Thesis advisor: David Hollenbach / Subsidiarity is a principle in Catholic social thought that informs the distribution of authority among levels of the political and social order. First expressly articulated by Pope Pius XI in his 1931 encyclical letter Quadragesimo Anno, the roots of the concept go back further to Pope Leo XIII and to Thomistic social theory. But subsidiarity is frequently subject to the criticism that it is vague and indeterminate and thereby an ineffective guide to politics and public policy. Much of the discussion of subsidiarity proceeds as though the principle were merely one of devolution of authority to the local level. Moreover, the principle is often taken to be a procedural norm, counseling "small is better" regardless of the underlying substantive question to which one is applying the principle of subsidiarity. The thesis of this dissertation is that it is only through an adequate examination of concrete policy issues that subsidiarity's import can be fully measured and appreciated and only by asking what the common good requires in particular instances through the exercise of political prudence that the proper distribution of authority can be determined. The account of subsidiarity advanced in the dissertation is one of "functional pluralism," denoting that subsidiarity focuses upon the multiple ends of differentiated political societies and thereby seeks to determine the goods they pursue and the means that are properly adapted to those ends. The dissertation argues that federalism and localism as informed by the principle of subsidiarity provide a safeguard for fundamental concerns of Catholic social thought, such as human rights and the common good. After examining the concepts of subsidiarity in Catholic social thought and federalism in American constitutional law and considering their relation, the dissertation discusses three areas in which a richer and analytically sharper understanding of the principle of subsidiarity can make an important contribution to policy debates over the role of federalism and localism in law and public policy. The three policy questions addressed in the dissertation are physician-assisted suicide, FDA preemption, and school finance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

It is within the realm of the international civil society that religions play out their important public roles as charities and advocacy organizations in globalization. World governance models in the post-Cold War era stress the important role that civil society plays in building and sustaining democracy. Indeed, the participation of the Catholic Church in the "third wave of democratization" confirms this. Yet, twenty-five years after the collapse of international socialism, problems with American-led models of development have come to the fore in glaring ways. Growing wealth inequality and what Gayatri Spivak calls "sustainable underdevelopment" are the norm, and these problems highlight the dangers and instability of liberal economic policies. Religious organizations, and proponents of the Catholic social tradition in particular, have been the strongest voices for advocating social justice and advancing policies that pursue "the common good." Both working to alleviate poverty as charities ([i]NGOs and FBOs) and using their voices as a "public religion" (José Casanova) in civil society, Catholic institutions navigate the historically constructed and contingent boundaries among the three spheres of the state, the market, and civil society. Studying this interplay has provided fruitful theories deconstructing the religious/secular binary. In light of these theories, this thesis applies the critique of liberalism supplied by world-systems analysis to the development of Catholic social thought, in the process highlighting a complex history of complicity and dissent with U.S. liberalism's unfolding hegemony. In circulating Catholic social thought through the economic focused paradigm of world-systems analysis, I explore the possibilities of seeing religion and globalization outside a culturally focused framework. How the social magisterium is responding to the problems of economic globalization in an increasingly unstable world will affect its future legitimacy. I explore where the Church has been and its capacity to be a continuingly proactive force for "social justice" and "the common good."

Thesis advisor: James Keenan / Environmental conservation is a pressing issue for modern humans. Health care systems and the consumption of medical goods should therefore be assessed in light of environmental sustainability. While the primary focus of environmental bioethics has been hospitals and health care facilities, ethicists must also address the offerings of the medical industry going forward. My dissertation proposes four principles to assess the environmental sustainability of current and future medical developments, techniques, and procedures. The four principles of green bioethics are: 1. General allocation of resources should precede special interest access: distributive justice 2. Current human needs over current human wants: environmental conservation 3. Simplicity before complexity: reducing dependence on medical intervention 4. The common good should drive health care instead of financial profit: ethical economics. The four principles of green bioethics will move environmental bioethics into the 21st century in a responsible and sustainable manner. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Thomas J. Massaro / In the U.S. theological context since the 1970's, the current called "public theology" has offered a very interesting proposal for the church to be present in society. In its Catholic variant, this current is very much inspired by the American theologian David Tracy. Applied to the context of Spain, this variant could clarify the relationship between Spanish citizenship and Catholic identity. However, in order to be applied to the context of Spain, this current needs to be put in dialogue with the two other major actors in Spanish society: (1) unbelief, and (2) the Islamic tradition. The issue of unbelief has been the focus of the French moral theologian Paul Valadier. His anthropological framework based on conscience could help public theology to respond to the main secularistic critics. The work of five major modern Islamic social thinkers: Abdulaziz Sachedina, Nurcolish Majid, Adullahi An-Naim, Tariq Ramadan, and Alli Allawi --each of whom have attempted to integrate modern social values with Islamic tradition--provide resources for public theologians to address the Muslim tradition from within the Christian theological stance. By incorporating the insights of these two conversations, public theology presents a new and very interesting proposal for the Church in Spain to be present in the social debates. Integrating Valadier's concern for conscience into Tracy's critical correlational approach offers a suitable theological method. To incorporate Islam into the conversation we should put some previous conditions (the category of public religion) and we should agree on a goal for interreligious dialogue (the pluralistic common good). This method could be the way for the Church in Spain to develop a discourse rooted in Christian identity but understandable by modern Spanish pluralistic society. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis advisor: David Hollenbach / Solidarity as spiritual exercise: a contribution to the development of solidarity in the Catholic social tradition By Mark William Potter Director: David Hollenbach, S.J. ABSTRACT The encyclicals and speeches of Pope John Paul II placed solidarity at the very center of the Catholic social tradition and contemporary Christian ethics. This dissertation analyzes the historical development of solidarity in the Church's encyclical tradition, and then offers an examination and comparison of the unique contributions of John Paul II and the Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino to contemporary understandings of solidarity. Ultimately, I argue that understanding solidarity as spiritual exercise integrates the wisdom of John Paul II's conception of solidarity as the virtue for an interdependent world with Sobrino's insights on the ethical implications of Christian spirituality, orthopraxis, and a commitment to communal liberation. The dissertation probes the relationship between spirituality and ethics in general, and Ignatian spirituality and Catholic social teaching, in particular. My analysis of solidarity in the encyclical tradition (Chapter 1) provides an historical overview of the incremental development of solidarity in the writings of successive popes and ecclesial councils from Pius XII through Paul VI. In considering the unique contributions of John Paul II, I turn first to the theological and philosophical formation of Karol Wojtyla and the sociopolitical context of Poland (Ch. 2). My analysis then turns to a consideration of Pope John Paul II's social encyclicals (Ch. 3), with the goal of offering a definition of solidarity that integrates his intellectual formation and social context with the development of solidarity in the official social tradition. Next, I examine the development of solidarity in the writings of Jon Sobrino, first through an analysis of his intellectual and spiritual formation in the revolutionary context of El Salvador (Ch. 4), and then through an analysis of his unique theological contributions to the topic (Ch. 5). Based on Sobrino, I offer an articulation of solidarity as spiritual exercise as an original contribution to the development of solidarity in the Catholic social tradition (Ch. 6). / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Kevin Kenny / The present study examines the Catholic social critique of U.S. immigration law from the introduction of literacy testing in 1917 to the removal of the national origins quota system in 1965. During this period, Catholic thinkers developed a distinctive theology of migration and engaged in a long campaign for reform of federal immigration policy. They did so at a time when the debate over that policy was characterised by a number of contentious issues: discrimination against prospective immigrants on the basis of race and national origins; the importation of migrant labor; the obligation to respond to an international refugee crisis; and the imperatives of Cold War national security. Catholic thinking on these issues involved a constant negotiation between a liberal policy position emphasizing the dignity of the individual and man's natural right to migrate, and a restrictive outlook which acknowledged sovereign states' right to control immigration and citizenship in the national interest. The Catholic philosophy was an important dimension of a national debate that oscillated between exclusionary and inclusionary approaches. In keeping with Catholic social doctrine, Catholic intellectuals and immigration experts insisted that the debate over policy and implementation should give priority to the integrity of the migrating family and the attainment and protection of a living wage for all. These priorities coalesced with a post-New Deal political and social emphasis on the heteronormative family as the core consuming and breadwinning unit in American life. Current historical understanding of the debate over American immigration policy elides the significance of religious thought. This study demonstrates that religious ideas and institutions were used to give the Post-World War II campaign for immigration reform and the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 the weight of moral authority, inclusive of their liberalizing and restrictive features. By giving the 1965 law their imprimatur, Catholic social thinkers helped efface the law's retention of restrictive and selective measures. Examination of the Catholic social critique of immigration policy reveals that socio-economic and moral ideals - as embodied by the idealized nuclear, male breadwinner-headed family - pervaded the debate over immigration reform in this era of restriction. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: M Cathleen Kaveny / This dissertation examines the question of whether a politics of the common good remains possible within contemporary democratic societies, characterized by deep pluralism, division, and contention. To engage this question, it draws on the moral and theological framework of the Catholic common good tradition, and employs that framework to identify, analyze, and theorize a real, practical exemplar of common good politics: the democratic tradition of community organizing founded by Saul Alinsky. By placing these two traditions of practice and theory in sustained dialogue for the first time, this study contributes toward a new understanding of each, while developing an original constructive account of the “politics of the common good.” Chapter 1 introduces Catholic common good theory as a framework of ethical analysis and assesses its current state of development. It argues that while contemporary Catholic thinkers have articulated a rich moral vision of the common good, and reconceived it in democratic terms, they have struggled to adequately account for the role of power conflict in political life. Chapter 2 places the Catholic common good tradition in dialogue with the Alinsky tradition. Analyzing the life, work, and methodology of its controversial founder, Saul Alinsky, it traces his deep relationship to the Catholic church and shows how he sought to embody the Catholic tradition’s vision of the common good in democratic practice, while imbuing it with a greater degree of political realism and attentiveness to power. Chapter 3 offers a historical and ethical analysis of Alinsky-style community organizing as a practice and dynamically developing tradition of democratic politics. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s practice theory, it shows how organizing forms the moral virtues, practical skills, and political institutions needed to promote the common good in a democratic society. It also further articulates the Alinsky tradition’s historical and intellectual relationship to the Catholic tradition. Chapter 4 examines how community organizing exemplifies a democratic form of political prudence. Reconstructing Thomas Aquinas’s theory of prudence, and employing it to analyze two real case studies of organizing campaigns, it develops a constructive account of political prudence as the virtue that enables morally principled and pragmatically effective collective action for the common good in the public realm. Chapter 5 synthesizes the results of the preceding chapters. It argues that prudent political action, and not merely public deliberation, is the social process by which to promote the common good, social justice, and social solidarity in a democratic society. Integrating key insights from both the Catholic tradition and the Alinsky tradition, it clarifies the role of power conflict in the pursuit of the common good, and identifies further areas for theoretical development. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

In the writings of the Vatican, the United States and Latin American bishops, and various theologians since the 1950s, Catholic social thought has generally failed to understand the pernicious depth of the system of racial classification, discrimination, and violence in the Americas. Catholic social thought still sees racism as based on the pre-existing, valid category of "race," requiring individual conversion and social effort. What is required instead is seeing the very concept of " race" as what must be rejected as the product of a racist ideology of politico-economic oppression and developing an anti-racist theological response that overcomes and eliminates this deadly ideology. It involves a re-imagining of the Imago Dei as the image of Jesus on the cross, of Mary and the women at the foot of the cross, as a direct confrontation with the principalities and powers that are invested in racist ideology, where the human and divine are connected through the cross and affirmed in the resurrection. It invokes a re-imagining of Laudato Si' as an anti-racist teaching, using many of the same ideas Pope Francis uses for his integral ecology to overcome the racist ideology that is inextricably tied up with modern capitalism and environmental despoliation.

This dissertation Michael Novak and Patrick Buchanan as Major Representatives of Contemporary American Political Catholicism compares the political thought of two faces of contemporary American political Catholicism represented by the neoconservative Michael Novak and the paleoconservative Patrick J. Buchanan. The first part deals with the context of contemporary political Catholicism and its historical background. The comparison thematizes five problem fields: the issue of democracy and American political system, economic problems, question of foreign policy, the issue of religion and Catholicism and, finally, the conflict over the basis of conservatism. To accomplish the given objective, I analyse the work of both authors, compare their respective ideological positions and set them in the context of other major authors in the given areas and in the context of established political theories. The comparison shows that they both emphasize the significance of the religious and moral aspect of democracy, especially in the American context, however, they do not agree on the universal reach of democratic ideals. In the field of economics, they stand for different views: Novak is an economic neoliberal, while Buchanan a radical economic nationalist. Similarly in relation to foreign policy, Novak...

The diploma thesis deals with the historical development of the attitude of the Church social doctrine towards the phenomenon of democracy. It compares the values of modern democracy and social doctrine. Implicit historical attitudes to democracy derive from the theses obtained by analyzing all the essential documents of social doctrine. The theses related to democracy explicitly are placed in the context and comments of other authors. In conclusion, it summarizes the genesis of the attitude of the Church's social doctrine to democracy in a systematic overview with the links. The summary distinguishes the level of the value starting-points of the Church social doctrine and the level of attitude towards democracy as such.