Catholic Social Teaching, Liberalism, and Economic Justice

Abstract

In this article, we focus on global economic inequality and global justice. Drawing on Rawls’s emphasis on the basic structure (i.e., a society’s economic, political, and social institutions) and the principle of subsidiarity, we address how individual nations are implicated in a global economy that benefits those of us in the affluent global north to the detriment of people in the severely poor global south. While it has focused explicitly on issues within nation-states, magisterial teaching about subsidiarity has thus far inadequately addressed subsidiary structures between interdependent but radically unequal societies in the era of globalization. In light of this inadequacy, we speculate how Catholic Social Teaching’s principle of subsidiarity benefits from Rawls’s (and Rawlsian) explication of the basic structure, especially if the Church is to speak normatively and precisely about global economic inequality.