Catholic Social Thought and Work Justice

Abstract

This article anticipates the 125th anniversary of the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum novarum (May 15, 1891) by briefly surveying modern Catholic social teaching (CST) and recent, related scholarship in four areas, focusing on the US context: CST on political economy; work and worker justice; labor unions, with attention to recent controversy over unionization of adjunct instructors at some Catholic colleges and universities; and gender and justice issues surrounding political economy’s relationship with the paid and unpaid labor in the so-called “care economy.”