100 Years Of Catholic Social Teaching Defending Workers & Their Unions: Summaries & Commentaries For Five Landmark Papal Encycli,Used

The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past, as a prompt and farsighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.' Benedict XVI, CARITAS IN VERITATE, Paragraph 25THIS BOOK provides summaries and commentaries for five landmark papal encyclicals defending workers and their unions. These are: Leo XIII's 1891 Rerum Novarum; Pius XI's 1931 Quadragesimo Anno; John XXIII's 1961 Mater et Magistra; and John Paul II's 1981 Laborem Exercens and 1991 Centesimus Annus. The heart of the book is an extended summary and commentary on each of the above five encyclicals, which are often mentioned but seldom studied. The book opens with the author's analysis of the late modern breakdown of Catholic evangelization among the working classes especially in the United States and other Englishspeaking industrialized countries. It concludes with a proposed pastoral strategy of global churchlabor solidarity to overcome both the older mid19th century 'loss of the working class' to the Catholic Church in much of Western Europe, and also the newer recently developing 'loss of the working class' to the Catholic Church in the United States and other Englishspeaking industrialized countries.As the book makes clear, the Social Magisterium of the Catholic Church defends workers' unions as an essential human right rooted in workers' sharing in the image of God, and having the Godgiven human right to organize for their defense and for participation in decisionmaking within their workplaces. Bishops and other pastoral leaders who do not build their pastoral strategies for evangelization on this central theme of Catholic Social Teaching undermine their own Catholic (universal) vocation to preach the full Gospel of Jesus to all social classes.JOE HOLLAND is an ecosocial philosopher and Catholic theologian with a Ph.D. in the field of Social Ethics from the University of Chicago. His earlier book, MODERN CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING 17401958, traces the wisdom tradition of Catholic Social Teaching from its early modern expression through to the death of Pius XII. It addresses the tradition's development as first an antimodern, and then a modern, ecclesial strategic response to the early and middle stages of Liberal Capitalism and Scientific Socialism. In a forthcoming book on John XXIII, and in additional future books on subsequent popes, Joe plans to address the postmodern development of the tradition from 1958 forward. These books will describe the still developing postmodern Catholic ecclesial strategic response to the turbulent localglobal crises of both Liberal Capitalism and Scientific Socialism. They will also highlight the Spiritinspired seeds of hope emerging across the human family for a regenerative localglobal ecological civilization.