Your Question: Why do we hear so little about Catholic Social Teaching...(not specific to THW but generally as Catholics)?

Yes, we often hear that Catholic Social Teaching is the best kept secret in the Catholic Church. (I, however, think the best kept secret is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that Opus dei is a secret society with murderous monks…. Oh, wait. That’s not true? The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction you say? Well, nevermind.) Yes, Catholic Social Teaching just may be the best kept secret of the Catholic Church!

I’m not really sure why we don’t hear about it more, but here are a few thoughts and resources to help us get the word out. Catholic Social Teaching is a wealth of reflections and documents about how we are to concretely live out the call of the Gospel in our world. It may just be that the documents are seen as too time-consuming to go through and read (which is not necessarily true!). So, the reason we don’t hear about Catholic Social Teaching is the same reason why the talk around the water cooler at work generally doesn’t include things such as, “Hey! Did you guys read the Pope’s encyclical this weekend? Can you believe what he said about agape? That was deep.”

Catholic Social Teaching should be a natural fruit of our Christian lives. Here are some straightforward resources to introduce yourself and others to Catholic Social Teaching.

For information on what it is and the foundational documents:
Catholic Social Teaching site of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: http://www.osjspm.org/cst/index.html

and

The Busy Christian’s Guide to Catholic Social Teaching: http://salt.claretianpubs.org/cstline/tline.html

Information from the Center of Concern: http://www.coc.org/

Just Faith groups at Three Holy Women:
Just Faith is a group of parishioners that meet weekly and discuss living out Catholic Social Teaching in the world. The group runs for a year, and includes both education and concrete practice of living and spreading the core values of Catholic Social Teaching. For more information, contact Bob Schuelke, Director of Human Concerns at Three Holy Women at 414-271-6577, or bschuelke@threeholywomen.org.