Options for the Poor: A Catholic Social Thought Perspective

The assignment content emphasizes the importance of creating opportunities for the poor and suppressed to flourish. It highlights God's significance in providing resources for those who are needy and vulnerable. The content also stresses the need for equal participation from every individual in social activities, stewardship of creation, solidarity with others, and human flourishing and common good. According to Catholic Social Thoughts, these principles should be adapted in everyday life to ensure a meaningful existence and contribution to community development.

Running head: CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
Self and Community: Exploring the Anatomy of Modern Society
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CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
Principles of Catholic Social Thoughts
Catholic Social Thoughts (CST) is not only the catholic social thoughts by the higher
authorities of Christian institution but also includes significant social thinking. The principles
have existed for more than two thousand years but the first documented proof is dated back to
1891 (Catholicsocialteaching.org.uk, 2017). The nine principles of are interpreted and discussed
below in contemporary social setting.
Dignity of human
Dignity of human serves as the primary platform on which other principles of Catholic
Social Thoughts are relying. Catholic social teaching tells us that God is the original creator and
human’s likeness encouraged him to imprint himself in the human form (Thiselton, 2015). That
reflects how every human is valuable and deserves great respect. The obsession with earthly
objects often misguides us to follow the path of disrespect of human dignity. The dignity of
sacred human must not get exploited or manipulated. Every human being is equal to god and this
principle teaches us to form our voice against the global equality in various aspects of life.
Present day human rights issues reflect this catholic principle clearly. However the catholic
social teaching follows certain decisions about issues like euthanasia or abortion as these deals
with starting and ending of life.
Community and Common good
The coming of digital era and globalization has promoted the concept of individualism
greatly. Though by definition individualism is embracing one’s individual freedom but in reality
it is focusing more on selfish practice. This principle of catholic social thoughts is working to

CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
preserve and promote the common good of all human beings not just for individuals (Engelland,
2014). This principle states that the common good binds both the individual and community for a
common purpose. Human being is social and sacred and in order to survive successfully he needs
others. The social unity cannot be ignored by an individual. Every individual must contribute to
the society based on his knowledge and capability. The common good lies in the common area
that exists in between two extremes such as extreme individualism and collectivism like
communism (Bretherton, 2016). The wellbeing of the entire human race should be the aim of
human responsibility. The interdependence is getting more complicated because of the complex
nature of the society. This transnational quality eliminates the individuality and establishes
equality in society’s every segment.
Goods for Universal purpose
In the catholic doctrine every good of God’s creation possesses individual right but
serves a common purpose (Stabile, 2006). God has not only created the society for individual to
inhabit but also the power for them to take care of his creations. The wellbeing of everything and
everyone must be taken care of by everyone. The ultimate purpose of all of Good’s goods is the
human development. The ideal world where the exchange of benefit is mutual and everyone
experiences the progress is desired as the destination. The individual and the community can
achieve the destination if they work together and for each other by fulfilling the purposes of
God’s creations.
Promotion for Peace
Catholic Social Thoughts demonstrates peace as a social condition where under the
guidance of God every human soul is living in harmony with dignity and all his creations are

CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
orderly placed. The just war theory is followed by the Catholic belief which explains the
necessity of war in order to reestablish the global peace (Rubio, 2016). There war theory in
connection with promotion for peace contradicts the extreme pacifism or realism. Some promote
war just to engage in violence and gain power over others and on the other hand realism
promotes war as a tool for surviving. The doctrine often gets criticism because of its support of
war but it stresses the cause to be the restoration of world peace.
Subsidiarity
The principle of subsidiarity is one of the significant catholic social thoughts. This
principle states that every activity that can be done by a decentralized smaller organization
should not be accomplished by any large or complex organization (McCann, 2014). This catholic
teaching contradicts the government or large corporate organization’s desire to centralize. The
individual actions, interstate activities and national acts should be taken care of the federal
government, but the internal state of the community must not be affected in the process. The
subsidiarity helps to balance the government policies with individual action focusing on the
improvement of the society as a whole.
Options for the poor
The catholic social thoughts encourage us to make situations where poor and suppressed
must be given opportunities to flourish. The poor are the most needy and vulnerable members of
the society. The nation’s conscience must focus on the need off the poor. The government must
ensure that the public policies are in favor of the poor. Creating the option for poor does not
mean dividing the humans in different groups, rather all groups within the community must work
collaboratively for the development of the poor which eventually develop the society as a whole.

CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
God does not want any poor soul to experience the same suffering as he did. Nobody offered him
food when he was hungry or cloth when he was naked (Catholic.net 2017). To him this is the
basic human need and must be offered by them who have the resources. God gives most
significance to the healing of poor’s pain and suffering and proclaims that the ignorant and
opportunists will experience great punishment because of their selfish acts.
Participation
The cultural, political and economic aspect of the society can develop significantly by
equal participation from every individual. Every human being is entitled to participate equally in
all the social activities. Every human being has the responsibility to act as active participants
instead of passive observers. We are all God’s children, so it is our responsibility to take care of
each other as brothers or sisters. Our active participation ensures the positive socio-economic,
political or cultural change in the society (Kearns, 2014).
Stewardship
The environment we inhabit is a created and provided to us by God. All the living and
non living beings on earth are God’s creation. We are all interdependent and inter connected to
each other and we have responsibilities for each other especially towards the needy and poor.
Through creation God makes his presence felt to everyone and stewardship is taking care of
those creations (Sison, Ferrero & Guitián, 2016). However that does not give us any authority to
manipulate the creations as only God holds the complete power over the whole of humanity.

CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
Solidarity
Christian ethics gives immense importance to solidarity. Solidarity increases the visibility
of others and binds every one and nations together. The solidarity cannot be achieved if such
barriers related to religion, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality or economic status is not
eliminated (Beyer, 2014). The God’s purpose of developing common good for everyone will be
hampered if the one ignores the solidarity by acting indifferently towards other’s pain and
suffering. We have to do our parts of the job responsibly and ensure the common good of the
society.
Human Flourishing and Common Good
We are all social creature by nature. A person’s existence is meaningless without the
presence of other. The Catholic Social Thoughts should be adapted in our everyday life to ensure
our meaningful existence in the world and contribution to the development of the community.
Humans are social beings so we cannot flourish without each other. According to Aristotle
humans can live virtuous life through flourishing (Tablan, 2015). Individual should have the
access to all the physiological and emotional resources. In the catholic tradition the human and
community flourishing is at the centre of development and through flourishing only the common
good can be achieved (Wallis, 2013).
Catholic social thoughts and flourishing of self and community
The discussed nine principles of the catholic social doctrine offer us strength and
nourishment in the maintenance of all the relationships. The flourishing of self is dependent of
the flourishing of the community. Both the self and community should participate actively for
improving the whole society. The ultimate good is achievable only when there is our active

CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
participation and solidarity as the Catholic Social Thoughts teaches us. As the God has claimed,
if we fail to resist ourselves from committing the similar sins and overlook the suffering or poor
we are bound to get punished. This will eventually cause great harm for our society.
Reference
Beyer, G. J. (2014). The meaning of solidarity in Catholic social teaching. political
theology, 15(1), 7-25.
Bretherton, L. (2016). Democracy, society and truth: an exploration of Catholic social
teaching. Scottish Journal of Theology, 69(3), 267-280.
Catholicsocialteaching.org.uk (2017). Catholic Social Teaching. Retrieved 11 September 2017,
from http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/principles/history/
Engelland, B. T. (2014). Religion, humanism, marketing, and the consumption of socially
responsible products, services, and ideas: Introduction to a special topic section. Journal
of Business Research, 67(2), 1-4.
Kearns, A. J. (2014). Catholic social teaching as a framework for research ethics. Journal of
Academic Ethics, 12(2), 145-159.
McCann, D. P. (2014). Who is responsible for the common good? Catholic social teaching and
the praxis of subsidiarity. In The common good: Chinese and American perspectives (pp.
261-289). Springer Netherlands.

CST, SELF AND COMMUNITY
Rubio, J. H. (2016). The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the
Praxis of Human Rights by Meghan J. Clark. Journal of the Society of Christian
Ethics, 36(2), 227-229.
Sison, A. J. G., Ferrero, I., & Guitián, G. (2016). Human dignity and the dignity of work:
Insights from Catholic social teaching. Business Ethics Quarterly, 26(4), 503-528.
Stabile, S. J. (2006). CST 101: basic principles of Catholic Social Thought. Review of
Business, 27(2), 7.
Tablan, F. (2015). Catholic social teachings: Toward a meaningful work. Journal of Business
Ethics, 128(2), 291-303.
Thiselton, A. C. (2015). The Image and the Likeness of God: A Theological Approach. The
Emergence of Personhood: A Quantum Leap, 184-201.
Wallis, J.(2013). On God's side: What religion forgets and politics hasn't learned about serving
the common good. christianaudio.
What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me. (2017). Catholic.net.
Retrieved 11 September 2017, from http://catholic.net/op/articles/452/cat/1187/what-
you-did-not-do-for-one-of-these-least-ones-you-did-not-do-for-me.html