March this year marked the golden anniversary of Popularum Progressio (The Development of Peoples), Pope (now Blessed) Paul VI’s Encyclical where he specified in detail the meaning of “integral development” as the “development of every man and of the whole man”. Moved by prevalent issues of his time, such as global inequality and systemic injustices, as he saw in his visits to different European and Latin American countries, Blessed Paul VI appealed for the eradication of both social and economic oppressions and reminded all to recognize the common threads that unite humanity in this world of finite resources. Much more than economic growth, he emphasized that development must also be geared toward the holistic growth of every person.
Pope Francis further proposed that it is about “integrating different peoples of the earth. The duty of solidarity obliges us to seek just ways of sharing so that there is not the dramatic inequality between those that have too much and those that have nothing, between those that discard and those that are discarded”.
Indeed, in those 50 years, the timeless vision of Popularum Progressio continued to be of deep concern to the Catholic Church and was revisited by Saint John Paul II’s Solicitudo rei Socialis in 1987 and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s reflection in Caritas in Veritate (2009), as well as Pope Francis’s Evangeli Gaudium (2013) and Laudato Si (2015), in which he called for a true and renewed human development.
In this present time social justice is an imperative, and the need for social transformation is made more urgent with so many people experiencing hunger and poverty, particularly with the existence of those who seek a larger share of the benefits of economic development.
Development must not be looked at just from the perspective of economic recovery and growth, not just from the context of technological progress and the workings of the free market but, more important, from the context of Christian social doctrine.
Essential to the attainment of these goals, Francis has clearly stated the moral imperative of ensuring social justice and respect for human dignity. Paul VI 50 years ago recognized that the social question has become worldwide and deplores the cry of anguish of the poor. It is not just certain individuals, but all men are called upon to this fullness of development.
Further, we have to recognize that the most beloved of economic tenets, the “trickle down approach” whereby the pursuit of individuals of their self-interest work out to the benefit of all, is frustrated, because, in today’s world, what happens, in Francis’s words, is an “economy of exclusion” whereby “human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded”.
The Church highlights the imperative of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy, emphasizing that if the market is governed solely by the principle of equivalence in the value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires to function well. The economic system, as stated in Popularum Progression, would benefit from the wide-ranging practice of justice in as much as the first to gain from the development of poor countries would be the rich ones.
Finally, quoting Francis again in his Apostolic Letter, Misericordia et Misera, issued at the close of the Extraordinary Year of Mercy, “the social character of mercy demands that we not simply stand by and do nothing. It requires us to banish indifference and hypocrisy”.
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Paul VI’s Encyclical we must see the imperative of this resounding call for Christian solidarity and uphold the right of all men to live a dignified existence. Otherwise, the world will simply spin down to degradation and inhuman co-existence.