Enacting Catholic Social Tradition – serie

What difference would Catholic Social Tradition make if it guided our personal and communal financial decision-making? The Sermon on the Mount reminds us of this fundamental decision-making when it comes to questions of faith and money: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). In Counting the Cost, Clemens Sedmak and Kelli Reagan Hickey suggest a theological and spiritual discernment process for the everyday reality of budgeting and financial planning that explores the status of money and monetary values by reflecting on this gospel call.   Counting the Cost explains how Catholic Social Teaching provides a framework for our thinking around finances by answering questions such as: What does this fundamental decision look like in times of financial scarcity and stewardship responsibilities? How do the attitudes that Jesus invites us into shape the ways we make financial decisions? And how can budgeting be and become a way of discipleship for individuals, parishes, and dioceses? The book includes a range of financial decision-making examples and reconstructs them as decisions about priorities, values, and commitments to respond to the world and its material realities in a gospel-inspired way.

Discover how Catholic Social Teaching can help us to re-think homelessness and our commitment to justice in the world.  Homelessness is on the rise globally. As many governments leave the provision of housing to the markets, access to adequate, affordable housing is becoming more precarious. Widening inequality, fueled by a capitalist and neoliberal ideology, is exacerbating the problem. Damaging social narratives deepen the stigma of homelessness, while the systemic injustices causing the housing crises are often overlooked. In Dwelling with Dignity, moral theologian Suzanne Mulligan examines how Catholic Social Teaching can help us to re-think homelessness and our commitment to justice in the world.  With its emphasis on the common good, solidarity, and integral human development, we find in the social doctrine of the church not only a robust analysis of social injustice but also a call to proximity with the sufferer. Rooted in the Gospel, it calls us to dismantle the structures that oppress the poor and exclude many from full participation in society. Dwelling with Dignity invites us to construct economies and societies that place the human person at their center, and to work toward human flourishing, personal and communal healing through accompaniment, solidarity, and a commitment to justice in the world.

2025 Catholic Media Association Second Place Award, Catholic Social Teaching2025 Catholic Media Association Second Place Award, Pastoral Ministry — Parish LifeExplore new modes of creation to bring virtue back into virtual spaces. At its best, the internet channels the world into a global village of sorts, where digital citizens learn from each other, explore new modes of creation, and help others work through dilemmas in both physical and virtual spaces. Virtue in Virtual Spaces argues that the internet doesn't have to be the cultural wasteland of click-bait, partisan politics, and vulgar content that we see too often today.Technology has tremendous potential for good because of the inherent goodness of human creation and creativity which can be achieved through the development and use of technology. The authors draw from writing on virtue ethics and Catholic Social Teaching to demonstrate this potential goodness of technology. Eight of the main themes of Catholic Social Teaching are used to build a framework for designing technology to promote human flourishing. In this book, readers will engage with the philosophies behind their favorite social media platforms, examine how the design features in these platforms shape habits and imagination, and gain dialogue-based skills to bring virtue back into virtual spaces.

A useful and enriching resource for empowering organizers rooted in Catholic Social Thought to engage the church on all levels and mobilize Catholics and other people of faith to enact social change.  Empowering People through Encounter presents the Catholic Social Tradition as an embodied, practical, and inspiring way to connect faith and action. It highlights the dispositions, skills, and methods of faith-based community organizing through a combination of interviews with Catholic organizers in the field and case studies of campaigns from a variety of national contexts. Focusing on the relational praxis of organizing provides an opportunity for readers to encounter Catholic Social Thought as an integrated vision that gets lived on the ground by those closest to the pain of injustices rather than a set of abstract principles invoked by those at a distance. Students and practitioners of Catholic Social Thought in a variety of contexts—from the classroom and the pulpit to the one-to-one meeting and the public action—will appreciate the introduction to the concrete skills of community organizing to encounter the Catholic Social Tradition with particular emphasis on the social teachings and synodal vision of Pope Francis. For those who use this resource, within the context of a university classroom or parish, Empowering People through Encounter will nourish faith formation and vocation development by presenting community organizing as an expression of Catholic Social Thought and a way people of faith have been architects of Catholicism.