Religion and Social-political Action: The Catholic Church, Catholic Charities, and the American Welfare State

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Adloff
Author(s):  
Mykhailo Shumylo

The social doctrine of the Catholic Church is an indication of the active involvement of the Church in disseminating the ideas ofthe welfare state and it reflects its attempts to establish ideals of the welfare state through an external influence on the ideology of countriesthat belong to Christendom.Furthermore, one cannot ignore the fact that encyclicals had a direct or indirect influence on the adoption of the first social protectionacts in Catholic Europe where encyclicals played an important role.As a result, the Holy See aligned itself with the labour movement.Considering the fact that papal encyclicals covered the entire Catholic World, these documents can be viewed as an example ofinternational soft law.The first social rights, principles, and values in the area of social protection were enshrined in the encyclicals.Social rights belong to second-generation human rights the legal basis for which comprises international instruments adoptedafter the Second World War (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention for the Protection of Human Rightsand Fundamental Freedoms (1950), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the European SocialCharter (Revised) (1965–1996), the European Code of Social Security (1964), meaning 50 years after these rights were enshrined inpapal encyclicals.There is an indisputable fact that has still not been discussed in scientific research on social protection and according to whichthe social doctrine of the Catholic Church can be viewed as an inherent part of the process of occurrence, formation, and developmentof social protection, and it can be regarded as an ideological framework, a source of social rights and principles of social protection.Considering the above-mentioned findings, the social doctrine of the Catholic Church can be defined as the body of legislationadopted by the Holy See regarding the status and development of social and labour rights, their place in a person’s life and in publiclife. Papal encyclicals form the basis of that legislation and they are addressed to believers, bishops, and archbishops.


Author(s):  
Mykhailo Shumylo

The social doctrine of the Catholic Church is an indication of the active involvement of the Church in disseminating the ideas ofthe welfare state and it reflects its attempts to establish ideals of the welfare state through an external influence on the ideology of countriesthat belong to Christendom.Furthermore, one cannot ignore the fact that encyclicals had a direct or indirect influence on the adoption of the first social protectionacts in Catholic Europe where encyclicals played an important role.As a result, the Holy See aligned itself with the labour movement.Considering the fact that papal encyclicals covered the entire Catholic World, these documents can be viewed as an example ofinternational soft law.The first social rights, principles, and values in the area of social protection were enshrined in the encyclicals.Social rights belong to second-generation human rights the legal basis for which comprises international instruments adoptedafter the Second World War (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention for the Protection of Human Rightsand Fundamental Freedoms (1950), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the European SocialCharter (Revised) (1965–1996), the European Code of Social Security (1964), meaning 50 years after these rights were enshrined inpapal encyclicals.There is an indisputable fact that has still not been discussed in scientific research on social protection and according to whichthe social doctrine of the Catholic Church can be viewed as an inherent part of the process of occurrence, formation, and developmentof social protection, and it can be regarded as an ideological framework, a source of social rights and principles of social protection.Considering the above-mentioned findings, the social doctrine of the Catholic Church can be defined as the body of legislationadopted by the Holy See regarding the status and development of social and labour rights, their place in a person’s life and in publiclife. Papal encyclicals form the basis of that legislation and they are addressed to believers, bishops, and archbishops.


Author(s):  
Nicholas K. Rademacher

Paul Hanly Furfey chose to pursue Social Work in his doctoral studies as a way to best witness to the Christian tradition. As a graduate student, Furfey served in a parish near the university and worked for John O’Grady at Catholic Charities. At Catholic Charities, Furfey became involved in a broader debate over the extent to which Catholic youth should mix with Protestant or secular communities for recreation. Furfey disagreed with Boy Scout leaders who urged Catholics to mix indiscriminately with other children at their camps. Furfey agreed that should Catholics attend BSA camps but only under Catholic auspices. Furfey also disagreed with his Catholic counterpart, Kilian Hennrich of the Catholic Boys Brigade. Hennrich insisted that Catholic boy scouts remain completely separate from non-Catholic institutions where the children might be pulled away from the Catholic Church by Protestant proselytizers or secular indifference. Furfey argued that a compromise was possible in maintaining a Catholic ethos among Catholic boys within a broader secular camping experience. Furfey’s dissertation, later published as a book, The Gang Age, engaged the latest research in the burgeoning field of boyology. His work at the parish and Catholic Charities provided him direct contact with the field.


2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-518
Author(s):  
Christine Ehrick

This article looks at the construction and evolution of Latin America’s first “welfare state” through the lens of social assistance. What one sees in Uruguay during these years is a modernization of paternalism, whereby the state assumed some of the roles previously played by the elite and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church, protecting and assisting society’s “weak” without fundamentally challenging or altering class or gender inequalities or hierarchies. The article focuses on the Asociación La Bonne Garde, a state-subsidized, ostensibly private organization that housed pregnant juveniles and placed them as domestic servants in the homes of the more well-to-do. Exploring the relationships between the elite women who ran this organization, their poor juvenile wards, and state bureaucrats and other reformers illustrates the establishment and evolution of this state-sponsored paternalism as well as the ways in which the young female wards attempted to manipulate this system to their own ends.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Eduardo Acuña Aguirre

This article refers to the political risks that a group of five parishioners, members of an aristocratic Catholic parish located in Santiago, Chile, had to face when they recovered and discovered unconscious meanings about the hard and persistent psychological and sexual abuse they suffered in that religious organisation. Recovering and discovering meanings, from the collective memory of that parish, was a sort of conversion event in the five parishioners that determined their decision to bring to the surface of Chilean society the knowledge that the parish, led by the priest Fernando Karadima, functioned as a perverse organisation. That determination implied that the five individuals had to struggle against powerful forces in society, including the dominant Catholic Church in Chile and the political influences from the conservative Catholic elite that attempted to ignore the existence of the abuses that were denounced. The result of this article explains how the five parishioners, through their concerted political actions and courage, forced the Catholic Church to recognise, in an ambivalent way, the abuses committed by Karadima. The theoretical basis of this presentation is based on a socioanalytical approach that mainly considers the understanding of perversion in organisations and their consequences in the control of anxieties.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Potocki

The activities of John Wheatley's Catholic Socialist Society have been analysed in terms of liberating Catholics from clerical dictation in political matters. Yet, beyond the much-discussed clerical backlash against Wheatley, there has been little scholarly attention paid to a more constructive response offered by progressive elements within the Catholic Church. The discussion that follows explores the development of the Catholic social movement from 1906, when the Catholic Socialist Society was formed, up until 1918 when the Catholic Social Guild, an organisation founded by the English Jesuit Charles Plater, had firmly established its local presence in the west of Scotland. This organisation played an important role in the realignment of Catholic politics in this period, and its main activity was the dissemination of the Church's social message among the working-class laity. The Scottish Catholic Church, meanwhile, thanks in large part to Archbishop John Aloysius Maguire of Glasgow, became more amenable to social reform and democracy.


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