Catholic Social Teaching Sheds Light on the Life of King’s
By Margarita Rose, Ph.D.
Streaming from a star in the northeast area of the official King’s College seal are thirteen rays of light, an homage to the “Pope of the Workers,” Leo XIII, whose coat of arms also includes streams of light emanating from a star. How appropriate that a Catholic college founded to educate the sons of miners and mill workers would so explicitly reference the pontiff best known for his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which he condemned the exploitation of workers in industrial society, acknowledged the rights of workers to unionize, and demanded respect from those in power for the dignity of marginalized people. With Rerum Novarum often referred to as the founding document of modern Catholic Social Teaching52 (CST), Leo XIII has influenced the writings of all popes since the mid-twentieth century and has inspired the King’s College community to this day. Rooted in these CST principles, King’s students, staff, and faculty nurture a tradition of service to the community, informed by academic discourse and dedicated to applying their talents to persistent challenges to human dignity and the natural environment.
At the heart of CST is a commitment to what some would call Catholic social justice, reflecting a common set of principles, emanating from the Gospels and official documents promulgated by popes and groups of bishops, as well as by a committed contingent of lay people who further the tradition through their academic scholarship. Those who live out CST translate these documents into action. Likewise, CST has been a foundational inspiration to King’s College, guiding its policies and programs. Most notably, CST is made manifest at King’s in curricula, campus-wide initiatives, and connections to the larger community.
From the beginning, King’s offered its largely Catholic students—even those pursuing a professionally-oriented major program—a traditional liberal arts curriculum, which included nine credits of theology. These courses challenged the early King’s scholars to consider how they would integrate the theological concepts discussed in class into their daily lives. Through the years, CST topics had a place in multiple courses, most notably those taught by Rev. Jim Doyle, C.S.C., a theologian dedicated to peace and justice education, and one of the founders of the Interfaith Resource Center for Peace and Justice (known today as the Peace & Justice Center). After the 1986 release of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral letter on the economy, “Economic Justice for All,” Dr. Philip Muntzel (Theology) and Dr. Thomas Arnold (Economics) team-taught a course on the letter that offered perspectives from both their disciplines. To this day, most full-time faculty in Theology and Economics integrate CST into their courses, from Christian Social Ethics—which is fully dedicated to CST — to Environmental and Ecological Economics, in which Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ and his 2023 follow-up Laudate Deum offer a framework for evaluating the impact of regulatory policies and economic decisions. The CST perspective extends to other fields, as well, including business ethics, women’s studies, environmental studies, and the liberal arts.
More often, while CST documents, perspectives, and principles are not explicitly identified, faculty in women’s studies ask students to consider gender disparities, including poverty and income gaps that CST also addresses. Similarly, environmental and sustainability studies courses examine the causes and consequences of climate change that mirror the concerns and CST principles expressed in Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum, which make an urgent plea for those in power to take the threats of climate change seriously, especially because those most affected by weather extremes are those who have done the least to bring it about. So, too, do faculty in the humanities and social sciences ask students to interrogate the injustices they see around them.
Whether literature professor Dr. Robin Field guiding students through the immigrant experience, Dr. Joel Shuman introducing them to the realities of health care disparities in his medical ethics course, or the late psychologist Dr. Jean O’Brien helping students understand how to support their mentees who are considered “at risk,” King’s faculty offer an education that is informed by principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good, even when they are not explicitly linked to CST. Students often encounter these principles and injustices through the service-learning pedagogy. Though not unique to CST, engagement with community partners through service-learning brings questions about the care for creation, rights and responsibilities of workers, and the dignity of the human person to life. For example, the idea that every person deserves to be treated with dignity has permeated the About Face Campaign—a multidisciplinary community engagement project funded by the AllOne Foundation, which has drawn together students in healthcare administration, psychology, and communications to reduce the stigma surrounding opioid use disorder.
Efforts to establish a structured service-learning program at King’s began with a grant proposal by Brother Dennis Fleming, C.S.C., who served as Director of Volunteer Services/Campus Ministry, to the Council for Independent Colleges in 1994. At the time, the only service-learning opportunity was an elective one-credit course, Theology and Community Service, and the compulsory 10 hours of volunteer service in the FREX (Freshman Experience) program. In time, the Office of Volunteer Services transformed into the Center for Community Engagement and Learning, and presently bears the name Shoval Center for Community Engagement and Learning, due to a generous endowment from the Shoval Family. After an abrupt disruption of direct service due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, in 2022 direct service programs resumed, and by 2024, hundreds of students again achieved course learning goals through service-learning requirements and assignments. These high-impact learning experiences range from the financial analyses offered to local nonprofit organizations by accounting majors to the promotional videos produced for community partners by communications students. Beyond offering technical skills, King’s students also open their hearts to children in programs like the Flood Elementary after-school tutoring program, and the Juvenile Justice Mentoring Program, which matches King’s student mentors with at-risk high school students.
The Shoval Center has also been a hub for connecting students and staff with CST-inspired social justice activities on and off campus, as well as post-graduate service opportunities. Throughout the years, the dedicated staff (Dave Devine, Dawn Morton Sarullo ’01 ‘05, Megan Barry, Maura Modrovsky ’22, Kim Fabbri ’06, Tammy Fritz Singer ’05, and currently Kelly Gibbons ’11 ’22, Leanne Mazurick, and Bill Bolan) has leveraged contacts with community partners to provide one-time and on-going volunteer opportunities for clubs and individual students. Some student clubs and organizations tap into the Shoval Center network to arrange their service activities, required for those who seek grants from the Student Government Association. It should be noted that the Athletics Department, as a whole and certain teams in particular, continue to organize a number of service and fundraising opportunities for student-athletes to give back to the community, such as sessions with Special Olympians in the Scandlon Gymnasium. Under Coach Jerry Greeley, the baseball team sponsors six annual service opportunities, including the Jared Box project that collects shoe-box size sets of activities for hospitalized children of all ages. Another way King’s students serve the community is the Community Based Work Study program, which places student aides in local nonprofit organizations, like the Commission on Economic Opportunity and the Peace & Justice Center, through federal work-study funding.
Perhaps the most impactful Shoval Center activity has been the SERVE (Students Engaged in Reflective Volunteer Experiences) program. Whether as part of a weekend Fall SERVE, a week-long Winter or Spring SERVE, or a longer international Summer SERVE trip—in India, Uganda, Bangladesh, and Mexico—students and staff who have participated have had genuine encounters with people at the margins of society. Though all participants may not be Catholic, each has been asked to consider CST principles and perspectives when engaging with people they serve locally or abroad.
CST has also informed certain community-based research and outreach projects, including the Economic Justice Campaign, which provided funds and empathic listening training for students to work with NEPA Organizing Center on the Right to Housing Campaign (2009-10).
Collaboration across departments has resulted in significant campus-wide initiatives to spread knowledge and understanding about CST. Notable among them was a four-year long series of lunchtime conversations dubbed “Towards the Common Good.” Starting in 2009, groups of King’s students, faculty, and staff engaged in monthly lunchtime conversations that reflected on critical contemporary issues in light of the principles of CST. Inspired in part by the Convention for the Common Good, an effort to ensure the 2008 presidential campaigns addressed conditions that keep people poor and marginalized, and a desire to create a venue for similar dialogue on campus, Associate Campus Minister Bob Shearn and faculty in the Economics Department invited colleagues and students to participate. Topics included Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, “Politics and the Common Good,” “Language and the Common Good” (led by Dr. Jim Wallace in English), “Agribusiness and CST,” and “Globalization and CST,” which led to a presentation by Rev. Dan Issing, C.S.C., Dr. Valerie Kepner, Dr. Margarita Rose, and Bob Shearn at the 2011 Global Landscapes Conference. The organizers of the Common Good Discussions found that most students who attended did not have much prior knowledge of CST or a good sense of the concept of the common good. Participating in these discussions opened their eyes to CST perspectives, and even motivated attorney and alumna Ana Mendez Suarez ’11, who found the discussions to be inspiring during her time at King’s, to emulate the Common Good Discussion model in a program she’s creating for United States Air Force personnel.
Another initiative to educate the college community was the CST and Catholic Higher Education Reading Group, organized in 2018-19 by Dr. Bernard Prusak, former Director of the McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, along with Rev. Thomas P. Looney, C.S.C., (then Director of Campus Ministry and College Chaplain), and Dr. Margarita Rose (Economics). In part to achieve objective 1.1 of the College’s 2018-21 Strategic Plan, “enhance Catholic co-curricular and educational programming,” the reading group included an additional 26 faculty and staff members, who participated in multiple discussion sessions.
As King’s confronts its future, members of its community might turn to the past and ask, “Who are today’s ‘coal miners and mill workers’?” and “Are we doing all we can to invite their sons and daughters into this college community founded on CST principles?” Surely, in King’s classrooms and labs today there are students who—like some of the early King’s men—are working full time and may even be parents themselves. In Northeastern Pennsylvania of the 21st century, rather than in coal mines, we may find our students and their parents working in distribution centers and warehouses, packing pet food, sending gourmet baskets, or monitoring a labyrinth of goods to make sure Prime members get their two-day delivery orders on-time.
Looking towards the future, how will CST continue to be part of our institutional identity at a time when the majority of faculty and students are not Catholic, and most major programs are geared more towards professions than the traditional liberal arts and sciences? As in the past, the identity of King’s College will be determined by its curricula, its campus-wide initiatives, and its connections to the larger community.
Since the founding of the College, the curriculum at King’s has been rooted in the liberal arts, which traditionally have been a home for the exploration of principles and perspectives that reflect those of CST. Because those perspectives have been maintained largely through the humanities and social sciences, the shrinking of resources and personnel in those areas pose a threat to the preservation of CST. Therefore, it is critical to the identity of King’s College that CST continue to be integrated into its Core and major program curricula. Across Catholic higher education, many CST principles resonate with faculty and staff who are not Catholic, but who share a commitment to serving those on the margins, protecting the planet and ending the epidemic of conflict and crime. To such educators, Catholic Social Teaching offers an invitation to embrace and promote the mission of an institution like King’s College.
CST will continue to be a fundamental dimension of the King’s College saga, as long as there is institutional and individual commitment to ensuring its legacy. This will require deepening our community’s knowledge of CST and expanding its influence on policies and decision-making. Institutionally, the Catholic Identity and Mission Committee (CIMC) offers a structure through which CST can be an identifiable component of the King’s mission and institutional story. The CIMC can create campus-side opportunities for the King’s community to reflect on how the words of the Pope of the Workers impacts policies and practices today. Are our employment, purchasing, and investment policies in alignment with Pope Leo’s messages in Rerum Novarum? Do our infrastructural design, maintenance practices, and sustainability efforts reflect what Pope Francis advocates for in Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum?
With the establishment of a committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that reports to the President, King’s College has elevated long-standing goals with a new seriousness. These goals generally align with CST principles of solidarity and respect for the human person. Their implementation would be well-served by making an explicit link to CST and creating opportunities for collaboration between the CIMC and the DEI Committee, for example, by educating the campus community about the Catholic position on immigration, one of “welcoming the stranger” and of a dignity realized in solidarity.
In large part, the desire to serve those on the margins of society remains a key element of the King’s identity, but external competitive and demographic changes make this increasingly challenging. However, connections to the wider community—locally, nationally, and internationally—are critical to the future of King’s. From clinical placements for students in the health sciences to service projects for courses and clubs, King’s College and community partners will find mutual benefit in working together to solve problems, guided by CST.
Some call CST the “best kept secret” of the Catholic Church. For King’s College, a Catholic institution established with the specific intention of educating working class students, CST can never be in the dark. Like the rays of light streaming from a star in the official seal, Catholic Social Teaching must illuminate who and what King’s College is and continues to be.
Image at Top: Students participate in a food drive in the 1980s.