Catholic Social Teaching

Resources and reviews

After the 2016 election I dove into Catholic Social Teaching for some sanity and direction.

If you're feeling like you need some of that now, here are some resources I'd recommend.

1. If you're new to CST, "The Church’s Best-Kept Secret: A Primer on Catholic Social Teaching" by Mark Shea is a great little resource to start with. I wrote a review of it here when it was published: https://wherepeteris.com/the-churchs-best-kept-secret/

   1. I interviewed Mark Shea about his book on the PFG podcast a few years ago:

      https://www.catholicthirdspace.com/p/interview-with-mark-shea-what-is

2. If you're already familiar with CST but want to go further, I'd recommend three books:

   1. "An Economics of Justice and Charity: Catholic Social Teaching, Its Development and Contemporary Relevance" by Thomas Stork is a summary of the major social encyclicals

   2. "Cathonomics" by Tony Annett is a survey of the historical development of CST and then it's application to modern economics

      1. I also interviewed Tony about his book on the PFG podcast a few years ago:

         https://www.catholicthirdspace.com/p/interview-with-tony-annett-a-more

   3. "Toward a Truly Free Market" by John Medaille offers a critique of modern capitalism from a Distributist perspective grounded in CST

      1. Believe it or not, I also interviewed John:

         https://www.catholicthirdspace.com/p/interview-with-john-medaille-a-catholic

3. You can also skip those three books about CST and jump into the social encyclicals themselves. There isn’t a better encyclical to start than Pope Francis's most recent social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html

4. If you do that, I co-wrote and edited a study guide for Fratelli Tutti that’s available for free: https://wherepeteris.com/fratellituttiguide.pdf

5. I also have a presentation about Fratelli Tutti that you can watch online or invite me to present live (in-person or virtual):

   https://www.catholicthirdspace.com/p/brothers-and-sisters-all-7b4

6. Finally, I can travel to your parish or diocese to present a day long kerygmatic retreat about CST that unpacks the four pillars of Church’s social teaching: the Dignity of the Human Person, Common Good, Subsidiarity, and Solidarity:

   https://www.practicalkerygma.com/p/what-is-life-as-christ-catholic-social