Freedom and Principles of Catholic Social Thought

This talk first sketches a “Catholic constitution of liberty” drawing on the paradoxical assertion in Centesimus Annus §41 that liberty is predicated on a dependent, obedient posture that is proper to rational creatures. I argue that the principles of a free society, antecedently cherished by classical liberals, with some variation, can be derived from this liberty of dependence. This lecture secondly develops a thesis about the possibility of a natural alliance between Catholic thought and classical liberalism, especially in regard to contemporary threats to the common good rooted in both collectivist and individualist attacks on the family and constituting a new formulation of the social question.