Review of Essential Catholic Social Thought

Bernard V. Brady titles his textbook Essential Catholic Social Thought to indicate that his focus extends beyond documents of the Church’s magisterium, usually designated “Catholic social teaching” (CST), but his emphasis is on those documents nonetheless. I will comment on this book from my perspective as a teacher for twenty years of a course called “Catholic Social Teaching.” My course is addressed to upper-level undergraduates in a Catholic university and specifically to those majoring in international studies (though it is open to others), but I hope these comments will be helpful to anyone who is considering Brady’s book for teaching or learning Catholic social thought. Currently I use the full texts or excerpts from the texts of the official documents reprinted in O’Brien and Shannon’s Catholic Social Thought (2016), supplemented by chapters from Daniel Groody’s Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice (2015)