Religion & Law

[John Allen writes in his Friday column:]

Fans of the budding corpus of Catholic social teaching sometimes refer to it as the church?s ?best-kept secret,? an indirect way of lamenting that recent Catholic teaching on the economy, war and peace, the environment, and other matters of social concern is not better known ? either in the pews, or in the outside world.

One creative response to that frustration now comes from England, in the form of a new bi-monthly magazine called Justice, with the subtitle ?Social Issues: A Catholic Perspective.? It?s put out by Gabriel Publications, which publishes The Universe, Catholic Times and Catholic Life in the U.K.

The thrust of the magazine is to apply the lens of Catholic social teaching to the whole panoply of global humanitarian concerns, whether it?s good governance in Africa or controversies over blasphemy laws in Pakistan. The magazine calls on a stable of talented journalists; for example, in one recent issue, veteran Rome correspondent Gerry O?Connell interviews Archbishop Lauren Monsengwo Pasinya of the Democratic Republic of Congo about the ?silent genocide? being fueled in that nation by a global scramble to exploit mineral resources.

Alas, not much of the content is available on-line, but the magazine does have a web site at www.justicemagazine.co.uk.