Since the university I attend has a J-Term, my winter break lasts longer than most, clocking in at 5 weeks. So what have I been doing to pass the time? Like anybody else I know, I like to spend my free time reading about Catholic social teaching!
I just finished a book called Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching by Anthony Esolen. The book is centered on the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, who is known as the father of modern Catholic social teaching. I found it so insightful that after I finished it, I had to reread it whilst taking notes so I could try to better absorb all of the knowledge I had at my fingertips.
I didn’t think any summary that I put together would do justice to Esolen’s or Pope Leo’s words. So instead, below are seven quotes I thought beautifully captured the spirit of Catholic social teaching.
- “Liberty is the unimpeded capacity to attain to that perfection for which we were made, union with God.
- “To set aside God, the Lawgiver, is to set aside Law itself.”
- “Each human person is infinitely greater than the entire physical universe.”
- “The human society is for the human person to promote his fulfillment as a human being.”
- “The family is not justified by the good it brings to the State; the State is justified by the good it brings to the family.”
- “To treat human nature as simply separate from God is, thus to attempt to construct a civil society without reference to God, is to treat of a thing that does not exist, and to attempt to build a society upon that fiction.”
- “It is Christ, not democracy, who has set us free.”
Esolen, with Pope Leo in tug, has painted a moving picture of the life we are called to as Catholics. We have been created, not to be functions of a mass State, but to know, love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ.
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