Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and its newspaper, The Catholic Worker, is depicted in a stained-glass window at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in the Staten Island borough of New York. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Catholic Social Justice

How do we define what social justice is? How have Catholics understood it, and what can we do today?

October 23, 2017

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Feature

Defining Social Justice

Cutting through the generalities, we must find a specific conception of social justice so that we can recapture it

By Virgil Michel

March 1, 2014

From the Archives

Article

We were, frankly, hoping for jail. Perhaps jail, we thought, would put another compulsion on us, of being more truly poor.

We Plead Guilty

December 27, 1957

U.S. Catholicism

Domestic Affairs

From the Archives

Jewish-Christian Relations

Feature

How to Make a Difference

We must lose more, suffer more, experiment more, risk more, trust one another more

By Daniel Berrigan

August 7, 1970

Article

The Scandal of the Works of Mercy

To reach a man in the street you must go to the street, where Christianity itself may be a sign of contradiction

November 4, 1949

From the Archives

Article

Against the Culture of Death

Karen Clifton on the church’s teaching about human dignity, why opposing the death penalty is a prolife cause, and why Catholics should seek restorative justice

By John Gehring

October 18, 2017

Feature

King & His Mentors

The black social gospel is strangely overlooked, but it provided the theology that Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement preached

By Gary Dorrien

January 16, 2023

Article

Reunion!

If worker-justice advocates want a dialogue with red America, Catholic social action is one of the few vehicles left.

By Clayton Sinyai

October 2, 2017

Article

The Catholic Sister Who Challenged Paul Ryan on CNN

John Gehring interviews Sister Jordan about Paul Ryan’s trickle down economics, the political activism of women religious, and Catholic education

By John Gehring

August 24, 2017

U.S. Catholicism

Domestic Affairs

CNS photo

Article

‘This Economy Kills’

The economic ideology favored by people like Arthur Brooks is utterly incompatible with Catholic social teaching; it is a rock of shipwreck.

By Anthony Annett

June 5, 2017

Feature

All my life I have been haunted by Catholic teachings on just war.

The War against Just War

By Peter Steinfels

June 5, 2017

Feature

Just War?

Just-war teaching has distracted Catholics from learning and practicing strategic nonviolence. At times it has excused them from even trying

By Gerald W. Schlabach

May 31, 2017

U.S. Catholicism

Domestic Affairs

Prolife advocates at the annual March for Life / CNS photo

Article

Abortion & Social Justice

Nothing would do more to energize social-justice movements than a broad-based coalition able to break through the impasse of abortion politics in the United States.

By Gerald W. Schlabach

December 20, 2016

U.S. Catholicism

Domestic Affairs

CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World

Article

LGBT Catholics & the Francis Papacy

How the church can do a better job reaching out to and learning from gay Catholics

By John Gehring

May 22, 2017

CNS Photo / Karen Callaway, Chicago Catholic

Article

Cardinal Blase Cupich on the Signs of the Times

Why Cardinal Bernardin deserves a fresh hearing

By Cardinal Blase J. Cupich

May 19, 2017

U.S. Catholicism

Paul VI and Joseph Ratzinger / Wikimedia

Article

A Larger Solidarity

Far from being an oddity best ignored, "Populorum progressio" still offers vital resources for the dilemmas and decisions now facing the church.

By Barry Hudock

February 23, 2017

Pope Benedict XVI

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