CSDC 523

This Christian anthropology gives life to and supports the pastoral task of inculturation of the faith, which aims at an interior renewal, through the power of the Gospel, of modern man's criteria of judgment, the values underlying his decisions, the way he thinks and the models after which his life is patterned. “Through inculturation the Church, for her part, becomes a more intelligible sign of what she is and a more effective instrument of mission”¹¹¹⁰ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio, 52: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 300; cf. Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, 20: AAS 68AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 68 (1976) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1976), 18-19.. The contemporary world is marked by a rift between the Gospel and culture, by a secularized vision of salvation that tends to reduce even Christianity to “merely human wisdom, a pseudo- science of well-being”¹¹¹¹ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio, 11: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 259-260.. The Church is aware that she must take “a giant step forward in her evangelization effort, and enter into a new stage of history in her missionary dynamism”¹¹¹² John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, 35: AAS 81AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 81 (1989) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1989), 458.. The Church's social doctrine is situated within this pastoral vision: “The ‘new evangelization', which the modern world urgently needs, ... must include among its essential elements a proclamation of the Church's social doctrine”¹¹¹³ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 5: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 800..