Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching
    Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching
    Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching
    Ebook64 pages1 hour

    Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching

    By Robert Sirico

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    An examination of the development of Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II's ground-breaking encyclical letter of 1991.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherActon Institute
    Release dateJul 24, 2012
    ISBN9781938948091
    Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching
    Author

    Robert Sirico

    Rev. Robert A. Sirico is a Roman Catholic priest and the president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, a think-tank dedicated to promoting a free-market economic policy framed within a moral worldview. He is the author of several books, including Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, and his writings have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the London Financial Times, and National Review, among numerous other publications. Fr. is regularly called upon to discuss economics, civil rights, and issues of religious concern and has provided commentary for CNN, ABC, the BBC, NPR, and CBS’ 60 Minutes.

    Read more from Robert Sirico

    Related to Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Apostate Saint

      Sep 30, 2021

      Apostate Saint
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Last Victorian Sage

      Jan 2, 2020

      The Last Victorian Sage
      6 min read

    • Article

      Leviathan

      Jun 16, 2022

      The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a running list of books deemed heretical, blasphemous, or otherwise morally dangerous by the Roman Catholic Church. First published in the 16th century, the Index was ostensibly a response to the Reformation, but i

      1 min read

    • Article

      Preaching The Gospel Of Progressivism

      Jul 28, 2022

      THE LONGEVITY OF ELIZABETH II has (mostly) allowed us to avert our attention from the question of the relationship between church and state for a very long time. Given that her 70 years on the throne have seen the relentless rise of the forces of phi

      4 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Dec 12, 2023

      “The general and accepted meaning of the Enlightenment today is that it was a great leap forward in the capacity of humans to control nature, generate wealth and direct their own destinies. It was, so the story goes, a crowning feat of progress and r

      2 min read

    • Article

      Saving Churches Needs Money

      Nov 10, 2021

      LAST week saw the launch of yet another report on the future of our churches. This one, by the National Churches Trust, addresses the subject across the UK, not only England, and comprises essays from 16 contributors —including individuals from the t

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Rise of Anti-Liberalism

      Feb 20, 2018

      The Rise of Anti-Liberalism
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Chicago Boys and the Revival of Classical Liberal Economics in Chile

      Jan 4, 2022

      According to a persistent narrative on the free-market revolution led by the so-called Chicago Boys in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s,1 the country was purely “a laboratory for cutting-edge free market experiments” imported from the United States (Klei

      36 min read

    • Article

      Time For The Church To Embark On A Navel-gazing Exercise

      Mar 31, 2024

      FOR any political structure that fails in the absence of moral direction, it would seem natural for it to turn to organised religion for leadership. Unfortunately, the direction of most modern institutional religion is decidedly secular. The institu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Finding Real Answers

      Apr 27, 2023

      MAY IN WESTMINSTER SEES SPRING, blossom and the National Conservatism Conference. This movement has its origins in the work of, among others, the philosophers Yoram Hazony and, here in the UK, James Orr. It raises the most fundamental questions of ou

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Pope’s True Power

      Sep 3, 2018

      “Witch hunts” is what prominent cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras called the Boston Globe’s and other outlets’ reporting on decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in 2002, after the coverage led to accusations of a cover-up. He is n

      4 min read

    • Article

      Is the Pope Catholic?

      Oct 21, 2020

      Is the Pope Catholic?
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy: We’re All Dead

      Jan 1, 2020

      By Victor V. Claar and Greg Forster New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Pp. xvii, 345. $89 hardcover. Is our economic system struggling on many dimensions? Is the practice of economics responsible for the problems in the economy? Can we identify the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Farewell to St Benet’s Hall

      Jul 28, 2022

      OXFORD, HOME OF LOST CAUSES, and forsaken beliefs and unpopular names and impossible loyalties.” Such was Matthew Arnold’s description, and its truth, though diminishing through time, has been part of its greatness. Oxford harboured John Wycliffe, an

      8 min read

    • Article

      Order Among Chaos

      Aug 13, 2020

      Order Among Chaos
      4 min read

    • Article

      Searching For Sense Amid Chaos

      Sep 28, 2023

      EVER SINCE THE POLITICAL STRATEGIST Steve Bannon mentioned, vaguely and dubiously, “Julius Evola and different writers of the early twentieth century who are really the supporters of what’s called the Traditionalist movement, which really kind of eve

      4 min read

    • Article

      Uncommon Decency

      Mar 14, 2021

      In a world in which toxic exchanges grab global headlines, two unlikely ancient adversaries have shone a light on the alternative approach: mutual tolerance and continued dialogue. Catholicism’s leader, Pope Francis, has risked his life, not least fr

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Catholicism's Developing Social Teaching - Robert Sirico

      Catholicism’s Developing Social Teaching

      Reflections on Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus

      Robert A. Sirico

      Foreword by George Pell

      Copyright © 2012 by Acton Institute

      An imprint of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty

      Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

      Contents

      Preface

      Catholicism’s Developing Social Teaching:

      Reflections on Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus

      Preface

      Leo XIII was one of the great popes of the modern era. He won for the papacy renewed international authority after a long period of declining prestige. Like his predecessors, he attacked socialism, communism, nihilism, and freemasonry, but not simply in a manner that was intellectually and politically reactive. Rather, Leo’s opposition to these forces led him to develop a program of qualified accommodation with the modern world. This program defined the different spheres of temporal and spiritual power, gave qualified approval to democracy, and put forward the claim that the Church is not an opponent but, rather, the true custodian of liberty, properly understood.

      A centerpiece in this program is the encyclical Rerum Novarum, published in May 1891. It was only one of eightysix encyclicals—and one of twelve on social questions—that Leo wrote over the course of his unexpectedly long pontificate (1878–1903), and he did not commence work on it until he was eighty years old. It is an indication of just how important and influential Rerum Novarum has been that, on rereading it today, one is struck by how much of it is so mellow, reasonable, and eminently acceptable. Its arguments for a just wage, appropriate State intervention to ensure humane working conditions, widespread private ownership of property and productive means, the legitimacy of unions and the importance of the rights of the individual and the family, appear almost as commonplaces, indicating that Leo’s thinking has now become foundational in Catholic social thought.

      As Father Sirico points out, in all of this Leo was not offering specific public policy prescriptions but setting out some guiding moral principles from which to develop a humane society. In particular, Leo was concerned to provide a deeper concept of the common good than either socialism or capitalism was able to offer, one based on a sound anthropological understanding of the nature of man, the conditions of human flourishing, and the intersection of our eternal destiny with our daily lives.

      This is typical of Catholic social teaching as a whole. The social doctrine of the Church appeals fundamentally to individual responsibility and conscience rather than to any recipe for social engineering. It regards the problem as one of principles from which might follow a plurality of prudential applications. This is a theory centered on human beings and their dignity rather than on schemes and institutions. Church leaders should work for an acceptance of the basic Christian moral principles, urge serious consideration of the Catholic tradition of social morality, and encourage Catholic lay people, whose special province is the world, to work toward improving the human situation. This makes a political and economic pluralism among Catholics as desirable as it is inevitable.

      The social teaching of the Church does not impose an economic or political straitjacket on its members, nor, as Pope John Paul II made clear in the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987), does it constitute an alternative ideology to liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism: a third way. It is an aspect of moral theology, which, as John Paul II explained in the Motu Proprio establishing the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences in 1994, respects the legitimate autonomy of the earthly realities (cf. Gaudium et Spes §36) encompassed by economics and the social sciences, while bringing to bear upon them the light of faith and the Church’s tradition. Constants at the heart of this theological reflection on autonomous earthly realities will always be Christ’s teaching on the dangers of riches, our special obligation to the poor, and the eternal consequences of closing our hearts and purses to those who are hungry, naked, and imprisoned.

      Rerum Novarum was written when the Church was retreating politically

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1