ABSTRACT This study examines the influence of Catholic clergy, particularly Father John A. Ryan, on social reform during the New Deal era, focusing on his interpretation of Pope Leo XIII's teachings and the ways that he used Catholic theology to limit the influence of birth control advocates, such as Margaret Sanger, in New Deal policy-making circles. This article analyses primary sources, including speeches, letters, and Papal encyclicals, to illuminate Ryan's beliefs and his advocacy for economic reforms rooted in papal teachings. The research also highlights Ryan's support for the ‘rhythm method' of birth control as a viable alternative to birth control devices such as condoms and diaphragms. In addition to his attempts to blunt the success of birth control advocates, such as Sanger, Ryan argued that birth control should not be prioritised over economic remedies he saw as more central to the welfare of the working class, such as minimum wage legislation. This paper argues that Ryan was fairly successful, integrating himself into New Deal committees and collaborating with Catholic Postmaster General Jim Farley to limit Sanger’s influence on New Deal politics. This research demonstrates the pivotal role of religious figures, such as Father Ryan, in shaping public policy on social issues during the New Deal era, illustrating the intersection of religious beliefs and political reform in a transformative period in U.S. history.

Climate change is the single largest health threat facing the world today. The purpose of the current article is to help nurses of faith more deeply explore a Catholic Christian response to climate change. Christian moral justice teachings from the Catholic Church's extensive social teaching efforts, including the far-reaching papal encyclicals Laudato Si and Laudato Deum by Pope Francis, and now championed by Pope Leo XIV, are explored.

Climate change is the single largest health threat facing the world today. Understanding the scientific and socioeconomic root causes of the global climate crisis is critical to helping nurses mediate the impacts of climate change and social inequity. This article explores climate change and current efforts to counter the growing global climate crisis. Christian moral justice teachings from the Catholic Church's extensive social teaching efforts are summarized, including the far-reaching papal encyclicals Laudato Si and Laudato Deum by Pope Francis, now championed by Pope Leo. Pope Leo XIV. Practical application to nursing is made using clinical examples and the 2025 Code of Ethics for Nurses.

This article examines the mission of the Christian churches in Lebanon through the lens of diakonia, understood as service that is theological, prophetic, and transformative. Drawing on Scripture, conciliar teaching, papal encyclicals, and Lebanese ecclesial voices, it argues that diakonia is constitutive of the Church’s identity. The historical experience of Lebanese churches during war, occupation, displacement, and economic collapse shows how service has been tested, reshaped, and extended across denominational and religious boundaries. Case studies of Caritas, World Vision, Offre Joie, Oum el Nour, and the Dialogue for Life and Reconciliation illustrate how ecclesial visions of service are translated into humanitarian relief, reconciliation, and peacebuilding. In Lebanon’s “long emergency,” diakonia becomes proclamation, solidarity becomes reconciliation, and opting for life itself a theological confession. The article concludes by asking how such witness can remain both prophetic and sustainable in the face of state collapse and sectarian fragmentation.

This article examines the concept of the crime of ecocide in the context of environmental sin, with a particular focus on the legal aspects. The crime of ecocide, understood as the indiscriminate and prolonged destruction of the natural environment, is receiving increasing attention in the international debate on its inclusion in the catalogue of the most serious crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. In this context, an analysis of the concept of ecological sin, derived from Catholic social teaching, which emphasises man’s moral responsibility for the destruction of the environment, is carried out. The aim of the article is to explore and compare two key concepts: ecocide as an international crime and ecological sin as an ethical-religious category, in the context of contemporary environmental challenges. The article seeks to show how these two categories can complement each other, pointing to the need to strengthen moral and legal responsibility for environmental destruction. Due to the overview nature of this paper, it follows a methodology based on a descriptive approach and critical analysis. Within this approach, particular emphasis will be placed on the analysis of papal encyclicals, doctrinal texts and legal provisions related to the topic of ecocide and ecological sin. In addition, the study will take into account an indepth analysis of scientific literature, including monographs, articles published in reputable journals and reports of international organisations. Such a multifaceted review of the material will provide a broad theoretical and legal context to critically examine current legal and ethical regulations on environmental protection and crimes against nature. The analysis will also relate to the debate on ecotheology and the role of ethics in shaping environmental legislation at the international level.

In an era defined by rapid technological advancements, technosocial issues have emerged, positioning technology as a double-edged tool that can either foster human flourishing or contribute to moral and societal decline. These challenges provide an opportunity for the Catholic Church to reassess its moral teachings and establish guidelines for technology. Pope Francis addresses these concerns in his papal encyclicals Laudato Si’ (2015) and Fratelli Tutti (2020), where he critically examines the ethical implications of technology and calls for its responsible and morally grounded application. This study analyzes Pope Francis’ framing of technology through Claes H. de Vreese’s (2005) Framing Theory, identifying the internal and external factors that influence his perspective. Additionally, it employs qualitative critical content analysis to extract key themes from the encyclicals and relational content analysis to relate them with Shannon Vallor’s (2016) twelve Technomoral Virtues. The study’s findings reveal that Pope Francis’ framing of technology acknowledges both its benefits and risks while emphasizing moral responsibility as a guiding principle. Furthermore, the findings highlight the need for ethical discernment in technological advancements, reinforcing Pope Francis’ call for responsible and morally grounded digital engagement.

Abstract The aim of the article is to examine the attitude of the Catholic church toward the rule of law. To achieve this goal it is necessary to analyze the statements of the magisterium (papal encyclicals and documents of Vatican II) which mention the rule of law or refer to its correlates (sovereignty of the people, democracy, human rights, religious freedom, and the equality of different opinions). At a general level, we can talk about acceptance of the rule of law since the pontificate of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, some substantive, rather than formal, aspects of the rule of law are currently the subject of controversy between the teachings of recent popes and the dominant tendencies in contemporary law.

This article aims to look into the thought of jurist Alberto Pasqualini as part of the early stages of organization of the ideology of ‘trabalhismo’, which appears in the author’s work as a political theology. This doctrine emerged as the foundation of Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo and had to adapt to the democratic regime of the 1946 Republic. We argue that Alberto Pasqualini played a fundamental in this endeavor. He acted both as a theorist of ‘trabalhismo’ and as one of its main political organizers. Drawing from his books, speeches, and interviews, we will demonstrate here that the moral and political foundations of the ‘trabalhismo’ built by Pasqualini was based on premises aligned with Catholicism and the social doctrine of the Church, as well as his position on major issues of his time, including social and economic development, state planning, and the Cold War. To this end, we will address his writings in the context of Catholic thought represented by the papal encyclicals ‘Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno’.

This study examines and highlights the relevance of Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum in addressing injustice within the context of environmental degradation. The researcher argues that these documents provide profound moral perspectives that frame environmental issues not merely as ecological challenges but as manifestations of injustice affecting humanity as a whole. A qualitative approach was employed, combining descriptive qualitative and comparative methods. The study involves an in-depth exploration of Pope Francis's thoughts on justice in Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum, utilizing literature reviews of Church documents and the Pope's personal history. The findings reveal that Pope Francis integrates social and ecological justice within a framework of integral ecology, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humanity and creation. Drawing from John Rawls's distributive justice and Brian Baxter's ecological justice theories, the study explores how these perspectives are reflected in the papal encyclicals. While Rawls focuses on the fair distribution of rights and duties within social institutions, Baxter extends justice to non-human entities. Pope Francis synthesizes these ideas, advocating for social inclusion and ecological stewardship as responses to exploitation and inequality. The study underscores the holistic approach of Pope Francis, where justice encompasses the dignity of the marginalized and the protection of the environment. His teachings challenge technocratic paradigms and call for collective responsibility to create a more just and sustainable world. By bridging social and ecological concerns, Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum offer critical insights for addressing environmental degradation as an issue of moral and social justice.

In this essay, I utilize a historical methodology into Catholic thought on abortion, looking toward the foundational viewpoint of original sin as justification for the need to baptize infants for the sake of their salvation. Then, I highlight how abortion has developed and shifted throughout the twentieth century vis-à-vis Papal Encyclicals and Vatican II. Strikingly, there is a resounding silence on the soteriology of aborted fetuses in Canon Law. Finally, I return to the clinical context to indicate the theological tension between the Catholic Church's foundational belief on the need to baptize and their procedural ethic on the soteriology of aborted fetuses, resulting in the uncertainty of the salvation for unbaptized aborted fetuses.

Ethical competence is not an easily defined concept, especially with respect to the job requirements resulting from new technologies and digital transformation of the economy. The present paper attempts to define the competence profile of a worker in knowledge-based economy and workplaces using automation and digital technologies, but in relation to sources from encyclicals and other moral-theological documents. This profile includes specific ethical criteria, which are relevant and valid regardless of the times. Moreover, in the face of technological progress in modern economies, these criteria seem to have the power to influence the effectiveness of work processes. Thus, features such as respect for human dignity, responsibility, honesty, quality, courage, trustworthiness, justice, and secrecy should be considered as key for recruitment and evaluation of human capital in the modern labour market. As these are values mentioned in moral-theological documents, including papal encyclicals, they refer to the essence of human work and ensure that no man is reified.

This research article explores the way in which the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has brought to life the interreligious principles of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), as articulated in its Magna Carta Nostra Aetate (NA), which served as the Church’s official doctrine and stance on its relationship with non-Christian religions and world cultures. The article also delves into the RCC’s interpretation of postconciliar exhortations, including the Papal encyclicals and magisterium, in its religious and social activities to foster community cohesion and peaceful co-existence in Kenya. It explores the theological outcomes of interreligious dialogue and its pastoral practice in the Coastal Kenya. It scrutinizes the RCC’s contribution to religious moderation and social cohesion through its multifaceted dialogue initiatives with the civil society, religious, and corporate communities. It empirically analyzes the numerous initiatives and ambitious development programs, i.e., education and charity, empowerment through conferences, training, and theological exchanges with the religious other. It utilises qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather empirical data from 140 respondents through interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), and questionnaires. From the empirical data it evaluated the impact and outcome of RCC’s interreligious programs and how dialogue can reshape prevailing stereotypes about other religions in a pluralistic context.

The concept of the integral speaks to the holistic nature of the globe. It is predicated on the claim that everything/everyone is related, and the destruction of one is the destruction of the whole. As such, it places a moral burden on each part to work towards the preservation and dignity of the whole. This ethics of union is aptly captured in Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), a papal encyclical of Pope Francis. African moral theory perfectly captures this ethic: I am because we are. What this communal ethic does is constantly maintain the view that humans are interconnected to one another. We interrogate how this communalistic approach of the African is implicated and vindicated in integral ecology and the special place Laudato Si’ holds in the world. The end is to justify both the African and ecclesiastical approaches as decolonial ecology and then see how the uniqueness of both approaches can birth a universal approach. However, to achieve our aim, we employ the method of conversation that comes from the African place. We choose conversation because we believe that Laudato Si’ promotes a ‘theology from the borders’. If our statement is true, then we will best be able to project our argument using a method that comes from the borders but is universally possible in its application.

This article intends to examine debt as a basilar political–theological device acting in favor of the neoliberal ethos. The Papal Encyclical Laudato Si affirms in paragraph 52 that debt today serves the control over the poor peoples in the world. In this article we demonstrate how debt can be seen as a political–theological device that works as an instrument of this specific ethos, aligned with neoliberal principles. We intend to show how these elements are related using three analytical movements. In the first, we present how we understand political theology as a critical reflection about the forms of political power. We observe that power, in its form and in the way it operates, replicates the theological–political power status prior to modernity, operating an excluding inclusion machinery. In the second movement, we analyze the political theology machinery that impacts individuals in the operation of an “excluding inclusion”. Under the political–theological machinery, individuals, groups, or populations are considered as a part of the machinery; they are included because they are incorporated in the new organism as they are excluded from their original content—language, ethos, culture, and their constitution as subjects. Then, in the third, we present the notion of the device, explicitly, a device constituted by a web of odd components and flexible relations that, when isolated as independent elements, act in the subject’s formation. In these terms, debt as a device of the political–theological machinery works to form individuals; it is a device that operates the excluding inclusion to make subjects more and more adapted to the market rules and habits. The very sense of debt in the post-productive era is challenged. We present how the possible exits from this machinery involve not only the debate on the forgiveness of foreign debts, but also how they are intrinsically linked to the creation of a new ethos, new ways of life created by relations outside the orbit of debt control. The conclusion intends to show how necessary it is to restore to people new forms of control over a way of life that is not regulated and ruled by debt. The methodology employed analyzes arguments that originated from works and articles concerning this theme.

In Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create A More Just Economy, Anthony Annett provides an account of Catholic social teaching, mainly encapsulated in papal encyclicals from 1891 to the present day, as a value system for economic policy-making in the contemporary world. He argues that values and ethical principles embedded in Catholic social teaching are a better basis for economic policy than the frameworks of “neoclassical” or “neoliberal” economics, with respect to goals such as human rights, inequality and environmental protection. This review evaluates Annett’s arguments in the context of other approaches to providing moral foundations for economic policy, and with respect to the state of current economic thinking. It also considers issues embedded in the difference between “religious economics” and the “economics of religion,” the role of religious reasons in public policy, and underlying conditions of power.

Abstract The objective of this article is to carry out a case study on the doctrinal principles of corporatism supported by Brazilian jurist Francisco José de Oliveira Viana and by American economist and theologian John A. Ryan. It analyzes the influence of tenets of Catholic doctrine stated in papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931) in their ideas and the adequacy of their principles to the solution of economic and social problems faced during the Vargas and Roosevelt administrations. For this purpose, in addition to the encyclicals, we analyze the works Problemas de direito sindical and Direito do trabalho e democracia social by Oliveira Viana and A Program of Social Reform by Legislation and Capital and Labor by Ryan.

As it is indicated by the analysis of source documents and literature of the subject, John Paul II can be considered a proponent of human rights, which has been expressed in particular in his numerous works. During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II issued many encyclicals and other documents in which he discussed the issues ad naturam of human rights in many aspects (not only in the context of the teaching of the Catholic Church), including pointing to the essential social and individual value of human dignity, freedom and social justice for a particular man. The issue of social values is at the same time the essence of horizontal principles, which should be implemented for the benefit of society in connection with the implementation of projects co-financed from European Union funds. Although the strategic documents of the EU, which specify the concept of “horizontal principles”, do not directly indicate the inspiration of the achievements of John Paul II’s social thought, in the opinion of the authors, the requirement to implement horizontal principles in EU projects is part of the essence of the message of papal encyclicals.

An attempt has been made to characterize the peculiarities of sodalities of Our Lady in the context of the Society of Jesus social activities in Galicia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is noted that the Sodality of Our Lady is a religious society of laypeople united by a certain professional or social affiliation, each of these congregations had its own statutes and was under the guidance of church authority. It was found that sodalities of Our Lady are the most common type of spiritual associations founded and cared for by the Jesuits, and the establishment of religious societies is a special part of the missionary work of the Society of Jesus. It is emphasized that the Jesuits not only founded sodalities but also led and constantly cared for their development. Based on the statutes and contemporary periodicals, the essence and purpose of creating these religious congregations in Galicia have been analyzed. Special attention is given to the role of sodalities of Our Lady as a Catholic response to contemporary social issues and demands, particularly as an alternative to socialist movements. It is clarified that these congregations had a specificity as they not only engaged their members in certain religious practices within the Church but also attempted to combine the individual's religious life with their social activities. On the basis of papal encyclicals the influence of the Leo XIII social doctrine on the forms of missionary service of the Society of Jesus is determined. It is noted that the social work of the Jesuit order was part of the cultural events taking place in the Roman Catholic Church at that time. A multidisciplinary approach incorporating various research methods, including source analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, has been employed. The principles of historicism, objectivity, comprehensiveness, integrity, and systematicity have also been observed. It is concluded that the establishment of sodalities of Our Lady was an attempt to reduce the barrier between the Catholic Church and laity by involving the latter in more active religious and social activities. Keywords: Sodality of Our Lady, Roman Catholic Church. religious congregations, Society of Jesus, Jesuits, Galicia.

Vertiatis splendor was one of the most consequential papal encyclicals of the twentieth century. In it, the Church presented the faithful with a detailed look at Catholic moral teaching and put to rest several disputes that followed Vatican II. This article presents some key teachings of the encyclical and how they shape our understanding of Catholic moral teaching today.

The paper undertakes the topic of racism and its moral evaluation by the Church’s Magisterium. It begins with an inductive study which consists in a lexical analysis of selected texts of the Church’s Magisterium and papal encyclicals aimed at tracing the topics of race and racism. The study has shown that although not numerous, the documents addressing this issue are very significant. The paper additionally reviews selected definitions of racism. Finally, the author makes an attempt to interpret the phenomenon of racism and provides a theological proposal to overcome this problem in a theoretical and definitional sense. The article is a contribution to further research and exploration.