Pope speaks on importance of Church social doctrine: ‘There is a widespread thirst for justice’

Good article; worth hitting the link for the entire piece.

“In our day, there is a widespread thirst for justice, a desire for authentic fatherhood and motherhood, a profound longing for spirituality, especially among young people and the marginalized, who do not always find effective means of making their needs known,” Pope Leo had said to them during the conclusion of the address. “There is a growing demand for the Church’s social doctrine, to which we need to respond.”

CAPP is named after St. Pope John Paul’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, written for the 100th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclical Rerum Novarum. According to the CAPP Foundation’s website, the organization, established in 1993, works to promote the Church’s social doctrine and seeks new funding opportunities for the Vatican. 

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He said that the Church’s social doctrine aims to engage social issues and “does not claim to possess a monopoly on truth, either in its analysis of problems or its proposal of concrete solutions. Where social questions are concerned, knowing how best to approach them is more important than providing immediate responses to why things happen or how to deal with them.”

Pope Leo described doctrine specifically in the context of the Church’s social doctrine as being synonymous with “discipline,” “science,” and “knowledge,” which can help respond to challenges prudently. Doctrine in this context can be considered the result of research and discussions that are “all aimed at conveying a reliable, organized and systematic body of knowledge about a given issue.” Thus, he said, such a doctrine is not an opinion but a “collective and even multidisciplinary pursuit of truth.”