In the next session of my Catholic Social Thought and the Law seminar, we will be reading Gaudium et spes(literally “joy and hope,” but formally referred to as The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). GS was one of the four “constitutions” promulgated in Vatican II. As a pastoral document, it presents Catholic social thought that builds on the earlier documents but also adds a more explicitly theological and scriptural basis for CST.
Basic Themes
GS is a dauntingly long document (68 pages exclusive of footnotes in our textbook). It touches on a remarkably wide range of issues, including:
They identified the family as a kind of school of deeper humanity. They lauded the increasing consciousness among people that they themselves are the authors and artisans of the culture of their community and declared that it is now possible to free most of humanity from the misery of ignorance. They bemoaned the fact that at the very time when the development of economic life could mitigate social inequalities, it is often made to embitter them; or, in some places, it even results in a decline of the social status of the underprivileged and in contempt for the poor. They cautioned that economic development must not be left to the judgment of a few. or of groups possessing too much economic power, or of the political community alone, or of certain more powerful nations. They recalled the command of the Church Fathers to Feed the man dying of hunger, because if you have not fed him, you have killed him and called for the support of individuals or peoples with the aid by which they may be able to help and develop themselves. They urged that investments must be directed toward procuring employment and sufficient income for the people both now and in the future.
Informing the Church’s pastoral response to these issues are three recurring themes: (1) human dignity, (2) the common good, and (3) the unity of the human race.
These themes reflect CST’s universal aspirations. Pope Paul VI had advocated that the Church engage in dialogue across four concentric circles:
The outer circle would include all human beings, including unbelievers, and the other three refer to believers in non-Christian religions, other Christians, and finally dialogue among Catholics themselves.
GS situates that dialogue relative to the Church’s primary function as set forth in the Great Commission:
Christ, to be sure, gave His Church no proper mission in the political, economic or social order. The purpose which He set before her is a religious one. But out of this religious mission itself come a function, a light and an energy which can serve to structure and consolidate the human community according to the divine law.
Put another way, CST is an authentic part of the Church’s prophetic witness to all mankind.
Methodologies
GS also reflects the two basic methodologies of CST. First, the trilogy of “see, judge, act.” Second, it speaks of “both and” rather than “either or.”
We see the latter, for example, in the discussion of human nature. Man is both a free individual and a social being. Hence, we are both individuals and members of a community. (32)
GS is perhaps the strongest affirmation of the liberty of the individual that we have seen so far in our examination of CST:
… there is a growing awareness of the exalted dignity proper to the human person, since he stands above all things, and his rights and duties are universal and inviolable. Therefore, there must be made available to all men everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one's own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom even in matters religious. (26)
One assumes this new emphasis was a product of the then quite recent experience with fascism and the ongoing threat of communism, both of which denied the liberty of the individual.
Note, however, that the communitarian element of CST is present even here in the emphasis on positive rights. Unlike the libertarian conception of human freedom, which emphasizes negative rights, CST embraces the concept of man having rights that oblige society to provide certain goods and services to its members.
The both and of autonomy and community is reinforced just a few paragraphs later:
Profound and rapid changes make it more necessary that no one ignoring the trend of events or drugged by laziness, content himself with a merely individualistic morality. It grows increasingly true that the obligations of justice and love are fulfilled only if each person, contributing to the common good, according to his own abilities and the needs of others, also promotes and assists the public and private institutions dedicated to bettering the conditions of human life. Yet there are those who, while possessing grand and rather noble sentiments, nevertheless in reality live always as if they cared nothing for the needs of society. Many in various places even make light of social laws and precepts, and do not hesitate to resort to various frauds and deceptions in avoiding just taxes or other debts due to society. Others think little of certain norms of social life, for example those designed for the protection of health, or laws establishing speed limits; they do not even avert to the fact that by such indifference they imperil their own life and that of others. (4)
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Part I
GS is divided into two major parts. Part I is a deeply theological treatment of the human situation. It is expressly laying the groundwork for linking the various aspects of Catholic teaching on social justice to “their divine source” and to commend those values that “stem from endowments conferred by God on man.” (11)
Part I does so by treating at some length the theological grounding of four basic principles: (1) the dignity of the human person; (2) the community of mankind; (3) human activity throughout the world and (4) the mission of the Church in the modern world. As David Hollenbach points out, this Part stands in stark comparison with the papal encyclicals issued by all of the popes between Leo XIII and John XXIII. Those earlier documents “were almost exclusively framed in concepts and language of the natural law ethic.” (Himes at 373) They lacked “careful consideration of the biblical, Christological, eschatological, or ecclesiological basis of the Church’s role” in achieving social justice. (Id.) To be sure, as Hollenbach makes clear, the Church continues to speak to the universal community of mankind and so continues to rely on arguments from human experience, but in doing so the Church is also witnessing to its faith.
I take a personal interest in sections 22 and 24 of Part I. It is saidthat “Pope John Paul II … cited sections 22 and 24 of Gaudium et Spesmore often than he … cited any other Vatican II document.” As regular readers will recall, I came to Catholicism mainly because of my immense admiration for JPII and deep appreciation of his encyclicals on work and economics. So the sections he valued commanded my attention.
Section 22 deals with Christ as the second (and final) Adam.
As an innocent lamb He merited for us life by the free shedding of His own blood. In Him God reconciled us to Himself and among ourselves; from bondage to the devil and sin He delivered us, so that each one of us can say with the Apostle: The Son of God "loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20). By suffering for us He not only provided us with an example for our imitation, He blazed a trail, and if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on a new meaning.
As one commentator observes, JPII invokes this passage to explain the profound question of human suffering:
Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from His Gospel, they overwhelm us.” … It is above all in suffering and death that the questions about life’s meaning arise, questions that only Christ can answer.
Section 22 also speaks to the eternal question of who shall be saved:
Pressing upon the Christian to be sure, are the need and the duty to battle against evil through manifold tribulations and even to suffer death. But, linked with the paschal mystery and patterned on the dying Christ, he will hasten forward to resurrection in the strength which comes from hope.
All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.
Paul McPartlan observes of this passage that:
The Spirit blows everywhere, calling everyone to salvation in Christ, as GS 22 explains. This passage maps a vital middle ground between two well-known extremes, respectively known as exclusivism and pluralism, the first of which says that unless a person expressly acknowledges Jesus Christ as their God and savior they cannot be saved, which seems to be hard on those who have never even heard the holy name of Jesus, while the second says that there are many paths to God and that the way of Christ is only one of them, which contradicts the Christian conviction that Christ is the one savior of the world.
The council carefully steered between those extremes, and said: “since Christ died for all, and since all ... are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” (GS 22). Yes, there is only one way of salvation, namely through the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, and the Church knows and celebrates that mystery regularly in its sacraments, as GS 22 says, incidentally echoing SC 6, but, in ways known only to God, every single human being is invited by the Spirit to participate in that same mystery and so to find salvation. It follows that only God can judge what the response of each one has been, but we might perhaps say that a certain likeness to Christ in terms of a life of love and self-sacrifice for others would be likely signs of a salvific response to the invitation of the Spirit, even if the person concerned had never even heard of Christ.
Turning to section 24, we come to the a restatement of the great teaching discussed above on love of neighbor.
God, Who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood. For having been created in the image of God, Who "from one man has created the whole human race and made them live all over the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26), all men are called to one and the same goal, namely God Himself.
For this reason, love for God and neighbor is the first and greatest commandment. Sacred Scripture, however, teaches us that the love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbor: "If there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.... Love therefore is the fulfillment of the Law" (Rom. 13:9-10; cf. 1 John 4:20). To men growing daily more dependent on one another, and to a world becoming more unified every day, this truth proves to be of paramount importance.
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.
As noted above, the commandment to love one’s neighbor pervades CST. We shall return to it repeatedly.
In closing, thinking about Section 24 inevitably called to mind a famous quote by C.S. Lewis about loving your neighbor:
You are told to love your neighbor as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own mind, I find that I do not love myself by thinking myself a dear old chap or having affectionate feelings. I do not think that I love myself because I am particularly good, but just because I am myself and quite apart from my character. I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself. In other words, that definite distinction that Christians make between hating sin and loving the sinner is one that you have been making in your own case since you were born. You dislike what you have done, but you don't cease to love yourself. You may even think that you ought to be hanged. You may even think that you ought to go to the Police and own up and be hanged. Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
