A social life without ethic values is like a flower withering. Social Doctrine considers four values as central and fundamentals for life and political action: Truth, justice, liberty and, carrying all of them, love, the political charity. To live those values leads us to self-fulfillment and to a more human social coexistence.
Let us talk about liberty and political charity.
Truth and Justice are closely attached to liberty. Truth and Justice can only be searched and built through Liberty. Liberty can only be accomplished from Truth and Justice.
This way, Liberty is an essential value because its exercise is an exigence of person’s dignity. It’s impossible to be a person without Liberty.
Social life answers more to Truth of human dignity and its demands of Justice when Liberty of people is favored, especially Liberty of impoverished people; when social conditions that allow the exercise of people rights are looked for and when responsibility for the common good is promoted.
A society is freer when is built from the searching of the practical statement of humans dignity and it searches the Justice for all. Liberty is inseparable from responsibility.
Truth, Justice, and Liberty make sense when are founded on love.
The social doctrine calls the political charity to the social practice of love to the others, taking them as brothers and sisters. That is the love embedded inside social relations.
Political charity is an active commitment, that is born in the love for the others, favoring a more just and fraternal world, taking special care of impoverished people.
The social doctrine insists on the Love as a basic social value, linking love and justice, because the love for the neighbor and the justice are inseparable. The love for the others is the true way for self-fulfillment and for the transformation of the World, making it a house where all of us can live together.
The problem is that inside our society reigns an individualistic and hedonistic conception of life, which also includes Liberty and Social Love. The Love is distorted and relationships are decayed. We do not feel responsible for the others.
Maybe, the major problem in our society could be the lack of fraternity, the lack of love in social relations.
DSI sentence
Christ revealed to us that “God is love” and at the same time taught us that the new command of love was the basic law of human perfection and hence of the worlds transformation.
CV II, Gaudium et spes n.38
Act
Take a look at our society.
Can you see any difference between Liberty and Political charity we talked about here and those present in our society?
What can we do to promote Liberty and Political charity?
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Democracy as political system
The political community, the social tissue, can be organized in different ways. Although the Catholic Church does not identify itself with any of these forms, it considers some of them unacceptable because they don’t respect the person’s dignity. Social Doctrine considers the democracy as the better way to organize political life.
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Church and political community
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