Millennial editor Robert Christian has a new article in Church Life, a journal from the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. He writes:

Contemporary liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism are all variants of this liberalism. And they are all rooted in a strong commitment to individualism, a foundation that puts these ideologies at odds with the Church’s moral and social teachings. When American Catholics embrace these ideologies, as many do, there is real tension between their approach to politics and the Church’s approach.

The Church transcends politics and likes to imagine that its view of politics transcends ideology, yet when one maps where the Church stands on a variety of issues—in papal encyclicals, Vatican II documents, bishops conference statements, and elsewhere—one sees a coherent political worldview, if not an ideology per se. The Church’s approach is essentially communitarian—rooted in a commitment to solidarity, reciprocal rights and duties, and the common good, rather than maximizing the autonomy of atomized individuals.

More specifically, the Church’s approach to politics can be defined as personalist communitarianism. This shapes the Church’s approach to human rights, social and economic justice, its preferential option for the poor, its commitment to protecting the environment and favoring sustainable development, its belief in the dignity of work and protection of workers’ rights, and its commitment to human life and the defense of the family. Government must remain limited and not invade the private sphere as it does in authoritarian and totalitarian states that violate subsidiarity, but government plays a significant, substantial, and irreplaceable role in promoting the common good.

The full article can be read here. Other great articles on “Pope Francis and the Joy of the Gospel” can be read here.