“...far too many Catholics are not familiar with the basic content of Catholic social teaching. More fundamentally, many Catholics do not adequately understand that the social teaching of the Church is an essential part of Catholic faith. This poses a serious challenge for all Catholics, since it weakens our capacity to be a Church that is true to the demands of the Gospel.”
Reflections of U.S.
Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions
(contents on this page is taken directly from the above website)
Introducing…
Catholic Social Teaching 101
Background
Its roots are in the Hebrew prophets who announced God's special love for the poor and called God's people to a covenant of love and justice. It is a teaching founded on the life and words of Jesus Christ, who came "to bring glad tidings to the poor . . . liberty to captives . . . recovery of sight to the blind"(Lk 4:18-19), and who identified himself with "the least of these," the hungry and the stranger (cf. Mt 25:45). Catholic social teaching is built on a commitment to the poor. Our commitment to the Catholic social mission must be rooted in and strengthened by our spiritual lives. In our relationship with God we experience the conversion of heart that is necessary to truly love one another as God has loved us. We are called to reach out and to build relationships of love and justice. It is also known as Catholic Social Justice (CSJ). (So why don’t you remember any of this from catechism? Because these developments began in the late 1990’s.)
CSJ is very broad and contains many subtopics, ranging from international to local issues that call on the participation of all Catholics. These subtopics are clustered into 7 themes and each week, we will be exploring a different theme and how each applies in modern times.
Posted by St. Anne Catholic Church
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