Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

With her social teaching the Church seeks to proclaim the Gospel and make it present in the complex network of social relations. It is not simply a matter of reaching out to man in society — man as the recipient of the proclamation of the Gospel — but of enriching and permeating society itself with the Gospel^{78Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 40: AAS 58 (1966), 1057-1059.}. For the Church, therefore, tending to the needs of man means that she also involves society in her missionary and salvific work. The way people live together in society often determines the quality of life and therefore the conditions in which every man and woman understand themselves and make decisions concerning themselves and their vocation. For this reason, the Church is not indifferent to what is decided, brought about or experienced in society; she is attentive to the moral quality — that is, the authentically human and humanizing aspects — of social life. Society — and with it, politics, the economy, labour, law, culture — is not simply a secular and worldly reality, and therefore outside or foreign to the message and economy of salvation. Society in fact, with all that is accomplished within it, concerns man. Society is made up of men and women, who are “the primary and fundamental way for the Church”^{79John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, 14: AAS 71 (1979), 284.}.

By means of her social doctrine, the Church takes on the task of proclaiming what the Lord has entrusted to her. She makes the message of the freedom and redemption wrought by Christ, the Gospel of the Kingdom, present in human history. In proclaiming the Gospel, the Church “bears witness to man, in the name of Christ, to his dignity and his vocation to the communion of persons. She teaches him the demands of justice and peace in conformity with divine wisdom”^{80Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2419.}. As the Gospel reverberates by means of the Church in the today of men and women^{81Cf. John Paul II, Homily at Pentecost for the First Centenary of Rerum Novarum (19 May 1991): AAS 84 (1992), 282.}, this social doctrine is a word that brings freedom. This means that it has the effectiveness of truth and grace that comes from the Spirit of God, who penetrates hearts, predisposing them to thoughts and designs of love, justice, freedom and peace. Evangelizing the social sector, then, means infusing into the human heart the power of meaning and freedom found in the Gospel, in order to promote a society befitting mankind because it befits Christ: it means building a city of man that is more human because it is in greater conformity with the Kingdom of God.

With her social doctrine not only does the Church not stray from her mission but she is rigorously faithful to it. The redemption wrought by Christ and entrusted to the saving mission of the Church is certainly of the supernatural order. This dimension is not a delimitation of salvation but rather an integral expression of it^{82Cf. Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi 9, 30: AAS 68 (1976), 10-11; John Paul II, Address to the Third General Conference of Latin American Bishops, Puebla, Mexico (28 January 1979), III/4-7: AAS 71 (1979), 199-204; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Libertatis Conscientia, 63-64, 80: AAS 79 (1987), 581-582, 590-591.}. The supernatural is not to be understood as an entity or a place that begins where the natural ends, but as the raising of the natural to a higher plane. In this way nothing of the created or the human order is foreign to or excluded from the supernatural or theological order of faith and grace, rather it is found within it, taken on and elevated by it. “In Jesus Christ the visible world which God created for man (cf. Gen 1:26-30) — the world that, when sin entered, ‘was subjected to futility' (Rom 8:20; cf. Rom 8:19-22) — recovers again its original link with the divine source of Wisdom and Love. Indeed, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son' (Jn 3:16). As this link was broken in the man Adam, so in the Man Christ it was reforged (cf. Rom 5:12-21)”^{83John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, 8: AAS 71 (1979), 270.}.

Redemption begins with the Incarnation, by which the Son of God takes on all that is human, except sin, according to the solidarity established by the wisdom of the Divine Creator, and embraces everything in his gift of redeeming Love. Man is touched by this Love in the fullness of his being: a being that is corporeal and spiritual, that is in a solidary relationship with others. The whole man — not a detached soul or a being closed within its own individuality, but a person and a society of persons — is involved in the salvific economy of the Gospel. As bearer of the Gospel's message of Incarnation and Redemption, the Church can follow no other path: with her social doctrine and the effective action that springs from it, not only does she not hide her face or tone down her mission, but she is faithful to Christ and shows herself to men and women as “the universal sacrament of salvation”^{84Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 48: AAS 57 (1965), 53.}. This is especially true in times such as the present, marked by increasing interdependence and globalization of social issues.