Principles of Catholic Social Thought

Catholic Social Thought 1
Principles of Catholic Social Thought
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Catholic Social Thought 2
Principles of Catholic Social Thought
There are 9 principles of catholic social thought. These principles were developed by
the catholic church. They provide every Christian with the social considerations that they
should make to live a Godly life. All the principles are based on one main principle, that is,
dignity and respect for the human person. This paper is going to focus on five of these
principles. Each of the five principles will be stated, defined and described. In addition, the
paper will provide a personal commentary to help understand the concept of ‘self’. The
commentary will borrow from the principles of catholic social thought.
Dignity of the Human Person
The first principle for catholic social thought is life and dignity of the human person.
The principle means that every human being should be respected. It is impossible to harm a
person that you respect. Respecting others is the duty of all Christians. Every person should
be respected by the virtue of being human. The human person is used to refer to any form of
human life. Therefore, every person should be respected regardless of whether they are an
embryo, a child or an adult. This principle is guided by the belief of the catholic church that
life is sacred (Novak 2017). God created every human being in his own likeness. Due to this
principle, the catholic church does not support any activity that causes harm to human beings
or leads to induced death. Therefore, practices such as abortion, euthanasia and death
penalties are not right for they are disrespectful to the human life (Sison, Ferrero and Guitián
2016.). This is because such practices do not put into consideration that human life is sacred.
Due to this principle, the church calls on all people and nations to maintain peace and avoid
war. This principle could make the world a peaceful and better place to be if it were applied
in all facets of the communities and nations.

Catholic Social Thought 3
Common Good
The principle of common good focuses on the importance of thinking about others in
an endeavour to make the whole community flourish. This principle means that if every
person shifted the focus from self to the community, then the whole community would
develop. Focusing on self only makes a few individuals wealthy and powerful while the
majority suffer. Ensuring common good is a responsibility of all people and nations (Matheny
2016). In addition, the institutions in a country should also work towards ensuring the
common good of the nation. This principle applies to different aspects of human life such as
health, education and spirituality. Let us take an example with a village that has no access to
clean. Suppose a rich individual settle in the area and has the ability of drilling a borehole. If
such an individual would consider the common good, they would allow the other members of
the community to have water from the borehole. If they were to consider their interests only,
then they would keep the water to themselves. Sharing the water with others would ensure
that the whole village gets access to clean water. This may have additional benefits such as
improved health status of the community members. It is important for every person,
institution, organization and government to ensure that they consider the common good in
their policies and decisions (Rubio 2016).
Subsidiarity
The principle of subsidiarity aims at maintaining personal liberty and freedom. The
principle means that it is wrong for state and larger organizations to impose supreme
authority to people since this denies human beings their individual liberty. This principle
emphasizes on the importance of ensuring that activities are performed by the most local of
small groupings possible (McKenna, 2019). The main role of this principle is to discourage
the influence of the state and other large organizations on activities that can be carried out by