Catholic Social Teaching is just Catholic moral teaching with emphasis upon the political and economic realms. This premise is in tension to the way many envisage the Church’s moral teaching, separating – even to the point of opposing – the Church’s commitment to “social justice” and its teachings on matters of life and sex. After a brief elaboration of the nature and purposes of CST and its dominant “principles,” the chapter reflects on why the disassociation between CST and Catholic moral teaching has come about. It argues that as a body of ethical instruction CST would be much more coherent and pastorally effective by explicitly incorporating the exceptionless moral norms taught and defended by the Church. The final section contains suggestions on how this incorporation might take place.

CST is impaired by (1) ambiguity about its scope or subject matter, (2) inattention to its dependence on judgments about empirical facts and likelihoods, and/or upon the other contingent factors and diverse but not unreasonable preferences inherent in any application of the Golden Rule, and (3) inappropriate assumptions that pastors have primary responsibility for making such judgments and assessments, and for deciding and choosing how the laity should act in line with them. Much (not all) of CST should be formulated hypothetically: if you judge that such and such facts obtain, or are likely, then (unless you judge that certain other facts do not obtain or are unlikely), true moral principles and norms, confirmed by divine revelation, direct that you should choose thus-and-thus. Popes and other bishops therefore should be little involved in it, beyond reminding everyone of those true principles and norms, in season and out. Their documents or preaching need not address CST more often than other matters of morality. Organs of the Holy See or bishops’ conferences dedicated to CST are unnecessary. The essay illustrates these theses (and seven related proposals) from the history of CST on sample topics such as the family wage, corporatism, usury, and nuclear deterrence.