This week’s blog post is an extract from Pope Francis’s message for the World Day of the Poor on 4th November 2022. The full message can be found at: https://www.cbcew.org.uk/papal-message-world-day-of-the-poor-2022/
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Following the recent post on this blog about corruption, we thought we would follow up by one on the related theme of lobbying.
The subject of lobbying has had very little sustained treatment in Catholic social teaching, though Pope Francis has started to address the question. If anything, Catholic writers tend to regard lobbying in a rather positive way. And there is no doubt that lobbying has its positive dimensions, for example where Christian organisations are lobbying on behalf of the oppressed.
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October 4th was the feast of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecologists and animals. The day brought to an end the season the Catholic Church describes as “The Season of Creation”. The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales also chose that day to launch a considerably revised, new edition of its teaching document on the environment – The Call of Creation.
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The term “social justice” leads to a lot of sabre rattling in Catholic social teaching circles. Greater attention to its meaning, including to some of the ambiguities about its meaning, might be helpful in promoting more fruitful discussion. Debates are often clouded by bringing F. A. Hayek’s disdain for the whole idea of social justice into the discussion. Supporters of a free economy, in the spirit of Hayek’s work, are therefore pitted against supporters of social justice in Catholic social thought. Constructive dialogue is impeded.
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This week’s blog post is the address of Pope Francis to the 25th Anniversary meeting of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe in Clementine Hall, the Vatican on 10th June 2022. The theme was “The Urgent Need to Develop Family Networks”. For brevity, some of the formalities have been edited out.
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Pope Francis has raised, in several of his talks and encyclicals, the problem of corruption. It is surprising how rarely this has featured explicitly in Catholic social teaching more generally because it is a major driver of poverty, injustice and miserable living conditions.
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St. Mary’s University is launching a new degree programme. It is coming to the end of its validation process and will be formally “on the books” from February. Students will be able to join the programme from September 2022, but they can apply now. For the next month, we are currently advertising it “subject to validation” as the regulations require. The programme is probably unique in the UK. It will be called: “MA in Social Justice and Public Service”.
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Some of you may be familiar with the phrase “technocratic paradigm” from Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato si’. But what is he talking about? I define it as an all-encompassing expression of a technical way of thinking.
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The series of events run by the Benedict XVI Centre, Together for the Common Good, Caritas Social Action Network and the Centre for Social Justice is coming to an end with an in-person event on November 16th.
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‘To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it’. These words from G.K. Chesterton’s A Short History of England are a salutary reminder to those who claim certain rights. And now, not for the first time, a new right has been proposed: the right to die. Over the last few years a number of bills advocating for a change in the law to allow for assisted dying or a right to die have been brought before Parliament. All have so far failed. Yet, the assisted suicide campaign continues.
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