This Paul VI encyclical really deserves a birthday party.

n March 26, 1967, Pope Paul VI pub­lished an encycli­cal enti­tled Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio. It is about the right to a just wage, employ­ment, safe work­ing con­di­tions, to join a union, and the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods. Cor­rect me if I am wrong, but last year did I miss it when Catholics threw a 50th birth­day par­ty for Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio?

I mean, Pope St. John Paul II thought that PP mer­it­ed birth­day cel­e­bra­tions. In 1987, when it was twen­ty years old, the pope cel­e­brat­ed it with a brand new encycli­cal. Maybe you recall this. It was called Sol­lic­i­tu­do Rei Socialis. St. John Paul II says that PP is a “dis­tin­guished” addi­tion to the body of Catholic social teach­ing. He says it has “endur­ing rel­e­vance.” Thus it is impor­tant, says John Paul II, to “pay homage … to its teach­ing.” What Paul VI teach­es, he says, “retains all [its] force as an appeal to con­science today.”

And Pope Bene­dict XVI, too, speaks of the rel­e­vance of PP in his encycli­cal Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate. (Indeed, in CV, you can find the words “Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio” fifty-four times.)

The Rerum Novarum of the Present Age

Bene­dict XVI writes:

At a dis­tance of over forty years from the encycli­cal’s pub­li­ca­tion, I intend to pay trib­ute and to hon­our the mem­o­ry of the great Pope Paul VI, revis­it­ing his teach­ings on inte­gral human devel­op­ment and tak­ing my place with­in the path that they marked out, so as to apply them to the present moment. This con­tin­u­al appli­ca­tion to con­tem­po­rary cir­cum­stances began with the Encycli­cal Sol­lic­i­tu­do Rei Socialis, with which the Ser­vant of God Pope John Paul II chose to mark the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio. Until that time, only Rerum Novarum had been com­mem­o­rat­ed in this way. Now that a fur­ther twen­ty years have passed, I express my con­vic­tion that Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio deserves to be con­sid­ered ‘the Rerum Novarum of the present age,’ shed­ding light upon human­i­ty’s jour­ney towards uni­ty.

The “Rerum Novarum of the present age”! Well, that’s an endorse­ment. So why are we see­ing Catholic Inter­net fall all over itself in homage to Humanae Vitae, while the fifti­eth anniver­sary of Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio pass­es with­out remark?

“But Alt” you say. “Catholics rebel against Humanae Vitae! We need to tell them why Paul VI was right!” So there need to be HV class­es at parish­es, of sev­er­al weeks’ dura­tion, to say that Paul VI was right. There need to be books on the sex­u­al moral­i­ty of HV, writ­ten by peo­ple who, being very con­sis­tent, defend Milo Yiannopou­los.

The Culture War in Red and Gold

I see. So there are no Catholics any­where, search the wide world, who rebel against Church social teach­ing. This is news to me. I mean, we have peo­ple like John Zmi­rak who says that Catholic social teach­ing is a myth. And we have peo­ple like Leila “Bub­bles” Miller, who time and again repeat the sil­ly view that social jus­tice is just about the left-wing, Demo­c­rat agen­da. It appeals to “the Catholic left,” but not “faith­ful Catholics.” And we have peo­ple like George Weigel, who had a melt­down in Nation­al Review in 2009 when Bene­dict XVI pub­lished Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate. He said that you could go through CV with a gold mark­er to high­light the obvi­ous “Bene­dic­tine” pas­sages and a red mark­er to high­light the obvi­ous Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for Jus­tice for Peace pas­sages.

And which ones are the “Bene­dic­tine” pas­sages? Mr. Weigel tells us.

The clear­ly Bene­dic­tine pas­sages in Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate fol­low and devel­op the line of John Paul II, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the new encyclical’s strong empha­sis on the life issues (abor­tion, euthana­sia, embryo-destruc­tive stem-cell research).

So you see, the issues that the Amer­i­can right-wing cares most about are the ones that Bene­dict wrote. He could­n’t have writ­ten those oth­er ones. Oh, heav­ens, no!! And which ones are they? Why, the ones about “defeat­ing Third World pover­ty,” of course. Those ones. Mr. Weigel finds those pas­sages “clot­ted and mud­dled.” (Where­as, the ones con­demn­ing abor­tion are very crys­tal clear. Hooray!)

Not too many years ago, Judge Andrew Napoli­tano beat his fist down hard, and declaimed that the pope’s inter­est in social jus­tice was an “attack on the free mar­ket.” At First Things, Mau­reen Mullarkey went mad, and said that Pope Fran­cis want­ed to destroy free­dom across the globe!

And as far back as 1961, the same Nation­al Review pub­lished a col­umn telling us that the expres­sion “Mater si, Mag­is­tra no” was “going the rounds of con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles.” The expres­sion was a play on Pope St. John XXI­I­I’s encycli­cal Mater et Mag­is­tra, and was meant to affirm, yes, the Church is my moth­er, but hell no, she is not my teacher. Big mid­dle fin­ger to that.

(Except on abor­tion, and con­tra­cep­tion, and gay sex. We love the Church when she says this. And if Pope Fran­cis does not say this when he comes to the Unit­ed States, he is mud.)

And in 2006, New Oxford Review pub­lished evi­dence that “Mater si, Mag­is­tra no” was still alive and well among pick-and-choose con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics. (Specif­i­cal­ly, in this case, con­cern­ing just war doc­trine. Con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics in 2006 need­ed to remain faith­ful to Pope George W first. Cer­tain­ly they must defend at all costs the idea that the Church is wrong to con­demn the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki.)

Human Solidarity & the Universal Destination of Goods

So if you want to say, “But Alt! We need to explain to dis­senters why Humanae Vitae is total­ly right and stuff,” fine. But dis­senters need some splain­in regard­ing Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio, too, and the bulk of Church social teach­ing.

As much as it may be true that we have an oblig­a­tion to the life-giv­ing mean­ing of the sex­u­al act, Paul VI also tells us that “we are under oblig­a­tion to all men” now liv­ing. “The real­i­ty of human sol­i­dar­i­ty brings us not only ben­e­fits but also oblig­a­tions.” And one of those “oblig­a­tions” is the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods.

Con­ser­v­a­tive dis­senters love to appeal to prop­er­ty rights. And the Church does not deny prop­er­ty rights, but lis­ten to what Paul VI also says.

All oth­er rights, what­ev­er they may be, includ­ing the rights of prop­er­ty and free trade, are to be sub­or­di­nat­ed to this prin­ci­ple. They should in no way hin­der it; in fact, they should active­ly facil­i­tate its imple­men­ta­tion. Redi­rect­ing these rights back to their orig­i­nal pur­pose must be regard­ed as an impor­tant and urgent social duty. (22)

The right to pri­vate prop­er­ty is not absolute. Paul VI con­tin­ues:

Every­one knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncer­tain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: “You are not mak­ing a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giv­ing him back what is his. You have been appro­pri­at­ing things that are meant to be for the com­mon use of every­one. The earth belongs to every­one, not to the rich.” These words indi­cate that the right to pri­vate prop­er­ty is not absolute and uncon­di­tion­al.

I am not sure “every­one knows” this any more. Ten­der hearts on the right may blow up at the sug­ges­tion. Now, we do hear a lot about how con­tra­cep­tion and gay sex vio­late the nat­ur­al law. We must nev­er be allowed to for­get that. But be care­ful when you invoke nat­ur­al law. That’s a mill that grinds very fine on both the right and the left. In Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca, St. Thomas Aquinas says that “What­ev­er cer­tain peo­ple have in super­abun­dance is due, by nat­ur­al law, to the pur­pose of suc­cor­ing the poor.” Imag­ine that! I don’t recall the nat­ur­al law zealots telling us about this. Nat­ur­al law just talks about sex, baby, and not about char­i­ty.

Just Wage Demanded by Natural Law

But Paul VI brings up nat­ur­al law in Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio too, as well as in Humanae Vitae. He men­tions it when he brings up the right to a just wage. Con­ser­v­a­tive dis­senters love to deny that we know what a just wage even is. They love to appeal to the right of con­tract; did­n’t the labor­er agree to that wage when he accept­ed the job? Paul VI and Leo XIII look down on this think­ing:

The teach­ing set forth by our pre­de­ces­sor Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum is still valid today: when two par­ties are in very unequal posi­tions, their mutu­al con­sent alone does not guar­an­tee a fair con­tract; the rule of free con­sent remains sub­servient to the demands of the nat­ur­al law.

To not pay a just wage is a vio­la­tion of nat­ur­al law too, accord­ing to Paul VI; and you can­not just appeal to “the right of con­tract” as an out on nat­ur­al law. (Deny­ing a just wage is a sin that cries to heav­en for vengeance, by the way.)

Celibate for the Duration

And you know, let me say some­thing else on this point. I have heard any num­ber of cheer­lead­ers for Humanae Vitae, when asked about women who have grave rea­sons to avoid preg­nan­cy, and yet can’t use NFP because their cycles are irreg­u­lar and can’t be chart­ed, who have no dif­fi­cul­ty at all say­ing, “Well, you’ll just have to be celi­bate for the dura­tion.”

And yet many of these wery same peo­ple are aghast when the Church demands that employ­ers pay a just wage com­men­su­rate with fam­i­ly size, or pro­vide ade­quate health insur­ance for women.

Per­son­al­ly, I don’t know many Catholics who blithe­ly rebel at Humanae Vitae and say, “Well, big mid­dle fin­ger to the Church, I will do what I want.” (I am sure there are some.) Instead I know a great many who have a great deal of fear due to goods that com­pete against the good of new life, such as the good of their own health, or the eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty of the fam­i­ly, and who at the same time find it impos­si­ble to use NFP for one rea­son or anoth­er (like irreg­u­lar cycles).

But I have run into a lot of Catholics who give a mid­dle fin­ger to the Church when she talks about social jus­tice (mater si, mag­is­tra no); and it is because of that that encycli­cals like Pop­u­lo­rum Pro­gres­sio need a loud and reg­u­lar birth­day par­ty. PP is the Rerum Novarum for today; Bene­dict XVI says so. How about, next year, we have a nice lit­tle homage to Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate? It will be ten years old.

As for Humanae Vitae, if women who are fear­ful could be approached with some degree of com­pas­sion rather than judg­ment (Oh, just have more faith in God, lit­tle one), that would be nice on this fifti­eth anniver­sary.