Reflecting the Mind of the
Vatican Since 1850

John Paul II and the Social Doctrine of the Church
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When the cardinals gathered in conclave and elected Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as the successor of St Peter on October 16, 1978, the choice was somewhat surprising. He was the first non-Italian pope since Hadrian VI (elected in 1522) and, above all, he came from Eastern Europe, from beyond the Iron Curtain, from Krakow in Poland. Few would have imagined that the new pontiff was about to bring a renewal to the Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC).

A look at his earlier life, however, would have given a clear indication of this direction. He had personal experience of real life in both the capitalist and communist worlds; as a professor of Ethics at the University of Lublin, Wojtyła had taken an academic interest in socio-economic matters, and at the Second Vatican Council he had contributed to the composition of Gaudium et Spes (GS). What is more, his clear opposition to communism was well known.

The end of the 1970s marked an era of turbulence in the Church and in wider society. In the Church, confidence in its social doctrine had reached its lowest point. The growing prestige of Marxism was combined with criticism of the social doctrine of the Church by various theological and political currents, which accused it of being abstract, moralistic and ideological. This accusation was formulated, for example, by Marie-Dominique Chenu in La doctrine sociale de l’Église comme idéologie. Everything seemed to conspire to attack it.
© Union of Catholic Asian News 2023
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