Word of the Day: Gaudium et Spes (With a Comment Added)

GAUDIUM ET SPES. Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The longest document of the council, it has two main divisions: 1. the Church’s teaching on human beings, the world they live in, and her relationship to them; 2. various aspects of life today and human society, and in particular the pressing moral issues of our day. Its treatment of the Church’s role in the modern world is realistic, recognizing that “atheism must be regarded as one of the most serious problems of our time.” It is also practical, noting that with all the media at work today, yet “genuine fraternal dialogue is advanced not so much on this level as at the deeper level of personal fellowship,” where individuals share together in spirit. The treatment of marriage and the Christian family is the most extensive in conciliar history. And the strong position on peace and war reflects the Church’s mind in the nuclear age (December 7, 1965).

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Gaudium et Spes (and the other Decrees on non-Catholic religions, including Dignitatis Humanae) was defined by Joseph, Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, whilst he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as a 'Counter-Syllabus'. 

'If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter syllabus.' Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 1987.

Fr John Hardon, S.J., in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, defines the Syllabus thus (my emphasis),

SYLLABUS OF PIUS IX. A series of eighty condemned propositions listing the prevalent errors that aimed at the undermining of society, morality, and religion. Every Catholic is expected to give exterior and interior assent to the condemnation of errors expressed in this syllabus.

Fr Hardon's Dictionary was published in 1980 and bears a post-Conciliar Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur. The nihil obstat is an official declaration that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error, after being reviewed by a learned theologian appointed by the Ordinary granting the imprimatur, so it cannot be argued that Father's work is outdated, or opposed to the Faith.