Grasping the authentic significance of Centesimus Annus
requires two approaches. First, one must read the encyclical on its own merits,
independently of previous papal teaching. As objectively as possible, one can
exegete its various passages to discern its thrust and priorities. Then one
must read the document in the context of previous social pronouncements by the
magisterium over the past one hundred years and see what new themes, developments,
and directions the present encyclical initiates.
When read for its own sake, Centesimus Annus emerges
as an uncompromising rejection of collectivism in its Marxist, communist, socialist,
and even welfare-statist manifestations. While the encyclical allows for a certain
amount of intervention by the state in such areas as wage levels, social security,
unemployment insurance, and the like (always according to subsidiarity and only
for the sake of the common good), Centesimus Annus also expresses repeated
concern for observing the principle of subsidiarity and warns against the effects
of intervention on both the economic prosperity of a nation and the dignity
and rights of each person.
Centesimus Annus, then, indicates a decided preference
for what it calls the business economy, market economy, or free economy, rooted
in a legal, ethical, and religious framework. While it rejects the notion that
such a free economic system meets all human needs, it distinguishes the economic
system from the ethical and cultural context in which it exists. In this way,
Centesimus Annus can criticize the excesses of materialism and consumerism
and still endorse a free economy as being essentially in accord with Christianity.
A second way of reading this encyclical reveals it as an even
more dramatic document. When it is read with an awareness of modern Roman Catholic
social thought, beginning with Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, its historical
import surfaces. Centesimus Annus demonstrates the greatest depth of
economic understanding and the most deliberate (and least critical) embrace
of the system of free exchange on the part of Catholic teaching authority in
one hundred years, and possibly since the Reformation period. Moreover, it contains
a modern appreciation for the dynamic nature of free exchange and the way in
which wealth is produced.
When seen in this way, Centesimus Annus represents
the beginning of a shift away from the static, zero-sum economic worldview that
led the church to be suspicious of the system of free exchange and to argue
for wealth distribution as the only moral response to poverty. Clearly, John
Paul II has incorporated the developments in economic science since the time
of Keynes. Not only does the encyclical synthesize advances in economics with
Catholic normative principles, but it also reaffirms the autonomy of economics
as a legitimate and positive discipline.
Centesimus Annus indicates a turn toward authentic
human liberty as a principle for social organization on the part of the Catholic
church. Thus a new dialogue has begun. Centesimus Annus has opened the
church to a vigorous dialogue with the idea of economic liberty. It is an idea
that began with Catholic scholarship as seen in the Scholastics; it is fitting
that this pope should retrieve it.
Rev. Robert A. Sirico is a Roman Catholic priest and
the president of the Acton Institute. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming
monograph, Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching: Reflections on Rerum Novarum
and Centesimus Annus (Acton Institute).
