SOCIETY OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL SCIENTISTS MEMBERSHIP CRITERIA

SOCIETY OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL SCIENTISTS Membership Criteria

The criteria for membership in the Society shall be the following (from the Society's By-Laws):

(1) fidelity to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in all it teaches including, and especially, her social teachings--always distinguishing between positions asserted in the social encyclicals which are morally obligatory and those which are not and allowing for legitimate differences in views about their application--and teachings on conjugal morality and family life, such as the important encyclical Humanae Vitae; (2) reasonable knowledge of and interest in deepening one's understanding of the Church's social teachings; (3) the minimum of an earned advanced degree (e.g., M.A., J.D.), except that full-time graduate students who are working toward a master’s degree and secure the sponsorship of a current regular or associate member of the Society are eligible for student membership; and 4) support for the purpose of the Society (as stated in Article Two of its Constitution):

The purpose of this organization is to bring Catholic scholars, professors, teachers, practitioners and the others in the social sciences and related disciplines into association to produce objective knowledge and analysis about the political, social, and economic orders which can assist the Catholic Church in fulfilling her various apostolic efforts, and which can bring the Church's social and other teaching and the Natural Law to bear on addressing the challenges and problems of modern culture. The Society seeks to promote scholarly efforts which are oriented to helping rebuild the culture according to the principles of the papal social encyclicals (with justice and charity as foremost considerations), securing protection for the dignity and rights of the Christian family and of all innocent human life (from fertilization until natural death), and furthering respect for the legitimate rights and duties of the human person.

Non-Catholics who are knowledgeable about and support the Church's teachings and the purpose of the Society may become special associate members of the Society (entitled to all the rights and privileges of regular members, except for holding a national office, serving as president or executive head of a local chapter, serving as chairman of a disciplinary or special interest section, and sitting on the national Board of Directors), but, if their consciences do not permit, will not be expected to affirm fidelity to the Magisterium.

All applicants, who are not known about by the Membership Committee and are not specifically invited to join the Society, will be required to submit a vita or other personal information in order to demonstrate, by their academic background, publications/writings, activity, or other service, that they meet the above criteria and are of the categories of people eligible to be members of the Society, as specified in the above statement of the Society's purpose from Article Two of its Constitution. They will also be required to provide the names of at least two present members of the Society who can be approached by the Membership Committee as references. If the latter is not possible, the Membership Committee may waive the requirement. Signing the statement on the application form affirming commitment to the Church's teachings does not preclude a further inquiry into this question by the Membership Committee through careful consideration of the above information, materials, and submissions, and further communication with the applicant. The decision of the Membership Committee regarding the acceptance of any application shall be final.

PSYCHOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY, AND RELATED DISCIPLINES IN THE SOCIETY OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL SCIENTISTS

Applicants to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists who are in psychology, psychiatry, counseling, social work, and related mental health fields are asked to take note of the following information.

The Psychology/Psychiatry/Mental Health Group ("Psychology Group" for short) of the SCSS (the SCSS's disciplinary section for the mental health fields) adopted the following "Statement of Purpose" on October 24, 1997 (it received approval from the SCSS's Board of Directors on October 25, 1997):

"The Psychology Group exists to further the ends of the SCSS, especially by encouraging And supporting members in their work as clinicians, researchers, and teachers of the psychological disciplines. The Psychology Group recognizes that psychology and related disciplines are principally arts ordered to alleviate human psychological suffering (in other words, the Psychology Group is neither a purely speculative society nor a lobbying group).

"The Psychology Group encourages its members to promote and defend the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in so far as these enter into the practice and teaching of psychology and related disciplines. In these respects, the SCSS Psychology Group has a common purpose with other research and professional societies, but its special and unique identity issues fundamentally from the intellectual traditions of the Church.

"The Psychology Group recognizes the validity of the positive sciences, but also affirms that they must be complemented by Church teaching on the nature and ends of the human person. In practice, many suppositions and declarations of contemporary psychological theory and practice are inconsistent with the perennial doctrines and moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Such schools at their root maintain diverse views including the following: that man's nature is not wounded by original sin, and is in no need of redemption from God; that there is no objective moral order (captured by the Decalogue) which guides and binds man in his behavior; that such an order is not accessible to the human person; or that such an order issues from each person as an aspect of his or her unique personality. As such, these propositions, and the schools from which they emanate, are not endorsed or supported by the Psychology Group. Neither does the Psychology Group recognize such positions as intellectually legitimate in their totality, nor that such systems of thought in their totality can be reasonably held as compatible with or informative of the Roman Catholic Church.

"Put positively, a Christian psychology must recognize that the teachings of the Church can inform the sciences, especially those dealing most directly with mankind, and particularly where their outer limits touch on other sciences or on revealed truth. In psychology, therefore, the Church may insist that we attend to man's need for redemption, his intellectual and moral openness to reality, his capacity for ordering life according to both rational norms and those confirmed by divine revelation, and his freedom (especially aided by divine grace) to actually perform these tasks."

Further, the SCSS has been most troubled by the tendency of so many present-day theoreticians and practitioners in psychology, sociology, social work, and related fields to minimize or dismiss the importance of the family and to countenance (and in some cases take part in) violations of its integrity and rights by the state and other institutions. It is our strong conviction that an expansive view of the prerogatives of the state to intervene in the life and affairs of the family, as exhibited in recent decades in such matters as education and parental control over the upbringing and discipline of their children. The latter has occurred, for example, in the misuse of laws and public policy set up to achieve the good purpose of stopping child abuse and neglect. (For an examination of these and related questions, see the SCSS's anthology Defending the Family: A Sourcebook, ed. by P. Vitz and S. Krason). We call particular attention to the following statements of Pope Leo XIII in his famous social encyclical Rerum Novarum, the cornerstone of modern Catholic social teaching: 1) it is "a great and pernicious error" to believe that the state "should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family"; and 2) that the state is limited to intervening only "if within the precincts of the household there should occur grave disturbances of mutual rights." Similarly, the Holy See's 1983 "Charter on the Rights of the Family" stated that, "Public authorities must respect and foster the dignity, lawful independence, privacy, integrity, and stability of every family."