Chapter 9: This chapter argues that a renewed respect for the place of practical wisdom in Catholic Social Teaching (CST) need not eclipse several well-established themes. Attention paid to practical wisdom does not diminish the Church’s ongoing critique of distorted worldviews, its reliance on justice as an organizing framework, or the primary role of charity in the Church’s mission.

Chapter 5: This chapter explores the development of practical wisdom, contrasting it with an approach to catechesis that gives priority to intellectual formation in the principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). The importance of the quality of Catholic parish life comes into sharper focus through the lens of practical wisdom.

Chapter 1: Although Catholic Social Teaching (CST) refers to practical wisdom, this virtue is treated as if it were separable from or irrelevant to the analysis of moral principles. This chapter argues for a more explicit incorporation of practical wisdom and the virtues into the Church’s social doctrine.

Chapter 2: This chapter is an introduction to practical wisdom, clarifying those aspects of practical wisdom that make it difficult to push offstage while CST’s principles are formulated: its essentially practical nature, the effect of contingency, and the transformation of practical wisdom by Christian faith.

Chapter 3: This chapter argues that practical wisdom is strongly implicit in the documents of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). The Church’s personalist vision strongly suggests practical wisdom, and both the Catechism and the Compendium assign an important role to the virtue.

Chapter 7: This chapter explores the challenge of dialog with economics when much of economic analysis is unable to incorporate neo-Aristotelian virtue. A reliance on preference optimization and its assumptions about knowledge appears to be the most significant barrier to neo-Aristotelian virtue in economics.

Chapter 4: The personalist vision of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) attempts to correct the distortions of social science, but a division between the work of community at lower levels of society and the work of governing persists. A bottom-up account of society through the lens of practical wisdom – a practical personalism – integrates individual agency more securely into human dignity.

Chapter 6: This chapter contrasts the nature of dialog in Catholic Social Teaching (CST) (in which political practical wisdom is the organizing virtue) with the expectations for dialog in technical social science disciplines like economics (which are skeptical of practical wisdom). Benedict XVI’s insistence in Caritas in Veritate that charity and truth are integrally related reframes and challenges this fundamental disagreement over the nature of the dialog.

Chapter 8: Political disagreements between bishops and the laity are notable for two reasons: They are practical disagreements, and they are disagreements between a spiritual shepherd and his flock. These disagreements are best understood in light of the authority claims of bishops, the Aristotelian structure of the human action, and Catholic teaching on conscience.