III. The Social Doctrine of the
Church
2419
"Christian revelation . . . promotes deeper understanding of the laws of
social living."198 The Church receives from the Gospel the full
revelation of the truth about man. When she fulfills her mission of proclaiming
the Gospel, she 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.
2420
The Church makes a moral judgment about economic and social matters, "when
the fundamental rights of the person or the salvation of souls requires
it."199 In the moral order she bears a mission distinct from that
of political authorities: the Church is concerned with the temporal aspects of
the common good because they are ordered to the sovereign Good, our ultimate
end. She strives to inspire right attitudes with respect to earthly goods and
in socio-economic relationships.
2421
The
social doctrine of the Church developed in the nineteenth century when the
Gospel encountered modern industrial society with its new structures for the
production of consumer goods, its new concept of society, the state and
authority, and its new forms of labor and ownership. the development of the
doctrine of the Church on economic and social matters attests the permanent value
of the Church's teaching at the same time as it attests the true meaning of her
Tradition, always living and active.200
2422
The Church's social teaching comprises a body of doctrine, which is articulated
as the Church interprets events in the course of history, with the assistance
of the Holy Spirit, in the light of the whole of what has been revealed by
Jesus Christ.201 This teaching can be more easily accepted by men of
good will, the more the faithful let themselves be guided by it.
2423
The Church's social teaching proposes principles for reflection; it provides
criteria for judgment; it gives guidelines for action:
Any system in which social relationships are determined entirely by economic
factors is contrary to the nature of the human person and his acts.202
2424
A
theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic
activity is morally unacceptable. the disordered desire for money cannot but
produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which
disturb the social order.203
A system that "subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups
to the collective organization of production" is contrary to human
dignity.204 Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a
means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the
spread of atheism. "You cannot serve God and mammon."205
2425
The
Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in
modem times with "communism" or "socialism." She has
likewise refused to accept, in the practice of "capitalism,"
individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human
labor.206 Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning
perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the
marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many human needs which
cannot be satisfied by the market."207 Reasonable regulation of
the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of
values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.
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