Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching: post 10

Week 4

Welcome to the final week of the course where we read through Anthony Esolen's Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching. If this is the first time you've joined us, please see this post which should navigate you through the course. After today's post -where I'll simply summarise the final chapter of the book- I'll post again this week to discuss critically some overall aspects of Esolen's work. Please feel free to comment on any issue you wish to tackle in the comment boxes.

My summary:

Esolen's final chapter can be summarised by his final words:

I know where a truly Catholic social order is to be found. It is found in a Church... (p186)

He does go on to say more about precisely what sort of Church this would be (full to bursting with repentant sinners; full of the faithful focused on God rather than themselves; where younger children are taken care of by the older children etc etc). But it is a Church and indeed the Church which embodies the completion of the social nature of human beings: the Church, gathered round the Eucharist, is the perfect society.

The central document for this chapter is perhaps Mirae Caritatis [here]. This Encyclical emphasises the centrality of the Eucharist to the good social life:

History bears witness that the virtues of the Christian life have flourished best wherever and whenever the frequent reception of the Eucharist has most prevailed.


My critical discussion:

As I've said above, I'll say more about this final chapter and indeed the whole book in further posts this week. For the moment, note the emphasis on two themes that Esolen is clearly identifying as central to the book and to the social teaching of Leo XIII. First, that a focus on God is central to good social life. Secondly, that a focus on the Church, and especially the Eucharist, is central to the God centred life.

I've suggested earlier that much of Esolen's book can be seen as an attempt to reintegrate Catholic social teaching into the main body of the Church traditional teaching. Here, we can see the heart of this: the integration of social concern into the heart of what might be seen as a traditionalist focus, the Liturgy of the Mass.

[I'll post tomorrow (15/9/15) further critical discussion of the book as a whole.]

[Details of image here.]