Critical survey of the ecclesiastical pronouncements in the economic and industrial field during the past sixty-five years (rerum novarum to evanston)

Abstract

The title of this thesis clearly states the nature of our study* During the past sixty-five years, the Church has met the challenges of an Industrial age by pronouncements covering a whole range of social and cultural subjects.

To survey all that the Church has put forth would stagger the efforts of the most imaginative mind* It has been our choice to consider only those statements or parts of pronouncements which touch on the economic and industrial field.

That leaves whole areas of life untouched: questions concerning education, the family, and politics, to mention a, few. However, to study the pronouncements, even within a limited area, is to come into contact with the Church's thinking on matters of social Justice ranging through all of life. Insofar as it is possible to compartmentalise life, by speaking of the political sphere or the cultural sphere or the economic sphere, we shall stay closely in the latter area, with the realisation that it is an artificial distinction accepted only for the purposes of more intensive understanding of all human problems.

In pursuing our critical study, we will divide the work into two parts, one a survey and the other a critical analysis. In Part I, the encyclicals and pronouncements will be Introduced by short historical treatments, Into which we may set the tradition of Christian social teaching. It Is important that we realize the significance of our small part, only sixty-five years, in the whole. The appendices to Chapter Two will help further to relate the social pronouncements to the main stream of thought within the Church.

Part II will hold up the subject matter of the pronouncements to critical analysis. Soma criticism! will be expressed in Part X with regard to particular pronouncements. To do anything more extensive would duplicate the kind of criticism found in the secular and religious press after many of the Church conferences. It would be repetitious to go over the same territory. In addition to the more sociological and economic analysis, we will make a short study of the theological and eschatological presuppositions and bases for making pronouncements. In the theological analysis, we will feel free to draw in contemporary theologians to help illumine our discussion. In one case, we will review a position which we feel might undercut the making of pronouncements, if it were accepted by the Church.

Thus it is that other material than the social statements will be introduced to help view the pronouncements from a perspective. To analyze or to criticize, we must stand someplace ourselves.