Community Building Versus Institution Building

(From Fr. Ferree’s incomplete manuscript of Forty Years After … A Second Call to Battle, currently in the process of editing and completion by Michael D. Greaney, Director of Research, CESJ)

We have already seen how Pope Pius XI had trouble in promoting his own “corporate” view of Social Justice because of his historical proximity to the “Corporate State” of Mussolini. The same sort of difficulty dogged his steps in the practical implementation of his theories in “Catholic Action.”

What he was really interested in was bringing the informal and largely uncontrollable “natural medium” of every human life under conscious Christian control so as to be able to direct it in Social Justice. Since Mussolini claimed sole and exclusive right to any such effort in the secular order, Pius XI hit upon the idea of doing that he wanted to do under a direct Hierarchical Mandate and thus removing it entirely from Mussolini’s already staked-out claims.

Hence evolved the definition of “Catholic Action” as “the participation of the Laity in the apostolate of the Hierarchy” and the extraordinary insistence on an official Church mandate.

In actual substance, however, everything in Catholic Action except the formal mandate itself pointed in a different direction: the secular Christian’s full and immediate responsibility for all the parameters of his own secular life and the definition of his “lay apostolate” as his own show. Thus, under a highly publicized “mandate” that seemed to put full responsibility in the hands of the (to Mussolini, at least) untouchable hierarchy, the laity were actually being taught under forced draft to stand on their own feet and to act on their own responsibility.

It was, evidently, only a matter of time until leaders so formed found the “mandate” idea in their own lives repugnant. As soon as Mussolini disappeared from the scene, this aspect of Catholic Action began to be attacked as unrealistic — which, of course, it had now become.

Unfortunately, the new leaders thought (especially in the much more “autonomous” later climate of Vatican II) that they would have to get rid not only of the “mandate” idea, but also of the control- and institution-building techniques of Catholic Action itself. They were certainly encouraged in their mistake by the fact that moral theologians had dodged the study of Social Justice and Social Charity, which were what made the techniques necessary in the first place.

Without dwelling on this unfortunate failure, it is sufficient here to call attention to the fact that much of Pius XI’s practical thinking on the realization of Social Justice is to be found in what was then known as “Catholic Action.”

Footnote for Our Day

We might contrast this vision from the past with what has filled the void since it disappeared from the scene. This filling will have been supplied, of course, by the individualistic mindset which Social Justice was supposed to correct, but didn’t — at least not the first time around.

The favorite “social technique” of our own time is the “peaceful” demonstration, especially when media coverage is likely or can be arranged. Subsidiary aspects of the demonstration are boycotts, sit-ins, organized lobbying pressures, single-issue “advocacy” and then — crossing an invisible line which is hard to define and harder still to hold — civil disobedience, violent demonstrations, and, ultimately, terrorism!

Despite the social intent of all such techniques, and their almost universal arrogation to themselves of the terms “Social Justice” or “Justice and Peace,” these techniques are all radically individualistic. There are several criteria which can be applied to test this:

1) They are directed immediately to some specific solution already determined in the mind of the “activist”; they are never a willingness to dialogue with other and differing opinions on what the problem really is.

2) They are always intensely concerned with the methodologies of pressure, not with those of competence in the matter in question.

3) They all require “time out” from the day-to-day social intercourse of life, and raise the question of how many objects one can juggle at any one time without dropping some or all.

4) Any “demonstration” is by definition a demand on someone else to do something. It takes for granted that whatever is wrong is the personal work of someone else, not the common agony of all; and it always knows exactly who and where the someone is.

All this can be summed up in the observation that the “social activist” as we have seen them so far, is an earnest amateur by profession.

This is not to say that such “professional amateurism” is always wrong. It is wrong as a normal methodology. If it obeys the same principles which would permit a just war, or the insurrection against an entrenched tyrant, more power to it! But it is a hopeless and hence unjust substitute for the patient and full-time organization of every aspect of life which we have seen in the necessary implementation of Social Justice and in the now defunct techniques of “Catholic Action.”

Thus, no one who appreciated the concept of Social Justice as it has come from the pen of Pius XI can afford to neglect the study of his parallel concept of Catholic Action. They complete and explain