‘Catholic’ must be more than just a brand name

Catholic Social Thought
Edited by David O’Brien and Thomas Shannon, Orbis, £30

There are 687 pages in this collection of Church documents, roughly 635 of which are freely available on the Vatican website. So the consumer spends £30 for 50 or so pages of introductory material and indices. This is, it turns out, as bad a deal as it sounds.

The explicitly modernist thesis of the editors is that tradition and orthodoxy are barriers that must be overcome if the Church is to engage today’s society fruitfully. Throughout the text, concepts that evoke the tradition of the Church are kept at a careful distance as if they emit an embarrassing odour. We are told, for instance, that Pope John Paul II’s “commitment to doctrinal and moral orthodoxy … caused considerable disaffection”. Among whom (other than the editors), the reader is left to guess.