Catholic Social Thought

This article was first published in ,” Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, ed. Michael L. Coulter, Stephen M. Krason, Richard S. Myers, and Joseph A. Varacalli.  (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, Scarecrow Press, 2007).

How can universities organize their international community engagement to optimize both student learning and community impact? This article describes the St. Thomas University/Port-de-Paix, Haiti, Global Solidarity Partnership, and provides one model of how a project-focused scaffolding of engaged scholarship opportunities can enhance student learning, empower local communities, and support long-term development.

Two of the most important concepts that are related to environmental care and our present ecological situation are sustainable development and integral ecology. Pope Francis in his encyclical letter Laudato Si’ focused on these concepts and stressed the need to safeguard our environment to ensure that while we meet the needs of the present generation we also do not compromise the needs of the future generation. He proposes a development that is both sustainable and integral, a development that is authentically just and for the common good. In this paper I discuss the ideals of sustainable development and integral ecology as expounded by various scholars and from both the western and oriental perspectives and as discussed in Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. The last section of the paper highlights the Philippine ecological situation to serve not as an ideal but a kind of mirror as to what is happening in a developing country like the Philippines which is situated in an area where different...

This paper reflects the viewpoint of a member of the ecology and creation desk of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Contributive justice is proposed as a beacon that should guide all actions that aim to address the injustices in the world—chiefly, the challenges related to natural resources and the care for the environment. This care requires an enabling context: being cautious with the meritocratic narrative; implementing good governance; avoiding a paternalist stance according to which one relies totally on the state’s action and, instead, going beyond what is a strictly legal requirement and even beyond reciprocity for the sake of solidarity and for protecting the commons. In conclusion, genuine gratuitousness—in this case, as applied to water management—is presented as a key contribution for society. The text is rooted in the recent magisterium and in the 50-year-old synodal document Justice in the World.

If Social Justice can be construed as helping people to become more fully human by being offered opportunities of financial progress, freedom, and privilege, then entrepreneurship can certainly contribute towards this, the more that it is practiced in ways which bring these opportunities for workers, ‘customers’, the community and society at large.

A look at post-humanism from the lens of the Catholic social ethical tradition, noting basic principles, framing concepts, and the opportunities and liabilities that lie ahead.

In _Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens​_, eds. Michael Bess and Diana Walsh Pasulka, 201-211. Part of the Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2018.

We spend much of our lives engaged in 'work' – whatever that work may be for us – and yet theology is remarkably silent on the subject, particularly so when it comes to the question of incorporating work with leisure and worship. We tend to see work, leisure, and worship as three different aspects of life; the aim of this short article is to suggest that they are in fact closely interconnected.

En la actualidad se da una crisis de identidad en la vida consagrada provocada por una comprensión de la eclesiología del Vaticano II que la reduce al binomio ordenado-laico. Las respuestas a esta crisis van en la dirección de ver a la vida consagrada como memoria Iesu en la Iglesia a través de la entrega de uno mismo en la vida de los votos. El magisterio social ha tardado tiempo en integrar plenamente a la vida consagrada en la acción social de la Iglesia recogiendo la integridad de su identidad. La mejor expresión de esta integración está en el Compendio de la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia. Sin embargo, esta integración debe incluir la opción por los pobres y el trabajo por la justicia. Con esos elementos es posible pensar la forma en que la vida consagrada es memoria Iesu para la Iglesia en su acción social.

Intercollegiate Review, Summer 2013 (posted June 29, 2013).The first of a two-part series, this article charts what I think the third way movement known as Distributism gets right.  First I sketch the complicated relationships such thinkers in the movement have with state power and their views on employment versus business ownership. I then go on to discuss four things Distributists can teach those who subscribe to free markets under a rule of law: 1) their correct emphasis on moral culture with regard to markets, 2) their critique of economic centralization, 3) their emphasis on building a broader culture of ownership, and  4) their critiques of the damaging effect of the welfare state on humans.

Widespread architectural and artistic changes to the interiors of Catholic churches in the United States, commonly attributed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, are in fact traceable to the foundational principles of the American Liturgical Movement.

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si’s theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis’s accounts of the techno-economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.


KEYWORDS: techno-economic paradigm, integral ecology, Laudato si’, moral theory, Catholic Social Thought, Catholic Social Teaching

As we find ourselves in a new moment of wearisome and violent racial recrimination, as the ghoul of whiteness and white supremacy returns again more intensely than ever, manifesting in the New Jim Crow, the scandalous murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and most recently, the mass violent march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the voices of Merton and Baldwin in concert on race are more important than ever for us to encounter, imbibe, and embody. This essay will return anew to the  dialogue between Merton and Baldwin on race, humanity, spiritual integrity and dignity, and the course of American and planetary history. While the dialogue between Merton and Baldwin was not one of personal, direct friendship, nevertheless their minds, hearts, and souls were very much in the same place. This essay will frame their dialogue, a dialogue that must extend to our own everyday consciousness, through a comparative and constructive examination of Baldwin’s 1963 book-length essay The Fire Next Time with Merton’s 1964 essay “Letters to a White Liberal” which opens his anthology Seeds of Destruction. Using an adaptation of the medical model for addressing deeply embedded and embodied illnesses of the social body, I will explore the common language Merton and Baldwin use to diagnose the infection of whiteness in the American commons, in American history, culture, and theology. I will then engage in a similar examination of their mutual call for a therapeutic regimen of healing from whiteness through radical, uncompromising love rooted in the prophetic moment of kairos and the conversion pathways of metanoia. This regimen of healing transcends retributive remodeling of racial hierarchy, the subsequent reinscribing and deepening of racial alienation, and the shallow waters of paradigms of reconciliation and integration towards radical repair and re-discovery of our common existence.

Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian Workers, insisted on the lay apostle’s need for a profound life of prayer to underpin their evangelisation of their peers. This would be centred on the Eucharist: attendance at Mass, frequent reception of communion, Eucharistic adoration.  Understanding the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, Cardijn sought to show his Young Workers how their work was to become as pure, holy and living a sacrifice as the Mass itself.

Rutilio Grande, S.J. was the first Jesuit assassinated in El Salvador on March 12, 1977.  He was killed for having done the works which Jesus commands with regard to one's neighbor as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church.  This volume of his writings and homilies illustrates how he applied the social and ecclesial teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in his ministry with the poor and marginalized of El Salvador.  His use of the social sciences to understand the problems in his context, his prophetic denunciation of power and wealth, and his ministry to empower lay people to lead their faith communities all speak to the Holy Spirit working through the courage of a true servant leader.

Do not depend on the hope of results​. In 1966, Thomas Merton shared this pearl of hard-earned wisdom in a letter to the young Catholic activist Jim Forest. In his work with the Catholic Peace Fellowship and the Catholic Worker, Forest found himself facing that distinct kind of existential nausea which comes when one’s activism, one’s hopes, one’s courage, and one’s dreams for a world rooted in the fellowship of human love is shattered again. As Forest had previously written to Merton “bomb after bomb after bomb slides away from the bomb bays. For every sentence in this letter, a dozen innocents will have died today in Vietnam. The end of the war is beyond imagination.”1 In the exchange of letters between Merton and Forest, we find ourselves alongside another set of dear friends, Krishna and Arjuna, in the ancient yet timeless song-Divine of the ​Bhagavad-Gita​. As Merton and Forest ached for truth and peace and hope amidst the unholy pressures of Mass Man intensities in the 1960’s, Krishna and Arjuna, on the battlefield setting of the Gita​, wrestled with the steadiness and sanctity of ​dharma​ in the face of overwhelming crises. Arjuna, like Forest, was shook to the core of his being facing the darkness of uncertainty and his ache for justice. In this short essay I want to offer to you a comparative exploration of Merton and Forest’s dialogue alongside, in embrace with, the sacred dialogue of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita​. I will share how Krishna’s primary teaching in the ​Gita​, of how to act in the world with detachment infused with active compassion and devotion for all living beings, echoes Merton’s guidance to Forest to not depend on the hope of results. This ​yoga​ of devotion, which Krishna calls bhakti-yoga,​ gives us a guiding light for the practice of anticipation in our intensely precarious times.

Applying the Roman Catholic Church’s set of moral principles on social concerns called Catholic social teaching (CST) on charity, distributive justice, private property and the common good, and utilising some secondary data and scientific literature, this article argues that establishing distributive justice for the global distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines must be a priority than donating millions of doses in the name of charity to address vaccine scarcity. Catholic social teaching teaches that the right to private property is a basic right but has moral limits and is subordinated to the moral principles on the universal destination of earth’s goods and the common good. Contribution: The current COVID-19 vaccines are developed by people and organisations outside the pharmaceutical companies and largely funded using taxpayers’ money. Thus, by virtue of justice, these vaccines must belong to all nations as global public health goods. Patents are to be suspended to allow poor countries to reproduce the popular vaccines and address the current vaccine shortage.

Résumé : La pensée religieuse fait partie, selon Ripert, des forces créatrices du droit. Si l’impôt est un  élément constitutif du pouvoir souverain, il n’est cependant qu’un objet secondaire des doctrines sociales des Eglises chrétiennes, dont les conceptions fiscales sont motivées par des fondements théologico-politiques. Si l’éclatement protestant a favorisé sa soumission au pouvoir fiscal du prince, l’unité catholique maintenait une attitude plus réservée. L’abandon catholique du modèle féodal est contemporain de la déchristianisation des sociétés européennes. L’affirmation unie du devoir fiscal accompagne donc désormais des sociétés où le civisme fiscal décline. Quant à l’influence de ces doctrines chrétiennes sur le droit fiscal positif, l’étude comparée des systèmes européens révèle qu’elle est moins directe qu’indirecte. En effet, l’interventionnisme fiscal à but religieux ou moral est des plus réduit. Il se limite à certains aspects « archaïques » des régimes fiscaux. En ce qui concerne la structure des systèmes fiscaux, au contraire, cette influence semble plus forte. Elle oppose la rationalité axiologique, au sens de Weber, du catholicisme, qui a freiné l’adoption de l’impôt sur le revenu, à la rationalité instrumentale du protestantisme, qui a favorisé l’adaptation des systèmes fiscaux au développement économique moderne.

Resumen: El pensamiento religioso es una de las fuerzas creadoras del Derecho. El impuesto, fenómeno constitutivo del poder soberano, es un objeto secundario de las doctrinas sociales de las Iglesias cristianas. Su concepción impositiva se ampara en fundamentos teológico-políticos. Mientras que la fragmentación de las iglesias protestantes contribuyó a la aceptación del poder financiero del príncipe, la unidad católica adoptaría una actitud más moderada. El abandono católico del modelo feudal es contemporáneo a la disminución de la influencia religiosa en las sociedades europeas. Desde entonces el consenso acerca del deber fiscal forma parte de nuestras sociedades en las que, sin embargo, el civismo fiscal disminuye. El estudio comparado de los sistemas europeos revela que la influencia de las doctrinas cristianas sobre el Derecho Tributario positivo es más indirecta que directa. En efecto, el intervencionismo fiscal con un propósito religioso o moral es muy reducido, limitándose a algunos aspectos “arcaicos” de los ordenamientos jurídico-tributarios. Por el contrario, en lo que se refiere a la estructura de los sistemas fiscales esta influencia parece más relevante. En ella se oponen el racionalismo axiológico del catolicismo -que puso freno a la aceptación de los impuestos sobre la renta- y el racionalismo instrumental del protestantismo (que ha coadyuvado en la adaptación de los sistemas fiscales al desarrollo económico).

Summary : Religious thought is part of the creative forces of the law, according to George Ripert. Intrinsic element of sovereignty, taxation is only a secondary object of the christian church’s social doctrines, whose bases are theological and political. If the division of protestant churches helped the the State’s tax power compliance, the united catholic Church as maintained for long time a more reserved attitude towards it. The influence of these religious teaching on tax laws seems to be more indirect than direct, exactly as shown by comparative studies. In fact, the religious or moral purposes of tax policies are restricted to some old aspects of tax systems. On the other hand, the influence on the structure of tax systems seems to be more significant. If the value rationality - according to Max Weber - of Catholicism tried to hold back the introduction of income taxes, the means-ends rationality of Protestantism helped to adapt the tax systems to economical development.

Zusammenfassung : Die religiösgedanke ist eine Schöpferkraft des Rechts. Die Steuer ist zwar ein Grundbestandteil der Souveränität, aber sie ist ein untergeordnetes Thema der Soziallehre der christlichen Kirchen . Ihre Steuerbegriffe haben theologische und politische Gründe. Die Kirchenenteilung des Protestantismus hat die Steuerkraft der Obrigkeiten gefördert. Die einheitliche katholische Kirche ist lang zurückhaltend geblieben. Der katolische Verzicht auf das Lehnsideal der Steuer entsteht gleichzeitig mit dem Einflussverlust des Christentums. Also ist die einheitliche Lehre der christlichen Kirchen über dem Steuerpflicht eine  Begleiterscheinung einer verminderten Steuermoral. Bezüglich des Einfluss dieser christlichen Steuerlehre  auf gelten Steuerrecht zeigt die vergleichende Untersuchung der europäischen Steuersystemen, dass dieser Einfluss vielmehr indirekt ist. Tatsächlich ist Steuerpolitik als Religiös- oder Moralpolitik ziemlich beschränkt. Sie betrifft geschichtliche Seiten der Steuergesetzgebungen. Der Einfluss über dem Aufbau der Steuersystemen sieht stärker aus. Einerseits hat die katholische Wertrationalität die Annahme der Einkommensteuern gedämpft. Andererseits hat die protestantische Zweckrationalität die Anpassung der Steuersysteme an der Ökonomisch Entwicklung gefördert.

Five years into his papacy, Pope Francis has proven to be conventional pontiff with regard to questions of war and peace in the sense that he, like his predecessors, has had to maneuver between his roles as head of state and “Vicar of Christ.” In the former role, the pope has foregrounded the tools of nonviolence while he, at the same time, continues to depend on the just war framework. Only in his role as leader of the Church with its eschatological vision does the pope reject all violence. For Francis, the way to abolishing war and winning peace must be guided by charity, the first among the virtues. I argue that his understanding of “fraternity” as the central theme of his World Day of Peace messages derives from the virtue of charity and is grounded in a Thomistic understanding of the virtues.

Evangelii Gaudium es un auténtico programa del pontificado del papa Francisco. La dimensión social de la fe es clave en este documento por ser garantía de autenticidad de la evangelización. A la hora de formular la visión de Francisco de esta dimensión social podemos destacar varios puntos. En el estilo de EG se aprecia una apropiación original de las intuiciones de la teología de la liberación y una recuperación del modelo de magisterio de Pablo VI. En su contenido se aprecia una clara denuncia del sistema económico liberal actual y una propuesta para incluir a los pobres en la sociedad.

This article was first published in the in Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, ed. Michael L. Coulter, Stephen M. Krason, Richard S. Myers, and Joseph A. Varacalli.  (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, Scarecrow Press, 2007).

“Are there objective moral values which can unite human beings and bring them peace and happiness?” People seem to assume there are indeed such values when they recoil against genocide, rape, child abuse, slavery and human trafficking, senseless destruction of the environment, involuntary “medical” testing, corruption, and terrorism. This recoil is generally perceived to be not merely some learned or innate moral sentiment, but an indicator that some actions are truly wrong — wrong not merely because of the emotional responses they arouse; wrong not merely on the basis of a consensual agreement between people or societies; but truly wrong, meaning in violation of some standard for human action that is applicable to and (at least in principle) accessible to all human persons. Even if there is great difficulty specifying norms about wrong human actions, and even if the norms have needed revision, there is a common conviction that certain moral norms exist. This fundamental conviction that there is some sort of standard against which human actions can be evaluated, and that it is accessible and applicable to all, is the essence of the view that there is a universal ethic.

A history of the first 70 years of Vatican teaching on media and communications, tracing major themes and tensions through the four major periods of its life.

¶ For further reading, you might consider also reading the brief "“Two Things to Know about Laudato Si‘ and Technology,” which explains two key ways that Pope Francis has changed teaching on technology in his work after the period covered in this article in Laudato Si'. 

¶ For an even deeper dive, read “What’s in a Tech? Factors in Evaluating the Morality of Our Information and Communication Practices,” which is a critical assessment of the work done in the first 70 years that was published before Laudato Si', but anticipates some directions that Pope Frances takes in the encyclical.

This paper contends that Laudato Si' would be better appreciated if understood in the light of the Church's teaching on the common good. More succinctly, it contends that although LS calls all persons to care for and defend the environment, such act would only be possible in a more genuine sense if understood in the light of the common good, that is, the collective vision for the future of humanity. In trying to explicate this claim, the article reviews the notion of the common good and its foundations in scripture, political thought, and Catholic social teaching. A constitutive aspect on the Church's teachings on the common is a sustained critique of capitalism and its repercussions to human dignity. This article ends with a reflection on the encyclical's challenge to the readers, particularly Christians, to be workers for the attainment of the common good and for the future of our common home.

Many would think of biodiversity merely in the context of environment, ecology, or nature. Species thrive because of diversity, and that includes human beings. However, this article treks an unusual terrain of biodiversity. The damage we made towards nature bespeaks the harm we likewise do against the vulnerable ‘other’in society, in particular the Deaf people. The people who are Deaf discussed in this article are the ones who identify themselves as entho-linguistic cultural minority. In addition, they do not consider deafness to be a deficit; rather, some of them view their condition as different, or to some is diversity. Contextually, this writer presents an alternate way to afford respect with humility by employing a moral Filipino value of pakikipagkapwa (shared inner-self). In a society that seems to remain numb to the groaning of our kapwa (the Other or fellow-being), this article challenges us to reconsider if we truly care for the non-human and the Deaf, who remains the vuln...

In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI describes the Christian vocation to overcome the obstacles that hinder the establishment of authentic fraternity in the world. Through the theme integral human development, the pope maps a theological grammar for Catholic social doctrine that takes charity in truth as its principle and purpose. This understanding of charity in truth is developed in continuity with the teachings of Paul VI and John Paul II, and as an explicit continuation of the interpretive tradition of Populorum Progressio. In this essay I focus on the aspect of that interpretive tradition having to do with the theologies of liberation. My central claim is that the magisterial response to the liberation theology movement is important background for our interpretation and reception of Caritas in Veritate. In the first section of this essay I briefly introduce three texts that show the relationship between the themes “liberation,” “development,” and “authentic human advancement” in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, and I outline the figuration of those themes in anticipation of Caritas in Veritate. Second, taking my cue from Caritas in Veritate, I sketch a retrospective “doctrinal grammar” of human advancement toward authentic fraternity as it unfolds in Paul VI’s and John Paul II’s social teachings on development and liberation. In section three I describe…

This article was first published in the in Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, ed. Michael L. Coulter, Stephen M. Krason, Richard S. Myers, and Joseph A. Varacalli.  (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, Scarecrow Press, 2007).

Benedict XVI in "Caritas in Veritate" advances a positive view of businesses that are hybrids between several traditional categories. He expects that the “logic of gift” that animates civil society infuses the market and the State with relations typical for it – reciprocity, gratuitousness, and solidarity. His theological rationale offers an answer to two questions that have largely re-mained open in the literature – why hybridization occurs and why it is desirable. A rational reconstruction of hybrid enterprise that goes beyond a simple taxonomy of types benefits from the Pope‟s call for an intrinsic integration of institutions and processes traditionally attributed to disparate spheres. The relational model of the Trinity defines the unity in diversity that accounts for the benefits of truly hybrid businesses, and the “logic of gift” serves as the agent of integration.

The thesis includes a qualitative research of Hungarian entrepreneurs, who are committed towards Christian and Buddhist values. Christian and Buddhist value-orientations are investigated and compared by qualitative methods. It introduces the core operating values of spiritually value-oriented entrepreneurs.