The World as It Could Be:Catholic Social Thought for a New Generation

Fr. Thomas Williams's new book is a must read for those who desire to understand the Social Doctrine of the Church

That, in a nutshell, is what the Catholic Social Doctrine is-bringing the Light of Christ-into the entirety of social life, from the highest chambers of government into the darkest corners of the world. And that is the thrust of Father Thomas D. Williams's new book on Catholic social thought entitled The World as It Could Be: Catholic Social Thought for a New Generation, and published by Crossroads.  It is Fr. Williams's effort to get the best kept secret out into the world.

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - "Take care, then, that the light in you not become darkness," Jesus said.  "If your whole body is full of light, and no part of it is in darkness, then it will be as full of light as a lamp illuminating you with its brightness."  (Luke 11:35-36).  Though Jesus was talking about the individual human soul, that same doctrine may be applied to the body politic which Plato described as the soul writ large, and even civil society as a whole, which is the soul writ larger still.

That, in a nutshell, is what the Catholic Social Doctrine is-bringing the Light of Christ-into the entirety of social life, from the highest chambers of government into the darkest corners of the world. And that is the thrust of Father Thomas D. Williams's new book on Catholic social thought entitled The World as It Could Be: Catholic Social Thought for a New Generation, and published by Crossroads.  It is Fr. Williams's effort to get the best kept secret out into the world.

Fr. Williams, of course, is eminently qualified to write on the subject.  He is professor of the topic at Rome's Regina Apostolorum University, and has written numerous books and articles on this subject.  He is the author of Who is My Neighbor? perhaps the best treatment of human rights in English written from a Catholic philosophical perspective.

Though one cannot characterize Fr. Williams's book as a methodological and synthetic introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine from A to B, it remains a valuable introduction to contemporary, even cutting-edge, Catholic social thought.  It pays heavy emphasis on the unique contribution given to Catholic Social Doctrine by Pope Benedict XVI.

The book comes with impressive encomia: Mary Ann Glendon, Kenneth L. Grasso, Charles J. Chaput, George Cardinal Bell, and even the recently-converted Newt Gingrich.  "Fr. Williams writes with verve and clarity," Ms. Glendon writes, "on the development of doctrine in fields as diverse as the legitimate use of force, global governance, and the challenge of scientific advances that have run ahead of moral reflection."  And she is right.

The book is composed of a series of twelve chapters, largely the result of Fr. Williams's prior work, but they are stitched together with sufficient deftness so as to appear to be of one seamless cloth.  The text itself is not long-only 186 pages not including notes-, and so it will not frighten away the neophyte to the subject who wants to learn more.

Some of the matters it handles in great depth include the notion of the "common good" as understood in Catholic thought, and how that concept is distinguished from the opposite errors of the individualism of modern liberalism and the collectivism of Communism and Socialism.  In explaining the notion of the common good, Fr. Williams focuses on Pope John Paul II's theory of Thomistic personalism, and he draws from Pope John Paul II's works both as Cardinal Wojtyla and as Pope John Paul II. 

Fr. Williams has a chapter devoted to human dignity, a word and a concept that, like the term "human rights," has sort of been piratized.  The concept of human dignity as misused by those without an adequate understanding has led to the point where it has become "a concept . . . so amorphous and malleable as to justify nearly anything."  Fr. Williams seeks to recover the term and disabuse those "discontents" who either mischaracterize the term or those who-because that term has been so mischaracterized-have grown suspicious of it.

Fr. Williams also focuses on the "life issues."  One of Fr. Williams's more important and developed chapters is his treatment on abortion.  He insists that abortion be viewed as a social justice issue, and not a matter of private morality alone.  He seeks to give emphasis the Church's teaching on abortion so as to make it the social issue of our time, since the presence of abortion directly harms human rights, human dignity, and the common good.  He devotes another chapter to the issue of capital punishment where he gives a well-balanced treatment of the historical development of the Church's position on the death penalty, and presents a fair and faithful treatment of the current state of the Church's teaching on that subject. 

As a predicate to the issue of capital punishment, Fr. Williams has a rather interesting chapter in the devoted to the issue of violence generally.  The issue of violence and its applicability to social life is particularly important in handling the problem of Islam, and what many see as its endemic violence.  He flirts with the issue of violence and Islam, raising some interesting issues, but never addresses the issue head on.

The book also contains treatments of multiculturalism, political correctness, economic development, distributive justice, and issues of global governance (which is to be distinguished from "world government") and the universal common good.  The popular notions of these areas often give Catholics on the political right heartburn, and Catholics on the political left false confirmation.  Fr. Williams's treatment transcends notions of political right and political left, seeks to disabuse both the left and right of their wrongful perceptions, and gives a balanced presentation which goes beyond political visions, offering something refreshingly Catholic.

Fr. Williams handles the issue of religious freedom in two chapters, entitling one "'Tolerance' and Religious Liberty" and the other "A Case for Religious 'Discrimination.'"  In these two chapters, Fr. Williams navigates between the Scylla of religious libertinism, relativism, and indifferentism and the Charybdis of a confessional state.  The latter chapter particularly is a welcome corrective to false notions of "religious freedom" which are used to justify all sorts of moral enormities.

Perhaps most valuable in this book is Fr. Williams's treatment of the effect that Pope Benedict XVI has made to Catholic Social Doctrine.  He has devoted his last two chapters to this topic, "Deus Caritas Est and Catholic Social Thought" and "A Paradigm Shift?"  If one had to put Pope Benedict XVI's contribution in a word, it would be dualism: Church and State, Law and Morals, Reason and Faith, Justice and Charity.

Interestingly, it is Fr. Williams's argument that Pope Benedict XVI focuses not so much on the hackneyed and abused term "social justice" whose thrust has been largely aimed toward economic justice.  Rather, he focuses on the dual notions of "charity and truth" and the much broader notion of "integral human development" which, while not neglecting economic injustice, includes the broader life issues that are so important in our day.  This represents, in Fr. Williams's view, a "paradigm shift" in Catholic Social Doctrine whose future effects will be one can only speculate.

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Andrew M. Greenwell is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas, practicing in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He is married with three children.  He maintains a blog entirely devoted to the natural law called Lex Christianorum.  You can contact Andrew at agreenwell@harris-greenwell.com.

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