In an analogous way, the Second Vatican Council repositioned the church’s
social teaching in the world. Up to the Second Vatican Council, this relation-
ship had been viewed mainly as one between the church and the state,
regulated through concordats. The church’s main concern was that the state
should use its coercive powers to favour Christian morality and the church as
an institution. They preferred a top-down approach: the Christian princes
guaranteed certain moral principles through the means of the state. The
paradigm shift that took place at the Second Vatican Council is expressed in
the very title ofGaudium et spes:‘on the churchinthe modern world’. Thus,
the church’s mission is now exercised preferably from below, in a bottom-up
model, by laypeople who partake in the mission of the church and sanctify the
world from within. In doing so, they use the spaces of freedom that the liberal
democracies open up to them. In other words, the church has placed herself in
the public arena of civil society. Her voice is one more voice among many
others. Her only power is the strength of her arguments; her only force the
conviction of her truth and the credibility of her love. Accordingly, inGau-
dium et spes, the church abandoned a purely deductive approach to judging
and legislating on secular affairs without going to the other extreme of mere
induction. She chose the attitude of dialogue: she not only teaches the world,
but also learns from it. This does not imply any form of epistemological or
ethical relativism, nor does the church cave in to the pressure of the world. Her
method could be called hermeneutical: she explains meaning, makes facts
come to light by means of the faith, and deepens her faith by penetrating
the divine sense of human affairs.^28 In a similar way, the church’s social
teaching progresses with the changing circumstances. It applies immutable
principles to varying historic situations. Throughout the ages, the church
answers to new social challenges, and the answers vary not because the
principles they are based on change, but rather because the problems they
address change.Gaudium et spesexplicitly makes this point, referring to its
second part, which deals with various specific aspects of social life:‘Interpret-
ers must bear in mind—especially in part two—the changeable circumstances
which the subject matter, by its very nature, involves.’^29 On the other hand,
Gaudium et spesreserves, as inherent in her divine mission, the church’s right
‘to pass moral judgment in those matters which regard public order when the
fundamental rights of a person or the salvation of souls require it’.^30
(^28) Hans-Jörg Sander has described this process as‘abduction’, combining deduction and
induction, applying abstractions to concrete facts; setting out from established truths, we modify
and improve our knowledge of them by listening to new experiences. Cf. Hans-Jörg Sander,
‘Theologischer Kommentar zur Pastoralkonstitution über die Kirche in der Welt von heute
Gaudium et spes’,inHerders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, ed.
Peter Hünermann and Bernd Jochen Hilberath, vol. 4 (Freiburg–Basel–Vienna: Herder, 2009),
581 – 916, 698f.
(^29) GS, Preface, note 1. This note forms part of the Conciliar text. (^30) GS §76.
206 Martin Schlag