What's that on your face?

One of the joys you might see on my face each week is cooking up ways I can delight my editor, Elizabeth Scalia, with my column over at Patheos. She has a pen I revere and her wit and wisdom is razor sharp. I really like her and she'd probably give me a wink and a smile and say something encouraging if she heard me say that some weeks this kind of writing just does not come all that natural for me, and I struggle to find the flow between the research, the selection of content, and, heck, just getting the words down in a rational manner.

However, the following article was not one of those. It was one of the easiest ones to write because it was subject that I had readily taught, and I always write down my talk content. So, when Elizabeth asked me months back to begin sharing some of my catechetical material with the Summa This Summa That blog at Patheos there were some weeks when all I did was re-write what I would say to you in person as a catechist.

What follows is the core nugget of a talk I give on Catholic social teaching, to clarify what it is, and to ground it in God's Word and the Church's magisterial documents. In other words, if I had an hour to give you the whole talk -- all 7500+ words of it -- you might be interested. But if you needed the executive summary, "the money quote", you know, if you could only remember ONE THING about Catholic social teaching, THIS SUMMARY would be IT.

I'm pleased that Elizabeth asked to run it again: Something of the Glory of God Shines on Your Face