My latest article from The Angelus, “Restoring the Integrity of Catholic Social Teaching,” is available online in front of the magazine’s paywall. Here’s a sample:
Catholic Social Teaching (CST), though rooted in centuries of reflection supplied by some of the Church’s greatest theologians, is often thought to have begun in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s ground-breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum. While there is a loud ring of truth to this, traditional Catholics should be well aware that the Church’s modern social magisterium began to emerge following the violent rise of liberalism in France in 1789 and the revolutionary upheavals which rocked Europe throughout the 1800s. With the early decades of the 20th century delivering further global unrest through two cataclysmic wars, a worldwide economic depression, and the rise of racialist fascism and atheistic communism, the holders of St. Peter’s Chair issued further encyclicals reminding the world that neither socialism nor unfettered capitalism were just economic options, and that all political authority comes from God.
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