Catholic Social Teaching: Toward a Decolonial Praxis

The claims to universality in the thought of Jacques Maritain and Catholic social teaching present a problem. The thought of Jacques Maritain and Catholic social teaching tend not to perceive their own entanglement in modernity and its hidden underside of colonial oppression. First, I explore this problem by drawing upon the scholarship of Catholic social ethicist Mary E. Hobgood to underscore the internal contradictions between three different social models in Catholic social teaching: feudal organic, liberal orthodox, and radical liberationist. I situate Maritain’s work within these social models. Second, I utilize Sylvia Wynter’s appropriation of Franz Fanon’s sociogenetic approach as a way of understanding how people and institutions are malformed by dominant modern epistemologies. I argue that the Roman Catholic Church lacks a coherent and credible praxis of transformation. Finally, I suggest three starting points to initiate shifts toward a decolonial ethic of Catholic social teaching.