Okay, Something’s Odd Here

This is something I’ve been meaning to blog about for some time, but things have been hectic.

You remember how, just before the election, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) published a book called the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (CSDC)?

Because of the potential bearing of a work like this on the Catholic Answers voters guide, I had a copy hotfooted over to us from Europe (the document–for some reason–not being available on the Vatican web site and not being published yet in America).

It took longer to get here than advertised. In fact, it was after the election before I got it.

But still, I’m one of the first people in America to have one. So here’s an early report from someone who actually has a copy of the work in question.

There’s something funny going on with respect to this work.

It’s the "baby" of the late Vietnamese Cardinal Van Thuan, who was head of the PCJP. When the work was first announced, it was claimed that the body would be producing a "Catechism of Social Doctrine" paralleling the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)–see, for example, the Zenit story archived here. This was one of many stories touting the document as a parallel "Catechism," in Cardinal Van Thuan’s words.

This was a source of concern to for those worried about the recent emphasis in many circles on "social teaching" over basic the basic doctrines of the faith. The announcement of a social doctrine "Catechism" seemed to further the placing of "social teaching" (about which Jesus and the apostles had to say little) on the same level as dogmatic theology (on which they had to say much). Indeed, the very use of the word "catechism" was disturbing, as a catechism is intended to teach the basics of the faith, not just one area only contingently attached to the doctrines of the faith.

If the new document was truly to be a parallel for the CCC then one would expect it to have similar authorization.

To authorize the CCC, Pope John Paul wrote an apostolic constitution (the highest form of papal writing, superior even to an encyclical) in which he personally discussed his authorization of the process of drafting the text, which involved all the world’s bishops, and referred to the Catechism as "a sure norm for teaching the faith" [SOURCE.] The CCC did not have changed the doctrinal notes attached to particular teachings (see a forthcoming post of mine), but it’s hard to ignore an apostolic constitution from a pope stressing the worldwide collaboration of bishops that went into a document and indicating that–as a whole–it is a reliable guide.

Nothing like this happened in the case of the CSDC.

First, proximate to Cardinal Van Thuan’s death in 2002, a document was released by the PCJP that seemed to correspond (minimally) to the description of the promised "Catechism." In actuality, it was a collection of quotations from various other Church documents having a bearing on social doctrine, but nothing more than this. At the time, I downloaded a copy, but have not been able to locate it. (If anyone can provide a copy, please let me know.)

UPDATE: A kindly reader points out that the document in question was The Social Agenda, ONLINE HERE. Collective brainpower rocks!

At the time, I thought, "Okay. They’ve severely downgraded the expectations for the document. This is what they’re releasing, and that’ll be the end of it."

But it wasn’t.

They eventually announced that this year another document would be coming out–the "Compendium" issued by the PCJP under its new head, Cardinal Martino.

This could have been a document parallel to the Catechism–if it carried similar authorizations to the Catechism–but it didn’t.

First, it didn’t have an apostolic constitution up front of it. This, of itself, was a severe downgrade from the Catechism. In fact, it didn’t have any papal document up front of it. What it did have was a letter from Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state.

Second, this letter did not indicate any special authorization from the pope. Indeed, the closest it comes to a papal endorsement is the following sentence:

The Holy Father, while hoping that the present document will help humanity in its active quest for the common good, invokes God’s blessings on those who will stop to reflect on the teachings of this publication [no. 5].

That’s about as tepid as it gets.

Nothing here about the Compendium being a "sure norm for the teaching of the faith." It’s just something that the pope "hopes" "will help" humanity and "blesses" those who "consider" what it says. This is not the language of definiteness and obligation; it is the language of tentativeness and conjecture. And the message was delivered by a subordinate, not by the pope himself.

Add to this the fact that the central descriptor of the work has been downgraded from "Catechism" to "Compendium" and we are looking at a severe lowering of expectations.

The Compendium thus seems to be a project that the Vatican may intend to be buried in silence. It is in no way a parallel document to the Catechism. It may be something its originators hoped would be a parallel to the CCC (hence the language they used to describe it in the beginning), but as time went buy, the folks in authority in the Vatican decided that it would not be prudent to issue such a parallel document (if they had ever contemplated it to begin with). They thus progressively sent signals downplaying the document relative to the Catechism, and in the end we have a document proposed for the reflection of the faithful that carries only very restricted weight, and that derived only from the force of the documents it quotes.

Soon I’ll provide a look at the contents of the Compendium, but for now I wanted to provide some overall perspective on its origin and level of authority.