The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, edited by Judith Dwyer

...At the end of each essay there is a helpful list of cross-references and a concise and up-to-date bibliography The alphabetical listing and identification of the contributors, the complete list of entries, and the concluding Index are also readerfnendly...

...28...

...In this respect, the Dictionary meets a refreshingly high standard of intellectual honesty...

...entries in this 1,000-page, double-column volume (it took up most of my free time this summer), I realize that, if anything, I was too sparing in my praise of the Dictionary It is the kind of exhaustive work that one could only have dreamed of before the council It is truly a great achievement and one for which we are deeply indebted to its innovative publisher, the Liturgical Press, to its scholarly editor, Judith A Dwyer, and its efficient production editor, Bette Montgomery...

...DOING GOOD, FROM A TO Z THE NEW DICTIONARY OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT Judith Dwyer, Editor, with Bette Montgomery The Liturgical Press, $79 50,1,056 pp George G. Higgins ome weeks ago ajournalist asked me to list some of the more significant changes in the area of Catholic social thought and social action that have occurred post, if not necessarily propter, Vatican II Since The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought happened to be on my desk, I pointed to it as one notable example, and when the journalist asked me why, I ran out of superlatives At that time, since the Dictionary had only recently arrived, I had read only a random sampling of its entries But now, having read almost all of the approximately 150...

...Their most embarrassing gaffe was to allow "Fascism" to be spelled "Facism" at the top of each page of a rather lengthy essay on this subject, but this can be corrected when the Dictionary inevitably goes into a second printing To show how little I know about the business of the commercial side of publishing, I close by expressing the (naive7) hope that the publisher will eventually be able to come out with a less expensive softcover edition of the Dictionary for the convenience of those who do not have ready access to a well-stocked, upto-date library Meanwhile, it is only fair to add that the pnce of this first hardcover edition, although at first sight it may seem rather high, is in fact a bargain by today's publishing standards when many if not most nonfiction books of one-twentieth or one-thirtieth the length of the Dictionary are priced at almost half and in some case more than half of $79.50...

...As one who has followed the literature in this field rather closely for fifty years, I am awed by Dwyer's ability (obviously in a very short period of time, given the almost up-to-the-minute timeliness of some of the entnes), to bring together scholarly articles covering the entire range of Catholic social thought (widely defined) and her ability to recruit highly qualified writers from around the world for each of the entries in the Dictionary One can only marvel at her success in persuading or cajoling them to meet what must have been a very tight deadline The purpose and scope of the Dictionary REVIEWERS PAUL A SRACIC is assistant professor of political science at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio PAUL GEDIMAN, a writer and previous Commonweal contributor, lives in New York City MSGR GEORGE G HIGGINS is an adjunct lecturer at The Catholic University of America are succinctfy summarized by Dwyer as follows in her Introduction The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, testifying to [the] deep solidarity that Chnstians experience with the human race and its history, seeks to present and analyze the major modern social encyclicals, from Leo XIIFs Rerum novarum to John Paul II's Centesimus annus, as well as to inspect central movements, figures, and themes that have been the hallmark of Catholic social thought for over one hundred years The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought also attempts to indicate the manifold social dimensions of the various moral issues that confront the human community The Dictionary, therefore, addresses such topics as abortion, homosexuality, birth control, and euthanasia, in order to emphasize that no issue is purely "sexual," or "biomedical...

...all ethical problems contain social ramifications that must be a vital part of any critical evaluation Dwyer barely hints at what is perhaps her most important contribution as editor— namely, her success in getting the authors to analyze Catholic social thought in historical context and to get them to highlight its major weaknesses or gaps and, with a look to the future, to point out its unfinished agenda...

...Montgomery has also done her work very well as production editor The type is clear and readable, and the lengthy essays are mercifully divided into manageable segments with accurate subheadings...

...The proofreaders at the Liturgical Press have allowed only a handful of insignificant typos to sneak into the text...