01/07/2026 09:00
- 12:20
HALL: Pola - A103
Contact:
Jancsó A.
Chair:
Ujházi L.
This panel examines Catholic Social Teachingas a central normative framework for interpreting equality and inequality, with particular attention to its internal tensions, historical transformations, and institutional embeddedness. Catholic social thought is grounded in the principles of human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and justice, yet it has always developed in close interaction with concrete social realities, power relations, and historically constituted hierarchies.
The panel explores how the normative moral reasoning of Catholic Social Teaching engages empirical social analysis. Contributions address the anthropological and moral foundations of equality, the relationship between freedom and hierarchy, the changing interpretations of poverty and structural injustice, and the transformation of war and peace ethics within CST. Special attention is given to the ways in which Catholic normative ideals encounter institutional practices, including education, ecclesial governance, legal regulation, and academic institutions.
The panel welcomes historical, legal, political-theoretical, and social-scientific approaches insofar as they place Catholic Social Teaching at the center of analysis and contribute to its critical and methodological reflection. Comparative and interreligious perspectives—especially dialogue with Jewish thought—are also included where they serve to clarify the specific character, possibilities, and limits of CST.
Overall, the panel aims to show how Catholic Social Teaching functions both as a critical resource for addressing social inequalities and as a historically situated discourse marked by unresolved tensions between normative ideals and social realities. In doing so, the panel contributes to the broader objectives of EuARe 2026.
