Anna Rowlands offers a guide to the main time periods, key figures, documents and themes of thinking developed as Catholic Social Teaching (CST). A wealth of material has been produced by the Catholic Church during its long history which considers the implications of scripture, doctrine and natural law for the way these elements live together in community — most particularly in the tradition of social encyclicals dating from 1891. Rowlands takes a fresh approach in weaving overviews of the central principles with the development of thinking on political community and democracy, migration, and integral ecology, and by considering the increasingly critical questions concerning the role of CST in a pluralist and post-secular context. As such this book offers both an incisive overview of this distinctive body of Catholic political theology and a new and challenging contribution to the debate about the transformative potential of CST in contemporary society.
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Emergence of Modern Catholic Social Teaching
Chapter 2
Human Dignity: philosophical and theological trajectories
Chapter 3
Human Dignity: and (forced) migration
Chapter 4
Human Dignity: the question of social and structural sin
Chapter 5
The Common Good: the long tradition in context
Chapter 6
The Common Good: in patristic and medieval context
Chapter 7
The Common Good: the encyclical tradition
Chapter 8
The body politic and the political community
Chapter 9
Subsidiarity: a principle of participation and social governance
Chapter 10
Solidarity: a developing theory
Chapter 11
The universal destination of goods: towards an integral ecology
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Dr Anna Rowlands (Durham University, UK)
Anna Rowlands is St Hilda Professor of Catholic Social Thought and Practice in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, and Chair of the UK Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice.
No one brings the worlds of social activism and the academy together with more energy, invention and style than Anna Rowlands. ... [The book] is a fluent and polyphonic introduction to the Catholic vision of the good life. * The Tablet * Those interested in political theology from a wide range of perspectives will appreciate this lucidly written [book]. * Church Times *