Lk 6, 12-19 + CSDC and CV

Luke 6, 12-19 + CSDC and CV 

CV 30b. Knowledge is never purely the work of the intellect. It can certainly be reduced to calculation and experiment, but if it aspires to be wisdom capable of directing man in the light of his first beginnings and his final ends, it must be “seasoned” with the “salt” of charity. Deeds without knowledge are blind, and knowledge without love is sterile. Indeed, “the individual who is animated by true charity labours skilfully to discover the causes of misery, to find the means to combat it, to overcome it resolutely”[75]. Faced with the phenomena that lie before us, charity in truth requires first of all that we know and understand, acknowledging and respecting the specific competence of every level of knowledge.

Notes: [75] Ibid., 75: loc. cit., 293-294.

The Church’s  social doctrine also has a universal destination

CSDC 84. Besides being destined primarily and specifically to the sons and daughters of the Church, her social doctrine also has a universal destination. The light of the Gospel that the Church's social doctrine shines on society illuminates all men and women, and every conscience and mind is in a position to grasp the human depths of meaning and values expressed in it and the potential of humanity and humanization contained in its norms of action. It is to all people — in the name of mankind, of human dignity which is one and unique, and of humanity's care and promotion of society — to everyone in the name of the one God, Creator and ultimate end of man, that the Church's social doctrine is addressed[131]. This social doctrine is a teaching explicitly addressed to all people of good will[132], and in fact is heard by members of other Churches and Ecclesial Communities, by followers of other religious traditions and by people who belong to no religious group.

  

Notes:  [131] Cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 453. [132] Beginning with the Encyclical Pacem in Terris of John XXIII, the recipient is expressly identified in this manner in the initial address of such documents.

(Lk 6, 12-19) A great crowd came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases

[12] In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. [13] When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named apostles: [14] Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, [15] Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called a Zealot,  [16] and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. [17] And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon [18] came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured. [19] Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him because power came forth from him and healed them all.

CSDC 21. Against the background of universal religious experience, in which humanity shares in different ways, God's progressive revelation of himself to the people of Israel stands out. This revelation responds to the human quest for the divine in an unexpected and surprising way, thanks to the historical manner — striking and penetrating — in which God's love for man is made concrete. According to the Book of Exodus, the Lord speaks these words to Moses: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex 3:7-8). The gratuitous presence of God — to which his very name alludes, the name he reveals to Moses, “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14) — is manifested in the freeing from slavery and in the promise. These become historical action, which is the origin of the manner in which the Lord's people collectively identify themselves, through the acquisition of freedom and the land that the Lord gives them.

[Initials and Abbreviations.- CSDC: Pontifical Council for Justice And Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church; -  SDC: Social Doctrine of the Church; - CV: Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in truth)]