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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?
The Editors
October 23, 2017
Social Justice

Please email comments to [email protected].

Article

Defining Social Justice

By Virgil Michel
February 14, 1936
Social Justice
U.S. Catholicism
Economy
Article

We Plead Guilty

"We were, frankly, hoping for jail. Perhaps jail, we thought, would put another compulsion on us, of being more truly poor."
By Dorothy Day
December 27, 1957
From the Archives
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
Social Justice
Article

The Scandal of the Works of Mercy

By Dorothy Day
October 4, 1949
Economy
Poverty
Social Justice
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
Ethics
Pope Francis
Social Justice
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
Social Justice
Theology
Race
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
Social Justice
Bishops
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
Economy
Social Justice
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
Economy
Ethics
Social Justice
Poverty
Pope Francis
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
War and Peace
Ethics
Social Justice
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
War and Peace
Ethics
Domestic Affairs
Social Justice
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
Donald Trump
Election 2016
U.S. Catholicism
Supreme Court
Domestic Affairs
Abortion
Social Justice
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
Sexuality
Bishops
Social Justice
Theology
Pope Francis
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
Bishops
Social Justice
U.S. Catholicism
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
Theology
Pope Benedict XVI
Social Justice
Vatican II

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