Social doctrine of the church as a social instrument of the new evangelization

Three terms are present in the title of this issue: two explicit (social doctrine of the church and new evangelization) and an implicit (evangelization). We can’t talk about the new evangelization without connecting it with the evangelization itself; the relationship between the church’s social doctrine and the new evangelization comes through the evangelization.
The first thing it’s the evangelization, the most original, and that goes back to the origins of the church.
The church’s social doctrine, born in the 19th century as an attempt to answer of faith to the great problems which occurred with modernity, as new ideologies that give the body and the political and socioeconomic systems derived from these.
The new evangelization is a most recent proposal, from Juan Pablo II, that is intended to realize the meaning and scope of evangelization in the circumstances of our historical moment.

Evangelization and mission as a framework
The four evangelisms present us a resurrected Jesus who appeared to theirs and charges them a mission: to be witnesses in the villages.
The conscience of this mission has been realized in a different way for each historical era. To illustrate the variety and to best understand what the evangelization today is, it will be useful to distinguish the four models of the evangelization.

The evangelization of the first Christian times
The Christians from the origins went to the Jews, who where the ones in better conditions to accept the message of Jesus.
However, soon we witness a radical change: the missioner predication goes out of the Jews environment to address the non-Jews, the pagans, i.e. to all the villages without exception. From Jewish particularism is the big step to the universalism of the gospel. Paul was the architect of this momentous shift.
The gospel announcement involves the proclamation of the faith of Jesus dead and resurrected and the testimony of a life. We know that the way of life of the Christians was one of the most convincing things for the pagans. Following the conversion comes the instruction in the word f God, until all ended at the baptism and the eucharist.
During more than three centuries the church expands, following the next scheme, all above the Roman Empire. In this expansion it finds a lot of difficulties. At the beginning there were reduced and almost unknown communities, little by little gaining some notoriety: in this way they reached the commitment of many but also the rejection of many.
We can find an amazing testimony of what all of those communities were in the Letter to Diogneto, a Christian script from the middle of the 2nd century.
As we could know the life of the Christian was full of paradoxes. And the most radical paradox was: that they were admired and hated at the same time. But all of this will going to change with the entry of Constantine the emperor to the power.

The evangelization in the Christian empire
The peace of Constantine at the 313 year opened an era of tolerance in which the Christian religion stopped from being pursued. And it will be admitted as another of the many religion that were practiced, at the 360 year the emperor Theodosius declared the christianism the official religion of the empire. With this changes the whole sense of the evangelization.
Now church and empire unified themselves. And the expansion of the empire involves an expansion of the christianism. There are no more pursuits and the situation for the Christians was a lot more comfortable. The necessity of evangelization continues but it losses all of it personal character to become massive. Also, the conversion was result of imposition and no for conviction.
This massive evangelization supposed the incorporation of many people to the Christian faith. Reaching the point that the christianism was all over the occidental culture. The power of the empire strengthened the authority of the church. The heresy was pursuit by the civil courts. The laws were inspired by the Christian principles.
The evangelization of America
America’s evangelization was made from Spain and Portugal. It takes place at the same time that the conquest of territories and was supported by the political power.
Since the first moments the pope intervened, especially when Spain and Portugal had conflicts and he conceded to the Spain Kings the discovered territories to practice there their Christian mission. Initially they use the requirement system, in which they invited the Indian to take the Christian faith or to lose their freedom and territories. After this they use the “parcel” system in which the Indians were submitted to the conquerors and they assumed the responsibility of their education.
America’s evangelization wouldn’t be possible without the missioners that take care of the indoctrination of the Indians. And that’s the way that the Christians imposed another type of evangelization: the exterior missions. This enormous effort extended to territories like Asia and Africa.
In all of this era the evangelization was made with an excessive connection to the European culture, so it was less real than the European evangelization.

The evangelization of Unchristianized Europe
In the modern era the evangelization received a new momentum. The popular missions generalized in Europe with the objective of returning the frequency of the religious practice to the masses. This isn’t a new evangelization but a re-evangelization.
The principal causes of this loss of religious vigor were: the geographic dispersion of the populations, the difficulty to attend them conveniently, insufficient formation of the clergy and lack of capacitation in pastoral works, poor hold of the first evangelization, mix with another religious traditions and the born and slow diffusion of a new mentality that thinks about the religion like an obstacle to the social coexistence.
This distance between the European society and the church was every day more intense and worrying.
Due to the necessity of making a missioner pastoral in center Europe was implicit not to assume that the majority of Europe was Christian and to overcome the approaches of a “conservation pastoral”.
And to take conscience that the evangelization work is not only work of the clergy, instead of every believer.

At the doors of Vatican II
With this we have reached the time of the council. A little bit earlier it has produced the intervention of the Holy See, quitting the experience of the worker fathers, which putted serious obstacles to this new path of evangelization. However this ecclesiastical presence will be reestablished.

The Church’s Social doctrine
Christian social thinking and church’s social doctrine
The Christian social thinking is the reflection that the church has made since it origins about the society problems.
The 19th century context which was oriented to the modern state and industrial capitalism, socialism and liberalism it’s what explains the birth of the church’s social doctrine.
In this era the pope’s documents about moral reflection of the society have an important weight.

Church’s social doctrine as an open reflection process
Doctrine. Suggests a closed system that is worth to try concrete truths of history.
We find continues efforts to answer the problems of each era. These documents do more than repeat the principles that govern the church’s traditions. They do at least this four things: 1) Apply the principles and formulate consequences that they have for the problems. 2) They don’t only add new principles they make changes and matrix of high importance. 3) the next documents systematize and nest the big principles. And 4) the new topics don’t incorporate like a juxtaposition, but the remodel all the result.
In summary, the church’s social doctrine is an open process of reflection made from the Christian sensibility when its needed, though the compromise and action in an always changing social reality.

The turn of the Social Doctrine of the Church since Vatican II
Not even the Vatican II or Pope Paul VI used the term church’s social doctrine. Probably it was for certain conscious about the end of the church’s social doctrine.
Pope John Paul II returned to this term, but not making away all that the Vatican II has supposed.
What means the Vatican II in the modern history of the church? The reunion og the church with modernity.
The antique society was an homogeneous society, in which religion was an element that structurated all the society. Modernity supposes a reaction against this way of organizing the society and proposes the secularization. Which is the separation between state and church.
The liberty of conscious and the religious freedom require a tolerance for pluralism that collides squarely with that submission to religious authority of the past.
When John XXIII announces that he is going to make convocation of a Council to refresh the church. It required accepting the modern man reality in all of his integrity. And that’s qhat the Vatican II does officially.
The crucial topic of a Council must be to clarify the church’s function on the modern society. It is not about arguing new mission, but to clarify the way to make it in new conditions.
The ecclesiology it’s articulated over two big theological categories: the church as God’s people and the church as mystery and salvation sacrament.
The category of God’s people remarks the communitarian dimension of the church and the necessity of being witness of God in the middle of all people. The category of church as mystery and salvation sacrament makes the church a visible and effective sign. In which is always a reality. This reality has two dimensions: intimate unity of man with God and unity of mankind.
All of this means for the church to accept the new place that they have in the society, more in line with the exigencies of the modernity: the church its present in the world, not as an authority but as a testimony.
The church social doctrine doesn’t suppose nothing more than the presence in the society with the intention of giving light and efforts to respond the continuous issues. With the mission of being sacrament, not as an authority but as a testimony. And in this new way of stay in the world, the protagonists are every member of the church and specially all that are directly involved in this problematic situations.