Is Social Catholicism left wing or right wing?

On economic organisation Social Catholicism scores 00 on a scale from −10 (common ownership) to +10 (private property and markets). On social and cultural order it scores +05. A single left–right figure combines these and four further measurements that move independently, which is why the atlas reports six.

Is Social Catholicism authoritarian?

On the organisation of power, which measures whether authority is dispersed among institutions that can stop each other or concentrated in a single centre, Social Catholicism scores −03. Subsidiarity: decisions at the lowest competent level; family and church as prior to the state.

Atlas / Organisations / Social Catholicism

Social Catholicism

Rerum Novarum · 1891– · Europe · Christian Democratic · Doctrine / school · coding confidence high

00ECbalanced

+05CUtraditional

−03AUpluralist

−03SClocal

+01IDascriptive

−07CHlawful

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

Rejects both liberal individualism and socialist class war; defends private property, a living wage and the dignity of labour.

Economic model

Property widely distributed, unions legitimate, subsidiarity, corporate bodies mediating capital and labour.

Organisation of powers

Subsidiarity: decisions at the lowest competent level; family and church as prior to the state.

Reading note

The doctrinal source of Christian democracy, the most electorally successful ideology in postwar Europe.

Check a claim about Social Catholicism. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored 00

Coded at zero: private property defended and unrestrained capitalism condemned in the same document.

Programme textRerum Novarum (1891) defends the right to private property and condemns the 'yoke little better than slavery' imposed on workers.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +05

Coded +5: a traditional moral and family order.

Programme textCasti Connubii (1930) and Rerum Novarum both treat the family as prior to the state.

AU · Organisation of power · scored −03

Coded −3: authority limited by subsidiarity.

Programme textQuadragesimo Anno (1931) names subsidiarity: no higher body should take what a lower one can do.

SC · Scale of decision · scored −03

Coded −3: decisions at the lowest competent level.

Programme textSubsidiarity is stated as a principle of social order, not a preference.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +01

Coded +1 after the v2.2 review: a conversion-open universal church, not a rule of descent.

Programme textRerum Novarum addresses workers as such, without national or ethnic qualification.

CH · Method and tempo · scored −07

Coded −7: reform through association, law and moral suasion, explicitly against class war.

Programme textThe encyclical rejects the socialist remedy while demanding legal protection of labour.

Where it came from, and what came after

gave doctrine toPostwar Christian Democracy
Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno are the doctrinal source of Christian democracy.
gave doctrine toDistributism
Chesterton and Belloc built the widest-possible-distribution programme on the encyclicals.

Scores that have been revised

ID +03 → +01The Catholic social tradition addresses labour and the family universally and the church it speaks for is a conversion-open, explicitly supranational body. Its cultural traditionalism was being read as a membership rule that its own doctrine denies.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Social Catholicism. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/socialcath/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.