Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching: A Defense of the Church's True Teachings on Marriage, Family, and the State by Anthony Esolen, 187 pages
Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching is
Anthony Esolen's book-length examination of the seminal encyclicals of
Pope Leo XIII. The result is a thorough refutation of the premise that
faithful Catholics can advocate for politics "as if God didn't exist".
The social teaching of the Church does not stand apart from - still less
in opposition to - the religious doctrines, since neglecting theology
results in a flawed anthropology.
In the
Catholic view, as drawn out in the writings of Leo XIII, society is not a
contract that individual parties enter into voluntarily, but a
community into which we are born and without which we are less than
human. The fundamental type of this form of community is, of course,
the family, and it is on this community that all others are built. This
results in an emphasis on the importance of small business, local
government, and a healthy civil society - politics and economics on a
human scale.
Esolen explores what this means
with his customary lyricism, and although some readers may find him
absurdly nostalgic and sentimental, others will find him inspirational
and entirely reasonable.
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