The text continues to succeed in inspiring people for its basic concern - building a more just and peaceful world. In 2023, the Protestant theologian Ulrich H. J. Körtner called Gaudium et spes a "great text of Christianity" and included it in the series of publications of the same name.
How is it that this document still fascinates people today? Why is it one of the most quoted and received texts of Vatican II? What is the reason for its seemingly unbroken relevance almost two generations later?
Gaudium et spes is the sympathetic face of the Catholic Church. That was the case in the 1960s and is still true today. The very first sentence made the world sit up and take notice: "The joy and hope, grief and anguish of people today, especially the poor and oppressed of all kinds, are also the joy and hope, grief and anguish of Christ's disciples. And there is nothing truly human that does not find an echo in their hearts." (GS 1) A magisterial text that does not begin with a reference to revelation and tradition, church fathers, scholasticism and natural law, but speaks of feelings, that summarises the attitude to life of modern man in a few words - that was new.
Right from the first sentence,Gaudium et Spes shows a community of Christians who engage with the people of their time, who can empathise and want to empathise, who develop an attitude of care and solidarity from the knowledge of the deep interconnectedness of all people, who build deep relationships and thus lay the foundations for a more humane world.
This is why Gaudium et Spes stands for a modern church
This new habitus has nothing of the superior rigour and distance of a theological treatise, but reveals a completely new humility. It begins with the fact that the Church sees itself as part of modern society, that it recognises the need to provide information about its beliefs and thus give an account of them. Gaudium et spes contains the admission that the Church is not only a giver but also a receiver with its proclamation, that it is dependent on political and social conditions, that it has learnt a lot from modern times and that it has made mistakes in the past in dealing with atheism.
It is also recognised that it is ultimately the "laity", the non-ordained women and men, who help the Christian message to be effective in the public sphere. Against this background, the Pastoral Constitution makes marriage and family, culture and the economy, international relations and world peace its themes. The sciences, education and the media are seen as partners whose work can support the construction of a more humane world. This openness to all sides is the other side of humility. Both together mark an unmistakable "break in style".
With Gaudium et spes, a new style of interaction is emerging in the Catholic Church, and this has a great deal to do with the way this constitution is organised. This text is the first ever magisterial document to consistently follow the three steps of seeing-judging-acting in its structure and individual chapters.
Pope John XXIII had recommended it a few years earlier as a useful working method for church youth work. With Gaudium et spes, the Magisterium has now adopted this method itself, and this has consequences for the entire proclamation. Before social contexts are evaluated theologically and ethically, the situation is analysed objectively. This is intended to ensure that moral judgements are not made in isolation from reality and that the improvements sought are not in vain from the outset. The method avoids ethical judgements that correspond to "pure doctrine" but contain no potential for change.
On the basis of the biblical message and the church's social proclamation, the three-step approach enables solutions to be developed from practical experience and can thus establish a new, better practice. He stands for a church that - as we would say today - does not withdraw into its own bubble in a moralising manner, but sets out to shape the future together with people.
In paragraph 4 of his encyclical Octogesima adveniens in 1971, Pope Paul VI once again recalled this fundamental concern of the Pastoral Constitution. In doing so, he set an impulse that attracted worldwide attention. Gaudium et spes set the tone for pastoral letters in Latin America, the USA and Europe. Today, it is impossible to imagine social ethics and pastoral theology, as well as pastoral practice, church education and social work, without the three-step approach.
Paradoxically, the fact that it has since completely disappeared from the magisterial proclamation and only reappeared under Pope Francis (Dare to Dream, 2022, 162) also has to do with the Pastoral Constitution, specifically with its understanding of personal freedom. This approach was taken up by Latin American liberation theology and interpreted pastorally and socially, but also politically.
When liberation theology was categorically stopped by Rome in the 1980s, this condemnation was directed not only at its theological content, but also at its method. From this time onwards, the Curia abandoned the three-step approach. In fact, this was a relapse into pre-conciliar times, but it could no longer stop the triumphal march of the three-step worldwide. But what did the Pastoral Constitution originally want?
Gaudium et spes has a heart for modern man. Not only the first sentences reveal this, but the whole document shows it. The Pastoral Constitution describes human beings with all that they are and all that they can achieve for themselves and for society, but also with what they need, where they are insecure and vulnerable, where they are damaged or even destroyed. The text speaks poignantly about the light and shadows of human existence and finds words that can still touch us and make us think today.
What does freedom mean between liberalism and Marxism?
Of course, the traditional anthropological motifs of creatureliness, filiation with God and likeness, guilt and sinfulness, need for redemption, hope for fulfilment and communion with God are not dispensed with. However, the Pastoral Constitution deliberately links these theological themes with an ethos of freedom that is understood in both Christian and modern humanist terms.
For a long time, this aspect of the Christian view of humanity was rather underexposed in the tradition, and it seems that the magisterium still struggles with human autonomy and self-determination today. Gaudium et spes sought and found a way between the unrestrained striving for freedom of liberalism and the suppression of freedom in Marxism.
The Pastoral Constitution, which dedicates a separate chapter to freedom (GS 17), describes it as a freedom lived in social relationships. It is realised in the responsibility that people assume for one another, especially in emergency situations and in the face of oppression and persecution.
With this understanding of human freedom as a disposition to social responsibility, the Pastoral Constitution succeeds in building a bridge to human rights, which are then also described and recognised in detail. Freedom rights on the one hand and social rights on the other have been part of the indispensable inventory of the Church's social ethics since Gaudium et spes. As the Council itself says, it wants to "inculcate respect for the human person: all, without exception, must regard their neighbour as an 'other self' and be concerned above all for his life and the necessary conditions for a dignified life" (GS 27). By recognising others in their freedom and neediness, Gaudium et spes hints at something that is discussed today as "relational ethics". With its liberal-social view of humanity, the Pastoral Constitution was far ahead of its time.
With Gaudium et spes, the Church not only opened itself up to the areas of life of modern people and not only sought dialogue with all relevant social actors and groups, it also represented an emphatically historically aware approach that was open to the future. It no longer confined itself to proclaiming so-called timeless values, but attempted to formulate goals that were defined in terms of content. These necessarily remained very general and had to be concretised. They were temporary, provisional and therefore contestable.
For a church that had always retreated to "eternal truths", this approach was very courageous, and the accusation of a naïve belief in progress, a willing adaptation to the spirit of the times and a lack of fidelity to tradition was not long in coming. Conversely, the vision of a fairer and more peaceful world emerged. The sincere willingness to participate in its construction "together with all people of good will" could be understood as a credible self-commitment.
Gaudium et spes - as an alternative to the political utopias of the time - sketches a picture of a society in the making. Because conditions are often anything but perfect, the constitution is not sparing in its criticism, but it always refers to the living conditions and not to the people. They are and remain brothers and sisters in the great human family to which the Church of the Council is deeply committed. In his impressive final declaration, also dated 7 December 1965, Pope Paul VI took stock and once again explained the basic attitude of the majority of the Council Fathers with regard to the critics:
"Their attitude was markedly and deliberately optimistic. A wave of affection and admiration flowed out from the assembly over the modern world of men. The errors were rejected because love demanded this no less than truth, but for the people themselves there was only invitation, respect and love. Instead of depressing diagnoses, uplifting remedies were offered; instead of gloomy prognoses, the gathering sent messages of confidence in today's world. The values of the modern world were not only respected but also appreciated, their endeavours supported, their aspirations purified and blessed."