This book has been written, primarily, to serve as introductory reading material for those studying the Church's social teaching. It will also serve equally well as a general introduction to the ethics of decision-making in the civic, political and economic spheres of human society. It is a distillation of Fr. Rodger Charles' recent major work, Christian Social Witness and Teaching: the Catholic Tradition from Genesis to Centesimus Annus, which is the definitive guide to the subject in the English language.

"Two volumes making Catholic social teaching available, with unsurpassed clarity and completeness, to a new generation."
- Professor John Finnis
University College, Oxford

"Comprehensive and intelligent, a scholarly reference book and textbook, anticipating the Pope's call for a Catechism of Social Doctrine."
- Stratford Caldecott
Plater College, Oxford

Fr. Rodger Charles, S.J. is a lecturer and tutor in Moral and Pastoral Theology at Campion Hall, Oxford. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1953 and was ordained in 1964. Having read politics and economics while studying for the priesthood, he afterwards took a doctorate in industrial sociology at Oxford. Since 1968 he has been teaching, researching and writing on the social teaching of the Church in London, Oxford and San Francisco.