The Catholic Social Imagination: Activism and the Just Society in Mexico and the United States. By Joseph M. Palacios

Extract

Joseph Palacios draws a stark comparison between the United States and Mexican Catholic Churches when it comes to putting the Catholic social imagination into action. He contends that, whereas the pluralistic character of political activism in the civil society of the United States has provided a fertile ground for Catholic faith-based community organizing, in Mexico, the rigid historical separation of church and state, the tradition of laicidad, has thwarted the flourishing of faith-based organizing that could affect just social transformations rather than simply being a counter-culture to a secular Mexican civil society.

Palacios spends the first quarter of his text examining the sociological construction of the Catholic social doctrine and imagination. Aspects of this sociological approach are useful for those teaching Catholic social teaching, such as the six levels of teaching in the Catholic hierarchy and the six functional types of Catholic social principles. However, the subsequent dense analysis of the principle of solidarity and then the culminating two-axis model that projects the normative (“integral-structural,” 61) and strategic (“church-world,” 61) orientations of the Catholic social imagination are written for social scientists. Palacios concludes that a comprehensive approach that links Catholic teaching (“integral-church,” 61) to engaged action (“structural-world,” 61) is lacking.