Last week’s discussion of Michelle Nickerson’s Spiritual Criminals focused on a concrete historical character: Cardinal Francis Spellman. This week I want go larger. An animating theme in the book is something called “Catholic Social Teaching”—or “CST” for short.[1] This theme touches every historical activist and actor in Spiritual Criminals. Beyond the book, because CST is an essential aspect of the faith in modern times, Catholics everywhere must reckon with the implications of it in their lives. Catholic Social Teaching is part of the spine of Nickerson’s story about the Camden 28. By ‘modern times’ I mean—and I think the Catholic Read more