Some Key Catholic Social Teachings from Gaudium et Spes (Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) that express the "dynamite" of the Gospel (Peter Maurin)
GS 3 – “The Church seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ himself” (see Luke 4:16-19: “The Spirit of the Lord...”).
GS 4 – “to carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the time and of interpreting them in the light of the gospel” (The gospel = the good news that requires that we repent and believe).
The Good News is that “The Kingdom of God [the kind of world God wants] is at hand” if we recognize and apply the following principles (so that "Thy will be done on earth"):
- GS24 – “God who has fatherly [parental] concerns for everyone, has willed that all people should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood/sisterhood" [and therefore]
- GS27 – “Everyone must consider every neighbor without exception as another self” [and]
- GS26 – “Therefore there must be made available to all people everything necessary for leading a life truly human” (The Common Good and The Just Wage). [And because of this]
- GS69 – “attention must always be paid to the universal purpose for which created goods are meant. In using them, therefore, people should regard lawful possessions not merely as their own but also as common property in the sense that they should accrue to the benefit not only of themselves but of others.” (also GS 71 - "The social nature of private property is derived from the law of the universal purpose of created goods.") [This means that]
- GS69 – “People are obliged to come to the relief of the poor and to do so not merely out of their superfluous goods …reckon what is superfluous by the needs of others.”[And therefore]
- GS 69 – “the sacred Council urges all, both individuals and government, to remember the saying of the Fathers: ‘Feed the people dying of hunger, because if you have not fed them, you have killed them’” [and in this regard, we must remember that]
- GS28 – “the teaching of Christ extends the law of love to include every enemy.”
These teachings are radical teachings because at root they contradict today’s majority culture (“The Christian conception of the world is that we are called to be a community, not a competing crowd” – Archbishop Bernardin).
