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1. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Meghan J. Clark, Anna Rowlands

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2. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Meghan J. Clark, Anna Rowlands

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This article explores the teaching of Fratelli tutti as an integrating document of the papacy of Francis. Exploring the title as greeting and imperative, the authors make a case for exploring FT as both a development of the themes of earlier social encyclicals and as an attempt to explore an integral humanism for a new age facing economic, environmental, migratory, and social-conflictual challenges. The article lays out a summary of these main themes of Francis’s social teaching. Nonetheless, the authors conclude, the integral planetary humanism that Francis calls for, and is so needed, is itself a radically incomplete project. A common home is not possible without a recognition of a common kinship, yet without deep reflection on women’s experience, the inclusion of women as full subjects and agents of CST, and greater attention to race, the document cannot fully embody the spirit and logic of its own message of gift, inclusion, and co-belonging.

3. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Kristin E. Heyer Orcid-ID

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In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis probes structural and ideological threats to people’s social instincts and shared good(s) in contexts of fragmentation and false securities (§ 7). His approach to these pervasive temptations to build a culture of walls “in the heart” and “on the land” employs structural analyses but also elevates ideologies abetting the harms these walls wreak, signaling a development in the use of social sin in line with related emerging theological scholarship. This essay traces and contextualizes Francis’s application of interconnected dimensions of social sin in Fratelli tutti; interrogates its oversight of the social sin of sexism; and suggests that practices of encounter and discernment in the pursuit of social friendship serve as apt antidotes to the harmful dynamics identified.

4. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Helen Alford Orcid-ID

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The connection between the use of fraternity, love, and justice in Fratelli tutti and Gaudium et spes is explored.

5. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Emilce Cuda Orcid-ID

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In chapter 5 (“A Better Kind of Politics”) of Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli tutti, the “better” politics is based on community social discernment as an embodied expression of the sensus fidelium. From the point of view of Latin American theology, it is reflected in people and populism; creative work and structural unemployment; party and movements; conflict and social friendship; value and discard. Without a categorization of these words in light of the Gospel, it will not be possible to address the threat posed by the ecological, socio-environmental crisis.

6. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Amy Daughton

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Unusually, Fratelli tutti and Laudato si’ both cite the work of French thinker Paul Ricoeur. It is unusual because reference to individual scholars can be rare in Catholic social teaching, and because Ricoeur was a philosopher, and not a Catholic. Yet Ricoeur’s work, which spanned nearly seventy years and incorporated both philosophy and engagement with religious resources, focused on meaningful communication in text and action for the work of living together. For an encyclical committed to rethinking and rejuvenating attitudes to each other in public life, across disagreement, Ricoeur’s work provides an ideal conversation partner. His approach involves attending carefully to the ethical entanglement of self and other, mediated by the institution. This attention supports the driving concern and reasoning of Fratelli tutti—to recenter the agency of neighbor, people, and institution for the fragile political work of deliberation, cooperation, and action.

7. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
María Teresa (MT) Dávila

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In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis lays out a vision for political life grounded in encounter with the other and as essential for human being and becoming. In this vision, the political projects of specific groups of people, their historical contexts, and their particular identities are an essential element of political projects for the common good. This essay seeks to understand the political anthropology originally developed by Jorge Bergoglio that undergirds this vision. In Fratelli tutti, Francis puts this anthropology at the service of Catholic social teaching, distinguishing him from his two immediate predecessors. Such a political anthropology supports the transcendent value of the person as extending to the people, and, in turn, as extending to political life as well. As such, this becomes an important space from which we extend ourselves toward others as part of the task of humanization.

8. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Elżbieta Łazarewicz-Wyrzykowska

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In this article the author uses Pope Francis’s understanding of solidarity expressed in the encyclical Fratelli tutti to interpret the hitherto unacknowledged role of women’s invisible work in the Polish social movement Solidarność (Solidarity). The author then juxtaposes their contribution with the work of volunteers involved in helping the migrants in the humanitarian crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus, considered from the perspective of the exegesis of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Fratelli tutti. A postscript places these events in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

9. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Ellen Van Stichel Orcid-ID

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The rise of nationalist and populist tendencies and their exclusivist discourse and consequent polarizing effects challenge the Christian narrative, especially if politicians openly look for support within the Catholic Church and Christian churches, thereby referring to Europe’s Christian heritage and Judeo-Christian roots. This article shows how Fratelli tutti can be read as a response to this attempted exclusivist interpretation of Christian identity. Pope Francis is not unaware of the underlying dynamics that lead people to become exclusivist rather than embrace inclusion, as is shown by his remarkable recognition of the sentiments of fear and resentment. As a response, however, he refuses to interpret Christianity so narrowly that it can be used to legitimize the construction of walls to keep “the other” outside enclosed communities. By taking the Good Samaritan as his focal point, Francis reorients Christianity toward its inherent cosmopolitan roots with a call to move from fear to fraternity.

10. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Léocadie Lushombo

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This article expands on Pope Francis’s vision of a community of fraternity. This community is one in which people support each other, identify with each other’s vulnerability, bear one another’s burdens, and embrace collective salvation. Although Francis takes steps forward in considering violence against women, a proper order to which a community of fraternity must turn requires that one draw much more from local narratives of injustice against women. This task can guide the Church’s orthopraxis on women’s suffering, which should consider how psychological or sociopolitical factors doubly wound women, especially in contexts of war and conflict. The effects of these wounds should inform the idea of imputability and responsibility for action regarding absolute moral laws. The article includes narratives affirming Francis’s call for mercy to be put first in accompanying wounded women, who become the locus theologicus on the suffering Christ.

11. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Simeiqi He

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The recent social encyclical Fratelli tutti provides the Chinese Catholic Church with renewed hope in a time of sweeping impasses. This article is inspired by Pope Francis’s passionate summons for the centrality of love, a culture of encounter, and a new social and political order. It presents an utterance of a laywoman rising from the Chinese Church, aspiring to dialogue with the encyclical. By weaving Francis’s vision together with the wisdom of Carmelite saints and my personal knowledge of the Chinese Church, I call upon the Chinese Church to deepen its roots in the soil of love and to journey through the dark night. I urge the Chinese Church to re-encounter atheism and to become a beacon of peace in Chinese society. I conclude the article with an appeal for authentic solidarity from the world Church and all concerned parties of the Chinese Church.

book reviews

12. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon

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13. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Ryan Service

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