Associate Professor and Programme Lead, MA in Catholic Social Teaching, St Mary’s University.
Former President of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain.
On Thursday 14 May, Ascension Day in some countries, Pope Leo XIV visited one of the largest universities in Europe, La Sapienza in Rome. In a wide-ranging address[1] which drew on the restlessness of St Augustine as a young man, at one point the Holy Father said:
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We are at the end of the Season of Creation, a special period of prayer and reflection which the Catholic Church observes from 1st September to 4th October each year. This year the Holy Father will publish a new letter on care for creation on Wednesday 4th October, following his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’.
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The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has posed great challenges to Christian teaching about the waging of war and the insights of Catholic Social teaching, issues such as the immorality of an aggressive war, international relations and the welcoming of refugees. However these is one issue which is not met by a straightforward moral response: self-defence.
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In the late 1970s I lived in rooms in Oriel College, Oxford, a few metres from the infamous statue of Cecil Rhodes in the city’s High Street. I don’t recall the statue, or the smaller ones also on the wall (including Cardinal William Allen) ever being discussed. Rhodes was only at Oriel for one term in 1873, leaving a lot of money to the college and to the university, partly for the scholarships bearing his name. What does Catholic Social Teaching have to say about the statue’s future, and that of similar monuments?
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What has Catholic Social teaching to say about the Covid-19 pandemic? As the Church reflects on both the ethics of healthcare resource allocation and the running of the economy, there is quite a lot for us to say; but here I simply want to look at how the United Kingdom’s international policies, and the attitudes underlying them, have affected the country’s response to the crisis. Some policies have been mistaken because they stem from flawed moral attitudes. We have a duty to question and challenge policies: while we are trying to ‘pull together’ governments and public authorities need to be held to account, particularly if mistakes have cost lives. For Christians this is in the best tradition of the Old Testament prophets.
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