I’d like to begin with some remarks on what strikes me about the Common Good (1996) document, having come back to it after many years. The first point I’d like to pick up on is the reference by Cardinal Hume in the Preface to the inner spiritual journey which needs to be a feature, indeed the starting point, for any disciple of Jesus Christ engaged in social action for the common good, the building up of a kingdom of love, justice and peace in this life, in anticipation of its completion in the next. Cardinal Hume says that the future of humanity depends on “a true conversion of mind and heart.” That sentiment is echoed in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church which was published eight years later. There it states that, “the inner transformation of the human person, in his being progressively conformed to Christ, is the necessary prerequisite for a real transformation of his relationships with others” (para 42).

The link is made between conversion of the heart and social changes, or the transformation of social relationships, which lies at the heart of the vision of Catholic Social Teaching. The Compendium goes on to say that the priority of the conversion of the heart, “in no way eliminates but on the contrary imposes the obligation, of bringing the appropriate remedies to institutions and living conditions…so that they conform to the norms of justice and advance the good rather than hinder it” (para 42).

Pope Francis addresses this in Chapter 4 of Evangelii Gaudium when he says scripture makes it clear that “the Gospel is not merely about our personal relationship with God” (para 180) and further on, “It is no longer possible to claim that religion should be restricted to the private sphere and that it exists only to prepare souls for heaven. We know that God wants his children to be happy in this world too” (para 182). The centrality of formation in social action for the common good is a point developed by Pope Benedict XVI, who in Deus Caritas Est, said that, “In addition to their necessary professional training, charity workers need a ‘formation of the heart’: they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirit to others” (para 31).

This formation, or conversion of heart is at the same time a breaking open of the heart, a heart softened and opened up by forgiveness since, as the Catechism reminds us, “the first effect of the gift of love is forgiveness” (CCC, 734). It is hardness of heart that excludes others and excludes the action of the Holy Spirit. Without this love as the source of our social action, Pope Francis warns of “unruly activism”, as did Pope Benedict VXI. What is distinctive about our approach to building the common good is the recognition of the protagonism of the Holy Spirit. What the Holy Spirit mobilizes in a surrendered heart open to grace is “an attentiveness which considers the other ‘in a certain sense as one with ourselves’” (para 199). This is the “Christ-shaped solidarity” (p. 162) which Professor Anna Rowlands refers to in her recent book, Towards a Politics of Communion.

For Pope Francis this is a loving attentiveness, a true concern for those who experience various forms of poverty, which entails respect and understanding for their experience of life, in their culture. It is true love which inspires us to seek the good of the other, to allow all people to become, in Pope Paul VI’s phrase “artisans of their destiny” (PP, para 65), rather than beneficiaries of our good intentions for them. This love, this caritas, is what is at the heart of an authentic option for the poor and makes it different from any other ideology. “Only on the basis of this real and sincere closeness,” says Pope Francis, “can we properly accompany the poor on their path of liberation” (EG, para 199). Compassion, or love, is at the heart of the Gospel and the heart of the Catholic social vision, but as we’ll consider in due course, it is not complete without proclamation and justice advocacy.

For Caritas Social Action Network, formation is one of the priorities in our new strategic plan. The formation of the grassroots Catholic community for social action and advocacy, the formation of those who lead in a Catholic setting in social mission, with an emphasis on those who lead in the third sector, although the programme which launches later this year will be of benefit to anyone who aspires to lead, or is newly in leadership in any Catholic setting. We are also developing our formation resources, such as for World Day of the Poor in 2021 and our resource for parishes on poverty, “Hoping for mild at least…” which will be published next month.

The Common Good (1996) appears in many ways to be an exemplary teaching document. Readers are guided through a comprehensive survey of Catholic Social Teaching as it may have applied to the national circumstances in the run-up to the General Election in 1997. In a remarkably prescient supplement to the document entitled, “The Common Good: suggestions for presenting and studying The Common Good in parishes and small groups” there is an invitation to the laity to use the pastoral cycle, the See-Judge-Act methodology, which at that time did not enjoy mainstream application in the Church, at least in England and Wales, to discern what actions groups might take locally after looking closely at the concrete reality of the community, understood in the wider sense, not just the Catholic community. The parish resource on poverty we will be publishing soon will take much the same approach, inviting parish groups to look closely and deeply a the reality of their community, the peripheries, the poverty, the toxic corners, the chronic isolation, and ask why and ask where in scripture and tradition do we hear about this, be attentive to the ‘tug of the Spirit’, the prompt to act and then decide with the various gifts and callings of the group what might be done, who might we collaborate with outside of the parish, what resources we might need to gather. And then re-group, reflect, review. Begin again.

The pastoral cycle really didn’t ‘stick’ after the 1996 document, despite its status as an approved approach in magisterial teaching, first outlined by Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra in 1961. With Pope Francis, our first pope from South America where the approach was embraced with enthusiasm, we now have See-Judge-Act back where it belongs, as a mainstream part of the Church’s approach to applying, or enacting, Catholic social teaching to our present circumstances. It wasn’t just the pastoral cycle that faded after 1996, but to a large extent the document as well. One reason I would offer, which is not just a feature of The Common Good, is an approach to pedagogy which is characteristic of Church documents. Ecclesia Docens – the teaching church – teaches the faithful, from the pulpit, from the pen, but how much attention was ever paid to the reception of this teaching by the faithful? It’s like a scattering of seed, without much attention to state of the soil, or indeed the harvest.

If I learned anything as a teacher, it was that there was no teaching without learning. The best lessons I observed as a headteacher was when the teacher used all of her skills to determine what had been learned, by whom and how deeply, and used that knowledge to inform the planning for the next lesson or sequence of lessons. The fundamental technique involved here was feedback from the pupils: tell me, show me what you’ve learned. Is anything I’m saying or we’re doing making any sense? What difference is it making to you?

Have you ever had an opportunity to provide feedback on a sermon, or an encyclical? I mean in a parish setting, not in a seminary, or academic setting. [saying that of course I’m aware that this is exactly in that category….if I was braver I might ask for thumbs up or thumbs down]. Anyway, in a parish setting a good pastor will know his congregation, and I don’t envy the challenge of preaching to such a differentiated ‘classroom’ as faced by some of our clergy on a Sunday, but more often than not, Church teaching comes and goes with no systematic attempt to discover how it has been received, how it might deepen and develop with feedback from the people of God. And yet, that is exactly the threshold we appear to be on now with the synod. Not an exercise in specific feedback on a document, but for the first time in its history, the Church is embarking on a way of proceeding which invites every baptised member of the Church to be listened to. This will hopefully evolve quickly into a new approach to the way church documents are written, a more inductive approach. The 1996 document had all the features of a good teaching document and took that instinct further than most by providing a framework for group discussion and discernment.

Another feature of the document I’d like to comment on is its affirmation of salvation as integral. In other words, the salvation offered by Christ is not just liberation from sin, or rather it is liberation from sin and its personal and social consequences in unjust social relationships. The document says, “Catholic social teaching sees an intimate relationship between social and political liberation on the one hand, and on the other, the salvation to which the Church calls us in the name of Jesus Christ” (para 39). Evangelisation means bringing the good news to “every stratum of humanity” and includes “liberating humanity from all forces and structures which oppress it…the transformation of an unjust social order; and one of its primary tasks is to oppose and denounce such injustices” (para 40).

There is a confidence in this document, a prophetic voice which provides a compelling vision for being fully human, located in our God-given desire to love and be loved in community and to find ourselves paradoxically in giving ourselves away in loving service; a vision whose corollary is integral human development, a commitment to challenge and change the societal structures which exploit and demean the person and prevent her or his flourishing. There is also a strong sense of solidarity with those who are in circumstances of poverty and vulnerability. It is moving to hear our bishops say that they are “in solidarity with people everywhere who are on low incomes, disabled, ill or infirm, homeless or poorly housed, in prison, refugees, or who are otherwise vulnerable, powerless and at a disadvantage” (para 15). This message needs to be heard in every generation, especially now when those are the very people the pandemic has hit hardest, who had no option to work from home, when home in lockdown was a fraught and cramped space with no privacy, who are now feeling acutely the rising cost of food and fuel. The very least the Church can say is “we’re with you” – and walk with them on a path to a better life.

This vision for Christian humanism emerged in the mid-20th century and informed so much of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. The Compendium puts it this way: “God in Christ redeems not only the individual person but also the social relations existing between men” (para 52). The Church aims at a “complete form of humanism…that is to say a liberation from everything that oppresses man” (para 82). The role of the Church community then becomes the transformation of relationships which are out of kilter with God’s loving plan, beginning with the person’s relationship with God (formation) and then the social relationships between us, and now, with the emphasis of Pope Francis since Laudato Si, our relationship with the earth our common home. All of this is connected in a vision of integral ecology. Right relations. The role of the Church community, then, “brought together by the message of Jesus Christ and gathered in the Holy Spirit round the Risen Lord” is to be “catalysts for the redemption and transformation of social relationships” (para 52). The common good viewed as the creation of just relationships in love.

Let me give you one example to make this a bit more concrete. Fatima House in Birmingham is a former presbytery from the days when parishes had six or seven priests serving a large Catholic population. A few years ago, the one priest left in the large parish house, inspired by Pope Francis, transformed the place into a refuge for destitute female asylum seekers. These are women who have often been abused, exploited and trafficked. Many do not speak English and are often separated from their children. They are destitute because they have been refused asylum in a system which is deliberately hostile to refugees. When their case has been refused, they have no recourse to public funds. They are on the very margins of viable life.

Fatima House is run by two lay Columban missionaries, Mauricio and Nathalie. When a group of us visited a few years ago, we prayed with them and shared a simple meal and talked about the project. We didn’t meet any of the women the house serves. Their privacy is paramount. Most of the women are Muslim so out of respect to them, the only room with any Catholic imagery was the small sitting room where we met. Mauricio and Nathalie were the face of Christ to those vulnerable and rejected women and at the same time, although they only said this to us, not them, in the women they served they encountered Christ, as truly as they encountered him in the Eucharist or the word of God.

What has been created in places like Fatima House is community, a common good, which resembles the kingdom of God. It is a community of welcome, generosity and compassion. Of accompaniment and advocacy support in navigating a complex and impersonal system. It is being together the way Jesus taught his disciples to be together. Not in rivalry, not wasting time about arguing who is the greatest, but serving, washing each other’s feet. This, for Pope Francis, is what the kerygma, the essence of Christianity is about. “At the very heart of the Gospel is life in community and engagement with others. The content of the first proclamation has an immediate moral implication centred on charity” (EG, 177). Places like Fatima House show what this looks like in practice. To be there is to be moved, to feel the Spirit of God at work in the world. This is the kind of structure of solidarity by which the Church responds to the structures of sin.

This vision of integral salvation has its roots in sacred scripture. I’d like to have a closer look at that. It is noticeable how little reference there is to scripture in the Common Good document, perhaps assuming that that work had been done in the papal encyclicals referenced. Even in those encyclicals, scripture seems limited to short proof text quotations. As far as I’m aware, an innovation in the encyclical tradition of Catholic Social Teaching is the extended meditation by Pope Francis on the Good Samaritan in Fratelli Tutti. There is a generosity and vulnerability about this reading. There is no sense in which what is being offered is a definitive and closed reading of the text – it is after all a parable – but the fruits of inspired reflection offered for the sustenance and further reflection of the community. A parable can work on our imaginations in ways which rational argument cannot. In the image of John Cassian, the soil of our hearts is turned over by the plough of the gospel.

In that spirit, and encouraged by the 1996 document’s description of CST as not just a textual but an oral tradition, “lived and living” (para 28) I’d like to offer a brief reading of Luke 4: 1-30 the Nazareth Manifesto, which by happy coincidence we are sandwiched between in the Third and Fourth Sundays in Ordinary Time in Year C. For this reading I’m leaning heavily on the scripture scholar Kenneth E. Bailey, and his inspiring close contextual reading of the text in, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. I offer this not just as foundational for our understanding of integral salvation but also as a way into the consideration of the contested nature of the common good in our context.

Bailey provides us with the context for this passage, the longest treatment in the synoptics of the inauguration of the public ministry of Jesus. Following his baptism, when he knew who he was – “My Son, the Beloved” (Luke 3:22) and the temptation in the wilderness when he knew what his mission was not, that is a worldly mission in pursuit of power and privilege – Jesus returns to his hometown in Nazareth to announce what his messianic mission is all about. There is no mention of Nazareth in the Old Testament. The settlement is known to have sprung up in the second century BC following the Maccabean conquest of Galilee. Then as now the idea was to create “facts on the ground” as part of a strategy to reclaim “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 9:1). It was in other words a “settler town” an all-Jewish conservative enclave. Further evidence for this is that following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD one of the displaced twenty-four courses of priests from the temple, now refugees, settled in Nazareth. Bailey argues that it had to have been a conservative all-Jewish town for this to happen. When Jesus returns, he is invited to read in the synagogue and is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He reads from the beginning of Chapter 61, but his (or Luke’s) careful editing of that text not only enrages his audience but announces clearly the dimensions of the good news.

Jesus stops his reading from Isaiah with the phrase, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” leaving out the second part of the verse, “and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2). Bailey argues that the phrase “All spoke well of him” in 4:22 could just as easily be translated as its opposite. The original Greek sentence does not have “for” or “against” in the text. The context, Bailey and others argue, strongly suggests against. Part of the messianic hopes of the community was vengeance on their Gentile neighbours and a life of greater prosperity with Gentiles as their labourers. The Targum – the more expansive Aramaic translation of scripture from the first century makes this clear. The Aramaic version of Isaiah 61: 6-7 reads, “You shall eat the possessions of the Gentiles…Instead of your being ashamed and confounded, two for one the benefits I promise you…and the Gentiles will be ashamed who were boasting in their lot.” Joachim Jeremias concludes that, “from the outset unanimous rage was their response to the message of Jesus. The good news was their stumbling block, principally because Jesus had removed vengeance on the Gentiles from the picture of the future” (p. 151). When Jesus goes on to provide two examples of faith from the Gentiles and not from their own faith lineage they are enflamed into a lynch mob and seek to throw Jesus, the scapegoat, over the cliff, but he evades them.

What we see here is a community with a vision for its common good which is based on ethnic purity and the enslavement of their neighbours. It is a binary arrangement. We are who we are because we are not them. Jesus came from this environment, he was Joseph’s son, he should have known all this, the logic runs, so for him to refute this vision can only end in scapegoating in order to restore the unity of the group. The good news Jesus offers is not vengeance on enemies, not material benefits and the bestowal of land. The messiah has three tasks, set out in a rhetorical pattern of five lines which Bailey argues illustrates what is central to the mission:

To bring good news to the poor

…to proclaim release to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To let the oppressed go free,

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Luke 4: 18-19

Those five lines are clustered into three ideas, or messianic tasks, with lines one and five matching (proclamation), lines two and four matching (justice advocacy) and line three, recovery of sight to the blind, or compassion, in the centre. So is the salvation on offer from sin or from oppressive social and economic circumstances? The text suggests both. In lines one and five, the good news is for the poor, the “anawim”, the humble and pious who seek God, and for the ones who will be liberated in the Jubilee year, the year of the Lord’s favour, when debts will be cancelled, prisoners set free and slaves released. In lines two and four, justice advocacy, line four is imported from Isaiah 58:6 – let the oppressed go free.

The full verse is the one where the Lord expresses displeasure with empty pious gestures and says the “fast” he wants is to loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free. The restoration of right relations, social justice, or what Bailey calls justice advocacy. The middle line, the rhetorical centre, the heart of the messianic mission, is “recovery of sight to the blind” (4:18). The original Hebrew literally reads, “The opening – to those who are bound.” The Qumran community and the Septuagint translation introduced the link to illumination as part of this liberation. Bailey concludes that “this compassionate act (of the opening of the eyes of the blind) is at the centre of the messianic agenda delineated in this carefully edited Old Testament text” (p. 161).

An act of compassion, or love, is placed at the centre of the list comprised of proclamation, justice advocacy and compassion. The challenge for the Church in every age is to keep this holistic package together. Only together in their Christological setting might they achieve their full healing power.

Proclamation on its own can become hollow and remote, all words no action. Justice advocacy on its own can become functional, coercive, a mere calculation of distribution. Even compassion on its own is not enough without a compelling vision of human flourishing (proclamation) and an understanding of how best love might be organised, to use the memorable phrase of Pope Benedict XVI.

Anna Rowlands, in her reading of St Thomas Aquinas, puts it this way: “Whilst Aquinas argues that charity (caritas) acts as the framework for all virtues, justice acts as the framework for the moral virtues. As such, justice paves the way for the order that makes peace possible; charity (caritas) makes peace a reality, but justice paves its way.” (p. 139). Or, as she puts it early on in the book, “love must witness to justice where it is absent” (p.7). In the episode in Nazareth, Jesus confronted a vision of the common good which was based on a closed cultural identity, on what would be received in material benefits in the messianic age. Jesus shifts the message to this is what you are expected to give. Bailey sums it up as Jesus saying, “I am the anointed one…and to follow me you must engage (with me) in proclamation, justice advocacy and compassion” (p.162).

This same trilogy is found in the formulation in Gaudium et Spes used to describe social life, or social ties which advance the common good. This kind of social life must be “founded on truth (proclamation), built on justice (Justice advocacy) and animated by love (compassion): in freedom it should grow every day towards a more humane balance” (G&S, 26). In his social encyclicals, Pope Francis, in the face of what he sees as endemic social violence, the result of grasping and possessiveness, of not recognising gift, of seeking to extract value from that which is gift (the person, nature) emphasises the need for social friendship. St Paul calls his Christian community in Corinth ambassadors for Christ and ministers of reconciliation. Christ’s redemptive act has “loosed” us from the bonds of sin and the distorted and exploitative relationships which result. The good news we offer is that there is another way to be human, another way to belong in community, which is not based on rivalry and violence, demeaning many for the sake of the few; another way to be free, which has nothing to do with personal gain and consumer choice, or escape from pluralist societies. The freedom of the children of God is found in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, in a life of self-giving for the good of others, content with what we need to live on so that others may live well too; a life which is committed to social justice within the scope of the gifts we bring to the body of Christ.

*

What injustice looks like will of course still be contested. Catholic social teaching does not direct us to specific answers for specific times. The 1996 document acknowledges that CST is not a list of Dos and Don’ts or a blueprint for a perfect society but rather “signposts suggesting the way forward or a set of questions suggesting the way forward” (Introduction). It is an invitation to discernment, in the light of the Gospel, in good conscience, guided by the tradition of the Church, the Big Church, what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. At the heart of that belief is the dignity of the person, as the document says, “The Catholic social vision has as its focal point the human person, the clearest reflection of God among us” (para 12). It should not stretch our imaginations too far to agree when the dignity of the human person is being undermined.

Last week saw the publication of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual report, UK Poverty 2022, which stated that 14 million people in the UK – 1 in 5 – were living in relative income poverty. This is not a party political point since that proportion has been relatively similar during different administrations. The metrics will be contested but anyone who has any contact with the reality of living on benefits, on low or precarious income, or those who depend on food banks, or need to choose between food and heating, will know there is a scandalous situation in this country.

The Church is called upon not only to pray in the face of suffering, not only to express solidarity, not only to relieve poverty, but as Pope Francis said so clearly in Evangelii Gaudium, to work “to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor” (para 188). That will bring down upon us the sophisticated wrath of those who are well served by the status quo. We will be accused of meddling in politics and told to stick to religion, but politics is exactly where we should be. Not rosette-wearing party politics, but what Pope Francis calls big P politics, the common good of the polis, the welfare of the city. We need to find again a confident prophetic voice that will speak on behalf of those who are afflicted and advocate a better social order.

Our understanding of the reality of poverty is greatly enhanced by encounter, by actually knowing and meeting and walking with those who experience poverty. The increasing tendency to build ‘gated communities’ and closed enclaves of privilege will only exacerbate division and deepen the culture of indifference which Pope Francis warns against. And you don’t need to live behind electric gates and high walls to be ‘fortified’ against the harsh reality of poverty. You just need to walk past it on the other side of the road, or more probably drive past it unawares. Colin Ridgway is a Joseph Rowntree Foundation expert by lived experience. In a recent blog he describes his daily circumstances:

“I’m sitting here in a t-shirt, hoody and two dressing gowns writing this. The alarm on my phone just went off to remind me it was time to switch off the heating from its second half-hour run of the day. In the past I used to dread the alarm going off for work, now my heart drops as I realise I’ve got about 15 mins of warmth left before I start to feel the chill again. It’s not like I’m extravagant with my heating. I set it at 16C or 18C when it’s really cold out, and I’m happy, but even that’s not affordable. I find myself following the weather forecast hoping for mild at least.”

The Common Good document does not contain the voices of lived experience, but then neither do the papal encyclicals on Catholic Social Teaching. It wasn’t a feature of the teaching Church, although again we seem to be on the verge of a change of era with the synod, this new way of being Church, which insists that the voices of those who live on the “spiritual, social, economic, political, geographical, and existential peripheries of our world” (Vade Mecum, 1.4) are listened to and are part of the discernment of the signs of the times. The 1996 document defines the common good as “the whole network of social conditions which enable human individuals and groups to flourish and live a fully, genuinely human life, otherwise described as ‘integral human development’. All are responsible for all, at the level of society or nation, not only as individuals” (para 48).

What the social conditions look like which enable flourishing should not simply be a matter for the ones who enjoy good social conditions to determine for those who do not. It is also a contested space. In recent years, one reaction to the impact of neoliberal globalised economics on communities has been a retreat into an understanding of the common good which promotes a closed culture as being in the best interest of its members, an exclusive strategy which regards the influx of people as a threat and dilution, not enrichment. It is an attempt to retrieve community, but community as closed and aggressive in its preservation of identity. Very much like the community at Nazareth which Jesus enraged with an alternative vision.

As we look to the social mission of the Church in a world shaken by the pandemic, a once in a generation event which exposed not only inequality but also the fraternity which lay dormant under the surface of our modern lives, let us not lose hope. The Church has the Spirit of Christ with us always to animate, inspire and renew. There is good news in the Church, as well as the bad news which can be so deflating. The 1996 document ended with an Appendix called Catholic resources which provided a snapshot of social action across the agencies and charities of the Church. The bishops had just created the Catholic Agency for Social Concern, one of the predecessors of CSAN. At the time CASC was about to carry out a “social audit” to capture the depth and detail of the social action in the Church.

A new social audit is a priority for us at CSAN as we seek to tell that story to this generation. I know already from my first few months in this job that there is a powerful story to tell across our 54 member charities, including 17 diocesan Caritas agencies in England and Wales; also charities working with the victims of trafficking and modern slavery, working with and advocating for refugees and asylum seekers, seeking out rough sleepers, guiding them towards pathways of personal renewal, working with families in difficulty, married couples whose relationships are under strain, prisoners and their families, the elderly and those in care, adults with learning difficulty. Thousands of staff and volunteers working to make our communities more humane, more fraternal, more just, peaceful and loving. For them the common good is not a theory, but a vision, and a lived reality. And we need help, more volunteers, more resources, more formation, more leadership, more amplification of the message of social evangelisation.

The document’s final rallying cry needs to be heard again, now more than ever, “We urge the Catholic people of England and Wales to take up the challenge of applying to our society all the principles of Catholic Social Teaching that we have outlined, and thus to advance the common good in collaboration with likeminded citizens of every political and religious adherence” (para 120).