Continuing Failure

Catholic social thinking has long wrestled with the concept of the state. | From the print issue.https://t.co/6k738jYQdf

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) May 14, 2025

Symposium on R Hittinger's Latest

ICYMI: A full video of last fall's symposium on LCI senior fellow Russell Hittinger's new book: On the Dignity of Society is now on YouTube!

>>>https://t.co/meax2fYpra

— Lumen Christi Institute (@LC_Institute) February 27, 2025

Their Definition of Virtue Is Inadequate

Last Thursday, @ProfAbela, Joseph E. Capizzi, Father Gregory Pine, O.P., and @AndrewMYuengert joined the IHE and @TheBuschSchool to discuss “Catholic Social Teaching in Practice.”

Watch the recording here: https://t.co/pjl4LDssn8 pic.twitter.com/dSBvUrqirj

— IHE (@HumanEcologyCUA) February 27, 2024

Subsidiarity and Family Policy

Subsidiarity and Family Policy@smarick in @NationalAffairs https://t.co/8lutDWz6pD

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) June 22, 2022

Establishment Theologoumenon on the State's Role Regarding Education

DECLARATION BY THE ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS OF ENGLAND AND WALES ON THE SUBJECT OF EDUCATION (1929)
1. It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach.
2. The State is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient to enable them to discharge the duties

— Fr Thomas Crean OP (@crean_fr) October 2, 2021

Papal Ghostwriters Doing Their Part

for an imperial papacy.

Every papacy is a collective enterprise. It’s the pontiff who gets the credit or the blame, but often their finest moments depend heavily on the labor of others who fade into the woodwork when the moment passes.https://t.co/ohdLAce3eX

— Crux (@Crux) May 20, 2021

Meanwhile...

Pope joins global elite to plan for world after Covid: Pope Francis and leading Vatican officials have held a meeting with many members of the world’s global financial elite on how to reshape the world after the #COVID19 pandemic.https://t.co/ulDqZ96UNj

— John Stone (@Johnthemadmonk) May 18, 2021

Solidarity

Solidarity
Volume 1 | Issue 2
Social Justice Quarterly

Check it out!https://t.co/B6B4OHVqs5 pic.twitter.com/2TcAmauf1V

— Leonine Institute (@leoinstituteCST) January 28, 2021

Can't recommend this issue; the essays are naive explanations of solidarity that do not critically examine the assumption of the state and community.

Syllabus on Roman Catholic Social Teaching

Draft of a syllabus for a course on Catholic Social Teaching, structured around the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. With texts giving background and/or development and interpretation for each. pic.twitter.com/CYIGtPSoju

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) January 26, 2021

There Will Be Gaps

Solidarity, like "common good," is poorly developed and understood in contemporary RC social teaching.

In the next 24 hours we will be releasing the second issue of Social Justice Quarterly.

Articles in this issue:

Solidarity as a Theological Necessity
Graves of our Fathers
Against the False Solidarity of Globalism
Solidarity as Policy pic.twitter.com/LT3Gto6DQv

— Leonine Institute (@leoinstituteCST) January 27, 2021

Levi Russel on Usury

Episode #35 - Dr. Levi Russel of the @leoinstituteCST on Usuryhttps://t.co/vc8F2r63UI

— Tradistae (@tradistae) January 21, 2021

Who Heeds the Prohibition of Usury?

The tenderness for usurers is especially touching, but not especially coherent: the magisterial pronouncements against usury are no less in the Denzinger than "Humanae vitae."https://t.co/weYRLmbMZJ

— Pat Smith (@smithpatrick08) January 14, 2021

Social Justice

94—Understanding Postmodern “Social Justice”—Darel Paul | Catholic Culture https://t.co/n9GfjTbuSp

— James Matthew Wilson (@JMWSPT) December 22, 2020

94—Understanding Postmodern “Social Justice”—Darel Paul | Catholic Culture https://t.co/n9GfjTbuSp

— James Matthew Wilson (@JMWSPT) December 22, 2020

Counsels of Imperfection

In today’s mail, looking forward to reading this!

Look at ch 1, especially Ideas 8 - 12. pic.twitter.com/uDi97EVVDA

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) December 9, 2020

CUA Press

The Next Issue of New Polity

It will be interesting to see D.C. Schindler's objections to integralism. His book against liberalism is quite good. https://t.co/Jy2jFeI8vb

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) October 27, 2020

Following Fratelli Tutti's Lead

And its interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Who is my neighbor?

On October 27 at 5:00 p.m., join IHE Executive Director @josephecapizzi and @LC_Institute Senior Fellow Russell Hittinger to discuss “Fratelli Tutti” on social friendship with IHE Fellow @jennfrey

To register: https://t.co/u5kJlMOzVp pic.twitter.com/LVxBr1Qngk

— IHE (@HumanEcologyCUA) October 23, 2020

A Good Samaritan society emphasizes the vulnerability and incapacity of the poor.https://t.co/z6wBshC2CT

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) October 25, 2020

Trying to Establish Continuity

I think it’s a little odd for the Pope’s critics to not mention “Quadragesimo anno,” where Pius XI addressed the interpretation of “Rerum novarum” now advanced against “Fratelli tutti.” https://t.co/2cBGeRSJsD

— Pat Smith (@smithpatrick08) October 21, 2020

“To express this truth in more personal terms... I justly possess and enjoy what is rightly mine when I promote and enjoy what is rightly ours.” #FratelliTutti
--@FrAquinasOP @pficnewshttps://t.co/LB3paJj26B

— National Catholic Register (@NCRegister) October 20, 2020

Again: A Questionable Use of a Parable for Moral and Political Theological Purposes

Perhaps there’s something other than American realpolitik considerations at the heart of #FratelliTutti.

Perspectives from @BMcCSJ, @KDaniels8, @Stephen_P_White, @MNCatholicConf, @gjpappin, @DrSamuelGregg, and @PiadeSolenni. https://t.co/5IzcR3zYDL

— Jonathan Liedl (@JLLiedl) October 13, 2020

Cardinal Müller on Fratelli Tutti

CWR: Cardinal Müller discusses Fratelli tutti, Trump and Biden, Corona-virus restrictions, German “Synodal Process”
“In our love for the Church of Christ,” says the former Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, “we must interiorly overcome personal injuries, apocalyptic fantasies about the end times, and the impulse to resign ourselves…”

Kath.net: On Sunday, [October 4,] Pope Francis published his new Encyclical, Fratelli tutti. What is your initial evaluation?

Cardinal Müller: The Encyclical is quite comprehensible and is to be recommended for more in-depth study, insofar as it is addressed to all people of good will and even teaches with Veritatis splendor by John Paul II that intrinsically evil acts do exist, contrary to most German moral theologians. It would be wrong to say that it is consistent with the Freemasons’ or the United Nations’ talk about fraternity, because it emphasizes the transcendence of brotherhood in God the Creator and expounds God as Father and the Church in Mary as Mother of all mankind. Its argumentation can be situated along the line running from John XXIII to Benedict XVI about [the Church’s] social teaching and the non-negotiable values of human rights. The Christian message is not reduced to what is universally human, but rather the reverse: the human way of life that grows from the faith is recommended as a foundation for the coexistence of human beings of different religions and cultures in today’s global civilization.

Catholic Herald Interview with John Finnis

Very interesting: ‘I was beyond being damaged’: An interview with philosopher John Finnis https://t.co/n7UuCQdCE9

— Jay W. Richards (@DrJayRichards) October 7, 2020

Catholic Herald

He has recently written “A Radical Critique of Catholic Social Teaching”, a chapter in a new book on CST (published by Cambridge University Press) which aims to undermine the credibility of the whole concept of that teaching. I tell him that it will be explosive, and he laughs: “No, it won’t, because it’s in a book that costs about £150 … it has been largely ignored because of the cost.”

So, for those of us who can’t afford a copy, the gist is that much of what we understand by Catholic Social Teaching is tendentious, and bishops would do better to focus on teaching fundamental Catholic moral principles instead, leaving their application to laypeople who know what they’re talking about. He is especially irritated by bishops’ conferences that issue lengthy guidelines on, for instance, migration or global warming, which are matters of legitimate debate. On climate change, he thinks “the Pope goes beyond his remit – it’s a massively difficult question of fact”.

Most of what the bishops can usefully say on these subjects can, he says, “be put in a few pages”. The expenditure of energy on lengthy policy statements is “worse than a waste of time; it’s a misdirection of energy”. The bishops’ job is in his view to preach the moral norms because “the urgent duty to be informed by and genuinely respectful of these principles [is] scandalously neglected by many Catholics in public life”. He makes clear that negative rules – “thou shalt not kill,” for instance – are categorical, without exceptions, whereas positive ones, such as loving your neighbour as yourself, are far more nuanced.

I think he is correct regarding contemporary use of RCST in episcopal statements or even papal encyclicals.

What Sort of Problem?

In the current pontificate, I submit, it has become simply impossible to square the Pope’s statements with those of his predecessors. 1/5 https://t.co/aqRCBzmF0v

— Philip Lawler (@PhilLawler) October 8, 2020

Most of what is considered Roman Catholic Social Teaching is moral theology and not of "dogmatic" status. The problem is that opinions in moral theology are not acknowledged as such in papal encyclicals.