Review: Introducing Catholic Social Thought

March-April 1996

Most American Catholics as well as most Protestants may be ignorant of the modern tradition of Catholic social thought. At the official level it began with Pope Leo MIT a little more than 100 years ago, reached an important culmination at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and has been further developed by Pope John Paul II.

Three American scholars who know the territory have now edited and contributed essays to Catholicism, Liberalism, and Communitarianism: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Moral Foundations of Democracy (Rowman and Littlefield, 1995). The three are Kenneth L. Grasso, Professor of Political Science at Southwest Texas State University, Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law at Notre Dame University, and Robert P. Hunt, Professor of Political Science at Kean College of New Jersey. Other contributors to this volume include Francis Canavan, S.J., Ralph Mclnerny, Mary M. Keys, George Weigel, Kenneth R. Craycraft Jr., and several non-Catholic authors, including Jean Bethke Elshtain and Stanley Hauerwas.

What this book does is to explain Catholic social thought in a way that compares and contrasts it to liberal individualism and social collectivism. Key words and ideas in Catholic thought include the common good, human dignity, natural law, and subsidiarity. Some of the key thinkers are John Courtney Murray, Jacques Maritain, and John Finnis.

Many readers of the Public Justice Report may wonder how the Catholic tradition can make any contribution to democratic political thought given the Church's internal hierarchical, non-democratic character and its late arrival (during Vatican II) at a decision to support religious freedom in the modern state. But what one should know, as this book explains, is that Catholicism has a long philosophical and theological tradition of reflection on the plural structure of society, on the moral order that binds human conscience and social responsibility, and on a limited, accountable political authority called to serve the common good. These principles and ideas open a door to the defense of an open society, democratic politics, and a high view of human rights.

Serious students will want to buy this book.

—The Editor