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Displaying: 1-20 of 458 documents


1. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Ellen Van Stichel, Orcid-ID Yves De Maeseneer, Orcid-ID Valerio Aversano Orcid-ID

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honoring johan verstraeten

2. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Johan Verstraeten Orcid-ID

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The article argues against the tendency to reaffirm Catholic social thought as Catholic “doctrine” and proposes a reinterpretation in view of the participation of the Church in the transformation of the world. Revisiting Chenu’s critique of Catholic social thought as ideology, the article argues for a reinterpretation of Catholic social thought as Catholic social and ecological discernment in response to the contemporary megacrisis. That such a discernment requires reflective practice and forward-looking imagination is articulated in the light of the thought of John Paul Lederach and Otto Scharmer.
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3. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Mathias Nebel Orcid-ID

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This paper investigates the Argentinian “theology of the people” (“teología del pueblo”) and how it might run the risk of turning Catholic social thought into an ideology. The first part focuses on the political and theological notion of people and its link to the poor. The author recalls the Argentinian roots of this theology, summarizes its main tenets, and presents Pope Francis’s understanding of the theology of the people. The second part contrasts the theology of the people with the roots of populism in Latin America. The author explores the historical construction of the notion of people in the modern nation-building process, turns to caciquism as the dominant cultural framework of political power, and reviews Nadia Urbinati’s definition of populist regimes. The conclusion proposes to build upon Francis’s principles of common good dynamics to avoid the capture and recycling of the theology of the people’s language by populist regimes.
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4. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Rolando A. Tuazon Orcid-ID

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Against the background of the 2022 national elections in the Philippines, in which the Church failed in the moral fight against the return of the Marcoses and the continuation of the Duterte regime in power, this article makes a social discernment as to why the Church has not succeeded in its social mission in shaping the social consciousness of the Filipino people. Why has the Catholic social tradition not taken root in the Philippine soil and in the Filipino soul? The author argues that the Church has located itself in the center rather than grounding itself in the margins. The author proposes a reappropriation of the Catholic social tradition from the margins to more dynamically transform Philippine society.
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5. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Raymond Olúsèsan Aina Orcid-ID

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A more dynamic approach to Catholic social thought that encourages a prophetic discernment can critically challenge the official narrative presented in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which is widely popular in Africa. This article develops this argument by revisiting three key problems that CST encounters in the African reality: poverty, violence, and justice. Significantly, the postcolonial discourse of “anthropological poverty” serves as both a justification for and a critique of the Compendium. This article highlights how a prophetic discernment’s dynamic approach, through the lens of anthropological poverty, enriches or critiques official Catholic social teaching’s views on the problems of poverty, violence, and justice. The discussion that follows in the article establishes how a less hierarchical approach to contemporary social questions is both necessary and attainable, while showing that this approach is, in part, taking place in Africa.
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6. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Lisa Sowle Cahill

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Catholic social teaching frames a practical, political tradition, historically embodied and directed toward the dignity of the person, solidarity, and the common good as essential to social justice. It aims not only to convert the Church but to be an agent of change in societies globally. Yet despite over 130 years of condemnations by CST of violence, exploitation, and other forms of social injustice, scourges like poverty, war, racism, and sexism still blight human existence. The work of the Belgian theologian Johan Verstraeten offers resources for a view of social movements as agents of the transformation of social institutions and structures. Social movements can provoke and enhance the formation of justice as an institutional virtue, disposing institutions to better foster solidarity and the common good.
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7. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Sahayadas Fernando Orcid-ID

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Religion does influence personal choices and behavior, even today. In a multireligious society, religions and religious groups influence social life and public policy considerably. Hitherto, Catholic social teaching, thought, and practice were essentially, if not exclusively, based on the Christian vision of socioeconomic and political realities, without paying much attention to the existence and role of the world’s great religions and religious traditions in this endeavor. To revitalize Catholic social teaching in today’s world, the Church must enter into critical dialogue with non-Christian religions and harness their contribution to sociopolitical transformation. The teachings of Pope Francis, especially in recent social encyclicals, emphasize the importance of such conversations and identify possible paths to pursue.
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8. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Conor M. Kelly Orcid-ID

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As Catholics, like all people of goodwill, work to confront the ongoing legacy of racism in the United States, they need additional resources to understand and challenge the suprapersonal aspects of racism at the social level. Building on existing Catholic analyses of racism as a form of cultural sin and incorporating recent refinements in the concept of structural sin, this paper argues that Catholic social thought can yield a more comprehensive account of systemic racism as a structural and cultural problem. This combined analysis provides the theological resources to help Catholics recognize a duty to confront racism and promote racial justice as a natural extension of their faith commitments.
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9. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Andrew Skotnicki

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In this article, the author argues that Catholic magisterial teaching in matters pertaining to criminal justice has been frozen since the Middle Ages in a legalist framework that has underwritten and continues to legitimate the violence of retributive justice by the state. The article will first provide the official Catholic position on criminal detention and punishment. This will be followed by a survey of the medieval, largely Thomist, account of the legitimacy of punishment as administered by the state, blessed by the Church, and dominant in Catholic teaching, to the demotion of the nonviolent, evangelical emphases that characterized the pre-Constantinian Church. Finally, the paper will urge the revoking of Catholic endorsement of inflicting willful suffering on criminal offenders found guilty in courts of law. In this way, the Catholic Church will maintain a consistent, life-affirming, and exemplary Christian ethic of criminal justice.
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10. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Erin M. Brigham

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This paper offers a framework for teaching and learning Catholic social thought. Drawing upon theories of community engagement and justice education, the paper observes stages of student learning related to Catholic social thought. Finally, it draws upon Ignatian principles and pedagogy as an approach to teaching Catholic social thought to college students.
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book review

11. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Nicholas Hayes-Mota

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12. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
William George

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13. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Grégoire Catta

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14. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Shaun Slusarski

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15. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Gwendolyn A. Tedeschi

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16. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Tia Noelle Pratt

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17. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Charles E. Curran

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Pope Francis’s two encyclicals—Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti—belong to the tradition of Catholic social teaching that began in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. There have been continuities and discontinuities within the tradition of Catholic social teaching, but there has been a tendency to downplay the discontinuities. Francis’s two encyclicals show both discontinuities and continuities with the earlier documents. The final section criticizes these two encyclicals as being too overly optimistic in their approach to solving the problems facing the environment and the social, political, and economic orders.
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18. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Tony DeCesare

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Despite a growing body of literature that engages both Catholic social thought and the Capability Approach, little has been done to explore what these two traditions of thought might offer to a reassessment of the project of global democracy promotion. This essay brings Catholic social thought and the Capability Approach into conversation for this purpose. What emerges is a framework for thinking about and engaging in what the author calls democratic democracy promotion (DDP). DDP is based on a broadened conception of democracy and avoids a dogmatic commitment to the promotion of Western liberal democracy; it takes a needs-based approach to the allocation of externally driven democracy assistance; and it prioritizes education initiatives as central components of democracy promotion. Refashioned as such, democracy promotion has the potential to bring about more participatory democratic processes, a more inclusive global democracy, and a critical and caring mass of global democrats.
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19. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Roger Bergman Orcid-ID

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In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis wonders why it took the Church so long to condemn slavery unequivocally. Indeed, the place of slavery in Catholic teaching provides a test case of change in official Church intellectual tradition. This paper examines the divergent arguments of four authors who have written about Church teaching on slavery: Pope Leo XIII, Fr. Joel S. Panzer, Judge John T. Noonan Jr., and Fr. John Francis Maxwell. It considers the statement on slavery in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in light of Pope John Paul II’s meditation on the nature of human labor in Laborem exercens, itself a meditation on Leo’s Rerum novarum (On the Condition of Labor), and offers a critique of the position that papal teaching, because it must be self-consistent, is therefore irreformable or unsusceptible to development. This provides one response to the pope’s provocative question.
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20. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Nicholas Ensley Mitchell Orcid-ID

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This article is a critical race theology analysis that asserts that Catholic social teaching established in documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Populorum progressio, Caritas in veritate, and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’s Contribution to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance justifies reparations for the state of oppression commonly called Jim Crow, or segregation society, from the US government because it denied African Americans “truly human conditions.”
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