The Social Encyclicals and Saint Thomas Aquinas

The social encyclicals of the Catholic Church provide an opportunity to treat human behavior from a practical moral philosophical point of view grounded in Aristotle as interpreted by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Because any attempt to remedy the social disorder by the efforts of reason alone will not only fail but will also result in a worse condition even for the oppressed, the author acknowledges that Christ and his Church have the true and only answer. The social encyclicals are intended, after all, to shift our focus from the philosophical (natural) to the theological (supernatural) level of human life and association, restoring the relationship between the two orders of Faith and Reason. This book was written to explain the philosophical foundation of that relationship, which modernity has threatened, in the hope that it will help heal the widening breach.