Lesson 12: Human Work

SUMMARY
Values: Love of Work, Justice and Responsibility toward work, Honesty, Creativity
The Nature of work
o The old testament presents God as the omnipotent Creator who fashions
man in his image and invites him to work the soil and cultivate and care
for the garden of Eden in which he has placed him.
The Dignity of Human Work
o Human work in the objective sense: it is the sum of activities, resources,
instrument and technologies used by men and women to produce things,
to exercise dominion over the earth, in the words of the book of genesis.
o Human work in the subjective sense: it is an essential expression of the
persons; it is an actus personae. Work does not depend on what people
produce or on the type of activity they undertake but, only and
exclusively, on their dignity as human beings.
o The goal of work: work must be oriented to the subject who performs it,
because the end of work, any work whatsoever, always remains man.
The Social Dimension of Work
o Human work also has an intrinsic social dimension. A persons work. In
fact, is naturally connected with that of other people.
Three Moral Significance of Work
o It is the principal way that people exercise the distinctive human capacity
for self-expression and self-realization.
Man must work in order to respond to the need to maintain and
develop his own humanity
o It is the ordinary way for human beings to fulfill their material needs.
Work is needed to form and maintain a family
Work is needed to have a right to property
o Finally, work enables people to contribute to the well-being of the larger
community. Work is not only for ones self. It is for ones family, fo the
nation, and indeed, for the benefit of the entire human family.
Work contributes to the common good of the human family.
The Spirituality of Work
o Work is a vocation. In the creators plan, created realities, which are
good themselves, exist for mans use.
o Work has a place of honor. Because it is a source of riches, or at least,
of the conditions for a decent life, and is, in principle, an effective
instrument against poverty.

Lesson 13: Poverty and Charity

SUMMARY
Values: Right use of goods, thrift, generosity, compassion, and sensitivity to the
needs of others, simplicity of lifestyle, care for the poor and needy.
The Scandal of Poverty:
o The fact is that many people, perhaps the majority today, do not have the
means which would enable them to take their place in an effective and
humanly dignified way within a productive system in which work is truly
central.
Causes of Poverty

o Illiteracy
o Lack of food security
o The absence of structures and services
o Inadequate measures for guaranteeing basic health care
o Lack of safe drinking water and sanitation
o Corruption, instability of institutions and political life itself.
Preferential Love for the Poor
The fight against poverty finds a strong motivation in the option or
preferential love of the
church for the poor.
St. Augustine on the Preferential Option for the Poor
o God does not demand much you
o Christ who is rich in heaven chose to be hungry in the poor
o Whenever you did it for one of the least mine, you did it for me.
o Go on making use of your special, expensive food, because you have got
into the habit of them, because if you change your habits you get sick.
o You give bread to the hungry person; but it would be better were no one
hungry, and you could give it to no one.
o Listen to the apostle: We brought nothing into this world.
o Christ is at once rich and poor: as God, rich: as a human person, poor.
o As a beggar for the beggars, Augustine would almost always include the
same words at the end of his homilies: give to the poor, think of the
poor, give to the poor what you have gathered.
Solidarity
Constantly reaffirming the principle of solidarity, the Churchs social doctrine
demands action to promote the good of all and each individual, because we
are all really responsible for all.
The principle of solidarity, even in the fight against poverty, must always be
appropriately accompanied by that of subsidiarity.
The poor should be seenot as a problem, but as people who can become the
principal builders of a new and more human future for everyone.
Social Justice
1. Justice consist in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and
neighbor. It is translated into a behavior that is based on the will to
recognize the other as a person.
Three forms of Justice
1. Commutative (coincides with the definition of justice itself): it has to do
with the rights and duties of individual persons among themselves.
2. Distributive is the virtue that inclines the person in charge of the
distribution of goods or favors in a society to bestow these things
proportionately, according to the dignity, merits, or needs of each one.
3. Legal justice is the virtue that inclines the members of a society to
render to that society what is due in view of the common good or goal of
the society.
Social justice, a requirement related to the social question which
today is worldwide in scope, concerns the social, political and
economic aspects and, above all, the structural dimension of
problems and their respective solutions.

Lesson 14: The Environment

SUMMARY
Values: Concern and Care for the Environment, Sensitivity, Cleanliness and
orderliness, Stewardship
The Goodness of the Created Order
o And God saw that it was goog. These words from the first chapter of the
book of Genesis reveal the meaning of what God has done. To men and
women, the crown of the entire process of creation, the creator entrusts
the care of the earth.
The Crisis in the Relationship between Man and the Environment
o The tendency toward an ill-considered exploitation of the resources of
creation is the result of a long historical and cultural process. The modern
era has witnessed mans growing capacity of transformative intervention.
Reductionistic Mentality:
o The nature appears as an instrument in the hands of man, a reality that
he must constantly manipulate, especially by means of technology.
o That an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available;
o That is possible to renew them quickly;
o That the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be
easily absorbed.
This reductionist conception views the natural world in mechanistic
terms and sees development in term of consumerismprimacy
is given to doing and having, rather than to being.
Environmental Stewardship: A Common Responsibility
o Responsibility for the environment, the common heritage of mankind,
extends not only to present needs but also to those of the future.
o Responsibility for the environment should also find adequate expression
on a juridical level: the right to a safe and healthy natural environment.
o The environmental crisis and poverty are connected by a complex and
dramatic set of causes that can be resolve by the principle of the
universal destination of goods, which offers a fundamental, moral and
cultural orientation.
o Serious ecological problems call for an effective change of mentality
leading to adoption of new lifestyles, in which the quest for truth,
beauty, goodness, and communion with others for the sake of the
common good are the factors that determine consumer choices, savings,
and investments. These lifestyles should be inspired by sobriety,
temperance, and self disciplineat both the individual and social
levels.
o The attitude that must characterize the way man acts in relation to
creation is essentially one of gratitude and appreciation; the world,
in fact, reveals mystery of God who created and sustains it.
S A P A T: An ethic and Emerging Spirituality
o SAPAT is a Filipino term for enough, sufficient. It means to have neither
more or less.
o A Filipino synonym with a Spanish origin, husto, (which, in turn, is derived
from the Latin word, ius, which means just) reveals a social dimension.
o Thus, SAPAT, when practiced means rendering what is due to another.

 Looking at Ourselves
o If anything, the environmental destruction on a global scale brought about
by the ethic of unlimited economic growth teaches us the following:
The folly of wasteful consumption;
The responsibility of the comfortable and the rich to lighten their
demand upon Earths resources;
The urgent need for a sense of enough based on a less
materialistic outlook of the good life.
Principle of SAPAT
o SAPAT NA ANG PAGKASIRA NG KALIKASAN (enough of the destruction of
the environment.)
Presupposes overcoming our anthropocentrism, limit the violence
against nature caused by the dominant economic systems thrust of
unlimited expansion.
o SAPAT LAMANG ANG KUNIN MULA SA KALIKASAN (take only what is
enough from nature)
Working against the privatization for profit of sources of
subsistence.
o SAPAT LAMANG ANG KAININ AT BILHIN (eat only what is enough and buy
only what is needed)
Lower your overall level of unnecessary personal consumption:
Buy less clothing
Buy less jewelry and other forms of personal ornamentation
Buy fewer cosmetic products
Observe holidays in a non-commercial nature.
o SAPAT DAPAT MAYROON ANG BAWAT TAO SA KANYANG
PANGANGAILANGAN UPANG MABUHAY NG MALUSOG AT MARANGAL (each
person must have enough to sustain a healthful and dignified life.)
o SAPAT AY MAKAKAMTAM LAMANG SA LAHATANG-PANIG NA PAG-UNLAD
(sufficient is obtained thru holistic development.)
Sufficient means the wholistic development of:
Self, seven
intelligences(visual/spatial,verbal/linguistic,musical,kinestitic,
logical/mathematical,interpersonal,interpersonal)
With others, gender sensitivity, establishing relationships
With nature, respect for nature, sustainable agriculture,
environmental consciousness
o DIOS SOLO BASTA/ God alone is enough.

Lesson 15: The International Community

SUMMARY
Values: Universal Common Good, Cooperation, Solidarity, Universal Charity,
Preferential Option of the Poor
Unity of the Human Family
o This unity is not to be built on the force of arms, terror or abuse of power
rather, it is the result of that supreme model of unity, which is a
reflection of the intimate life of God, one god in three persons,.what we
Christians mean by the word Communion, it is achievement of the
moral and cultural force of freedom.
On Free Trade
o In order that international trade be human and moral, social justice
requires that it restore to the participants a certain equality of opportunity.
This equality is a long term objective, but to reach it, we must begin now
to create equality in discussion and negotiations.
Peace: Fruit of Justice and love
o Peace is a value and a universal duty founded on a rational and moral
order of society that has its roots in God himself, the first source of being,
the essential truth and the supreme god.
o Peace also the fruit of love. True and lasting peace is more a matter of
love than of justice, because the function of justice is merely to do away
with obstacles to peace: the injury done or the damage caused. Peace
itself, however, is an act and results only from love.
The Failure of peace: WAR
o The Magisterium condemns the savagery of war and asks that war be
considered in a new way.
War is a scourge and is never an appropriate way to resolve
problems that arise between nations;it has never been and it will
never be, because it creates new and still more complicated
conflicts.
Legitimate Defense
o A war of aggression is intrinsically immoral. In the tragic case where such
a war breaks out, leaders of the state has been attacked have the right
and the duty to organize a defense, even using the force of arms.
Conditions for War to be Morally Accepted(Just War Theory)
o the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of
nations must be lasting, grave and certain;
o All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be
impractical or ineffective;
o There must be serious prospects of success; and
o The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil
to be eliminated.
Disarmament
o The enormous increase in arms represents a grave threat to stability and
peace. The principle of sufficiency, by virtue of which each state may
possess only the means necessary for its legitimate defense, must be
applied both by states that buy arms and by those that produce and
furnish them.

 The Value of Transnational and International Organizations

o The united nationhas made a notable contribution to the promotion of
respect for human dignity, the freedom of peoples and the requirements
of development, thus, preparing the cultural and institutional soil for the
building of peace.
o The Magisterium recommends that the activity of international agencies
respond to human needs in social life and in area of particular importance
for the peaceful and ordered coexistence of nations and peoples.
International Cooperation for Development
o The solution to the problem of development requires cooperation among
individual political communities. Political communities condition pone
another and we can affirm that each one will succeed in its development
by contributing to the development of others. For this happen,
understanding and collaboration is essential.
Basis for the Right to Development
o Unity of origin and a shared destiny of the human family
o Equality between every person and between every community based on
human dignity;
o The universal destination of the goods of the earth;
o The notion of development in its entirely;
o Centrality of the human person and solidarity.