Through the insightful and thought-provoking commentaries of ten distinguished Catholic writers, Building the Free Society critically examines a century of Catholic reflection and argument on human freedom, the just society, and the international order. It focuses on the eleven key documents of modern Catholic social doctrine, beginning with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and concluding with Pope John Paul II's revolutionary Centesimus Annus (1991).