American Catholic Religious Thought by
As American Catholics and other Americans move into the twenty-first century it might be helpful to re-assess American Catholic religious and social thought during the past two centuries. Have American Catholics produced any creative theological responses to the issues and forces that confronted them over the past two centuries? Have they added anything worthwhile to the classical European formulations? Have they developed some of their own traditions that need critiques in our own day? In his introduction to this collection of original writings, Patrick Carey argues that American Catholics, from John Carroll to John Courtney Murray, have exhibited a fresh, vigorous ability to engage the great religious and social questions of their time in creative continuity with their inherited tradition and sometimes in capitulation to the culture in which they lived. Whether they were responding to the Enlightenment or to the Romantic mood, to the slavery and capitalism, to Modernism, to Neo-Scholasticism, or to twentieth-century problems of social justice, Catholic Americans have produced a stimulating theological commentary that is worth re-examining. This book has been designed to make that tradition on American Catholic thought more accessible. Included are the writings of leading figures: John England, Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker, Martin John Spalding, John Ireland, John Hughes, Dorothy Day, Virgil Michel, and others. Introduced by a major interpretive essay that traces the development of Catholic religious and social thinking in American, this work provides an outstanding resource to students of American Catholicism and American history.
American Catholics and social reform; the New Deal years by 
Catholic social thought : the documentary heritage by
This compendium of church teaching offers complete access to more than 100 years of official statements of the Catholic Church on social issues.
Church, State, and Society: an introduction to Catholic social doctrine by
How can the Catholic faith help not only Catholics, but all people, build a just and flourishing society? The Catholic Church contributes first and foremost to the common good by forming the consciences of the faithful. Faith helps reason achieve a proper understanding of the common good and thereby guides what individuals need to do to live justly and harmoniously. In this book, J. Brian Benestad provides a detailed and accessible introduction to Catholic social doctrine (CSD), the Church's teachings concerning the human person, the family, society, political life, charity, justice, and social justice. Church, State, and Society explains the nuanced understanding of human dignity and the common good found in the Catholic intellectual tradition. It makes the case that liberal-arts education is an essential part of the common good because it helps people understand their dignity and all that justice requires. The author shows the influence of ancient and modern political philosophy on CSD philosophy and examines St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, papal social encyclicals, Vatican Council II, and postconciliar magisterial teaching. Benestad highlights the teachings of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI that the attainment of the common good depends on the practice of the virtues by citizens and leaders alike. The book is divided into four parts. The first treats key themes of social life: the dignity of the human person, human rights, natural law, and the common good. Part two focuses on the three principal mediating institutions of civil society: the family, the Church, and the Catholic university. Part three considers the economy, work, poverty, immigration, and the environment, while part four focuses on the international community and just war principles. The conclusion discusses tension between CSD and liberal democracy. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: J. Brian Benestad is professor of theology at the University of Scranton and the author of numerous book chapters and journal articles published on Catholic social doctrine. He is editor of Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK "Professor Benestad treats complicated issues with subtlety and yet at the same time offers a broad and comprehensible introduction from which an interested reader, whether in the classroom or not, can profit wonderfully. . .Church, State, and Society is the best introduction to Catholic social doctrine I have encountered, and it is well worth the investment." --Nova et Vetera "Against the backdrop of cacophonous disputes about the meaning and application of Catholic Social Doctrine, Brian Benestad has presented a magisterial work of considerable extent and admirable clarity. . . Benestad's book provides a great service to those trying to understand Catholic Social Doctrine. His erudition and his care in making key distinctions are essential to understand such a complex body of doctrine. He subtly charts a course through the minefields of contemporary arguments about Catholic Social Doctrine, getting to the theoretical source of these disagreements: the relation of Catholic Social Doctrine to both the Church's older tradition of political reflection and the new forms of political thought and practice that modernity originates. . . In short, Benestad's excellent volume is the best treatment of Catholic Social Doctrine as a whole and a precious reminder of the intrinsically problematic character of modern democracy." --Perspectives on Political Science
Empowering the people of God Catholic action before and after Vatican II by
The early 1960s were a heady time for Catholic laypeople. Pope Pius XII's assurance "You do not belong to the Church. You are the Church" emboldened the laity to challenge Church authority in ways previously considered unthinkable. Empowering the People of God offers a fresh look at the Catholic laity and its relationship with the hierarchy in the period immediately preceding the Second Vatican Council and in the turbulent era that followed. This collection of essays explores a diverse assortment of manifestations of Catholic action, ranging from genteel reform to radical activism, and an equally wide variety of locales, apostolates, and movements.
The Poor Belong to Us : Catholic charities and American welfare by
Between the Civil War and World War II, Catholic charities evolved from volunteer and local origins into a centralized and professionally trained workforce that played a prominent role in the development of American welfare. Dorothy Brown and Elizabeth McKeown document the extraordinary efforts of Catholic volunteers to care for Catholic families and resist Protestant and state intrusions at the local level, and they show how these initiatives provided the foundation for the development of the largest private system of social provision in the United States. It is a story tightly interwoven with local, national, and religious politics that began with the steady influx of poor Catholic immigrants into urban centers. Supported by lay organizations and by sympathetic supporters in city and state politics, religious women operated foundling homes, orphanages, protectories, reformatories, and foster care programs for the children of the Catholic poor in New York City and in urban centers around the country. When pressure from reform campaigns challenged Catholic child care practices in the first decades of the twentieth century, Catholic charities underwent a significant transformation, coming under central diocesan control and growing increasingly reliant on the services of professional social workers. And as the Depression brought nationwide poverty and an overwhelming need for public solutions, Catholic charities faced a staggering challenge to their traditional claim to stewardship of the poor. In their compelling account, Brown and McKeown add an important dimension to our understanding of the transition from private to state social welfare.
100 Years of Catholic Social Teaching Defending Workers and Their Unions by
"The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level." - Benedict XVI, CARITAS IN VERITATE, Paragraph 25 THIS BOOK provides summaries and commentaries for five landmark papal encyclicals defending workers and their unions. These are: Leo XIII's 1891 Rerum Novarum; Pius XI's 1931 Quadragesimo Anno; John XXIII's 1961 Mater et Magistra; and John Paul II's 1981 Laborem Exercens and 1991 Centesimus Annus. The heart of the book is an extended summary and commentary on each of the above five encyclicals, which are often mentioned but seldom studied. The book opens with the author's analysis of the late modern breakdown of Catholic evangelization among the working classes especially in the United States and other English-speaking industrialized countries. It concludes with a proposed pastoral strategy of global church-labor solidarity to overcome both the older mid-19th century "loss of the working class" to the Catholic Church in much of Western Europe, and also the newer recently developing "loss of the working class" to the Catholic Church in the United States and other English-speaking industrialized countries. As the book makes clear, the Social Magisterium of the Catholic Church defends workers' unions as an essential human right rooted in workers' sharing in the image of God, and having the God-given human right to organize for their defense and for participation in decision-making within their workplaces. Bishops and other pastoral leaders who do not build their pastoral strategies for evangelization on this central theme of Catholic Social Teaching undermine their own Catholic (universal) vocation to preach the full Gospel of Jesus to all social classes. JOE HOLLAND is an eco-social philosopher and Catholic theologian with a Ph.D. in the field of Social Ethics from the University of Chicago. His earlier book, MODERN CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING 1740-1958, traces the wisdom tradition of Catholic Social Teaching from its early modern expression through to the death of Pius XII. It addresses the tradition's development as first an anti-modern, and then a modern, ecclesial strategic response to the early and middle stages of Liberal Capitalism and Scientific Socialism. In a forthcoming book on John XXIII, and in additional future books on subsequent popes, Joe plans to address the postmodern development of the tradition from 1958 forward. These books will describe the still developing postmodern Catholic ecclesial strategic response to the turbulent local-global crises of both Liberal Capitalism and Scientific Socialism. They will also highlight the Spirit-inspired seeds of hope -- emerging across the human family -- for a regenerative local-global ecological civilization.
American Catholic Pacifism: the influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement by
This collection of 12 essays by scholars and Catholic Worker activists underscores the pivotal role of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement in challenging the Catholic Church, once linked to unquestioning American militarism, to assert its prophetic pacifist voice. Previously unpublished letters o
Called to be saints : John Hugo, the Catholic Worker, and a theology of radical Christianity by 
The Catholic Worker Movement by
This book is essential reading for understanding the legacy behind the Catholic Worker Movement. The founders of the movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin met during the Great Depression in 1932. Their collaboration sparked something in the Church that has been both an inspiration and a reproach to American Catholicism. Dorothy Day is already a cultural icon. Once maligned, she is now being considered for sainthood. From a bohemian circle that included Eugene O'Neil to her controversial labor politics to the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, she lived out a civil rights pacifism with a spirituality that took radical message of the Gospel to heart. Peter Maurin has been less celebrated but was equally important to the movement that embraced and uplifted the poor among us. Dorothy Day said he was, "a genius, a saint, an agitator, a writer, a lecturer, a poor man and a shabby tramp." Mark and Louise Zwick's thorough research into the Catholic Worker Movement reveals who influenced Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day and how the influence materialized into much more than good ideas. Dostoevsky, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieux, Jacques and Raissa Maritain and many others contributed to fire in the minds of two people that sought to "blow the dynamite of the Church" in 20th-century America. This fascinating and detailed work will be meaningful to readers interested in American history, social justice, religion and public life. It will also appeal to Catholics wishing to live the Gospel with lives of action, contemplation, and prayer.
Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement by 
Go to the Worker by
OC Go to the workerOCOOCothat was the central message of the Catholic social-action movement which flourished in the United States from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. And, according to a book by that title recently published by Marquette University Press, the message is as fresh and powerful today as it was in the Great Depression to which this movement responded. OC Go to the WorkerOCO: AmericaOCOs Labor Apostles, by historian Kimball Baker, tells the movementOCOs story by profiling 10 of the movementOCOs leaders, and traces the origins of the movement. These include Catholic social teachings (OC Go to the workerOCO was initially a directive in several papal encyclicals, or letters); Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker movement; the ideas of social, industrial and political democracy; and worldwide social-justice stirrings within the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. All these influences came together, the book says, in the 1930s, a time when unrestrained capitalism had brought the U.S. economy to its knees. The result was many Catholic priests and laypeople forming a national worker-justice movement based upon its membersOCO belief that helping workers organize and bargain collectively was just as much of a spiritual calling as feeding the hungry. The movement operated ecumenically. It cooperated with worker advocates from all faiths and helped workers from all backgrounds. It fought for worker justice side by side with organized labor, especially the industrial unions which came on in the mid-1930s, and together these advocates and unions gained passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Within a decade, the proportion of American workers organized went from less than one tenth to about a third. Underlying the Catholic social-action movementOCOs central message, Baker says, was the conviction that every economic activity is subject to moral law. It was on this basis, for example, that Monsignor George Higgins, one of the bookOCOs chapter subjects, criticized the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 as OC unfair and unworkable.OCO Since its enactment, the proportion of U.S. workers organized is back to about one tenth. OC In the current economic crisis, American workers are becoming more and more aware that they need to organize to be strong, OCO Baker contends. OC Hopefully OCyGo to the WorkerOCO will give them and their advocates an encouraging boost in dealing with the Great Recession, in which the adverse affects of unrestrained capitalism are once again on full display.OCO"
Christian Liturgy: Catholic and evangelical by
Written with special attention to Early Church, Reformation, and present day traditions, in Christian Liturgy Senn traces the story of Christian liturgy in light of the church's public rites. Senn's study focuses on liturgical practices that are catholic -- in continuity with the whole historic tradition -- and evangelical -- Gospel-centered in its forms of proclamation and celebration. Exploring the liturgy from an ecumenical perspective and context, the author uses a comparative studies approach to the liturgy, drawing on the insights of anthropology, biblical studies, general history, church history, historical theology, and musicology.
Reforming the Liturgy by
2009 Catholic Press Association Award Winner! Perhaps no liturgical scholar of our time is better ale than John Baldovin to write with clarity and accuracy about the meaning of the church's liturgy and the history of its development in the last half century. In this summary volume on the reform of the liturgy since the Second Vatican Council, Baldovin pinpoints and assesses 'both sympathetically and critically 'the objections to changes in the liturgy since the council, focusing on philosophical, historical-critical, and theological questions. After addressing each criticism in turn, in a final chapter he assesses the critique of post 'Vatican II liturgy as a whole, affirming what is accurate and necessary, rejecting what is backward looking, and proposing a set of principles to guide future development. No one who studies or participates in liturgical action in the twenty-first century can afford to overlook this book. John F. Baldovin, SJ, is professor of historical and liturgical theology at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. His most recent books include Bread of Life, Cup of Salvation and The Urban Character of Christian Worship.
Reynold Hillenbrand : the reform of the Catholic liturgy and the call to social action by 
There Were Also Many Women There by
Where are the women in liturgical history? In considering the influential liturgical movement in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, Katharine E. Harmon reveals that the reality is analogous to Matthew's account of the crucifixion of Jesus: "there were also many women there" (Matt. 27:55). In this groundbreaking study, Harmon considers women's involvement in the movement. Here, readers explore the contributions of Maisie Ward, Dorothy Day, Catherine deHueck Doherty, Ade Bethune, Therese Mueller, and many others. Harmon shows how movements and institutions such as progressivism, Catholic women's organizations, Catholic Action, the American Grail Movement, and daily Catholic family life played a prominent role in the liturgical renewal. The historical record is clear that women were there, they ministered to the Mystical Body, and their important work must be recognized.
The unread vision : the liturgical movement in the United States of America, 1926-1955 by
Biographies have been written of the liturgical pioneers in the United States, and scholars have studied particular aspects of the movement. This volume is the first to treat the movement synthetically. As a social history, the liturgical movement in the United States is examined not only from the perspective of the people who were behind it but also from its socio-cultural context treating such issues as immigration, ethnic identity, and poverty in the years of the Great Depression. Grounded in the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ, the pioneers' call for full and active liturgical participation necessarily included social responsibility. At the heart of the liturgical movement in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s was one fundamental principle: liturgy and social justice are inseparable. The author calls for a new liturgical movement and for the rediscovery of that inseparable relationship within the contemporary American church.
Worship in transition : the liturgical movement in the twentieth century by
A wide-ranging study which defines and explains the very diverse processes of change in liturgy and worship that have swept most Christian churches this century, touching the lives of all Christians.
