**3. The Norm of Solidarity**

In CST since Vatican II, access to health care, including the ready availability of vaccines in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been deemed a positive right, i.e., a justified entitlement claimable by individuals from society. The warrants for this understanding are expressly theological, involving a number of themes and principles that, while interconnected, can be analyzed separately. I have analyzed most of those themes extensively elsewhere and will not review the first six of them here beyond listing them again as norms central to the Catholic conversation (Lustig 1990, 1993, 1996, 2012). The first six of these themes are (1) the dignity of persons, (2) the common good, (3) subsidiarity, (4) social justice, (5) distributive justice, and (6) the so-called "preferential option for the poor". However, a seventh theme, that of solidarity, has emerged as a core emphasis in the encyclical literature since the papacy of John Paul II. Herein, I analyze its development as a unifying norm in recent CST, one that helps to illuminate the responsibilities of individuals and institutions in the context of the current pandemic.

In the social encyclicals of the last three papacies, solidarity has emerged as perhaps the central value invoked in the ongoing tradition. To be sure, solidarity as a political concept long predates its use in Catholic discussion. It first appeared in Napoleon's 1804 *code civil* and was invoked as a principle for reordering society by various political and social theorists during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the writings of French socialist Charles Fourier (1772–1837). The term first appeared in Catholic teaching in Germany in the late nineteenth century in the writings of social reformer Franz Hitze (1851–1921) and the Jesuit Heinrich Pesche (1854–1921). In the modern encyclical literature, cognates of solidarity are invoked in other explicit appeals from the earlier decades of CST. It seems clear that the value of solidarity was at least foreshadowed in the two major encyclicals of John XXIII, *Mater et Magistra* in 1961 and *Pacem in Terris* in 1963, in Paul VI's 1967 *Populorum Progressio*, as well as in *Gaudium et Spes* in 1965, a core document of Vatican II. However, solidarity appears in full-blooded fashion only in the social encyclicals of John Paul II and continues to be cited regularly in the writings of his successors (Doran 1996).

To appreciate the importance of solidarity in John Paul II's thought, it is helpful to situate it within the larger context of personalism, the theologically informed philosophy that shapes his approach to ethical issues at both the personal and institutional levels. As a priest and cardinal archbishop before becoming Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla was a serious scholar and author, with particular interest in exploring the phenomenology of the person as the most appropriate focus for understanding the nature of human freedom and responsibility. While a professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland, Wojtyla authored two significant books on personalism (Wojtyla 2013, 1979). In *Love and Responsibility* (Wojtyla 2013) and *The Acting Person* (Wojtyla 1979), he synthesized traditional scholastic understandings of human nature with insights from phenomenology. In his writings, he emphasized the inviolable and transcendent worth of each human being as the necessary safeguard against the dangers of materialistic and reductionist views. By underscoring the transcendent worth of persons as the necessary starting point for ethical reflection, Pope John Paul's personalism seeks to avoid perspectives that would view persons as isolated individuals pursuing "consumerist" ends or as "units" of a larger collectivity. Instead, personalism insists upon the irreducibility of persons in their freedom. However, in that affirmation, the "liberty" central to the personalist account is not that of the atomistic individual, but of the socially situated self, with direct implications for understanding the appropriate relations between self and society.

At the same time, this personalism is expressed in terms of an anthropology that maintains a fairly traditional understanding of an objective moral order. It is that combination of commitments—to the inviolable dignity of the person as a subject who freely pursues the shared and definable goods of human flourishing—that leads to John Paul's emphasis on solidarity as a norm. Viewed theologically, solidarity is best construed as a holistic virtue of both individuals and institutions that serves to integrate the more focused emphases of other theological norms (e.g., distributive justice, the preferential option for the poor, specific rights claims). In its integrating function, it has significant theoretical and practical promise as a value that both unifies CST and reinforces its growing call for international mechanisms to support personal rights and to enforce collective obligations in pursuit of the global common good.

While there are etymological precedents in CST for solidarity as an ethical norm, earlier terms (e.g., relationship, agreement, cooperation, interdependence) often appeared primarily in descriptive fashion, i.e., as features of the increasing complexity of modern socioeconomic circumstances. In an illuminating analysis of John Paul's explicit use of "solidarity" as a norm in its own right, Constance Nielsen observes the decided shift in terminology one finds in John Paul. While earlier encyclicals had noted the facts of modern interdependence, John Paul speaks in *Sollicitudo Rei Socialis* about how solidarity, as an effective virtue based in fraternal love, can *transform* interdependence:

... in a world divided and beset by every type of conflict, the conviction is growing of a radical interdependence and consequently of the need for a solidarity which will take up interdependence and transfer it to the moral plane ... [T]he idea is slowly emerging that the good to which we are called and the happiness to which we aspire cannot be obtained without an effort and commitment on the part of all, nobody excluded, and the consequent renouncing of personal selfishness (Pope John Paul II 1987, #26).

Nielsen comments that, for John Paul, "[s]olidarity does not replace interdependence, it transforms it. It elevates human unity to a higher moral dimension" (Nielsen 2007, p. 321). This transformation has implications for both individuals and institutions. As John Paul continues,

I have wished to introduce this type of analysis ... in order to point out the true *nature* of the evil which faces us with respect to the development of peoples: it is a question of a *moral evil*, the fruit of *many sins* which lead to "structures of sin". To diagnose the evil in this way is to identify precisely, on the level of human conduct, *the path to be followed* in order *to overcome it* (Pope John Paul II 1987, #37).

What, then, constitutes the aforementioned "path to be followed"? Here, John Paul is quite explicit:

... it is the virtue of solidarity: This then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is *a firm and persevering determination* to commit oneself to the *common good*; that is to say, to the good of all and of each person, because we are *all* really responsible *for all* (Pope John Paul II 1987, #38).

In her analysis, Nielsen draws together a number of earlier notions in CST that serve as precedents for John Paul's explicit formulation of solidarity. There are two important aspects to John Paul's discussion of the term. As a norm, it has extensive implications for both individuals and institutions. On the one hand,

while the earlier tradition rested primarily upon the twin categories of justice and charity, there was another animating love that went beyond the individual act of charity in the giving of superfluous wealth—a love that had social impact and worked for the common good ... It is a love that promotes justice, goes beyond justice, seeks to perfect the structures of society, and is willing to go beyond self for the sake of others. Solidarity springs from this discussion of love. Yet, if the term solidarity is truly to be a development, it cannot simply be another term for the love already described. It goes beyond charity (Nielsen 2007, p. 336).

How, then, does solidarity "go beyond" charity? Unlike both charity and justice, which "can always be reduced to individual acts or personal dispositions that may or may not affect the common good" (Nielsen 2007, p. 337), John Paul draws out the necessarily social implications of solidarity at the level of *culture*, which is even "more fundamental to the ordering of society than either State or market" (Nielsen 2007, p. 341). Most profoundly, in Nielsen's judgment,

Solidarity is neither a political nor an economic concept. It is a Christian virtue for the formation of people who will then go on to transform culture. They will naturally use the State and the market for the purposes for which they are intended. Their solidarity will motivate struggles for justice, and great acts of charity. In all they will be dedicated to the development of each and every human person (Nielsen 2007, p. 342).

Lest one confuse matters, while solidarity is "neither a political nor an economic concept", it provides a rich context of reflection that has powerful implications in the analysis and critique of current global issues, including that of effective access to the basic goods of health care. As Anna Rowlands observes, the power of solidarity as a norm is that it integrates the sometimes more restricted emphases of other principles in three ways: "as an anthropological fact and theological reality; as an ethical principle or moral outlook; and . . . as a structural and institutional imperative" (Rowlands 2021, p. 265).

Each of these functions helps to provide a useful lens through which to consider the nature and scope of personal and social responsibilities during a pandemic. As an anthropological and theological reality, the pandemic serves as a stark reminder that we are inevitably interconnected, and that we are, in fact, both our own and our brothers' (and sisters') keepers. As an ethical principle or moral outlook, solidarity invites us, indeed challenges us, to understand our necessary interdependence as both a fact and a value. We become ever more fully ourselves in cooperation and, ultimately, in communion with others. As a structural and institutional imperative, solidarity offers a perspective on persons and institutions that views them as necessary partners rather than as antagonists in pursuit of the common good.

In light of solidarity, one can rather straightforwardly make the Catholic case for global basic rights within the context of what is called "the universal destination of earthly goods" (Second Vatican Council 1965, #69). John Paul II calls that concept "the first principle of the social order" (Pope John Paul II 1981, #19). The dignity of persons is affirmed as fundamental even as it is justified and constrained by the requirements of the common good. Thus, the "universal destination" remains a general norm for regulating the excesses of both an unfettered libertarianism and an unrestrained collectivism. It has served to both justify and limit property holding since the time of Aquinas. While private property is recognized as a legitimate feature of economic life, it is ultimately assessed in light of its contributions to the common good and regulated as necessary. According to Annett, the practical implications of the "universal destination" include both the taxation of excessive profits and the redistribution of overly concentrated wealth. In the context of COVID-19, he concludes that it justifies overriding the intellectual property protections of pharmaceutical companies by making inexpensive generic versions of the vaccine widely available (Annett 2022b).

When linked to the virtue of solidarity, "the universal destination" principle generates a powerful critique of current global realities. This critique points to the need for significant reform of current international approaches to ameliorating issues of global import, including climate change, hunger, lack of access to basic medical care, and inequities of access to the goods of public health. Central to that reform will be a recognition of the inadequacy of continuing to engage large-scale problems in piece-meal fashion, especially when one acknowledges the links between and among putatively separate issues. The more that such "systemic discernment" is encouraged, the more that integrated solutions will need to be sought as the necessary and compelling implications of recent Catholic discussion.
