Includes bibliographies.

The Church's Evolving Social Teaching -- Faith and Liberation: Development Since Vatican II -- Class Struggle and Magisterium: A New Note -- The Impact of Marxism on the Thought of John Paul II -- Toward a Canadian Catholic Social Theory -- John Paul II's Social Teaching in Canada -- Liberation Theology Blessed -- Theology and Emancipation -- Liberation Theology and "The Supernatural" -- Salvation and Emancipation -- The Holocaust and Political Theology -- Critical Social Theory -- The Social Context of American Catholic Theology -- Humanistic Sociology, Scientific and Critical -- Contradictions in the Catholic Church -- Catholic Foundation of Human Rights -- The Retrieval of Subjectivity -- Neo-Conservative Critics of the Churches

The last decade has witnessed considerable development in social theory within the Roman Catholic Church. Inspired first by papal statements such as Pacem in Terris by Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI's Populorum Progressio, Catholic social theorists have found a fertile environment in the new world. The Medellín Conference in 1968 laid the groundwork for the movement known as liberation theology in Latin America. In North America the hierarchies of the United States and Canada have issued prophetic and sometimes startling on nuclear arms and economic policy. Gregory Baun has long been one of the most insightful commentators on religion and social theory. He is a theologian who is also trained as a sociologist and political theorist. In this book he brings together the best of his writings covering the period of greatest ferment in Catholic circles. He analyzes events and documents and the movements they represent. He is especially sensitive to the social context of theories, whether political or theological.