New online course: Anthony Esolen on Catholic Social Teaching

Now that the school holidays are over (in Scotland at least!), I'm going to try something rather different for the Albertus.

From 24 August 2015 (ie next Monday) until 21 September 2015, I shall be running on this blog an informal course on Anthony Esolen's Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching. For each of the four weeks of the course, I'll posting at least twice a week on the relevant portion of the book and responding to the comments box.  (There's no formal sign up procedure and no fees!) Even though the posts will be largely comprehensible without Esolen's book, I'd encourage you to buy it: it's available on Kindle as well as traditional formats.

I'll say something more about the overall thrust of the book once we've got started on 24 August. But its main interest for me is that it tries to show how Catholic social teaching, rather than being a relatively recent and discrete creation, is instead a natural outgrowth of the Church's traditional teachings on the relationship between God and human beings. It does this by focusing on the teachings of Leo XIII who, as the author of Rerum Novarum, is often taken to be the founder of modern Catholic social teaching.

As noted, Esolen makes extensive use of Leo XIII's own writings. I'll be placing links to those which can be found online here.

As a taster, here's a link to an article by Gerald Russello which gives some of the background to the book and the arguments it's stimulated.

See you on 24 August!