Social Teaching

‘... the present state of affairs must be confronted boldly, and its concomitant injustices must be challenged and overcome.  Continuing development calls for bold innovations that will work profound changes.... Everyone must lend a ready hand to this task, particularly those who can do most by reason of their education, their office, or their authority.’

‘In teaching us charity, the Gospel instructs us in the preferential respect due to the poor and the special situation they have in society: the more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others.’

‘A consistent theme of Catholic Social Teaching is the option of love of preference for the poor.  Today, this preference has to be expressed in worldwide dimensions, embracing the immense numbers of the hungry, the needy the homeless, those without medical care, and those without hope.’

‘The way society responds to the needs of the poor through its public policies is the litmus test of its justice or injustice.’

‘The hopes and forces which are moving the world in its very foundations are not foreign to the dynamism of the Gospel, which through the power of the Holy Spirit frees men and women from personal sin and from its consequences in social life.’

‘Yet He frees all so that by putting aside love of self and bringing all earthly resources into the service of human life they can devote themselves to that future when humanity itself will become an offering accepted by God.’

‘For unless the Christian message of love and justice shows its effectiveness through action in the cause of justice in the world, it will only with difficulty gain credibility with the people of our times.’

The laity should take up as their own proper task the renewal of the temporal order. If the role of the hierarchy is to teach and to interpret authentically the norms of morality to be followed in this matter, it belongs to the laity, without waiting passively for orders and directives, to take the initiatives freely and to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws and structures of the community in which they live.