105 See Villey's discussion in 'Une enquete sur la nature des doctrines sociales chretiennes', Archives de philosophie du droit 9 (1964). Villey's objection is confirmed by an examination of the thought of Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio, the 19th century Jesuit and co-founder of Civilta Cattolica who coined the term 'social justice'. Taparelli taught the future Leo XIII and was a principal influence on Rerum Novarum, and was quoted by Pius XI in Divini illius magistri 50, which described his Saggio Teoretico di Diretto Naturale as 'a work never sufficiently praised and recommended to university students'. His thought was largely a version of baroque scholastic natural law theory, with eclectic borrowings from Locke and other nonCatholic thinkers. John C. Rao's enthusiasm for Taparelli as having provided an alternative to Enlightenment thought is thus misplaced. The failure of Catholic social thought to be
https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Journals/The%20Thomist%20(1941-2024)/OCR-layer-only-PDFs/2009_Volume73_Number2.pdf
105 See Villey's discussion in 'Une enquete sur la nature des doctrines sociales chretiennes', Archives de philosophie du droit 9 (1964). Villey's objection is confirmed by an examination of the thought of Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio, the 19th century Jesuit and co-founder of Civilta Cattolica who coined the term 'social justice'. Taparelli taught the future Leo XIII and was a principal influence on Rerum Novarum, and was quoted by Pius XI in Divini illius magistri 50, which described his Saggio Teoretico di Diretto Naturale as 'a work never sufficiently praised and recommended to university students'. His thought was largely a version of baroque scholastic natural law theory, with eclectic borrowings from Locke and other nonCatholic thinkers. John C. Rao's enthusiasm for Taparelli as having provided an alternative to Enlightenment thought is thus misplaced. The failure of Catholic social thought to be widely accepted and practiced - a failure Rao finds mysterious - is in fact due to a large extent to the weaknesses that result from its being framed in modern natural law terms.
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