Abstract
Part I of Gaudium et Spes puts forward a dramatic tension between the secularity of the economy, as one important dimension of “the world,” and the theological vocation of humankind to transform the world through labor. This chapter will explore this tension between the secularity of economic activity and that activity’s theological dimension, and examine how the teaching of Gaudium et Spes both affirmed and challenged the initiatives of Catholic groups devoted to social activism in the economic sphere at the time of the council, such as Catholic Action and labor unions. It will also consider how this tension has played out in the decades since the council.
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Notes
- 1.
Émile Durkheim , The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (New York: Free Press, 1965), 475.
- 2.
Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum, ASS 23 (1891): 641–670, nos. 41, 57.
- 3.
Yvan Daniel and Henri Godin , La France, pays de mission? (Paris: Cerf, 1943). For a discussion of how the book influenced the apostolate to workers, see Oscar L. Arnal, Priests in Working-Class Blue: The History of the Worker Priests (1943–1954) (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 53–56.
- 4.
José Casanova , Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 20–21, 212; see also Casanova, “The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 55.
- 5.
Charles Taylor , A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 22.
- 6.
Ibid., 61–89.
- 7.
Ibid., 99–112.
- 8.
Ibid., 90–99.
- 9.
Ibid., 146–58.
- 10.
Ibid., 544.
- 11.
Ibid., 3.
- 12.
Lieven Boeve, Interrupting Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 37–39.
- 13.
Anthony Giddens , The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 17–19.
- 14.
Ibid., 21–22; Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 17–18.
- 15.
Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, 20.
- 16.
Ibid., 22.
- 17.
Ibid., 27–28; Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 18.
- 18.
Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, 29–36.
- 19.
Ibid., 28.
- 20.
Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 20.
- 21.
Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, 38–39.
- 22.
Boeve, Interrupting Tradition, 40–42.
- 23.
Casanova notes the irony that whereas “the secular” was originally a theological concept that took on a life of its own, the concept of “religion” as something distinct from the rest of social life is in turn a product of secular modernity. Casanova, “Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms,” 61.
- 24.
Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 195.
- 25.
This phrase was first used by Pope Paul VI in his 1965 “Address to the United Nations Organization,” AAS 57 (1965): 877–85. It is then repeated by Pope John Paul II in two encyclicals. Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, AAS 79 (1987): 513–86, no. 7; Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, AAS (1993): 1133–1228, no. 3. It is cited in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, no. 61. It was used on occasion by Pope Benedict XVI , most notably in his “Message for World Day of Peace 2010,” AAS 102, no. 1 (2010): 41–51, no. 4. More recently, it has been used by Pope Francis, in his 2014 “Address to the Council of Europe,” AAS 106, no. 12 (2014): 1005–13. Benedict XVI offered a variation on the theme elsewhere, telling Polish clergy that they should be “specialists in promoting the encounter between man [sic] and God.” The faithful do not expect their priest to be an expert in secular disciplines, but “an expert in the spiritual life.” “Meeting with the Clergy,” http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060525_poland-clergy.html.
- 26.
Taylor, “Western Secularity,” in Rethinking Secularism, 38.
- 27.
Casanova, Public Religions, 6.
- 28.
Ibid., 43, 228–29.
- 29.
Ibid., 62.
- 30.
Gabriel Daly, O.S.A., Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980).
- 31.
Martin Conway, “Introduction,” in Political Catholicism in Europe, 1918–1965, ed. Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 19.
- 32.
Paul Luykx, “The Netherlands,” in Political Catholicism in Europe, 224–25.
- 33.
Joseph A. Komonchak, “Modernity and the Construction of Roman Catholicism,” in Christianesimo nella storia 18 (1997): 358.
- 34.
Ibid., 383.
- 35.
Martin Conway, Catholic Politics in Europe, 1918–1945 (New York: Routledge, 1997), 16–18.
- 36.
Taylor, Secular Age, 466–67.
- 37.
Komonchak, “Modernity,” 378.
- 38.
Pope Leo XIII , Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum, no. 27.
- 39.
Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno, AAS 23 (1931): 177–228, no. 147.
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Shadle, M.A. (2018). Economic Activity in Gaudium et Spes: Opening to the World or Theological Vocation?. In: Latinovic, V., Mannion, G., Welle, O.F.M., J. (eds) Catholicism Opening to the World and Other Confessions. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98581-7_5
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