The Role of the Church in the Modern World

Abstract

The publication of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World or Gaudium et Spes (1965) by the Second Vatican Council marked the definitive opening of the Catholic Church to the challenge of the modern world. It represented a decisive reformulation of the Church's relationship to the social and historical context in which it now fulfills its mission. While almost a century of Catholic reflection on social issues had prepared the way, nothing previously had matched the depth and comprehensiveness of the Council's examination of the meaning of modern civilization as a whole. Having weathered the successive shock waves of the modernist critique, from Protestantism, to scientism, to historicism, to materialism, the Church seemed to have attained a new-found confidence to confront and contemplate the true nature of the adversary that now simultaneously opposed it and stood in need of its ministry. The eternal light of Christ's love was turned toward the condition of modern man, and the result was an illumination of the spiritual core of the contemporary civilizational crisis that henceforth was intended to define the mission of the Church in the modern world.