Instead of promoting Aquinas as a model of how to engage fruitfully and charitably with other schools of thought in search of truth, manualism turned him into an authority not to be questioned.

A full century of attempts to understand and address the world’s problems are reduced to a series of conclusions and definitions to be memorized, repeated, and referenced. Instead of a resource for more fruitful engagement with the world, the Church’s authoritative statements are reduced to rhetorical cudgels, often used against other Catholics.

Catholic social teaching should not simply involve rehearsing definitions or voting according to certain principles on election day. It should be about understanding the Gospel that inspired each of these articulations of moral truth and living it out in everyday life.

Where social questions are concerned, knowing how best to approach them is more important than providing immediate responses to why things happen or how to deal with them. The aim is to learn how to confront problems, for these are always different, since every generation is new, and faces new challenges, dreams and questions.