Foundations of Justice: A Scoping Review of Catholic Social Teaching in Formation and Practice

Abstract

This scoping review maps how Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has been conceptualised, taught, and applied as an introductory, foundational discipline within theological, pastoral, and social-transformation formation. Following PRISMA-ScR guidance and the Arksey and O'Malley framework as refined by Levac and colleagues, a search of five databases on 8 July 2026 identified 391 records; 51 underwent full-text screening, and 14 met the inclusion criteria, with 37 excluded primarily for engaging CST's doctrinal content without addressing how it is taught, curricularised, or applied pedagogically. Inclusion instead required explicit engagement with CST’s pedagogical application, formation methodology, or empirical student outcomes. Included sources span Catholic formation contexts in the United States, Nigeria, Hungary, Poland, Kenya, the Philippines, and East Africa, and comprise peer-reviewed articles, a dissertation, and a course guide. Thematic synthesis aga-inst six anticipated clusters yielded six findings of markedly varying strength: curriculum design and institutional embedding (13 of 14 sources); core principles and their pedagogical framing (12); regional and institutional variation (12); integration with practical theology, service-learning, and advocacy formation (11); key encyclicals and documents (11); and, weaker than the rest, reception and comprehension among learners (5). Introduction to CST emerges as widely and formally embedded and richly documented in curricular design and content selection, but thinly evidenced in what learners actually understand, retain, or subsequently act upon. A conceptual account of the discipline as canonically mandated, curricularly embedded, and locally adapted is proposed, foregrounding curriculum design as the field’s evidentiary strength and learner reception as its central weakness, alongside gaps including scarce measurement of comprehension, no controlled or comparative evaluation designs, weak longitudinal evidence, and continuing Anglophone concentration. Screening and eligibility decisions were made by a single reviewer, without independent duplicate screening, a limitation borne in mind throughout.