Solidarity and Social Distancing
By Kate O'Brien-Nicholson
6th April 2020
In a pandemic, solidarity requires being apart.
Few imagined that the most well-known principle of Catholic social thought would require human beings to stay apart. But as Gerald Beyer, author of the forthcoming book, Just Universities: Catholic Social Teaching Confronts Corporatized Higher Education, explains, COVID-19 social distancing measures not only demonstrate that solidarity is essential for our survival. They also expose the consequences of the neglect of solidarity in cultures dominated by excessive individualism, not least in the United States. .. Read more
Gerald J. Beyer is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Villanova University. His publications include Recovering Solidarity: Lessons from Poland’s Unfinished Revolution (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2010), Just Universities: Catholic Social Teaching Confronts Corporatized Higher Education (Fordham Univ. Press, forthcoming in 2020) and journal articles on solidarity, worker justice, and Catholic social thought. He co-edited and contributed an essay to the critical edition of Karol Wojtyła, Katolicka
With thanks to Catholic Moral Theology where this article was first published.