Fostering the Global Common Good

The Relevance of Catholic Social Teaching to Public Health Debates

Bibliographic Data

ID3117889
AuthorsAndrew Lustig (0000-0002-6508-9283, Davidson College, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume14
Issue4
Pages504
Publication date2023-04-06
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel14040504
OpenAlexW4362670393
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited9

Given the scope and intensity of its impact, the COVID-19 pandemic proves instructive as an example of the shortfall in regnant legal and policy approaches to global health issues. Secular discussions of such issues tend to rely on a perspective best described as "policy realism", with current international arrangements and institutions viewed as the acceptable context for future reform. Much of recent Catholic social teaching (hereinafter, CST) has challenged such realism in fundamental ways. While CST is often dismissed as merely prophetic in its tone, I defend its salience by assessing several aspects of its distinctive perspective: (1) the broad theological and anthropological vision reflected in the Catholic framework of basic norms, especially the norm of solidarity; (2) issues that arise in identifying different modes of moral discourse in modern CST; and (3) an effort to resolve such apparent tensions that unifies a distinctively Catholic approach to global health even as it suggests a series of "talking points" between the Catholic theological vision and various secular philosophical and political perspectives

Catholic social teaching · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Realism · Sociology · Solidarity · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Religion, Society, and Development

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