CSDC 101

Ninety years after Rerum Novarum, Pope John Paul II devoted the Encyclical Laborem Exercens ¹⁸⁷ Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens: AAS 73AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 73 (1981) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1981), 577-647. to work, the fundamental good of the human person, the primary element of economic activity and the key to the entire social question. Laborem Exercens outlines a spirituality and ethic of work in the context of a profound theological and philosophical reflection. Work must not be understood only in the objective and material sense, but one must keep in mind its subjective dimension, insofar as it is always an expression of the person. Besides being a decisive paradigm for social life, work has all the dignity of being a context in which the person's natural and supernatural vocation must find fulfilment.