Catholic Social Teaching website launched

Christine Allen, Executive Director of Progressio with Bishop John Hine of Southwark Archdiocese

A new website dedicated to Catholic Social Teaching was launched on Monday.

The website: www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk is from the livesimply network and will be a valuable resource for schools, parishes and people wishing to deepen their understanding of the faith.

Launching the site at Heythrop College, London, Bishop Hine said it would help to equip people to respond to the ecological, peace and justice challenges of the 21st Century, “because if our calling is to become more like Christ, then we will view what we are doing to our world and the injustices of our society as intolerable.”

Former government minister John Battle, told the invited audience of 60 people that Catholic Social Teaching must not be an ‘add-on’ to the Catholic faith. Rather, it was about ‘the whole practice of our faith.’

He added: “Catholic Social Teaching helps us to make sense of what we do at Mass when we walk out of the church doors.”

Welcoming the new website, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster said: "This website will be useful whether you’re coming to Catholic Social Teaching for the first time or whether you want to find out a bit more on this journey of discovery.

“It is very important because Catholic Social Teaching is such a crucial exploration and application of the faith which is so formative in our lives and so important for us all."

US Catholic author and lecturer Megan McKenna, said that truth, light, peace and hope were among the foundations of Catholic Social Teaching.

She said Catholic Social Teaching was about ‘what people deserve simply because they are human beings’. And she ended with the challenge: “If your religion doesn’t make you more compassionate, truthful and just, and stop you thinking about yourself, then it is no religion at all.”