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Catholic Social Teaching

Summary

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is the body of doctrine developed by the Catholic Church on economic and social matters, beginning with Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891). Its key principles include human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, the common good, and preferential option for the poor.

Core Contribution

The most developed tradition of theological social ethics, offering a coherent alternative to both capitalism and socialism grounded in natural law and the dignity of the person.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Catholic ethics
  • subsidiarity
  • common good
  • human dignity

Historical Influences

Natural law tradition Aristotelian-Thomist ethics Scholasticism

Intellectual Lineage

Catholic Church Leo XIIInatural law tradition

Contemporaries & Peers

Protestant social ethics

Minds Influenced

Christian democracydistributism liberation theology social ethics

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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Catholic Social Teaching

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