Living Wage - Catholic Social Teaching

Catholic Social Teaching

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal bull entitled Rerum Novarum, which is considered the Catholic Church's first expression of a view supportive of a living wage. The Church recognized that wages should be sufficient to support a family. This position has been widely supported by the church since that time, and has been reaffirmed by the papacy on multiple occasions, such as by Pope Pius XII in 1931 Quadragesimo Anno and again in 1961, by Pope John XXIII writing in the encyclical Mater et Magistra. More recently, Pope John Paul II wrote:

  • "Hence in every case a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the whole socioeconomic system and, in any case, of checking that it is functioning justly" - Laborem Exercens, 1981

Read more about this topic:  Living Wage

Famous quotes containing the words catholic, social and/or teaching:

    The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short- cut answer.
    Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

    Mrs. Zajac knows you didn’t try. You don’t just hand in junk to Mrs. Zajac. She’s been teaching an awful lot of years. She didn’t fall off the turnip cart yesterday. She told you she was an old-lady teacher.
    Christine Zajac, U.S. fifth-grade teacher. As quoted in Among Schoolchildren, “September” section, part 1, by Tracy Kidder (1989)