Money in Modern Social Encyclicals

It is difficult to imagine human life without money. It is said that “money rules the world.” It is omnipresent. Money has been and continues to be a phenomenon that not only forms the foundation of economic life, an essential dimension of human existence, but also influences personal and familial life, shapes social relationships, impacts political life and culture, and enables technological development, including medical progress. It saves lives but also leads to disputes and wars.

The task and mission of the Catholic Church are to accompany people on their earthly pilgrimage toward eternal life. Furthermore, it is the People of God who are the subject of this earthly pilgrimage. Every person, whether Christian or non-Christian, undertakes the daily effort to subdue the land (Gen 1:28). Everyone constantly struggles with daily joys and worries. Some of them involve money, that is, the effort to earn it and satisfy needs through it. Therefore, it seems natural that the Catholic Church should have a clear stance on money. The first source of the Church’s teaching is Holy Scripture. At first glance, the Church’s attitude toward money appears to be negative, leading to a well-known statement from the Gospel of Matthew: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon” (Mt 6:24). However, a deeper reflection on the Bible reveals that the topic of money is much broader. Money-related topics found in the Holy Scriptures include wealth and prosperity, wages and salaries, inheritances, savings, investments, financial planning, taxes, tariffs, contributions, donations and sacrifices, bankruptcy, and debts, temptation by money, wealth related to securing human life. Furthermore, as Bauer notes, Jesus himself speaks more about money than heaven and hell.¹

So, the Church should have much to say on the subject of money. Therefore, two questions seem justified: (1) What is the Catholic Church’s stance on money? And (2) How does the Church understand money? An attempt to answer these questions is the subject of this work.

It is surprising that the topic of money itself only sporadically appears in the literature on the social doctrine of the Church. There seems to be no single book in the German-language field of Catholic social doctrine dedicated to this topic. The book by Nell-Breuning–Müller,² which includes “money” in its title, falls within the realm of economics. The same applies to a section on money in the works of Schwindt³ and a section in the work of Strzeszewski.⁴ In the vast majority of publications on Catholic social science, the term “money” not only does not appear in the title but also is absent as a separate chapter or section or not even present in the index. However, this does not mean that literature does not address money-related themes, such as wealth and poverty. Money itself is rarely the subject of investigation.

This work will be divided into three main chapters. The first two will serve as a starting point and background for the analyses presented in Chapter 3.

These questions must be clarified from the beginning. The research topic will by no means be money in general but money in the sense of the Church’s social doctrine. The Church is a multidimensional reality. Catholic social doctrine is one dimension of the Church’s mission, with “this world” as its immediate subject. The first chapter of this work will, therefore, deal with the approach to the Church’s social doctrine. It will be a starting point that prepares the ground and outlines a framework for further considerations. In this sense, analyses of money in other areas of Church teaching, such as the Old and New Testaments or the tradition of the Church, and the practice of handling money in the Church, go beyond the research framework chosen here.

Catholic social doctrine is based on two foundations: on the one hand, on Scripture and Tradition, and on the other hand, on the observation of reality, including the use of the achievements of modern science. When assessing the Catholic Church’s stance on money, it seems justified to consider this question in a broader context. Therefore, the second chapter will provide a brief overview of the understanding of money in contemporary scientific disciplines. Since economics has the most to say about money, the starting point will be the presentation of the understanding of money in this scientific discipline and then in other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, ethics, and the contemporary specific approach known as the theology of money.

In the third chapter, attempts will be made to find answers to the research questions raised. On the one hand, the work of broadly understood Catholic social thinking is extremely rich, and on the other hand, there is an authoritative teaching within the Church. Therefore, the research will focus on the statements of the Church’s teaching. However, due to the enormous number of such statements by the Church, the research will focus on the most important papal documents, which constitute the canon of social doctrine and are not limited to particular churches. Specifically, the attempt to answer the research questions will be based on an analysis of contemporary social doctrine of the Church, contained in the papal encyclicals from Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” to Pope Francis’s “Fratelli Tutti.”

The analysis of papal teaching will be based primarily on the texts available on the Holy See’s website (www.vatican.va). However, in order to better understand the content of the popes’ thought, the study of the encyclicals will be based on their published official translations in four languages: English, Latin, German and Polish.⁵