featured Archives - Catholic Social Thought

Taxation, government debt, and the family

Render unto Caesar was published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 2025. In this third of three blog posts from the contributors to an event on the publication, Philip Booth writes about taxation, government debt and the family.

Undemocratic filibustering or proper scrutiny? The death of the Terminally Ill Bill.

The Terminally Ill bill has run out of time in the House of Lords. Disappointed advocates of the bill to allow assisted suicide claim that the obstructive tactic of filibustering, mainly by a cohort of seven peers, caused the bill to fail. They point to the fact that the Commons voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Bill at its Third Reading by 314 to 291, a narrow majority of 23, and that the House of Lords, as an unelected body, has acted undemocratically in not following the lead of the Commons.

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.

Taxation for the Common Good

Render unto Caesar was published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 2025. In this second of three blog posts from the contributors to an event on the publication, Professor Anna Rowlands writes about taxation and the common good.

Building from the Bottom Up – Catholic social teaching, society and the state

Render unto Caesar was published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 2025. It was followed by an event, and the next three blog posts will be articles based on the speakers’ remarks at that event. The articles are being published now because the Feast of the Annunciation was the ancient beginning of the tax year. Indeed, it was the beginning of the legal year until 1752. The change in the calendar led the tax year to move to its current starting point of 6th April. Our Christian roots, perhaps, go deeper than we realise.

Globalisation and the common good

On the website www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk, there is a set of videos that introduce Catholic social thought and teaching. We continue featuring those videos on the blog with the video on “Globalisation and the common good”. This explores the Church’s nuanced view of globalisation. It is also available with Portuguese subtitles.

Explaining social justice using the Prodigal Son

In this blog post, I explain the distinction between social and distributive justice in Catholic social teaching, using the parable of the Prodigal Son.