A Catholic bishop expressed hopes that other significant social issues in contemporary society would be addressed in the Catholic Church’s canon of social teachings.
Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo on Tuesday stated that he hopes other vital issues such as the status of women and environmental concerns will be included in the future in the list of Church social doctrines.
“The role and status of women in society and in the church has not been addressed adequately and remains a significant limitation of catholic social doctrine,” Lagdameo noted.
He said that despite the importance of catholic social teaching in the light of the contemporary church, still some other matters which report further development are yet to be included in the Church’s canon of teaching.
“An encyclical on the environment has not yet come out ever, is overdue even though some move has been made in this direction by the current Pope Benedict XVI,” he said.
Lagdameo stated that the main purpose of the Catholic social doctrine has been anthropocentric and not environmental.
And yet, he said, “we have actually been created by the environment and we create our environment.”
The former CBCP president was the keynote speaker during the opening plenary session of the national conference of church people and workers being held at the Mariners Court in Cebu City.
He affirmed before 800 participants of church people and workers that it is part of the Church role to be the voice of the poor in the face of injustice and oppressive structures.
“[The Church] cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice,” Lagdameo said, quoting a line from Pope Benedict XVI’s celebrated encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.
Lagdameo quoted extensively from Church social documents highlighting the Church’s position on the dignity of labor and rights of workers.
He explained the development of the Church social documents from Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum that dates back to 1891, a seminal encyclical on Labor and Capital, up to Pope John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens published in 1981.
The social encyclicals, beginning from Rerum Novarum underline the Church’s “preferential option for the poor”, “the primacy of labor over capital”, and the task of the Church to fight injustice as an essential part of evangelization.
Lagdameo said, “what is now known as catholic social teachings develop organically.”
“That’s the reason why I tried to enumerate some of the magisterial statements because you have to look at the social doctrine organically. Each document drew upon and affirmed what precede it but also added to and develop the teaching. Given this it is important to point to consistent values and principles within this tradition,” he said.
“We are not lacking in the tradition of social teaching… what is lacking is to fill it up,” he added.
Lagdameo expressed hopes that the Church continue to live up to the tradition of the social teachings which evolved in 1891 “into this new century and continue to push the boundaries of faith to incorporate the big issues to the future.”
Noting that the social teachings have been rarely discuss in “Church circles”, these also rarely “informs decision making and action, at least explicitly,” Lagdameo said
“The Catholic social teaching has been referred to oftentimes as the catholic church’s best kept secret. It is Church teaching that is rarely preached about in our pulpits, rarely written about and rarely spoken about in Church circles. Consequently in rarely informs decision making and action, at least explicitly,” he said.
“Now is a good time to reclaim this tradition, and to allow it to become a benchmark for the seeding out of the powerplay in today’s world,” Lagdameo furthered.
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