by Mary Cullen

Anna Rowlands’ fascinating account of Catholic Social Teaching, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times, is both rich and complex.  The ‘dark times’ of the title echoes social philosopher Hannah Arendt’s 1968 book, Men in Dark Times.  Both women focus on lives that illuminate the darkness.

For Rowlands, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is a tradition which sheds light on the shifting patterns of our lives.  It is not a form of unchanging theory, she argues, a ‘simple repetition through history applied downwards’, but a ‘circling round the very materiality of the truth as it comes to us in each age’. It is framed by a belief in the transcendent origin and destiny of the human person (not shared by Arendt) which points us towards a profound understanding of mutual living and social gift exchange.

Dr Mary Cullen is the editor of Open House.