Catholic Social Teaching: Discernment

 Fall2012

In earlier decades of the twentieth century, Catholics in America felt they were bound to a higher loyalty. As St. Thomas More put it, the King’s servant and God’s servant first. Social problems like abortion, poverty, and moral decline were viewed as departures from the normal values and truths society held. Now these problems are part of the established culture. The tsunami of societal revolution in the 1960s upended traditional values, morphing personal responsibility into social sin, the Works of Mercy into government handouts, and morality into doing whatever feels good.

Can this American Detour Be Fixed?

The answer is a resounding YES! Education is the key. In this, the third of its trilogy on the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church, the Bellarmine Forum Magazine establishes the means for discernment, the ability to distinguish the true path for a just society from the rocky road toward a country full of sheep led by a wolf. The Church has the roadmap in her age-old teachings to uplift mankind. Her words must be taught to every generation to maintain right order in society. The Bellarmine Forum Magazine begins that task with this issue.

“Catholic education recognizes the transcendent quality of every human being, and thus seeks to promote wholeness and holiness.”–Michael Kenney, Madonna University

“Through an education that forms young people by means of a free and open dialogue, that engages a proper anthropology and the Natural Law, [Pope] Benedict [XVI] proposes that man may once again begin to see the spread of true justice and peace in the world.”–Michael Adkins, Saint Agnes School

“[T]he Church is the authority on matters of morality and human dignity, and when an economic system degrades humanity, the Church must speak.”–Prof. Ronald Rychlak, University of Mississippi Law School

$4.95 ($1.55 S/H)





This article, Catholic Social Teaching: Discernment is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/catholic-social-teaching-discernment/
Do not repost the entire article without written permission. Reasonable excerpts may be reposted so long as it is linked to this page.

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John M. DeJak

John M. DeJak is an attorney and Latin teacher and works in academic administration. He writes from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  • Peter Rother says:

    I have had the good fortune to read the article from Mr. Adkins on the revitalization of a truly classical education. I recall a mantra of secularist promoters using children to say something to the effect of “we want to learn how to think, not what to think.” My response would be, “What’s the difference?” Once secular education instituted the rule that all ideas had equal merit, classical education was tossed out of the window. As we know, a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same aspect. This and other traditional rules of logic lead students to objective truth–in Mr. Adkin’s words, the “transcendent”. Kudos to Mr. Adkins. Education, truly approached, is formation in reality. All else is, as Frank Sheed noted, insanity.

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