The prestigious Rome-based Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, has announced a free introductory video course on Catholic Social Teaching that addresses topics like political community, work, natural law, and family life.
“Human beings live in societies, form families, work together, and enjoy friendships,” the Angelicum states on its website about the course. “But we all know from experience that human social life can also be difficult. What are the principles that should govern our social life together, and how can we develop concrete practices of justice, truthfulness, charity, and social unity?”
The series “Fraternitas: Introduction to Catholic Social Thought” works to respond to these questions and give an overview to Catholic Social Teaching, which the Angelicum defines as “an age-old tradition of thinking, a collection of ideas and practices, that has been formed down through time to analyze and address human social life in light of long-standing principles and in the face of ever-new emerging questions or challenges.”
The course features 20 episodes taught by Angelicum faculty, who explain the Church’s teachings on natural law and rights, subsidiarity, political community, the dignity of work, the family, justice and truth in social life, and more, according to an email from Angelicum Media’s Evelyn Blacklock.
The episodes, all under 10 minutes, are available on YouTube and the Angelicum website. The website also offers a five-question quiz for each episode.
Blacklock noted in the email that the series can be used in parishes, in the Church’s Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) formation classes, in Catholic high schools and university classrooms, and clergy, teachers and catechists seeking to continue their formation.
The website adds that the series spotlights core principles of Catholic Social Thought, including the universal destination of goods, integral ecology, solidarity, religious freedom, and family as the cell of society.
The second episode of the course focuses on the definition of Catholic Social Thought and its description notes how some criticize it as “too conservative, too traditional, too behind-the-times.”
“To others, CST is too liberal, too progressive, too much a concession to modernity, to be a legitimate development of the deposit of faith handed down from the apostles,” it continues. “In this episode, we’ll see how CST is nothing more and nothing less than the part of moral theology that studies how the grace of Jesus Christ transforms, perfects, elevates, and divinizes how we flourish as members of society, from the bottom up.”