Angelus News | May 7, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 9

St. Pope John Paul II greets the future Pope Francis, then-Cardinal
Jorge Bergoglio, at his elevation to the rank of cardinal in 2001.
Writings from both popes are included in Word on Fire’s new
“Catholic Social Teaching Collection.” | FRANCO ORIGLIA/GETTY
Catholics sympathetic to the aims of
today’s social justice movement. Do
you see the text on CST compiled in
your book as an antidote to the legacy
of Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault
in Western culture today?
Yes! The advocates of the so-called
“woke” ideology today have not been
shy about articulating the philosophical
underpinnings of their perspective.
They do indeed find inspiration in
Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Derrida, and
Foucault, among others.
From these modern and postmodern
thinkers, they derive a number of
principles.
First, they advocate a deeply antagonistic
social theory, whereby the world
is divided sharply into the two classes
For many years, I offered a course at
Mundelein Seminary on this subject,
and I paid special attention to
the social doctrine articulated by the
popes of the past 120 years. I feel that
the Church’s social doctrine, like the
documents of Vatican II, is still largely
unknown to huge numbers of Catholics.
I wanted this text to serve as a
useful introduction to this tradition.
In the introduction to the book,
you write that “the idea that the
Church shouldn’t have a social
teaching is simply repugnant to the
Catholic view of God.” Where do
you see that view being expressed
right now?
I would like to first explain what I
mean by this. For classical Catholic
theology, God is not one being
among many, but rather the sheer act
of “to-be itself,” “ipsum esse” in the
language of St. Thomas Aquinas. This
means that God is intimately present
to all of creation and to every aspect
of life, very much including the social
and political order.
We ought, therefore, never to think
of economics and politics as secular, if
by that term we mean divorced from
God and God’s purposes. I think there
is, within some quarters of the Catholic
world, a tendency to bifurcate the
secular and the spiritual too radically.
One inclusion that surprised me
was that of “Sublimis Deus,” Pope
Paul III’s encyclical condemning
the enslavement of American natives
centuries before the major world
powers — and later the U.S. — ended
slavery. It doesn’t sound like it
would have been the most popular
thing for the pope to say at the time.
Do you see any parallels with the
Church’s teachings on any of today’s
“hot-button” social issues?
I love that text, and I have enormous
admiration for Bartolomé de las Casas,
the Dominican friar and advocate of
the native peoples, who played a key
role in its development.
You’re right. Long before the European
powers moved to end slavery, the
Church condemned the practice,
and in so doing contributed mightily
to what would eventually emerge as
a movement on behalf of universal
human rights. To be sure, there were
many violations of this teaching within
the Church in the centuries following
this declaration, but it certainly
represented a crucial turning point.
When the Church speaks out today
on behalf of migrants, the poor, those
who are discriminated against because
of their race, etc., it is continuing
in the tradition of Las Casas and his
colleagues.
You’ve talked and written a bit
lately about the problems with
“wokeism,” to the chagrin of some
Friedrich
Nietzsche.
| WIKIMEDIA
Jean-Paul Sartre.
| WIKIMEDIA
24 • ANGELUS • May 7, 2021