Counsels of imperfection : thinking through Catholic social teaching / Edward Hadas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hadas, Edward, author.

Contributor:

JSTOR (Online Service)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church--Doctrines.

Catholic Church.

Christian sociology--Catholic Church.

Christian sociology.

Christian ethics--Catholic authors.

Christian ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

polychrome

Place of Publication:

Washington, DC : The Catholic University of America Press, [2021]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

For more than a century, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church has attempted to walk along with the modern world, criticizing what is bad and praising what is good. Counsels of Imperfection described the current state of that fairly bumpy journey. The book is divided into 11 chapters. First comes an introduction to ever-changing modernity and the unchanging Christian understanding of human nature and society. Then come two chapters on economics, including a careful delineation of the Catholic response, past and present, to socialism and capitalism. The next topic is government, with one chapter on Church and State, another on War, and a third that runs quickly through democracy, human rights, the welfare state, crimes and punishments (including the death penalty), anti-Semitism, and migration. Counsels of Imperfection then dedicates two chapters on ecology, including an enthusiastic analysis of Francis's "technocratic paradigm". The last topic is the family teaching, which presents the social aspects of the Church's sexual teaching. A brief concluding chapter looks at the teaching's changing response to the modern world, and at the ambiguous Catholic appreciation of the modern idea of progress. For each topic, Counsels of Imperfection provides biblical, historical and a broad philosophical background. Thomas Aquinas appears often, but so does G. W. F Hegel. The goal is not only to explain what the Church really says, but also how it got to its current position and who it is arguing with. In the spirit of a doctrine that is always in development, Counsels of Imperfection points out both strong-points and imperfections in the teaching. The book should be of interest to specialists in Catholic Social Teaching, but its main audience is curious newcomers, especially people who do not want to be told that there are simple Catholic answers to the complicated problems of the modern world.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Background and Key Ideas p. 9

Idea 1 Human Nature Is Real and Comes in Three Types p. 15

Idea 2 People Naturally Search for the Supernatural p. 19

Idea 3 People Are Fundamentally Social p. 20

Idea 4 Love Is the Foundation of All Human Communities p. 21

Idea 5 Societies Are Always Imperfect p. 23

Idea 6 Authority Is a Necessary Part of Social Life p. 24

Idea 7 The Only Historical Story That Really Matters Is the Story of Redemption p. 25

Idea 8 Catholics Have Responded to Modernity but Not Very Successfully p. 27

Idea 9 The Catholic Social Teaching Is a Response to Huge Changes p. 33

Idea 10 Most of the Catholic Social Teaching Is Universal p. 35

Idea 11 The Catholic Social Teaching Can Only Offer Counsels of Imperfection p. 37

Idea 12 The Church Always Calls People to Perfection p. 40

Chapter 2 Economic Issues in an Industrial Age p. 42

The Biblical Base p. 48

The Philosophical Base p. 55

Five Principles p. 58

Chapter 3 Economics Ideas, New and Old p. 96

The Virtues and Vices of Technical Ingenuity p. 96

The Fading Challenge of Poverty and the New Challenges of Affluence p. 99

Free Markets p. 104

A Better Way p. 117

Chapter 4 Government-Church and State p. 127

The Biblical Base p. 129

Philosophical Tensions p. 134

Historical Perspective p. 143

Chapter 5 Government-War and Peace p. 163

The Biblical Background p. 164

The Philosophical Background p. 168

The Historical Background p. 174

The Just War Doctrine p. 181

The Current Teaching-The War against War p. 185

Chapter 6 The Church Adrift in a Secular World p. 191

Democracy p. 193

Human Rights p. 202

The Welfare State p. 210

Crimes and Punishment p. 216

Anti-Semitism p. 227

Migration p. 235

Chapter 7 The Care of Creation p. 246

The Biblical and Theological Base p. 247

The Teaching in Context p. 252

Catholics against the Mainstream-Four Issues p. 259

Chapter 8 Integral Ecology p. 276

The Big Old Idea-Misguided Anthropocentrism p. 277

The Big New Idea-The Technocratic Paradigm p. 280

Food Production-People in Nature p. 286

The Life of Cities-The Poor and the Rich p. 291

The Life of Leisure p. 296

The Denigration of the Domestic p. 302

Cautionary Conclusion p. 309

Chapter 9 The Human Family-I p. 311

The Family in the Bible p. 313

The Modern Shift, in Practice p. 320

The Modern Shift, in Theory p. 334

Chapter 10 The Human Family-II p. 345

The Catholic Response p. 345

The Catholic Response in More Detail p. 354

A Brief Cheerful Conclusion p. 375

Chapter 11 Three Concluding Thoughts p. 376

Light and Shadows p. 376

From Frightened Pride to Confident Humility p. 381

Progress and Its Discontents p. 388.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. New York Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on January 28, 2021).

Other Format:

Print version: Hadas, Edward. Counsels of imperfection

ISBN:

9780813233321

0813233321

Publisher Number:

40030324328

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.