Anna Rowlands on Catholic Social Teaching (REVIEW ESSAY)

Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) December 11, 2022: The doctrinally conservative Pope Francis (born in 1936) is the author of the 2015 eco-encyclical Laudato Si' - the most widely read papal social encyclical ever written.

More recently, Pope Francis issued another equally lengthy social encyclical titled Fratelli Tutti (Latin for "all brothers [and sisters]") in 2020.

Papal encyclicals are available in English and other languages at the Vatican's website.

Now, because I have characterized Pope Francis as doctrinally conservative, I should mention here that many conservative American Catholics have been vociferous in denouncing him. See Massimo Borghesi's book Catholic Discordance: Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis, translated by Barry Hudock (Liturgical Press Academic, 2021).

I have profiled the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis in my OEN article "Pope Francis aon Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019):

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Now, Pope Francis' 2015 eco-encyclical and his 2020 encyclical grow out of the body of pro-social constructive thought known as Catholic social teaching, in which popes since Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903; reigned 1878-1903) play the role of public intellectuals offering pro-social constructive thought to the political and social world at the time of their social teachings.

In addition to the rightly famous social encyclical Rerum Novarum (Latin for "of revolutionary change"), concerning the rights and duties of capital and labor that Pope Leo XIII issued in 1891, he issued the equally famous encyclical Aeterni Patris (Latin for "of the eternal Father") in 1879. It inaugurated the worldwide Roman Catholic movement of neo-Thomism. Neo-Thomism was officially demoted a wee bit from its most favored status by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church.

The official demotion of St. Thomas Aquinas from his most favored status inspired Matthew Fox's creativity in the wide-ranging 560-page book Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality (Ixia Press/ Dover Publications, 2020; orig. ed., 1992).

Now, Catholic social teachings as distinct from what other kind(s) of Catholic teaching? Roman Catholics had long looked to popes and their church for teachings about faith and morals. Roman Catholic teachings about morals had long included the social dimension. Indeed, it is hard to imagine moral teachings that do not include the social dimension somehow.

So what exactly emerged historically in what is known as Catholic social teaching? The young English Catholic religion scholar Anna Rowlands of Durham University provides the history of Catholic social teaching in her learned new 2021 book Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (T&T Clark).

Rowlands' reference to "Dark Times" in her subtitle is a reference to the social philosopher Hannah Arendt's essay collection Men [and Women] in Dark Times (1970; orig. ed., 1968). In it, Arendt devotes a chapter to Pope John XXIII (1881-1963; reigned 1958-1963).

Now, figuratively speaking, dark times may include the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the rise of Donald J. Trump in the United States. In Christian eschatological thought, the end of dark times is imagined as the end-time.

However, in addition to Arendt's essay collection Men [and Women] in Dark Times, Rowlands also refers to Arendt's book The Human Condition (1958). In Rowlands' "Introduction" (pp. 1-14), she claims that she has "attempted to frame [her book's] uniqueness in dialogue with the work of Hannah Arendt" (p. 12). Yes, Rowlands is in dialogue with Arendt (for specific page references to her, see the "Index" [p. 306]), among others. However, Rowlands appears to me to be in a more persistent dialogue with Simone Weil (for specific page references to Weil, see the "Index" [p. 315]).

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