Catholic Social Teaching
I think it might be a general experience that Thanksgiving Day tends to bring extended families together more than even Christmas Day. I’m not sure why this is or whence this came about. My own recollections of Thanksgiving as a kid take me to my grandparents’ basement where two long tables were spread with all the fixings. It…
Read More“Many leftists cheered when Benedict issued his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, in 2005.” So writes Rocco Buttiglioni, one of Europe’s foremost Catholic lay leaders. “They ignored most of the document, naturally, which insists that true charity is inseparable from Christ and His Church. They focused instead on his condemnation of ‘unbridled capitalism with its…
Read MoreThe phrase “social justice” is relatively new, appearing first with frequency in the writing of Pius XI, most notably in Quadragesimo Anno (1931). Despite its more frequent use among contemporary Catholics, social justice is now widely confused with its kindred virtues, “commutative justice” and “distributive justice” The failure to distinguish these virtues leads to basic…
Read MoreIs the Rule of Law Immoral? (Part III) “What we got here is a failure to communicate.” Cool Hand Luke Last week the Rubble talked to Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa), a prominent member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. Rep. King disagrees with Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, who, we noted…
Read MoreIn 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…
Read MoreAll this rubble around the Christmas tree… every news cycle brings new gifts, so many untold stories, so many issues swirling by. Troubled times abound in such gifts – like, you know, our celebrated democracy! Hey, that’s the gift that keeps on taking. As Prufrock puts it, “And this, and so much more?” Yes, so…
Read MoreWe interrupt the presidential campaign to raise this pressing question. Back in 1969, Bill Buckley sent my parents a hilarious book – not his, but his sister’s. Aloïse Buckley Heath was mother of ten rambunctious and inquisitive children, one of whom asked her, some 48 Octobers ago, if Tommy Major’s mother, who lived next door,…
Read MoreWhat Happened? Living and working in the world but not of it may have been the mantra of Catholic thought and education in the first half of the twentieth century, but the tsunami of societal revolution in the 1960s upended rationality in favor of action-oriented programs in the name of social justice. The wisdom of…
Read MorePart of the renewal of the temporal order to which Catholics are called involves an understanding of man’s ultimate Common Good, God Himself, and the need to direct our actions toward attaining this Good in an increasingly secular society. In examining the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church as promulgated over the last 120 years,…
Read MoreThe wizards of smart in the Obama administration never cease to amaze. By now all thinking Catholics should realize that this administration is anything but friendly to the Church or her doctrines. Yet some still support the President claiming that his initiatives are consonant with Catholic Social Doctrine. Now comes the latest assault on common…
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