Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism

My brief allusions to some documents of the Council focus exclusively on
these two points.
The Second Vatican Council proclaimed the universal calling to holiness of
all Christians, based on the sacraments of initiation and not on public vows, in
its Declaration on the ChurchLumen gentium(LG). The clergy are ministerial
members of the body of Christ, at the service of the people of God as a whole,
which is itself composed of both laity and priests, people who exercise the
common priesthood and ordained ministers who serve their brethren with
sacramental powers. The hierarchy is service. For thefirst time in a document
of the Catholic Church, laypeople are defined in a positive way, describing
what they are rather than limiting itself simply to saying that they are not
clergy as the CIC 1917 had done. The laypeople are the faithful who, unlike the
clergy and religious, remain in the world:

What specifically characterizes the laity is their secular nature....The laity, by

their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and

by ordering these affairs according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that

is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the

ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their

existence is woven. They are called there by God, and through exercising their

proper function and being led by the spirit of the Gospel they work for the

sanctification of the world from within as a leaven.^25

Such a clear acknowledgement of secularity implies the acceptance of the
modern differentiation of social spheres. Accordingly,Gaudium et spes(GS)
fully recognizes the‘rightful autonomy of earthly affairs’, making it clear that
this autonomy is only relative. It is conditioned by God’s law:

But if the expression, the independence of temporal affairs, is taken to mean that

created things do not depend on God, and that man can use them without any

reference to their Creator, anyone who acknowledges God will see how false such

a meaning is. For without the Creator the creature would disappear. For their

part, however, all believers of whatever religion always hear His revealing voice in

the discourse of creatures. When God is forgotten, however, the creature itself

grows unintelligible.^26

Together with the Christocentric confession in GS 22 that only Christ fully
reveals man to man himself,^27 these passages form the central constitutive
elements of Christian humanism as taught by the Second Vatican Council. It is
an inclusive theo- and Christocentric vision that bridges the divide between
God and world, between grace and nature.

(^25) LG §31. (^26) GS §36.
(^27) ‘Christ, thefinal Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully
reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear’(GS §22).
A Catholic Concept of Christian Humanism 205