Prof Anthony Reddie spoke on the importance of ‘lived experience’ in theology. Picture credit: Helen Pooley
Published in the Tablet, 6th September 2025
Activists and academics argued that Catholic Social Teaching (CST) should be a greater force “on the streets”, inspired by the work of its early advocates such as the Jesuit Charles Plater.
Dr Philomena Cullen, organiser of a conference on 2 September to mark 150 years since Plater’s birth, said CST was “not so much a theory as resource for action” as evidenced by the contributions to the event hosted by the Charles Plater Trust and Campion Hall, the Jesuit institution in Oxford where Plater was Master from 1915 to 1921.
In his opening remarks at the conference, the chair of the trust Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton said CST can respond to contemporary challenges and “contribute to a new vision for our society”, adding that Plater “would insist we address these challenges with vigour”.
Anthony Reddie, the first Professor of Black Theology at Oxford University, delivered a paper on the importance of “lived experience” in theology, observing that “Black Christianity has always been a response to the realities of racism”.
He said that Black Theology and CST both “emphasise the necessity of solidarity”, essential to challenge the rise of populist forces in Europe and beyond.
More than 120 participants heard a series of 15 parallel discussion papers over the course of the day, covering dignity in prisons, the inclusion of disabled people and Pope Leo’s response to Catholic social thought, as well as diverse other topics.
One paper discussed the work of Imperial College London’s SHARP project, which uses a “simulation-based holistic approach” to reduce knife crime. The paediatric surgeon Dr Sofie Chacon said that a CST-aligned emphasis on the dignity of participants and discernment was key to its work.
“Sometimes it is as simple as getting people to sit in a circle,” she said, explaining how such an approach of “immersive pedagogy” helped participants to take responsibility for change.
Dr Séverine Deneulin, director of international development at the Laudato Si’ Institute, echoed some of these themes in a discussion of the Green Hub for Teens, a gardening initiative to improve mental health for young people.
Speaking alongside its founders Tone Tellefsen Hughes and Vanessa Lanham-Day, she said the sense of agency offered by horticulture and the project’s holistic approach to health were integral to its success.
Elsewhere, the chief executive of the prisons charity Pact Andy Keen-Downs argued that its work – originating in the Catholic Prisoners Aid Society in 1898, seven years after Pope Leo XIII’s foundational social encyclical Rerum novarum – was not to make prisoners “independent” but to promote “healthy interdependence”, a concept aligned with Dr Ann Marie Mealey’s discussion of the “universal destination” of the work of prisons.
Dr Carole Irwin and Alexander van Dijk of the Lyn’s House community in Cambridge spoke about how it functions as a space for hospitality and friendship for people with and without learning disabilities, “wasting time” together.
“A city like Cambridge really needs something like Lyn’s House,” said Dr Irwin, explaining that “letting things go off-piste” was integral to the experience. The conference also featured participants from Soundabout, a charity which helps people with complex support needs to interact with the world through music and silence.
The Dovetail Orchestra, a music group including asylum seekers and refugees, performed at the close of the conference before the opening of an exhibition about the life of Charles Plater.
The conference was intended “to generate fresh thinking and practice and to renew the Church’s social mission”, said Dr Cullen, and to help discern how it can “deliver meaningful change with marginalised and excluded people”.
