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7 Roles of the Church in Supporting the Social Mission What role should the Church and its members play in trying to achieve its social mission? This chapter presupposes all that has been said about the understanding of the Church and its social mission today as well as the sociological understanding of the Church and Catholics in United States culture and society. Particular instances of the social involvement of the Church at times have been quite contentious, as illustrated by the U.S. abortion law debate in the last few decades. Tensions arise when a particular position is said to be required of all those who belong to the Church, and one cannot be a good Catholic and disagree on a particular action. But in reality these contentious areas are comparatively few. In the vast majority of instances of working for the social mission of the Church, this problem does not arise, because it is not the whole Church that is acting but individuals in the Church or groups either of Catholics—or, more often today, of ecumenical and interfaith groups that do not purport to speak for the whole Church. The primary and most important work of the social mission of the Church is the work done by individuals alone or in association with others in their daily lives and in all aspects of their familial, social, political, economic, and cultural life. This chapter discusses first the most important and least contentious roles and later the more disputed roles the Church might play. The Most Important Role As outlined in the preceding chapters, the most important role of the social mission of the Church is the formation, education, and motivation of all Catholics to work in their daily lives and activities for the common good of society.   G Chapter  Education, in the broadest sense of the term, constitutes the primary function of all Christian churches. The Church strives to form itself into a community of disciples of Jesus. This discipleship by its very nature should recognize that action on behalf of justice and the transformation of the world is a constitutive dimension of preaching the Gospel and of the Church’s mission of redemption of the human race and liberation from oppression. Thus, the formation of all the members of the Church into a community of the disciples of Jesus constitutes the most important and fundamental role in developing the social mission of the Church. I will consider three aspects of the formation and education of the Church community—the challenge, the areas in which the social mission takes place, and the means to carry out formation for the social mission. The challenge to make the social mission of the Church a constitutive dimension of the life of the Church and of all its baptized members is daunting. At best, this is an ongoing work that will never be totally successful. At present, the broader Catholic population is not as aware as they should be of the centrality of the social mission of the Church in their faith and life. Challenge and Areas of Involvement The Church has had modern social teaching coming from the popes and Vatican II since Leo XIII’s famous encyclical Rerum novarum defended the rights of workers in 1891, and continuing through the 2009 encyclical Caritas in veritate by Pope Benedict XVI. However, Catholic social teaching has been called the Church’s best-kept secret.1 In the last few decades efforts have been made to make this teaching better known to Catholics in the pews, but many Catholics are still not familiar with it. When New York Catholic Al Smith ran for the presidency in 1928, someone asked him about the papal encyclicals. Smith’s alleged answer was classic: ‘‘What the hell is an encyclical?’’2 To its great credit, Catholic social teaching does address many of the structural and institutional problems in our world. The Church continually faces the challenge of making this teaching better known to all Catholics. But the social mission of the Church also involves what individuals do in all aspects of their familial, social, cultural, and political lives. Individual Christians in their daily lives are called to work for the common good of society in their work, their play, their home, their neighborhood, their voluntary associations, their professional groups, and their role as citizens. As stated in chapter 4, structural change is only a part, albeit a significant part, of the total social mission of the Church...

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