Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

The Church sees in men and women, in every person, the living image of God himself. This image finds, and must always find anew, an ever deeper and fuller unfolding of itself in the mystery of Christ, the Perfect Image of God, the One who reveals God to man and man to himself. It is to these men and women, who have received an incomparable and inalienable dignity from God himself, that the Church speaks, rendering to them the highest and most singular service, constantly reminding them of their lofty vocation so that they may always be mindful of it and worthy of it. Christ, the Son of God, “by his incarnation has united himself in some fashion with every person”^{197Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 22: AAS 58 (1966), 1042.}; for this reason the Church recognizes as her fundamental duty the task of seeing that this union is continuously brought about and renewed. In Christ the Lord, the Church indicates and strives to be the first to embark upon the path of the human person^{198Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, 14: AAS 71 (1979), 284.}, and she invites all people to recognize in everyone — near and far, known and unknown, and above all in the poor and the suffering — a brother or sister “for whom Christ died” (1 Cor 8:11; Rom 14:15)^{199Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1931.}.

All of social life is an expression of its unmistakable protagonist: the human person. The Church has many times and in many ways been the authoritative advocate of this understanding, recognizing and affirming the centrality of the human person in every sector and expression of society: “Human society is therefore the object of the social teaching of the Church since she is neither outside nor over and above socially united men, but exists exclusively in them and, therefore, for them”^{200Congregation for Catholic Education, Guidelines for the Study and Teaching of the Church's Social Doctrine in the Formation of Priests, 35, Vatican Polyglot Press, Rome 1988, p. 39.}. This important awareness is expressed in the affirmation that “far from being the object or passive element of social life” the human person “is rather, and must always remain, its subject, foundation and goal”^{201Pius XII, Radio Message of 24 December 1944, 5: AAS 37 (1945), 12.}. The origin of social life is therefore found in the human person, and society cannot refuse to recognize its active and responsible subject; every expression of society must be directed towards the human person.

Men and women, in the concrete circumstances of history, represent the heart and soul of Catholic social thought^{202Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 11: AAS 83 (1991), 807.}. The whole of the Church's social doctrine, in fact, develops from the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of the human person^{203Cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 453, 459.}. In her manifold expressions of this knowledge, the Church has striven above all to defend human dignity in the face of every attempt to redimension or distort its image; moreover she has often denounced the many violations of human dignity. History attests that it is from the fabric of social relationships that there arise some of the best possibilities for ennobling the human person, but it is also there that lie in wait the most loathsome rejections of human dignity. II. THE HUMAN PERSON AS THE “IMAGO DEI”