ABSTRACT
Catholic social teaching (CST), often described as one of the best kept secrets of the Catholic Church (De Berri, Hug, & Henriot, 2003), is grounded in understandings of justice generated throughout the Old and New Testaments. It comments on public life and encourages people to act for justice by reflecting on and applying the principles of CST as guidelines for action. In education, CST can be used as a lens through which to engage critically with the content of the general school curriculum in a manner that underlines the faith-based identity of Catholic schools.
This chapter provides an introduction to CST, beginning with a brief exploration of social justice as articulated in the Bible. The main body of the chapter tracks the treatment of the major principles of this relatively modern corpus of CST across social encyclicals, beginning with Pope Leo XIII (1891) through to Pope Francis (2015).
