Table” commandments, numbers five
through nine), idolatry, and blasphemy.
Contrary to Calvin, Kuyper asserted that the religious freedom found in Calvinistic countries such as the Netherlands
embodied the religion’s true spirit, and then extended such independence to other institutions. In his words, “God established
institutions of various kinds, and to each of these He awarded a certain measure of power. He thus divided the power that He
had available for distribution. He did not give all His power to one single institution but gave every one of these institutions the
power that coincided with its nature and calling.” Each social entity thus possesses a degree of “supreme authority” that “we
deliberately designate by the name of sovereignty within its own sphere to sharply and decidedly put the case that this supreme
authority within every group has nothing but God above itself, and that the state cannot force itself between the two and cannot
here on its own authority give any orders.” Stone Lectures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961).
One must note that Kuyper, in contrast to Althusius, has not awarded sovereignty to local state bodies, and that his social
theory thus has more in common with subsidiarity than federalism. Dooyeweerd has addressed this issue by asserting that
sphere sovereignty governs relations only between structurally different entities. Intrastate relations within a society, however,
are to be governed by the concept of “autonomy” through which authority may be delegated to lower state levels. This
formulation, of course, deviates from the conventional understanding of federalism. See Herman Dooyeweerd III, A New
Critique of Theoretical Thought, tr. David H. Freeman and H. de Jongste (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Co., 1958), pp. 221-222.
For helpful secondary literature on this concept, see Bob Goudzwaard, “Catholic Social Thought in Calvinism,” in Walter
Block and Irving Hexham, eds., Religion, Economics, and Social Thought (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1986) and James W.
Skillen, ed., Political Order and the Plural Structure of Society (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991).
48. See Herbert J. Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), especially
Chapter 2, “The Small Republic.”
49. See David Hume, “The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” [1752], in T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, eds, Essays Moral,
Political, and Literary (London: Longmans, 1882).
50. John Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 10.
51. Ibid., No. 10.
52. The parts of The Federalist Papers relevant to federalism are Nos. 39, 37, 14, 45, 51, and 9.
On the Founders’ theory of federalism, see Martin Diamond, “The Federalist’s View of Federalism,” in George C.S.
Benson, ed., Essays in Federalism (Claremont: Institute for Studies in Federalism, 1961), “What the Framers Meant by
Federalism,” in Robert A. Godwin, ed., A Nation of States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1974), and “The Federalist on
Federalism,” Yahle Law Journal 86 (May 1977); Jean Yarbrough, “Rethinking the Federalist’s View of Federalism,” Publius
15 (Winter 1985); Michael P. Zuckert, “Federalism and the Founding: Toward a Reinterpretation of the Constitutional
Convention,” Review of Politics 48 (Spring 1986); and Vincent Ostrom, The Meaning of American Federalism: Constituting
a Self-Governing Society (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1991).
53. Michael Burgess and Alain-G. Gagnon, eds., Comparative Federalism and Federation: Competing Traditions and
Future Directions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Ellis Katz and G. Alan Tarr, eds, Federalism and Rights
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996); Max Frenkel, Federal Theory (Canberra, Australia: The
Australian National University, 1986); W.H. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1964); Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987); Andreas Follesdal,
“Subsidiarity,” Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1998); Charles M. Tiebout, “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures,”
Journal of Political Economy 64 (1956); John Ferejohn and Barry R. Weingast, eds., The New Federalism: Can the States
Be Trusted? (Washington, D.C.: Hoover Press, 1997).
54. See Paul E. Peterson, The Price of Federalism (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995).
55. John Paul II, The Fabric of Relations Among Peoples (1995), paras. 7-8.
56. Ibid., para. 8.
57. Ibid., para. 14.
 Conclusion

Future Directions for Catholic Social Thought and

Liberal Democratic Theory

With the previous chapters as background, this conclusion will briefly evaluate and apply John
Paul’s ethical and political thought by addressing two questions. First, as an ethicist and
political theorist, which accomplishments were his most significant? Second, which areas of
his thought deserve further development?

Accomplishments: Human Personhood and Politics

John Paul’s most important accomplishment was his synthetic and normatively fruitful
philosophy of the human person. Consistent with his Fides et Ratio recommendation that
theology guide but not replace philosophical inquiry, his philosophical ethics attempts to
rationally defend and develop two aspects of the Christian theological concept of personhood
highlighted in Gaudium et Spes: our self-donative telos, and the dignity that imparts
normativity to this telos. Additionally, given modernity’s promising but confused debate about
human freedom, he also set out to simultaneously defend freedom—both metaphysically and
normatively—and define its proper teleological orientation.
But instead of doing so from a Thomistic philosophy of being, with its focus on describing
human persons in terms of their essential and hierarchically ordered qualities and faculties,
John Paul enlists a so-called philosophy of consciousness. Despite this methodological shift,
he readily accepts the validity of three Thomistic assumptions: we are beings with a “rational
nature,” and this nature renders us capable of knowing obligatory natural law precepts and
developing virtues that actualize our potential. John Paul, however, seeks to substantiate,
develop, and supplement these assumptions through a realist phenomenology—an analysis of
our consciousness of reality, particularly as revealed through acts.
This analysis produces several interrelated anthropological insights with normative
ramifications. Human persons are conscious not only of phenomena such as biological drives
that happen in and to them, but also of acts—perhaps in opposition to these drives—of which
they are the cause or agent. In other words, we are conscious of our will and freedom. Prior to
acting, our apprehension of others’ dignity and the subsequent “dueness” of the goods
necessary to their fulfillment—in other words, their rights—reveal a conscience aware of
context-dependent obligations otherwise known as natural law precepts.1 Epistemologically,
then, rights precede duties. Subsequent to choices in accordance with these obligations, one
experiences a sense of well-being that gradually discloses the nature of human fulfillment and
cultivates the virtues that reinforce the will’s orientation toward the right and goodness. And
through this latter dynamic, one progressively becomes conscious of the self-determining effect
of the will.
John Paul’s second major achievement was to draw out the liberal political implications
of these anthropological and ethical realities, and solidify the Church’s stance on the
relationship between human rights and politics. Imperfect human beings nevertheless require,
and are due, freedoms to actualize their potential as persons. The negative rights emphasized
by classical liberalism are thus due preconditions to human fulfillment that, because of human
selfishness, require the protection of a state. Unfortunately, however, this same human nature in
possession of negative rights may create problems for the positive natural law precepts and
positive rights emphasized by welfare liberals.
The conflict between these two classes of human rights has generated the great debates of
contemporary liberal politics. State protection of positive rights will unavoidably reduce
negative rights and the freedom necessary for self-determination. For two reasons, this
constraint becomes more problematic given its application by the state. First, as John Paul
argues most forcefully in his critique of socialism, its policies are created and administered by
fallen human beings who, in possession of power, may unduly limit negative rights.2 Second
and concerning economics, and also highlighted in his critique of socialism, one of the benefits
of relatively free markets and private property is the beneficial expression—within the limits
of justice—of self-interest and choice.
John Paul’s contribution to these debates about liberal politics is his third major
accomplishment as an ethicist and political theorist, and represents an important development
of the principle of subsidiarity. His defense of limited government as the preferred default
position is multifaceted. As mentioned above, he argues that state constraints reduce the
possibilities of overreach stressed by classical political and economic liberals. But on a more
positive note, he also insists that such limitations coincide with maximizing the respective
competencies of civil society and state institutions vis-à-vis human fulfillment. Voluntary non-
state institutions not only permit self-determining choice, but are capable of providing
regulation and superior social services. Additionally, the character- and culture- forming
capabilities of the family, schools, and churches are unique and indispensible to a free society.
On the other hand, robust civil society activity allows the state to execute and assist in ways
commensurate with its unique characteristics, including its centrality, information, power, and
resources.
Ultimately, then, John Paul prefers to accomplish welfare liberal ends through classical
liberal means. However, while stressing a limited state and the primacy of civil society and
culture, John Paul retains the principle of subsidiarity’s recommended recourse to temporary
but significant state intervention when, for example, market failures threaten positive economic
and cultural rights. Although his appreciation for a “free economy” and critique of the welfare
state are deeper than those of his predecessors, his critique of abuses of economic freedoms
and advocacy of state interventions as temporary but crucial means of last resort cannot be
ignored.
 A final social ethics accomplishment—closely related to his concern with positive
economic rights—is John Paul’s inquiry into the nature and importance of work. As outlined in
a previous chapter, this inquiry transcends important but conventional discussions about just
wage and working condition imperatives. Instead, his insights into the teleological significance
of choice, creativity, and self-donation combine to broaden relevant working condition
concerns. While fulfilling work does not necessarily need to be continually pleasant or
democratic, employers should strive to promote an environment where workers consciously
make creative choices that benefit the firm and society.

Areas for Future Development

John Paul’s interpretation of the principle of subsidiarity allows for significant but temporary
state interventions to address economic and cultural injustices. But rarely addressed in
Catholic social thought is the appropriate state level for such interventions—or for even lesser,
status quo activities.3 One way of developing this issue would be to inform existing federalist
thought—which analyzes national and sub-national governmental rights, functions, and
relationships—with subsidiarity’s rationales and recommendations. In other words, local
governments would, analytically, substitute for civil society institutions.
As indicated in a previous chapter’s survey of federalist arguments, one finds two broad
schools: one emphasizing effects on individual fulfillment and rights, and another more
concerned with states’ rights. Historically, Althusius emphasized the latter, pre–Civil War and
European Union discussions focus on the latter, and the Anti-Federalists emphasized both
rationales. The Anti-Federalists were quite specific—and consistent with subsidiarity—about
the effects of local self-governance: liberty, respect for law, and civic-mindedness. However,
the principle of subsidiarity’s rich anthropological and ethical foundation allows it to provide
additional salient justifications. Liberty is important, in part, because of its relationship to self-
determination. Local governments may deliver more effective and efficient services, in turn
freeing central governments for other tasks. Additionally, the principle suggests that a key
central-state role is support for local governments, and temporary interventions in cases of
institutional weakness.
However, this analysis should not be interpreted as an argument for welfare statism on a
local scale. As local, the activities of these governments may offer certain advantages
discussed above. In some cases, perhaps where cultural and other factors generate high
degrees of responsibility, trust, and effectiveness, some degree of welfare statism may be
acceptable. But a few caveats are in order. First, this effectiveness will be situationally
dependent. Second, local states can be as tyrannical as central states. The Anti-Federalists may
have been overly sanguine about the relationship between local politics and liberty. And third,
in addition to being local and voluntary, civil society institutions possess characteristics and
capabilities vis-à-vis human fulfillment that are unattainable and thus irreplaceable by any
level of state. Local states must therefore themselves abide by the principle of subsidiarity in
relationships with civil society. Combined, this schema suggests situationally dependent roles
and relationships between different state levels, and between these state levels and civil
society.
This area for future research suggests another. Consistent with John Paul’s sensitivities to
state limitations, positive economic rights, and “fully human” work, he suggests two civil
society–based institutional solutions: trade unions and co-partnership organizational schemes.
The former operates through power balancing; the latter is collaborative. Although he deems
unions as “decisive,” he also stresses requirements for their fairness, prudence, and non-
oppositional activities such as education. In keeping with the social encyclical tradition, he
thus focuses on normative ends that should guide public policy particularities—details that
require development, especially by knowledgeable laity. Unions are undoubtedly fraught with
problems, but—as affirmed in international politics and domestic constitutionalism—power
balancing is a necessary aspect of the human condition. Ripe for development, and consistent
with the principle of subsidiarity, are ways through which the state can, on the one hand, help
workers overcome their collective action and organizational challenges and, on the other hand,
facilitate collective bargaining to ensure fairness and prudence. Popular in Europe, this
corporatist approach deserves more emphasis from the Vatican and in Catholic public policy
circles in the United States.
Likewise, co-partnership measures—joint ownership, shared management, and profit
sharing—deserve further development by Catholic thinkers and policymakers, especially their
implementation means. Rather than redistributive taxation to provide direct payments or social
goods, states should more seriously consider fiscal incentives and perhaps collaboration with
unions in order to promote such arrangements. When combined with adequate regulation to
prevent monopolies and ensure sustainable growth, these measures can increase workers’
productivity, job satisfaction, and standard of living.
Finally, and crucial for the important work John Paul assigns to culture: while he asserts
that human dignity is the bridge between anthropology and ethics, two aspects of this dignity
require further development. The first is epistemological. Even if one accepts the validity of
his claim that our experience of human dignity is not subjective (as I do), one can remain
unclear about the mode of this knowledge. Notwithstanding his critiques of Scheler’s
emotionalism, the treatments in Love and Responsibility and The Acting Person on the natures
of, and relationship between, emotions and cognition require further study. He asserts that
some emotions are related to body and will, but that love—properly defined—is related to
truth. This assertion may suggest that love may be epistemologically significant for
apprehending the dignity of the human person.
A second dignity-related concern is metaphysical. Philosophically speaking, John Paul
fails to convincingly establish the foundation of human dignity. As previously discussed,
uniqueness is itself inadequate; and a capabilities-based approach is either unconvincing or—
especially if these capabilities cannot be exercised—tenuous. Perhaps in his opinion, and
increasingly in mine, we can apprehend human dignity but not its source. In other words, the
foundation of human dignity may be, ultimately, theological.
If true, this situation highlights a dangerous irony. Modernity’s celebration of human rights
is accompanied by both a yearning for explanatory foundations, and a skepticism—borne of an
increasing confidence in our control and security—about the theology necessary to establish
the foundations of these rights. Without surrendering to historicism, one could posit that the
advance of technical mastery will intensify ideological and behavioral currents flowing against
the advance of human dignity and rights. Thankfully, John Paul’s magisterial work has given us
the intellectual framework to redirect this flow—the tools to advance our commitments to
human dignity and its implications, and in turn to freely open ourselves to that which must be
believed.

Notes
1. Our apprehension of this dignity is implied by Aquinas’ first principle of the natural law—“do good and avoid evil”—but
is not philosophically examined and substantiated by him.
2. One could argue that state actors are, especially domestically, less prone to such abuses. According to virtue ethicist
Alasdair MacIntyre, just as the human telos defines and requires properly human virtues, one’s social purpose will also define
and require virtues appropriate to that particular function. Accordingly, since the purpose of the liberal state is to secure a
particular subset of nevertheless universal rights, dispositions proper to public servants will be those conducive to securing the
good of others. In other words, given personal dignity, public service ought to select and cultivate members who are oriented
toward the good of others. I would argue that, outside the military, this selection and cultivation process is inadequate and leads
to aggregate results only slightly better than those found in the private sector.
3. Exceptions include David A. Bosnich, “The Principle of Subsidiarity,” in Religion and Liberty (July-August 1996).
 Bibliography

Primary works by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II

Aby Chrystus sie nami poslugiwal [“To Serve Christ” anthology] (Krakow: Znak, 1979).
The Acting Person. Translated by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, 1979. Originally published
as Osaba I Czyn. Crakow: Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne, 1969.
Address of John Paul II to Journalists on their Jubilee, June 2000. Published at: www.vatican.va
Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York, 1979. Published at: www.vatican.va
Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York, 1995. Published at: www.vatican.va
“Address to the Third General Assembly of CELAM” in Puebla: A Pilgrimage of Faith. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1979.
Addresses of John Paul II to the Participants in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, 1987-
1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002. Published at: www.vatican.va
Addresses of John Paul II to the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications, 1988, 1989, 1991.
Published at: www.vatican.va
Centesimus Annus (1991). Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998.
Code of Canon Law (1983). Published at: www.vatican.va
“The Constitution of Culture Through Human Praxis.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New
York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Crossing the Threshold of Hope. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
The Doctrine of Faith According to St. John of the Cross. Translated by Jordan Aumann. San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1981.
Dominum et Vivificantem. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1986.
“Ethical Act and Ethical Experience.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter Lang,
1993.
“Ethics and Moral Theology.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Evangelium Vitae. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1995.
Familiaris Consortio. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1981
“The Family as a Community of Persons.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter
Lang, 1993.
Fides et Ratio. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1998.
General Audience, St. Peter’s, Rome, October 21, 1992. Published at: www.vatican.va
Homily in Santiago de Cuba, January 1998. Published at: www.vatican.va
“Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New
York: Peter Lang, 1993.
“The Human Person and Natural Law.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter
Lang, 1993.
Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation” (1984). Published at: www.vatican.va
“The Intentional Act and the Human Act, that is, Act and Experience.” Analecta Husserliana 5 (1976).
Laborem Exercens. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1981.
Letter to Artists (1999). Published at: www.vatican.va
Letter to Families. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1994.
Love and Responsibility. Translated by H.T. Willetts. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981. Originally published as Milosc i
Odpowiedzialnosc. Lublin: KUL, 1960.
Ocena mozliwosci zbudowania etyki chrzescijanskiej przy zalozeniach systemu Maksa Schelera. [An Evaluation of the
Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler.] Lublin: KUL, 1960.
“Message for Base Christian Communities.” Origins 10 (1980).
Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the Celebration of the Day of Peace, January 1981. Published at:
www.vatican.va
Messages of the Holy Father for World Communications Day, 1984, 1994, 2001. Published at: www.vatican.va
Message to the Indians, Santo Domingo, October 13, 1992. Published at: www.vatican.va
“On the Dignity of the Human Person.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter
 Lang, 1993.
“On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis of the Moral Norm.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa
Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Genesis. Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1980.
“The Personal Structure of Self-Determination.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York:
Peter Lang, 1993.
“The Person: Subject and Community.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter
Lang, 1993.
“The Problem of Experience in Ethics.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter
Lang, 1993.
“The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa
Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
“The Problem of the Theory of Morality.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter
Lang, 1993.
“The Problem of the Will in the Analysis of the Ethical Act.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM.
New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Redemptor Hominis. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1979.
Sign of Contradiction. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979.
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1987.
Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.
“Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New
York: Peter Lang, 1993.
“Television and the Family: Guidelines for Good Viewing.” Message of the Holy Father for World Communications Day, May
1994. Published at: www.vatican.va
Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994). Published at: www.vatican.va
“Thomistic Personalism.” In Person and Community. Translated by Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Veritatis Splendor. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1993.

Secondary works on Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II

Buttiglione, Rocco. Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II. Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans,
1997.
Frossard, Andre and Pope John Paul II. Be Not Afraid! New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.
George, Francis E., OMI. Inculturation and Ecclesial Communion in the Teaching of Pope John Paul II. Rome: Urbania Press,
1990.
Kupczak, Jaroslaw. Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000.
Lawler, Ronald D. The Christian Personalism of John Paul II. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982.
McDermont, John M., ed. The Thought of Pope John Paul II. Roma: Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 1993.
Neuhaus, Richard John. “The Very Liberal John Paul II.” National Review, August 11, 1997.
Schmitz, Kenneth L. At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II.
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993.
Seward, John. Christ Is the Answer: The Christ-Centered Teaching of Pope John Paul II. New York: Alba House, 1995.
Shivanandan, Mary. Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage in the Light of John Paul II’s Anthropology.
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999.
Simpson, Peter. On Karol Wojtyla. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001.
Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. New York: Harper Collins, 1999.
Williams, George H. The Mind of John Paul II: The Origins of His Thought and Action. New York: Seabury Press, 1981.
Woznicki, Andrew N. A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Personalism. New Britain, Conn.: Mariel Publications,
1980.
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 Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search
function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed
below

action/acts
anthropology
Aristotle
association, freedom of. (See also rights)
Augustine

Buttiglione, Rocco

Centisimus Annus
Cicero
civil society
Communitarianism
conscience
conscious, freedom of
consciousness
Constantine

democracy
dignity
distributists/distributism

Etzioni, Amitai
expression, freedom of. See rights

family, rights of. See rights

Federalism
free market (See also rights)
free will
freedom of conscious. See also rights
fulfillment

human rights. See also rights

Husserl, Edmund

individual, rights of. See rights

individualism

Kant, Emmanuel

Leo XIII
Liberal Catholicism/Catholics
liberation theology
liberalism
economic and political
state centric
Locke, John

MacIntyre, Alasdair
Marx, Karl
marxist theory
and scientific materialism
and Liberation Theology
Mill, John Stuart
modernity

Natural Law
New Natural Law

Patristic period
personalism
phenomenology
Pius III
Pius IX
Pius XI
private property. See also rights

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal

religious freedom. See also rights
rights
cultural
expression
free market
freedom of association
freedom of conscience
individual
negative
of family
of workers
positive
positive economic
private property
religious freedom
to life
work. See also human rights

Sandel, Michael
Scheler, Max
Schindler, David
Second Vatican Council
self-determination
sin/sinfulness
social Catholicism
subsidiarity
principle of
logic of

Taylor, Charles
teleology
theoconservatism
theoconservatives
Thomism
De Tocqueville, Alexis
United States Council of Catholic Bishops

Weigel, George
 About the Author
Edward Barrett is Director of Research at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center for
Ethical Leadership and an ethics professor in the Academy’s Department of Leadership,
Ethics, and Law. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he completed a doctorate in
political theory at the University of Chicago. While in graduate school, he served for two years
as speechwriter to the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago. He served for nine years on active
duty with the U.S. Air Force as an instructor pilot, thereafter entered the Air Force Reserves,
and currently works in the Air Force’s Division of Long Range Plans at the Pentagon.