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101. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1
Christopher Rice The Green New Deal, Subsidiarity, and Local Action
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A common criticism of the Green New Deal proposal to address climate change is that it would centralize too much power at the level of the federal government. However, the Green New Deal can avoid this by centering local action and decision-making in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity from Catholic social ethics. This principle holds that higher levels of society should not override the initiative of lower levels of society but should instead coordinate and support their work whenever possible. A focus on subsidiarity is already present in the framing of the Green New Deal proposal and provides a sound ethical foundation for its development and implementation.
102. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1
Rebecca Hiromi Luft Fulfillment—A Term at Play in Gifts and Calling and Jewish-Christian Concerns about Supersessionism: A Nonevolutionary, Cultic Redefinition of the Term
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The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews produced The Gifts and Calling of God Are Irrevocable (Rom 11:29), in which supersessionism is firmly rejected. In this document, the term fulfillment occurs frequently to describe the relationship between the Old and New Covenant. It implies an evolutionary development from old to new, or from promise to fulfillment. Therefore, the use of this term may lead one to suspect that it is merely a synonym for supersession or a progression from good to better. To avoid this connotation, I redefine this term by locating it within the Israelite cult. Through a study of Aaron’s ordination to the high priesthood in Leviticus and the claims for Jesus’s high priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews, I show that fulfillment already occurs in the Old Covenant by relating the historical, earthly cult to the eternal, heavenly cult.
103. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1
Matthew Bagot Fostering Human Dignity and Freedom: A Shared Vision for Catholic-Muslim Dialogue about Democracy
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At the beginning of Nostra aetate, the Church calls for mutual understanding with Muslims in the interests of “peace, liberty, social justice, and moral values.” This paper strives to achieve such an understanding in light of the fragile state of democracy in today’s world. The paper first presents the Church’s approach to democracy through an analysis of the work of the philosopher Jacques Maritain and the Second Vatican Council. It then presents representative views from Islam: the work of the Sunni legal scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl and the Shi’ite scholar Naser Ghobadzadeh. By appealing to the Jesuit scholarDavid Hollenbach’smethodology of “dialogic universalism,” the paper argues finally that there is a rich confluence between the two traditions: Their basic commitment to the dignity and freedom of the human person implies a respect for pluralism, a reverence for reason, and a call for self-transcendence, all of which can serve to enhance democracy.
104. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1
Jules Boutros Promoting the Constants of the Mission with Muslims in Today’s Middle East
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One of the most important facts that the Second Vatican Council has revealed is that the point of the Church is not itself, but to go beyond itself, to be a community that preaches, serves, celebrates, and witnesses to the reign of God with due respect to the text and context. During the past century, the Church of the Middle East experienced the absence of an authentic missionary enthusiasm and the lack of a clear and pertinent theology with which it could face the challenge presented to Christianity by Islam. This challenge resides in its special role and mission before the Muslims, which this paper will further discuss and, in doing so, answer the question, How can the Church of the Middle East try to approach the Muslims in a time of violent Islamic fundamentalism and persecutions, in a region where most of the Christians are opting to remain distant or to emigrate?
105. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Meghan J. Clark, Anna Rowlands Fratelli tutti: Reading the Social Magisterium of Pope Francis
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This article explores the teaching of Fratelli tutti as an integrating document of the papacy of Francis. Exploring the title as greeting and imperative, the authors make a case for exploring FT as both a development of the themes of earlier social encyclicals and as an attempt to explore an integral humanism for a new age facing economic, environmental, migratory, and social-conflictual challenges. The article lays out a summary of these main themes of Francis’s social teaching. Nonetheless, the authors conclude, the integral planetary humanism that Francis calls for, and is so needed, is itself a radically incomplete project. A common home is not possible without a recognition of a common kinship, yet without deep reflection on women’s experience, the inclusion of women as full subjects and agents of CST, and greater attention to race, the document cannot fully embody the spirit and logic of its own message of gift, inclusion, and co-belonging.
106. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Meghan J. Clark, Anna Rowlands Introduction
107. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Kristin E. Heyer Orcid-ID Walls in the Heart: Social Sin in Fratelli tutti
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In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis probes structural and ideological threats to people’s social instincts and shared good(s) in contexts of fragmentation and false securities (§ 7). His approach to these pervasive temptations to build a culture of walls “in the heart” and “on the land” employs structural analyses but also elevates ideologies abetting the harms these walls wreak, signaling a development in the use of social sin in line with related emerging theological scholarship. This essay traces and contextualizes Francis’s application of interconnected dimensions of social sin in Fratelli tutti; interrogates its oversight of the social sin of sexism; and suggests that practices of encounter and discernment in the pursuit of social friendship serve as apt antidotes to the harmful dynamics identified.
108. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Helen Alford Orcid-ID Fraternity in Fratelli tutti: A Return to Gaudium et spes?
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The connection between the use of fraternity, love, and justice in Fratelli tutti and Gaudium et spes is explored.
109. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Emilce Cuda Orcid-ID A Place at the Table for Better Politics: Political Mobilization, Community Social Discernment, and Valorization of the Bodies
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In chapter 5 (“A Better Kind of Politics”) of Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli tutti, the “better” politics is based on community social discernment as an embodied expression of the sensus fidelium. From the point of view of Latin American theology, it is reflected in people and populism; creative work and structural unemployment; party and movements; conflict and social friendship; value and discard. Without a categorization of these words in light of the Gospel, it will not be possible to address the threat posed by the ecological, socio-environmental crisis.
110. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Amy Daughton Paul Ricoeur and Fratelli tutti: Neighbor, People, Institution
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Unusually, Fratelli tutti and Laudato si’ both cite the work of French thinker Paul Ricoeur. It is unusual because reference to individual scholars can be rare in Catholic social teaching, and because Ricoeur was a philosopher, and not a Catholic. Yet Ricoeur’s work, which spanned nearly seventy years and incorporated both philosophy and engagement with religious resources, focused on meaningful communication in text and action for the work of living together. For an encyclical committed to rethinking and rejuvenating attitudes to each other in public life, across disagreement, Ricoeur’s work provides an ideal conversation partner. His approach involves attending carefully to the ethical entanglement of self and other, mediated by the institution. This attention supports the driving concern and reasoning of Fratelli tutti—to recenter the agency of neighbor, people, and institution for the fragile political work of deliberation, cooperation, and action.
111. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
María Teresa (MT) Dávila The Political Anthropology of Fratelli tutti: The Transcendent Nature of People’s Political Projects Grounded in History
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In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis lays out a vision for political life grounded in encounter with the other and as essential for human being and becoming. In this vision, the political projects of specific groups of people, their historical contexts, and their particular identities are an essential element of political projects for the common good. This essay seeks to understand the political anthropology originally developed by Jorge Bergoglio that undergirds this vision. In Fratelli tutti, Francis puts this anthropology at the service of Catholic social teaching, distinguishing him from his two immediate predecessors. Such a political anthropology supports the transcendent value of the person as extending to the people, and, in turn, as extending to political life as well. As such, this becomes an important space from which we extend ourselves toward others as part of the task of humanization.
112. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Elżbieta Łazarewicz-Wyrzykowska Invisible Solidarity
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In this article the author uses Pope Francis’s understanding of solidarity expressed in the encyclical Fratelli tutti to interpret the hitherto unacknowledged role of women’s invisible work in the Polish social movement Solidarność (Solidarity). The author then juxtaposes their contribution with the work of volunteers involved in helping the migrants in the humanitarian crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus, considered from the perspective of the exegesis of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Fratelli tutti. A postscript places these events in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
113. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Léocadie Lushombo Fratelli tutti: Toward a Community of Fraternity with the Wounded Women
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This article expands on Pope Francis’s vision of a community of fraternity. This community is one in which people support each other, identify with each other’s vulnerability, bear one another’s burdens, and embrace collective salvation. Although Francis takes steps forward in considering violence against women, a proper order to which a community of fraternity must turn requires that one draw much more from local narratives of injustice against women. This task can guide the Church’s orthopraxis on women’s suffering, which should consider how psychological or sociopolitical factors doubly wound women, especially in contexts of war and conflict. The effects of these wounds should inform the idea of imputability and responsibility for action regarding absolute moral laws. The article includes narratives affirming Francis’s call for mercy to be put first in accompanying wounded women, who become the locus theologicus on the suffering Christ.
114. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Simeiqi He Love, Dark Night, and Peace: The Chinese Catholic Church in Dialogue with Fratelli tutti
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The recent social encyclical Fratelli tutti provides the Chinese Catholic Church with renewed hope in a time of sweeping impasses. This article is inspired by Pope Francis’s passionate summons for the centrality of love, a culture of encounter, and a new social and political order. It presents an utterance of a laywoman rising from the Chinese Church, aspiring to dialogue with the encyclical. By weaving Francis’s vision together with the wisdom of Carmelite saints and my personal knowledge of the Chinese Church, I call upon the Chinese Church to deepen its roots in the soil of love and to journey through the dark night. I urge the Chinese Church to re-encounter atheism and to become a beacon of peace in Chinese society. I conclude the article with an appeal for authentic solidarity from the world Church and all concerned parties of the Chinese Church.
115. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Ellen Van Stichel Orcid-ID Europe’s “Neonationalism” Read through the Lens of Fratelli tutti: A Call to Move from Fear to Fraternity
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The rise of nationalist and populist tendencies and their exclusivist discourse and consequent polarizing effects challenge the Christian narrative, especially if politicians openly look for support within the Catholic Church and Christian churches, thereby referring to Europe’s Christian heritage and Judeo-Christian roots. This article shows how Fratelli tutti can be read as a response to this attempted exclusivist interpretation of Christian identity. Pope Francis is not unaware of the underlying dynamics that lead people to become exclusivist rather than embrace inclusion, as is shown by his remarkable recognition of the sentiments of fear and resentment. As a response, however, he refuses to interpret Christianity so narrowly that it can be used to legitimize the construction of walls to keep “the other” outside enclosed communities. By taking the Good Samaritan as his focal point, Francis reorients Christianity toward its inherent cosmopolitan roots with a call to move from fear to fraternity.
116. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Charles E. Curran Pope Francis’s Social Encyclicals and the Social Teaching of the Church
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Pope Francis’s two encyclicals—Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti—belong to the tradition of Catholic social teaching that began in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. There have been continuities and discontinuities within the tradition of Catholic social teaching, but there has been a tendency to downplay the discontinuities. Francis’s two encyclicals show both discontinuities and continuities with the earlier documents. The final section criticizes these two encyclicals as being too overly optimistic in their approach to solving the problems facing the environment and the social, political, and economic orders.
117. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Roger Bergman Orcid-ID Catholic Teaching on Slavery: Consistency or Development?
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In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis wonders why it took the Church so long to condemn slavery unequivocally. Indeed, the place of slavery in Catholic teaching provides a test case of change in official Church intellectual tradition. This paper examines the divergent arguments of four authors who have written about Church teaching on slavery: Pope Leo XIII, Fr. Joel S. Panzer, Judge John T. Noonan Jr., and Fr. John Francis Maxwell. It considers the statement on slavery in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in light of Pope John Paul II’s meditation on the nature of human labor in Laborem exercens, itself a meditation on Leo’s Rerum novarum (On the Condition of Labor), and offers a critique of the position that papal teaching, because it must be self-consistent, is therefore irreformable or unsusceptible to development. This provides one response to the pope’s provocative question.
118. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Tia Noelle Pratt Introduction
119. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Tony DeCesare Catholic Social Thought and the Capability Approach: Toward a More Democratic Form of Global Democracy Promotion
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Despite a growing body of literature that engages both Catholic social thought and the Capability Approach, little has been done to explore what these two traditions of thought might offer to a reassessment of the project of global democracy promotion. This essay brings Catholic social thought and the Capability Approach into conversation for this purpose. What emerges is a framework for thinking about and engaging in what the author calls democratic democracy promotion (DDP). DDP is based on a broadened conception of democracy and avoids a dogmatic commitment to the promotion of Western liberal democracy; it takes a needs-based approach to the allocation of externally driven democracy assistance; and it prioritizes education initiatives as central components of democracy promotion. Refashioned as such, democracy promotion has the potential to bring about more participatory democratic processes, a more inclusive global democracy, and a critical and caring mass of global democrats.
120. Journal of Catholic Social Thought: Volume > 19 > Issue: 2
Nicholas Ensley Mitchell Orcid-ID A Critical Race Theology Analysis of Catholic Social Teaching as Justification for Reparations to African Americans for Jim Crow
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This article is a critical race theology analysis that asserts that Catholic social teaching established in documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Populorum progressio, Caritas in veritate, and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’s Contribution to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance justifies reparations for the state of oppression commonly called Jim Crow, or segregation society, from the US government because it denied African Americans “truly human conditions.”