The Catholic social

teaching and our

social responsibility
God has a plan
for the world.
•
• as God’s co-creators, it is our
responsibility to live and act
according to His will for the
world.

• we have the responsibility to

“govern the world with justice
and holiness” (GS, 34).
• We have the responsibility to
commit to the promotion of
“solidarity” which is understood
as the “firm and persevering
determination to commit oneself
to the common good, i.e., the
good of all and of each individual,
because we are really responsible
for all” (CFC, 341; PCP II, 295; cf.
SRS, 38).
 God’s eternal plan involves the
good of the whole society.

The social ministry of the Church is a

response to the mission of the
Church to the society.
 The Church envisions a kind of
society/community according to God’s
plan.
We, too, have our own
dream community.
 The Social Mission of the Church

Mission ad gentes

Evangelization involves
Mission:
proclaiming Jesus as savior of Evangelization in
proclamation of the
all and bringing the Good News Christian communities
Gospel =
into all the strata of humanity
Evangelization
to transform the society
according to God’s plan.
New evangelization
 Evangelization has two-fold dimensions

• Religious dimension
o manifested in religious activities such as the proclamation of
the Word of God, Bible studies, celebration of the sacraments,
and other liturgical activities.

• Social dimension
o concretized in the promotion of integral human development
and liberation” which includes the promotion of justice and
charity
 Social dimension:

Actions on behalf of justice and

participation in the
transformation of the world are
constitutive (essential,
obligatory) dimensions of the
preaching of the Gospel (JW, 6).
Meaning: essential or
obligatory
Our mission as Christians is to evangelize.
Evangelization is (PCPII, 166) :
1. the proclamation, above all, of salvation
from sin;
2. the liberation from everything oppressive
to man;
3. the development of man in all his
dimensions, personal and
communitarian; and ultimately,
4. the renewal of society in all its strata
through the interplay of the Gospel
truths and man’s concrete total life. This
is our task. This is our mission (PCPII,
166).
 Our social mission is an expression of the three-fold mission of
Jesus Christ.
 With her social teaching the Church seeks to
proclaim the Gospel and make it present in the
complex network of social relations (CSDC, 62).
Christian understanding of Salvation

Our social mission is

rooted on the salvation
promised by Jesus Christ.
Jesus became like us ( a human being)
to save us. But what kind of salvation
does he promise us?
 Lk 4:16-21 – When Jesus came to Nazareth where
he had been brought up, he entered the synagogue
on the Sabbath as he usually did. He stood up to
read and they handed him the book of the prophet
Isaiah. Jesus then unrolled the scroll and found the
place where it is written: ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon
me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the
poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to give new
sight to the blind; to free the oppressed and announce
the Lord’s year of mercy.’ Jesus then rolled up the
scroll, gave it to the attendant and sat down, while the
eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then
he said to them, ‘Today these prophetic words come
true even as you listen.
Aside from His death on the cross, the kind of salvation promised by
Jesus is evident in his life and teachings:
• he cured the sick
• fed the hungry
• gave sight to the blind
• raised the dead
• forgave sins
• proclaimed the Good News,
• and many more.
Jesus promised a salvation that:
• involves the total person (body and
soul)
• involves the “life-situations” of every
person
• is “concrete” (can be perceived by the
senses)
• can be experienced “here and now”
Jesus offers a salvation that saves the total person not only from sins
but from all forms of evil and oppressions. It is a salvation that brings
“kaginhawahan” here and now.

Salvation = Kaginhawahan
 The Spirituality of Social Transformation

Our social ministry as Christians

demands a kind of spirituality.

Spirituality - the inspiration within a

person to live a particular way of life
based on his beliefs or religious
conviction.
Christian spirituality – the call to all
the members of the Christian
community to live and think, to make
judgments and always discern in
relation to God, in the light of the
Gospel, and the teaching of the
Church.
Social transformation – a
process that seeks to heal and
liberate the society from its social
problems and injustices and
transforms it into a more humane
society.
Christian spirituality of social
transformation - the life-long task
of responding to the challenge of
Jesus' Gospel of Justice and Love
by committing oneself to the
mission of adjusting the social
order to the "radical demands" of
the Christian faith.
 External Manifestations of the
Spirituality of Social Transformation

• Social action • Social service

The Four Steps in the Cycle of
Christian Social Praxis
 The reality of social sin

Sinful structure

Social Sin Sinful situation

Sinful attitude