Social Teaching of Modern Popes

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of modern Catholic social teaching emerging from key papal writings on the question of labor inside and outside Western Europe. With special attention to ecclesial documents and social movements, the course explores the theological, ethical, and historical foundations of Catholic social doctrine and its modern papal development in response to the Industrial Revolution and economic globalization. As universal shepherds of the world’s largest faith tradition, the modern popes have proclaimed the transcendent dignity of the human person made in God’s image, the preferential option for the poor identified with Christ, and the integral ecology of God’s creation. The course explores the social teachings of the popes both as an evangelical challenge to Christian lifestyles in the West and as a safeguard against the modern idolatries of the market, partisan and statist politics, and technology.