It says
something for the influence of Donal Dorr that this is the third,
enlarged and revised, edition of a book which first appeared in 1983. Over those decades he has not only written other books, but through his work as a missionary priest enhanced his insights as a theologian.
He has been associated with the Irish Missionary Union and served as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
His writings have influenced a generation of Irish activists, but looking round the wider world, with the continuing exploitation of poor people in so many places, one wonders. Or rather, as he prefers, not poor people, but “people who happen to be poor”.
Development
The aim of this book is to trace the development of Catholic social teaching over the last 133 years, since Leo XII issued Rerum Novarum.
But there is a sense in which long before that Catholic social teaching had been rooted in the gospels, had been given effect by the such figures as St Francis of Assisi and to Catherine McCauley.
It did not need an encyclical to tell them what must be done.
Whatever else it was the essence of Catholic social teaching was no new thing.
Leo XIII was responding to the emergence over the course of the 19th Century of industrialised society. This had created as all thinking people, from Karl Marx to the Pope, realised great social injustices.
The Pope, however, wished to see a solution to those injustices, not so much in the over-intervention of the state, as in the actions of groups and individuals.
Catholic social studies and Catholic action as in developed in the following decades worked along these lines.
But over the course of the 20th Century it was not the over-intervention of the state (malignant as that often was) that came to the fore, but the often free-roaming activities of great multinational conglomerates.
Globalisation
Donal Dorr was born in Foxford, but he lived to see the fabric industry, not just of that town, but of much of Western Europe transferred to the Far East. Slavery may have been abolished in the course of time over much of the world.
But globalisation has resulted in slavery of another kind, where the proprietors do not even have to own the slaves to exploit them. This has meant wealth for a small number, greater hardship for many others.
As humanity crowds into cities people have not even the land to cultivate for food that the rural poor once had, and still have in some places.
So the content of his book is immediately and continuingly relevant. So what is new here?
Approximately a third of this book is devoted to dealing with the development in recent times, especially since 2005 when Cardinal Ratzinger was elevated to the Pontificate as Benedict XVI.
Human rights
Dorr deals in detail with Deus Caritas Est, which is relevant to Catholic aid agencies such as Trocaire, and with Caritas In Veritae.
These chapters will be found especially valuable for the developments that will have to be reacted to in 21st Century. An emerging notion seems to be to extend the idea of what charity is. It is a respect for human rights, yes, but perhaps more.
Can we, it was asked, at the launch of this book, begin to speak water in itself, and not as property, having rights?
The theme of an option for the poor might have seemed at a time when western nationals basked in their prosperity as being a divisive one.
Yet now, as large numbers of the populations of Europe and the USA have themselves being plunged from prosperity into poverty, there is a realisation that the option for the poor is becoming an option for everyone.
Catholic social teaching is not just applicable in the Third world, or the South, those traditional ‘mission lands’. Mission now begins in Tallaght.
Social teaching
Social teaching, as laid out with such brilliant clarity by Donal Dorr, means every where it must be based on all humanity.
And not only on humanity, but also on creation, on the ecology of spiritual development.
It is not that the poor are always with us, we are all in some way or other part of the world’s poor.
Human solidarity must be universal. People who are poor, wherever they are, may seem powerless, but with God’s grace and our aid they have the power to change the world for the better.
This is rich book, with careful discussions and deep insights drawn
from long experience. The author does not avoid the difficult and controversial places, such the developing ideas about women.
But in the end he writes: “I hope this will not give the impression that I am playing down the strengths that I outlined earlier. Despite its inadequacies, the tradition of social teaching in the Church is one of which we Christians can be proud.”
And moreover: “This tradition calls us to examine our actions, our lifestyles, and our structures, and to make sure that there is not too wide a gap between what we are proclaiming and what we are doing.”
Option for the Poor and for the Earth: Catholic Social Teaching, by Donal Dorr (Orbis Books / Alban Books, €32.00/£25.00)