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BY OSCAR CRUZ
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Human promotion
THERE is this persistent thought and lingering belief that the Church should be only concerned about the human spirit and its eternal salvation, about the bliss of heaven and the curse of hell, about the goodness of God and the evil of the devil.
In other words, there is the puerile belief and vain posturing – especially among those wallowing in power and wealth, indulging in vices and depravity – that the Church has no business in speaking about earthly realities and acting on social issues.
Heaven and hell, the angels and the devils, the beyond and eternal – these are and should be the sterilized teaching and agenda of the Church. Human rights and obligations are irrelevant. Social curses and community miseries are immaterial. War and peace, despising and killing people, graft and corrupt practices – all these fall within the exclusive attention, concern and competence of the State. The Church – never mind.
Let the Church teach and act about Love of God – but never about Love of Man. Let the Church think and speak about heaven and hell – but never mind about realities and temporalities here and now.
The objective truth, however, is that nothing truly relevant to the good or evil of human society – such as poverty and abundance, misery and development, freedom and bondage, war and peace, and the like – is irrelevant to the concern of evangelization or the preaching of Gospel Truths which in fact is the mandate and obligation of the Church in conjunction with the truths here and now plus the realities hereafter and beyond.
So it is that evangelization would be a downright betrayal of the Divine Mandate to love God and to love man. And so it is that practically all instant sects as well as lately founded churches here and there, are altogether dedicated to preaching about the beyond and hereafter such that they are nonchalant about the here and now – and are thus exempt from the ire of lying public officials, of cheating public servants, of dubious individuals and avaricious corporations wallowing in wealth vis-à-vis the poor and miserable families, the hungry and sick individuals.
However, let it also be well-noted that that Church may not only preach and act about temporal realities, about earthly factors, about material concerns. Reason: The Church as founded by Christ Who is true man and true God. So it is too that the Church cannot but be concerned about the glory of God and the plight of man – as fundamentally grounded and proclaimed by the Sacred Scriptures.
So it is that as far as the Church is concerned, there is a profound interconnection between evangelization and human promotion – even but considering that man is an intimate composite of body and a soul.
So it is that evangelization – the preaching and acting on the Gospel Truths – cannot but have both divine and human concerns, spiritual and corporal, temporal and eternal contents and intents. The subject-object of evangelization is man who is living in the world of realities here and now but infallibly destined to hereafter and beyond. And so it is that Human Promotion is the key intent and content of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
Human life becomes blessed or cursed by secular factors. The Social Doctrine of the Church through evangelization is thus committed to the promotion of genuine human values with eventual relevance to his spiritual welfare and eternal goal./PN
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