I wanted to share a beautiful new website showcasing the wisdom of Catholic social teaching:
http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/
The site has plenty of media–videos, podcasts, and articles–and you can access the original church documents quickly and easily. There is also a good glossary of social teaching terms and an area revealing tons of ways to get involved. I’ve explored just about every website I could find covering Catholic social teaching, and I think this is the best one I’ve seen, both because of its attractive design and depth of content.
For more online Catholic social teaching material, check out these other sources:
- If you want to understand the Church’s position on many of today’s most pressing social issues, you should begin with the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (book form or free online). It’s a difficult read–you may be better off with more popular-level books–but if you can make it through, you will be wiser for it.
- I did a lot of research on Catholic social teaching for a series of four talks I gave at my parish. You can find the audio recordings and Powerpoint slides for each presentation here, as well as a list of book recommendations I put together for attendees.
- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have set up a new Catholic social teaching website geared toward young-adults and those in college, but I think anyone will find it useful. In addition to lengthy articles, the site has online prayers, podcasts, study materials, and videos.
- The Bishops’ official website features easy-to-understand descriptions of each major theme of Catholic social teaching.
- A website from the Office for Social Justice in St. Paul and Minneapolis has selected quotations for each theme, pulled from the papal encyclicals and Church documents that form the core of Catholic social wisdom.
- If you’re a teacher or catechist, this website has plenty of lesson plans for every age covering the Church’s social teachings.