The Catholic Thing website
As a Professor of Ethics and Social Philosophy in a Catholic university, I find fascinating the encyclical’s use of the language throughout of “social friendship” (
amistad social, in Spanish), rather than the familiar “social justice.” There is not a single mention of “social friendship” in the
Catechism that I could find, or the
Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine. Here if anywhere in the encyclical is the significant development of the tradition of social thought.
Justice is insufficient for social unity, because of its emphasis on impartiality, which becomes “autonomy” and “individuality” in our culture, also, because of the attention it gives to past wrongs, and the encouragement it gives to anger.
Earle Hilgert, 1923–2020
January 14, 2021
William Earle Hilgert passed to his rest at the Westminster-Canterbury Retirement Community at Charlottesville, Virginia on December 22, 2020. Born in Portland, Oregon on May 17, 1923, he was 97.
The first child of William T. and Katie Ann (Earle) Hilgert, a Seventh-day Adventist minister and Bible instructor couple, Earle graduated from Laurelwood Adventist Academy, Oregon, in 1939 at the age of 16. During the subsequent year he received private tutoring in French and German from Leona Glidden Running, a mentor destined to later become a particularly valued colleague. By 1945, a five-year stint on the campuses of La Sierra College and Walla Walla College had led to a Bachelor of Arts degree in theology and history, and a Bachelor of Theology with emphasis in biblical languages. Earle was president of WWC’s student association in 1943–44.