CPD Catholic Social Thought and Practice PC

Durham University

Explore the tradition of Catholic social thought/teaching, which spans the last 150 years and draws on the social reflection of the Christian tradition since its origins. It is a tradition with huge cultural relevance now, and the course will help you connect your reflections on our own times with a tradition that gives you resources to try to orient yourself within it.The end of the 19th century marked the beginning of a significant new tradition of Catholic papal teaching: the social encyclical. This tradition was born out of the end of an era of throne-and-altar Catholic politics and the emergence of the papacy into a world of nascent European nation states and urbanising industrial capitalism.From the loss of territorial powers, the Church crafted a new genre of Catholic theology out of the old: from the patristic, medieval and early modern reflections of theologians and bishops emerged a distinctive canon of social principles and teachings which have shaped key aspects of the modern world we inhabit. These ideas have been at the heart of post-war constitutions, human rights frameworks, reforms to workers’ rights, resistance and liberation movements, migration norms, and now ecological action. The distinctive theological formation of each papacy has led to important differences of emphasis, controversies of interpretation and wider critique. Often this teaching has also been closely connected with grassroots movements inside and outside the Church, forming a complex web of intellectual and praxis-based influences.This module attempts to map the emergence of key themes, trajectories of thought, principles and propositions within the broad CST field. It explores the encyclicals chronologically and thematically. It relates the development of theory to praxis, where possible, and reads the tradition critically. In addition to the popes, students will encounter the work of Joseph Pieper, Simone Weil, Gustavo Gutierrez, Dorothy Day, Charles Taylor, Ivan Illich, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, John Courtney Murray and others.