Dottrina Sociale Ed Ecumenismo

Social Doctrine and Ecumenism

The “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church”

and the “Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church”

S.E. Mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi

Secretary of the Pontifical Council

for Justice and Peace

The ecumenical dialogue, especially between Christian religions, must also focus on social doctrine, which guides the faithful in society in the effort of creating conditions of justice and peace for all human beings. The programme and the method, of the “beatitudes” (Mt 5, 1-12) and of the “works of mercy” (Mt 25, 31-46), are an expression of Christian charity, and as such, they represent the meeting ground for the faiths that recognize themselves in the same Divine Teacher.

Oggi, il dialogo tra le religioni cristiane circa il valore liberante del Vangelo per la società si fa particolarmente urgente. Nel Message for the World Peace Day del 2002, Giovanni Paolo II scriveva che “Le confessioni cristiane e le grandi religioni dell’umanità devono collaborare tra loro per eliminare le cause sociali e culturali del terrorismo, insegnando la grandezza e la dignità della persona e diffondendo una maggiore consapevolezza dell’unità del genere umano.

Today the dialogue between Christian religions on the liberating value of the Gospel for society is particularly pressing. In his Messagefor the World Peace Dayin 2002, John Paul II wrote that “The various Christian confessions, as well as the world's great religions, need to work together to eliminate the social and cultural causes of terrorism. They can do this by teaching the greatness and dignity of the human person, and by spreading a clearer sense of the oneness of the human family. This is a specific area of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and cooperation, a pressing service which religion can offer to world peace.”[1].

The defence of life, of human rights, of peace, of social and economic justice, and of development will be at the heart of inter-religious dialogue more and more in the near future, and Catholics will have to contribute with their Social Doctrine.

This collaboration has become most urgent today because of the need for transcendence that emerges from our European nations, albeit in an ambiguous manner. While on the one hand we seem to have outgrown the old ideological oppositions against the public role of religion, on the other, we are noting that often the urge of the lay world in wanting to confine religion to the private sphere is becoming less aggressive. However, greater attention is being paid to the moral teachings of the Churches, and also in secular thinking, the belief that it is good for society that Christianity, albeit remaining a religion and hence pursuing only its mission, can enlighten the world of social relations by being open to transcendence, that isto say, to things that are not available to man[2]. Indeed, the transcendent dignity of thehuman person can be founded only on God; it is only on the Creator that we can constitute the foundations of natural law and of man’s rights and duties; and the unity of the human family can be motivated only through the Redeemer, who wants us all to be one (Gv 17, 21), and hence fight against all forms of division and contrast.

The Catholic Church has recently summarized its wealth of thoughts on social life in the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church”, drawn up on the wishes of the Holy Father John Paul II by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and published in October 2004. Approximately at the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church worked on the definition of “The Bases of the Social Concept”[3]. This document, which is the outcome of five years of work by a group set up by the Holy Synod and chaired by the Metropolite of Smolensk, Cirillo, was approved by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church that met in Moscow from 13 to 16 August 2001.

The two documents have different backgrounds. The first summarises a long phase of reflections, which, in its modern phase, began in 1891 with Rerum novarum by Leo XIII. The second represents the first document of its kind and which has this authority within the tradition of the Orthodox Church. Also with regard to the teachings provided, the two documents differ. The Compendium summarizes the social doctrine of the Church as is was formulated by Peter’s teachings, with the awareness, clearly manifested by Leo XIII, that in this way the Church would be fulfilling its universal apostolic task. The Bases are the expression of an autocephalousChurch, precisely the Russian Orthodox Church. Besides these differences there are also those that express the Catholic theology on the one hand and the Orthodox theology on the other and also the concrete historic experience of the relationships with society and politics as they unfolded in the West and in the East. The common reference to the Gospel of the Lord, to the theology and practice of the original Church, to the reflections of the Fathers of the Church and, above all, the basic idea that the social teaching and the active presence in history at the service of mankind that by nature belong to the Church, constitute a horizon of fundamental importance that is presence in both Documents

In The Bases of the Social Conception, the Russian Orthodox Church places the concern for human and social things in its mission of salvation: “The Church must go through a process of historic kenosis, thus accomplishing its redeeming mission. Its aim is not only the salvation of mankind in this world, but also the salvation and renewal of the world itself” n. 1.2).

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, for its part, is placed within the vision of the relationships of the Church with the World as indicated by the Council and, with Gaudium et spes, itdeems that “The Mission of the Church will show its religious, and by that very fact, its supremely human character”[4]. The wholeness of the message of salvation of Jesus Christ, the full service of the Church to the world for its full liberation, in history and beyond history, are views that are common to both the Compendium and to the Istruzione.

In the Message for the Day of World Peace, recalled above, John Paul II identified the teaching of the greatness of the dignity of the person and the diffusion of a greater awareness of the oneness of mankind as the main ground for collaboration between the Catholic Church and other religions. These two spheres of ecumenical dialogue and of a common service to the world command a more urgent commitment in defence of life and in working together to rediscover Europe’s common Christian legacy.

Both the Compendium and the Instruction of the Orthodox Church are two messages of life. They deal with the rights of a new life in relation to the family and, especially as regards the Instruction, also to the area of bioethics (cf. Chapter XIII). It can also be stated that the two Documents do not deal with life as a sectoral issue, but as the background theme underlying the entire social question and as a full and comprehensive commitment for the Christian faithful in society.

The theme of the “policy for life”, namely society’s commitment to welcome life, to protect it and promote it, is undoubtedly one of the major ecumenical commitments at this point in history and it is the first contribution that Christian religions can give to our bewildered society.

The other major issue is the rediscovery of Europe’s common Christian origins. In the two Documents, Europe is not present as a specific theme, but both exhaustively deal with the international community (For the Compendium cf. Chap. IX; for the Instruction cf. Chap XVI), emphasizing how the Christian perspective enhances the nation but also the universality of the encounter between peoples, and how the Christian faith has been an element of identity and at the same time of opening. This holds even more for the European continent, for Europe taken as a cultural and spiritual unity of different, but at the same time, united peoples. ThisEurope, that goes from the Atlantic to the Urals, as John Paul II liked saying, needs to reconstruct its identity and it cannot do so without acknowledging and reconciling itself with its Christian roots. This is not so much a need felt by the Christian religions, but rather, we might say, a social and political necessity, in the sense that without this recovery of its religious traditions, European society runs the risk of not breathing, of lowering the profile of the values in which it believes, and of leaving room to the nihilism of technology. It even runs the risk of not being sufficiently welcoming, because without an identity and awareness of Self it is difficult to integrate any different entity.

While, presumably, these are the two themes that are emerging as the core of the dialogue betweenthe Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church for the near future, the Compendium and the Instructionbring up several other themes, as for instance the issue of human rights (in the Compendium Chap. III; in the Instruction Chap. IV.6), the issue of democracy (respectivelyChap. VII and Chap. V); the issue of labour (Chap. VI in both Documents) or the protection of the environment (Chap. XI; Chap. VIII). “Peace is a gift of God” reads the Instruction of the Orthodox Church in Chapter VIII.5, and the Compendium states even more explicitly that peace is first and foremost an essential attribute of God (n° 488).

As we were saying at the beginning, and as is quite understandable, there are differences in emphasis between the two Documents and even differences in the way the themes are structured. For instance, the Compendium expresses the outcome of a long reflection on the nature of the social doctrine of the Church, that has engaged the Catholic Church for decades and that was further and almost definitively clarified with the Second Vatican Council and with the teachings of John Paul II. The Instruction is less interested in specifying the epistemology of similar teachings. The Compendium summarizes the “fundamental principles of the social doctrine of the Church” (Chap. IV), which were the outcome of a lengthy and systematic elaboration, while the Instruction prefers to focus on an analytical discussion of the individual social themes.

For these and other reasons, there is a need to continue the dialogue on the meaning of the mission of the service of the Church to the world. In this dialogue, the horizon that is common to the two Churches is the idea that this mission of the Church for the good of the world is part and parcel, as the Compendium says, of God’s plan of love for mankind.

[1] “There is no peace without justice, there is no justice without forgiveness”, Message for the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2002, n. 12.

[2] G. Crepaldi, “The Church’s Social Doctrine in Today’s World” published in: Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Justice and Peace: an ever Present Challenge, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 2004, pp. 125-136.

[3] The text is available in the Supplement to “Il Regno”, n. 1, January 2001.

[4] Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, n. 11.