Catholic social teaching has been called the “Church’s best kept secret”, and with good reason. The two foundational encyclicals (Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum [RV]and Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno [QA]), other encyclicals on social topics, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), and the Compendium of the Social
Christian charity is more than simple philanthropy, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sunday. Speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square Aug. 23, the pope said: “Christian charity is not simple philanthropy but, on the one hand, it is looking at others through
Thinking out loud about a return to “Sunday normal,” a veteran pastor recently told me that he thought it would take one year for each month of lockdown/quarantine/ shelter-at-home for Mass attendance to return to where it was in February 2020. I said I hoped
Pope Francis’s headline-grabbing words last year – “inequality is disastrous for the future of humanity” – reflected the long doctrinal dialectic following Vatican Council II. At the Council, the focus of social justice increasingly shifted from the tenets of Rerum Novarum – which recognized “the enormous fortunes of some
The rise of divorce and the decline of marriage following the sexual revolution have destabilised the family life of two generations and have been the source of much unhappiness both for children and parents. We have lamented these trends often enough on MercatorNet, and a
May 1 is the Optional Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker. It coincides in many parts of the world with May as “International Labor Day,” a communist-inspired observance, given that communism purported to be the advocate of the worker. Work is an important element of
In a recent First Things column, editor R.R. Reno confirmed that the magazine founded by Father Richard John Neuhaus has substantially revised its hitherto generally positive view of the market economy. This formal shift toward what I’ll call “One Reluctant Cheer for—and Many Doubts about—Capitalism” was no
The Brazilian man who received the miracle allowing for Mother Teresa’s canonization says that he and his wife were ordinary believers who received an extraordinary sign of God’s mercy. “From the beginning, the diagnoses weren’t good and they seemed only worse. (But) from that moment, inside
Churches open up to shelter people, neighbors start to clean out each other’s houses in wake of Harvey. Texans and sympathetic Americans continued to help survivors of Hurricane Harvey Wednesday, as the diminished but still very wet storm made its way eastward, inundating Port Arthur
MUMBAI, India – A German nun known as the “Mother Teresa of Pakistan” will be given a state funeral, according to Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi, after dying Aug. 10 at the age of 87. Sister Ruth Pfau died in Karachi in a hospital affiliated with
