With the election of Pope Leo XIV, there have been more than one public commentator who has mentioned "Catholic Social Teaching" as a significant indicator behind the pope's choice of the name "Leo." 

But what exactly is "Catholic Social Teaching" and why should we care about it? For that matter, why is it important to the new pope? 

In recent years, Catholic Social Teaching has been given the tag line "Catholicism's best kept secret" and on numerous occasions religious instructors (such as myself), priests, bishops, and other church ministers have tried to make it the central focus of our conversation, often with little success. Hence it remains a "secret." 

Catholic Social Teaching refers to a body of teaching in the Catholic Church that began with Pope Leo XIII in 1891. With his encyclical "Rerum Novarum," he began to talk about the Church's response to the world in a different way. The cascading efforts of subsequent popes and bishops conferences have led to a series of encyclicals, papal bulls, pastoral letters, edicts, declarations, and other various church literature, which collectively become Church doctrine with a level of authority in accordance to the relevance and stature of the particular document. 

If I left you with one take away as to why this is important, it would be this. The human person's social contract with other human persons changed dramatically due to the Industrial Revolution and while the Gospel did not change, the necessary response of a Christian to the social order did change. When people began to work in factories and mass production redefined human economies and politics, the root causes for social ills changed. For centuries, Christians would hear the words of the Gospel to "Feed the hungry" and respond with charity in a proportionate manner to the need presented at face vale. But Pope Leo XIII recognized that we can no longer feed someone who is hungry without asking the question "why are they hungry in the first place?" When this question is asked, the Christian has a profoundly different response to the social construct of hunger. The response is not merely to offer a sandwich to someone who is hungry but to engage in remedies to the illness in society that caused there to be hunger in the first place. 

This was pretty radical stuff at the time. It lifted the Church and its directives out of the façade of mechanically following superficial directives of the Gospel and demanded that we become active thinkers and doers of the Gospel within a new social framework. To this day, Catholic Social Teaching is still pretty radical. It requires that we reflect on what "human dignity" means, even as external forces hasten to tear it away, often for the sake of profit or power. 

The past few weeks have been a new dawn in the constant pursuit of implementing Catholic Social Teaching. Mere seconds after Cardinal Prevost was elected pope of the Catholic Church, he was asked what name he would take for his pontificate. With two simple syllables, by uttering the name "Leo," he gave the world an awe-striking sign that he desired to extend the work of Leo XIII. The inevitable take away is that the "best kept secret of the Catholic Church" will be brought to the forefront of his papacy. 

Even in his short time has pope, Pope Leo XIV has furthered his initial indication by naming a new horizon for Catholic Social Teaching. He has signaled his desire to address Gospel-based concerns around the development of Artificial Intelligence. This new revolution, instigated by incredible technological achievement, bears a great promise for prosperity, but it also bears an even greater danger to castigate human dignity as a disposable component of that same progress. We can expect Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessors, to resist this danger with profound intensity. Catholic Social Teaching solicits a response from all people of good will that the degradation of human dignity can never be permitted.  

It is safe to say that Jesus didn't say anything directly about the printing press, the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution, or what we face now in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. But what Jesus did, and the ongoing movement of the Holy Spirit within the Church, has a lot to say about modern changes (advances?) to the social contract. We should stay attentive to Pope Leo's guidance in the coming years, and especially to the Holy Spirit's work amongst us and through us all, so that we can respond as Christ would to the challenges of a new era. 

If you're not already familiar with the notion of Catholic Social Teaching, now is a good time to begin to learn more. If you are familiar with it, now is a time to listen with fresh ears. For by Pope Leo XIV's elevation, it has been given a seat, front and center, to the problems we face citizens of our state, nation, and world. 

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