The concept of work in 'Laborem Exercens'

Abstract

'Laborem Exercens', the latest of the so called social encyclicals of the Church, written to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the publication of 'Rerum Novarum', presents all men of good will, and especially the christian community, with an invitation to reflect on work - this being one, if not, the most basic and universal human activity. The Church, which can be called the political expression of the collective realisation of christianity", has through the ages expressed, highlighted and reaffirmed the good news of the Gospel according to the actually lived experience of the faithful. 'Rerum Novarum' - "the world in mutation" justifiably called the Charter of Work, is considered to be the first official expression of the social doctrine of the Church. The popes succeeding Leo XIII have, in their own turn, expressed themselves on the differently experienced, yet inherently related, social problems facing humanity. A change must immediately be noted in the method of expression used by the Church from 1960 onwards. The change in methodology, rather than in change of content, is the result of the realisation on the part of Vatican Council II "that the world is not made for the Church which supplies the blueprints in its construction and the laws of its transformation in some magisterial and authoritative way? but the Church is made for the world which is where it exists and which in its self-determination brings to the Church the raw " material of its enterprise of divinisation" [...].