Introduction
Two statements from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) of the Second Vatican Council can be used together as a definition of Christian humanism. The first of these statements deals with cultural values:
...when a man applies himself to the various disciplines of philosophy, of history, and of mathematical and natural science, and when he cultivates the arts, he can do very much to elevate the human family to a more sublime understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty, and to the formation of judgments which embody universal values.[1]
The second statement deals with solidarity:
Thus we are witnesses of the birth of a new humanism, one in which man is defined first of all by his responsibility toward his brothers and toward history.[2]
The topic of Christian involvement in the world is central to the thinking of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit scientist and theologian:
To incorporate the progress of the world in our picture of the kingdom of God: to incorporate the sense of the earth, the sense of man, in charity - with the world no longer eclipsing God nor carrying us away at a tangent... ‘God clothed in the world’.[3]
References:
[1] Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” in The Documents of Vatican II, ed.Walter M. Abbott, S.J.,(New York: America Press, 1966), 263 (paragraph # 57).
[2] Ibid., 261 (paragraph # 55).
[3] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Awaited Word" in Toward the Future (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975),96.
[1] Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” in The Documents of Vatican II, ed.Walter M. Abbott, S.J.,(New York: America Press, 1966), 263 (paragraph # 57).
[2] Ibid., 261 (paragraph # 55).
[3] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Awaited Word" in Toward the Future (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975),96.
Monday, May 10, 2010
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