Michael L. Coulter, Ph.D., is professor of political science and
humanities at Grove City College. He has contributed to
Perspectives on Political Science, The Journal of Markets and
Morality, Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court, Family in America, and
Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics.
Richard S. Myers is professor of law at Ave Maria School of Law. He
is co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition:
Contemporary Perspectives. He has published extensively on
constitutional law, including articles in the law reviews of Ave
Maria School of Law, Catholic University, Notre Dame, and
Washington & Lee. He is the Vice-President of University Faculty
for Life and the Executive Secretary of the Society of Catholic
Social Scientists.
Joseph A. Varacalli, Ph.D., is S.U.N.Y. Distinguished Service
Professor and Director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Nassau
Community College-S.U.N.Y. Co-founder of the Society of Catholic
Social Scientists, his most recent book publications are The
Catholic Experience in America and Bright Promise, Failed
Community: Catholics and the American Public Order (Lexington,
2001).
Following Volumes 1 and 2, which were released in 2007, this book
aims to fill informational gaps and explicate the Church’s
perspective on new controversies, including scientific advances and
related moral concerns. Coulter (Family in America), Richard S.
Myers (Thomas Aquinas), and Joseph A. Varacalli (Bright Promise)
gather the research of nearly 120 field specialists. Also covered
in the alphabetically organized, multiparagraph entries are figures
who have shaped or opposed Catholic social thought, such as Albert
Camus and Richard Dawkins. VERDICT Occasionally, subtle
editorializing accompanies explanations of Church perspective.
Otherwise, this is a valuable, accessible guide to Church
principles as they relate to specific issues and people.
*Library Journal*
The first two volumes of this encyclopedia of Catholic matter were
published in 2007, and this first supplemental volume adds another
202 entries on events that have occurred during the intervening
five years, and on matters that either were deferred from the
original volumes or have become more important in public debates
since then. Among the discussions are Pope Benedict XVI's recent
encyclicals, a statement on ethical implications of biomedical
research, and recent social science research that bears on Catholic
teaching. The full index for the third volume is accompanied by an
index of entries and authors for all three volumes.
*Book News, Inc.*
As a refernce book, the Encyclopedia lives up to the editors' claim
that is 'represents a distinctive contribution to academic
scholarship'. . . . It belongs in every library, not least because
it "clearly presents a Catholic alternative in intellectural and
moral public discourse."
*Touchstone: A Journal Of Mere Christianity*
This work is a reliable and useful Catholic handbook on American
and global social issues theoretically and theologically
constructed and practically applied. Those libraries holding the
original two-volume set will want to add this supplemental edition
to their collection.
*American Reference Books Annual*
The supplement is a useful work in its own right. . . . It sets out
rightly to show practical Catholic thinking is not a mile away from
the best theologically-informed social science research in the
field[.]
*s*
Five years after the publication of the two-volume Encyclopedia of
Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, a
supplemental third volume now has been published. As the only such
encyclopedia. . . currently available in English, these volumes
make a unique and very helpful scholarly resource.The editors
produced the volumes with the aim of applying 'a Catholic
sensibility and critique to a wide variety of aspects of social
existence, from intellectual and scholarly disciplines, to culture
and institutional structures, to the strategies and possibilities
of government intervention in the lives of the citizenry' (xi). On
the whole, the volumes succeed in their given task. . . . The same
standard of quality and approach evident in the first volumes is
maintained in the supplemental volume. Libraries that hold the
original two-volume set should add the supplement to their
collection; those lacking this resource should add all three
volumes.
*Catholic Social Science Review*
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