Introduction
Day for Life will be celebrated throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland on fathers’ day.
Read more >>Day for Life – from language to culture
Category: Social Action
Catholic social teaching, taxation and generosity
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales recently published a document on taxation called Render unto Caesar. There is relatively little Catholic teaching that is specifically on taxation. Catholics apply principles such as the universal destination of goods, the right to property and the primacy of the family to try to develop practical approaches to taxation in the wide variety of specific circumstances in which they find themselves. Unsurprisingly, they disagree.
Read more >>The call to care for creation
I was recently asked to say what my favourite Bible passage was. Without much thought, I said the first chapter or so of Genesis. The reason I gave is because we can sideline these chapters. Catholics might think: “ah yes, the creation story; that did not really happen; let’s leave that to Jehovah’s witnesses and move on to the second chapter of Matthew.”
Read more >>Practice what we preach – the Church and the environment
Why should Catholics work to nurture the natural environment? The answer to this It is part of our Christian calling. The teaching of the Church has been clear from the earliest times. In the book of Genesis, it is stated at the end of the creation story “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” If God proclaims His gift of creation to be good, then we have a responsibility to care for it and use it appropriately.
Read more >>Catholic social teaching for everyone – fed by our relationship with God
The topic of fraternity was covered in a post shortly after the death of Pope Francis. It is worth revisiting, especially following Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation Dilexi te, though this was drafted before that document was issued. The starting point for this post is the question “how might Catholic social teaching affect our everyday lives?”. In particular, I want to consider how it might affect all our everyday lives, not just those involved, for example, in political lobbying.
Read more >>Is compassion under threat?
To know whether compassion is under threat, we need, firstly, to define it. In the Christian tradition, compassion means to “suffer together with”. It involves entering into the suffering of another. There are classic Christian examples of compassion. Mary shared her son’s agony at the foot of the cross. The Good Samaritan provided the financial means and put himself at considerable physical risk to help the person who had been robbed. St Maximillian Kolbe substituted himself for a condemned father in Auschwitz and, as a result, was condemned to starvation himself, though he actually suffered death from the injection of carbolic acid into his veins.
Read more >>Ecology, Energy, Education: The Journey of the Guardians of Creation Project
Launched in December 2020, the Guardians of Creation Project aims to help the Catholic community in England and Wales work towards a carbon-neutral and more sustainable future, inspired by the teachings of Laudato Si’.
Read more >>Assisted suicide – when one person’s right becomes another person’s duty
Catholic social teaching has always valued independent institutions for the provision of care, education, and welfare for workers. Culturally, such institutions provide a protection against a form of radical individualism which can elevate certain individual rights that are created by legislators above the common good of the community. They also protect against an over-bearing state. Far from undermining individual rights, civil society institutions provide the opportunity for people to work collaboratively for the common good: people choose to work for such institutions and they choose to be involved with them in other ways. The state, in turn, is there to protect the rights of civil society institutions and nurture their foundation.
Read more >>Pope Francis and fraternity
In the coverage of the passing of Pope Francis to eternal life, surprisingly little has been said about an important aspect of Pope Francis’s social teaching – fraternity. This was the theme of his second social encyclical, Fratelli tutti. It is an important theme because it links the pastoral, spiritual, theological and social teaching of the late pope. The title of Fratelli tutti in English is “Brothers All”, and it is subtitled “On Fraternity and Social Friendship”.
Read more >>St Mary’s academics present at key international conference focused on “Catholic universities: in solidarity with their partners and colleagues in conflict zones”
Professor Carole Murphy, Dr Ashley Beck and Ms Maggie Doherty recently presented at an important international conference exploring how to build resilience in solidarity with partners and colleagues in conflict zones. The conference was led and organised by the University of Notre Dame, alongside a Consortium of ten Catholic Universities. It took place at the Notre Dame Rome campus from 31 July to 2 July.
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