Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
Cardinal Höffner’s „Christian Social Teaching“ is surely the Catholic Church’s most successful
textbook on this subject. The German version was first published in 1962, but over the
next twenty years or so (up to 1983) eight more editions, some enlarged, appeared and it was
translated into six languages (1964 English and Spanish, 1967 Japanese, 1970 Portuguese/
Brazilian, and 1979 Italian and Korean). This fact, too, shows its unique importance for the
Church’s globa1 mission. The ‘secret’ of the author’s success lies in a similarly unique combination
of qualities. Joseph Höffner was a historian and systematist, theologian and economist,
researcher and ‘populizer’, professor and bishop all in one person.
Born in Korhausen (Westerwald, Germany) in 1906 into a rura1 family of eight children, Joseph
Höffner obtained a PhD in 1929 at the Gregorian Papal University in Rome and, after
being ordained in 1932, was awarded a theology doctorate in 1934 with a dissertation on „Social
Justice and Social Love.“ With his study entitled „Peasant and Church in Medieval Germany“,
a study of socio-ethical history, he also obtained a German theology doctorate at
Freiburg im Breisgau in 1938. At the same university he also studied economics under Walter
Eucken and in 1940 wrote a dissertation on „Business Ethics and Monopolies in the 15th and
16th Centuries.“ Then in 1944, likewise in Freiburg, he wrote a post-doctoral thesis on
„Christianity and Human Dignity. The Ethics of Spanish Colonialism in the Golden
Age”(published in 1947).
In 1945 Joseph Höffner became professor of pastoral theology and Christian social teaching at
the Trier Seminary, and in 1951 he was appointed professor of Christian social science at the
University of Münster. There, in 1960, he founded the „Yearbook of Christian Social Sciences.“
Apart from his teaching and research work he was involved in Germany’s post-war
political and social reconstruction as a member, for instance, of advisory committees to the
federal ministries for family and youth, housing, labor and social affairs, as head of the social
affairs department of the Central Committee of the German Catholics and as spiritual adviser
to the Federation of Catholic Entrepreneurs.
Höffner’s „Christian Socia1 Teaching“ appeared in the year he was appointed Bishop of
Münster (1962), the fruit of his many years of teaching. Thus its academic and ecclesiastical
impact was not felt until after the author had swapped the professor’s robes for the bishop’s
gown, first as Bishop of Münster, then from 1969 as Archbishop of Cologne and Chairman of
the German Bishops’ Conference. But the extent to which he continued in his episcopal teaching
to draw on the Church’s social doctrine is apparent not only from his many other publications
but above all from his famous presentations at the autumn plenary sessions of the Bishops’
Conference. The latest ones were entitled „The Church’ s social doctrine or the theology
of liberation?“ (1984); „Economic Systems and Economic Ethics -Guidelines in Catholic Social
Teaching (1985); and „The State. Servant of Order“ ( 1986). His 1985 presentation was
disseminated in near1y 30 countries, not least because its author, owing to the international
importance of the archdiocese of Co1ogne and his visits to many parts of the Third World as
Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, had personally acquired increasing esteem as
an ambassador of the Church’s social doctrine. As late as December 1986 (Joseph Höffner
died on 10 October 1987) he made long journeys to Nicaragua, Mexico, the Philippines, Hong
Kong and other countries. In Nicaragua he met the head of the Sandinist Government, Manuel
Ortega, on what was a difficult intermediary political mission, and at the universities of Mexico
City and Manila he received honorary doctorates from the faculty of economics.
These biographical data largely explain the nature of Höffner’s textbook and its global influence.
Joseph Höffner was deeply convinced that the Church could only play its role in society
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