Encyclical

An encyclical is the most authoritative of official Catholic Church documents. Encyclicals provide the pope with an opportunity to comment on critical issues in the contemporary church and society (e.g., materialism) and/or to reassess official church teaching on a particular question (e.g., women's equality). Since the Catholic Church sees itself explicating a "universal" morality that transcends the doctrinal beliefs of any specific faith tradition, papal encyclicals are often used as a way to engage public debate on the morality of particular institutional practices. The outlines of Catholic social teaching on economic justice and the rights of workers, for example, were first elaborated in an encyclical issued in the late nineteenth century (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum [On the Condition of Labor], 1891), and subsequently elaborated by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (On Reconstruction of the Social Order), 1931. In more recent times, similar themes have been expounded by Pope John Paul II (e.g., Laborem Exercens [Engaged in Work], 1981), who, like many of his predecessors, criticizes the inequalities associated with global capitalism and who, in reacting to the fall of the Soviet Union, has repeatedly cautioned newly developing capitalist societies against excessive materialism.

The Vatican has issued encyclicals on many diverse topics, but perhaps the most publicly known encyclical is Paul VI's 1968 Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Births), which reaffirmed the church's opposition to artificial birth control, abortion, and sterilization. This encyclical caused public controversy at the time among theologians, priests, and laypeople in America and Europe, who argued against the unreasonableness and impracticality of the church's position on artificial contraception. After Vatican II's affirmation of religious freedom, lay competence, and the importance of conscience, these critics saw Humanae Vitae as an intrusive and authoritarian document.

The papacy of John Paul II (1978–) is renowned both for the extensive number of encyclicals issued and the didacticism of their tone. A common thread throughout many of these encyclicals is the Vatican's broadly encompassing concern with moral relativism, secularism, a self-indulgent consumer culture, and what John Paul sees as the break between faith and morality that allows individual and self-oriented reasoning to displace the relevance of moral conscience and "divine wisdom" (see especially Veritatis Splendor, 1983; Evangelium Vitae [The Gospel of Life], 1995; and Fides et Ratio [Faith and Reason], 1998). In Evangelium Vitae, for example, John Paul sees contemporary society as a "veritable culture of death" in which there is a "conspiracy against life" as exemplified by the prevalence of abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. John Paul calls for a profoundly consistent ethic of life that "cannot tolerate bias and discrimination" of any form and at any life stage, and he challenges people in both their personal and their professional lives to work for a more morally and economically just society (22, 30, 155ff). Although it is well documented that a majority of Catholics (and non-Catholics) do not necessarily follow papal exhortations on specific issues, papal encyclicals nonetheless remain a unique and important source of public theology in today's world and can orient political and intrachurch debate in ways that have the potential to build a more inclusive and just society.

See alsoBirth Control; Dogmatism; Heresy; Humanae Vitae; Papacy; Religious Studies; Roman Catholicism; Vatican; Vatican II.

Bibliography

Carlen, Claudia, ed. The PapalEncyclicals, 1740 –1981. 1981.

John Paul II. TheGospelof Life (Evangelium Vitae). 1995.

Michele Dillon