Book Review

Radicals and conscience-wrestlers

Catholic Social Justice: theological and practical explorations

Because it is not easy to arouse public interest in documents of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, the publishers of Catholic Social Justice must be cock-a-hoop at the reaction to this collection of essays under the auspices of the bishops' domestic social agency Caritas. "English bishops attack the Pope!" is the cry on the blogosphere. The "Catholic Action UK" website is even calling on its faithful to denounce the bishops of England and Wales to Rome.

The main excitement turns on an essay by the liberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya, who was excommunicated in 1997 but who (as the blogs do not generally remind us) had his excommunication lifted a year later. Excommunications of theologians are medicinal in nature and purpose: they can be and are lifted either when theologians, or the Magisterium itself (as happened at the Second Vatican Council), modify their understanding; so it is hard to imagine why, a priori, a book with a foreword by Christopher Budd, the Bishop of Plymouth, that includes an essay by a de-excommunicated theologian could be deemed subversive of the Magisterium. But it is equally mystifying that the editors should want to include an essay by an otherwise unexceptional theologian. Hans Küng, who is also in this collection, has never had his licence to teach restored, but he is, at least, a very interesting theologian; and the Pope - who had tea with his old classmate shortly after the conclave in 2005 - is unlikely to be greatly disturbed by the Swiss academic's impressive, if characteristically rambling, thoughts here on ethical economics.

So what's the fuss? Balasuriya has written a respectful, if pedestrian, liberationist critique of Deus Caritas Est in which he claims that the Church has failed to admit its own complicity in injustice, and failed to hallow the martyrs who spoke out against it. The essay is predictable and often annoying: the Church "joined the ruling state powers" under Constantine and became part of an ideology of patriarchy and colonialism, etc. etc. For 1,500 years, Fr Balasuriya claims, the Church's ministry of charity was conceived as social

service rather than reforming social action. This is absurd: what of the great social Catholic movements, inspired by papal encyclicals, which swept across western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, demanding just wages and the right to unionise, and condemning the Manchester school of economics?

There is even more silliness when Balasuriya puts inverted commas around the word "terrorist" to describe the 9/11 attacks - punctuation marks that may be obligatory in the theologian's home of Sri Lanka, where the Tamils struggle for a homeland, but are grotesque in this context. Some basic editing might have paid off here, as it would elsewhere in Catholic Social Justice ("Poto Allegre", for example, is not a city any Brazilian would recognise).

The other contentious essay is by Philomena Cullen, Caritas' social-policy coordinator, a work that has been denounced by The Daily Telegraph's Damian Thompson as "sub-Marxist" for its proposition that the "evolving Catholic tradition" needs now to embrace "an open family ideology rooted in a feminist perspective". Her idea, I think, is that the Church needs to be open to families as they now are - the Church "must now be prepared to entertain a discourse of family that is not dependent on a prior theology of marriage" - which is fair enough pastorally, but it's not clear what use the Church would be to anybody if it junked its centuries of insights on the subject.

Radical uncertainty seems to be built into Cullen's very language, no doubt because "the postmodern shift in consciousness invites us to see our experience and understanding as perspectival". But it's hard to imagine the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith understanding, let alone fretting over, her proposition that feminism "seeks to offer from amongst the ruins of romanticised idolatrous family worship a framework of gender justice within which the diversity of families that flourish in postmodern Britain today can be challenged and changed".

But elsewhere there are helpful essays written in transparent English, many of which bring new goods to a well-worn table. Bernard Hoose makes use of St Teresa of Avila to warn us to be attentive to motivations - a pro-life campaigner might be merely an anti-abortionist, driven to avenge - through prayer and relationships.

Peter Phan writes intelligently on Christian social spirituality, and uses his expertise on Asia to illustrate the dilemmas of a Church expanding among the poor. Gerard Mannion gives a fine summary of Catholic social teaching, linking "authentic existence" with living out human dignity in the face of the often dehumanising world of work - which must sometimes mean taking a stand against the regime of accountants and shareholders. It is also good to have Jayne Hoose on leisure, the advocacy of which she rightly criticises the modern Church for downplaying; but it is odd that she does not point out that leisure is a key demand of Rerum Novarum. 

The best essays here are from the frontline. The MP John Battle gives a magisterial and characteristically positive vision of politics from a Catholic standpoint, while Jim Richards writes authoritatively on the rights of the child - one of the best summaries of the subject I have seen. Also fine is Sir Stephen Wall, former adviser both to Tony Blair and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Wall elegantly lays out the dilemmas of being a Catholic public advocate, one whose conscience must wrestle with and weigh up the demands of Church and constituency, dogma and the common good.

After a neat discussion of the difficulties of Catholic politicians and abortion in the US, he describes, vividly, his own conscience-wrestling over the Iraq war while in Downing Street (he wishes now that he had publicly opposed it), and his time as ambassador to the EU representing a country which played fast and loose with its international obligations. His is a robust defence of the role of conscience tempered by humility: St Peter, he recalls, "cowered in the upper room until the Holy Spirit filled him with divine fire. I take comfort from that." This is stylish writing from the heights of Church and State.

In response to the furore on the internet, the director of Caritas-Social Action has said that the essays were intended to "provoke debate" and did not represent the opinions of the bishops. But then, why publish it under the auspices of Caritas, which is an agency of the bishops' conference?

If this volume merited publication - which, on balance, it just about does - why did it need to come out "in association with Caritas", and presumably part-paid for by Catholic congregations? Its marketing (and the inclusion of Balasuriya) has handed the self-appointed inquisitors not only the firewood, but the matches too. And yet, without the heat, we might hardly have noticed it.

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