Foundations of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is a graduate-level course intended to introduce to the student the classical (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero) and medieval (St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas) roots of the fundamental principles that make up CST.

In this course, students will be exploring the philosophical, anthropological, and theological ideas that inform CST allowing for a deeper and more holistic understanding of its principles. Having explored these foundations, the course then presents how these principles are fundamentally challenged by the anthropological turn of modernity and the resulting “social question.” This course sets the stage for CST 510 and CST 520, which present CST as an answer to the great social challenges of late modernity through our present times.