CSDC 70

The Church has the right to be a teacher for mankind, a teacher of the truth of faith: the truth not only of dogmas but also of the morals whose source lies in human nature itself and in the Gospel⁹⁵ Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, 14: AAS 58AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 940; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, 27, 64, 110: AAS 85AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 85 (1993) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1993), 1154-1155, 1183-1184, 1219-1220.. The word of the Gospel, in fact, is not only to be heard but is also to be observed and put into practice (cf. Mt 7:24; Lk 6:46-47; Jn 14:21,23-24; Jas 1:22). Consistency in behaviour shows what one truly believes and is not limited only to things strictly church-related or spiritual but involves men and women in the entirety of their life experience and in the context of all their responsibilities. However worldly these responsibilities may be, their subject remains man, that is, the human being whom God calls, by means of the Church, to participate in his gift of salvation. Men and women must respond to the gift of salvation not with a partial, abstract or merely verbal acceptance, but with the whole of their lives — in every relationship that defines life — so as not to neglect anything, leaving it in a profane and worldly realm where it is irrelevant or foreign to salvation. For this reason the Church's social doctrine is not a privilege for her, nor a digression, a convenience or interference: it is her right to proclaim the Gospel in the context of society, to make the liberating word of the Gospel resound in the complex worlds of production, labour, business, finance, trade, politics, law, culture, social communications, where men and women live.