The literature on the official documents of Catholic social teaching is immense and still growing. A lifetime could be spent sifting through the relevant Vatican texts on social and economic issues and digesting the numerous commentaries on them. Meghan Clark's new book achieves something quite rare: it proposes a substantially original thesis regarding foundational issues in recent Vatican social teachings, then illustrates it by drawing compelling connections to contemporary global justice issues. Clark, a young but already well-traveled scholar at St. John's University in New York, draws richly on her involvement in global health issues and theological education to demonstrate the salience and demanding nature of the main points in this important book.
As the book's subtitle suggests, the central thesis is that human rights and solidarity emerge as twin pillars of recent Catholic social thought, not by some accident of history, but precisely because the underlying social anthropology of a Catholic worldview demands such a dual prioritization. The two are intrinsically linked because (as recent popes and their ghostwriters came readily to recognize) their connection allows simultaneously for acts of expanding human rights and building community. It is through the very practice of forging proper respect for human rights that solidarity, as a key social virtue, is cultivated and habituated. The strength of Catholic social thought—namely, its highlighting of the relational nature of the human person and the key role of participation—shines most brilliantly when contrasted with the shortcomings of strictly secular approaches to human rights and economic development. As commendable as the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen (to name just one example) might be, the lack of attention in his writings to a substantive view of the community as an entity capable of creating and sustaining deep solidarity is a lamentable lacuna.
Establishing and unpacking her thesis gives Clark the opportunity to display her considerable command of the intricacies of contemporary human rights discourse, developmental economics, virtue theory, Trinitarian theology, and the seminal work of Charles Taylor. The author is at her best when interweaving diverse contributions to social philosophy and theological reflection; her occasional lapses into rehearsing the detailed content of social encyclicals are the only times when the patience of any reader will be taxed in the course of this reasonably accessible book.
The commendable driving force of the book is the author's desire to see a renewed global solidarity based on mutuality and a global interdependence grounded in equal regard and mutual respect for the human rights of all. Socially responsible (even virtuous) behavior on the international scene today is not merely a matter of promoting human rights (especially in the traditional “negative” sense, of immunity from harm, in line with the “perfect duties” outlined by Kant), but rather a matter of forging positive commitments (for Kant, “imperfect duties”) that hold the promise of cultivating conditions that will foster the flourishing of all. This is especially obvious when we consider potential personal and collective responses to the powerful contemporary economic forces that place a substantial majority of the world's population at a distinct disadvantage, limiting the economic opportunities and life chances of most of our global neighbors.
Clark moves the argument forward skillfully so that the reader reaches the satisfying end point of considering next steps in two promising global initiatives: the growing momentum of the responsibility-to-protect doctrine and the creation of serious public-private partnerships for international economic development. Along the way, we are treated to Clark's appealing (and entirely accurate) construals of church teachings on economic life—interpretations that emphasize a deeply social understanding of human personhood, a compassionate approach to fulfilling duties to neighbors near and far, and an unrelenting insistence on forging bonds of solidarity, even when building ties of mutuality proves rather costly to the affluent inhabitants of the global North. Living out the virtue of solidarity in our age of globalization requires nothing less than extending ourselves in acts of self-gift that reach out to all members of the human family.
