An overview of Catholic social thought, both official and non-official, particularly in recent decades, first published in 2006.

Catholic Social Teaching and Labour Law explores the contribution that religious ethics makes to debates on justice in working life. Many faiths include beliefs about the significance of work to human development and the need for work to be performed under conditions that uphold dignity, equality, and solidarity . This book considers how the substantive provisions of labour law reflect prior ethical choices about how workers should be treated, and how beliefs from Catholicism influence these. This book provides a thorough account of the principles found in Catholic Social Teaching (CST), and how these impact human work and labour rights . It tests the contemporary relevance of its principles by applying them to current debates, using EU labour law as a case study. Specifically, it examines CST on the right to a just wage, the right to rest, worker participation, and equality and discrimination. The book finds that CST offers fresh insights on long-standing injustices in the labour market, such as low wages or poor working conditions, and also sheds light on emerging challenges such as ensuring rest in an era of digital connectivity. The book recognizes that tensions arise in areas where the Church's beliefs diverge from those that prevail in a secular understanding of human rights. This is particularly evident in debates relating to equality. It concludes that faith-based perspectives should be included in pluralistic dialogue on the future of labour law.

This book explores how the themes and insights of official Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and broader Catholic social thought might illuminate, and be illuminated by, a deeper engagement with the context of prisons. What resources might Catholic social thought bring to pastoral work in prisons? And what might listening to the prison context bring to Catholic social thought? The volume includes constructive proposals for the relationship between CST and prison ministry, as well as critical questions about the role and shortcomings of prisons, CST, and chaplaincy. It contains contributions by scholars and practitioners of theology, criminology, and prison chaplaincy from the UK, US, and Ireland, and reflects on the inextricable relationship of social action and pastoral care in the work of prison ministry.

Introduces Catholic social teaching of the twenty-first century, and includes encyclicals of Benedict XVI.

Now revised, this is a concise overview of what the major documents of the tradition say about political, economic, and social life, making accessible the key ideas that the Church has proclaimed in the area of social teaching.

Responding to the signs of the time, this book brings the lens of Catholic social thought (CST) to the enterprise of Catholic higher education in the United States. Scandals in the Church and the growth of religious non-affiliation in the culture have made being Catholic greatly challenging for Catholic colleges and universities, at the same time that the economics of higher education have mounted a challenge to the very viability of many institutions. This book throws light on what Catholic colleges and universities might and must do in order both to preserve their mission and renew it for the future. CST is concerned with the right ordering of social institutions, or in other words the systems in which individuals live and work. CST is accordingly relevant not only to the internal dynamics and structures of Catholic colleges and universities, but to the system of U.S. higher education in which individual colleges and universities operate. This edited volume, consisting of high-quality chapters by authors with disciplinary expertise, deploys the resources of CST to shed light on both internal and external challenges to, opportunities for, and obligations on institutions of Catholic higher education in the U.S. context.

Based on Catholic and Confucian social ethics, this book develops an ethic of solidarity and reciprocity with the migrants in Asia who are marginalized. Mary Mee-Yin Yuen draws off her own pastoral experiences in the Church, the situation of the wider Christian community, and the personal experiences of migrant women from various Asian countries in Hong Kong, to describe the features and practices of an ethical approach that emphasizes solidarity and reciprocity. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book integrates Catholic social ethics, moral philosophy, Chinese Confucian ethics, social sciences, and cultural studies to investigate the phenomenon of international and intra-national migration in Asia, particularly with regard to women migrants moving from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Mainland China to Hong Kong.

Even though the policy impact of Catholicism has increasingly been acknowledged, existing scholarship lacks a coherent view on its changing influence over time and in different political contexts. In this book, Fabio Bolzonar investigates the influence of Catholicism on developments in French social protection from World War II to the mid-2010s. He discusses the factors that have favoured or inhibited it and explores the hybridization between Catholic values and secular principles in the social engagement of Catholic actors in secular France. By doing so, this multidisciplinary study integrates current scholarship, which has given limited attention to the changing patterns of Catholic involvement in the social policy domain over a long period of time, and the renewed influence of Catholic values in secularized societies. Catholic mobilization has relocated from the political to the civil society sphere, making voluntary organizations and social movements, rather than political parties, the main channels for defending Catholic values in secular France. Rather than marginalizing Catholicism, this process has opened up new opportunities for Catholic actors and values to play a significant role in society and politics. Bolzonar identifies two divergent scenarios that define Catholic social engagement in contemporary France: either the strengthening of new forms of institutional collaboration between Catholic-inspired philanthropic organizations and public administrations in the interest of socially vulnerable citizens, or the emergence of new ideological conflicts on gender- and sexuality-related issues.