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Office Of Readings | Week 4, Saturday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Pastoral Constitution On The Church In The Modern World Of The Second Vatican Council | The Regulation Of Human Activity
‘The regulation of human activity.’
This reading from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World reflects on human activity, especially work and social engagement, and places it within a clear theological framework. The Council seeks to affirm the value of human action while clarifying its proper orientation and limits.
The reading begins by stressing that human activity has a formative effect on the person. Through work, people do not merely change the world around them; they also develop their own capacities and grow in understanding. This inner growth is presented as more valuable than external gain. Human dignity is measured primarily by what a person becomes, not by what a person acquires.
The Council then widens the perspective to include social action. Efforts to promote justice, fraternity, and humane social structures are given priority over technological advance. Technology is acknowledged as useful, but it is described as a means rather than a source of true progress. Without moral purpose and concern for the human good, technological development remains insufficient.
From this follows a criterion for evaluating human activity. The decisive question is whether such activity corresponds to God’s plan and serves the genuine good of humanity, enabling individuals and communities to fulfil their vocation fully. Human action is therefore judged not only by efficiency or success, but by its contribution to integral human development.
The reading addresses a concern common in modern society: the fear that religion might limit human freedom or the autonomy of science and social life. The Council makes an important distinction. It fully affirms the legitimate autonomy of created realities. Sciences, arts, and social structures have their own laws and methods, which must be respected and carefully studied. This autonomy is not opposed to faith but arises from the order of creation itself.
At the same time, the Council warns against a distorted understanding of autonomy. If autonomy is taken to mean independence from God, it becomes false and self-defeating. Created realities do not sustain themselves; their meaning and permanence depend on the Creator. To ignore this dependence is ultimately to undermine the very reality one seeks to affirm.
The reading concludes by acknowledging that misunderstandings of autonomy have sometimes arisen within the Christian community itself, leading to unnecessary conflict between faith and science. The Council calls for a more balanced vision, one in which faith and reason are seen as complementary, and human activity is carried out in responsible freedom, grounded in truth and open to God.
Office Of Readings | Week 4, Saturday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Pastoral Constitution On The Church In The Modern World Of The Second Vatican Council | The Regulation Of Human Activity
The activity of man, as it has its origin in man, has man also as its end. Man through his work not only introduces change into things and into society; he also perfects himself. He learns a great deal; he develops his powers; he advances above and beyond himself. This kind of gain, properly understood, is more valuable than any external possessions. Man’s worth is greater because of what he is than because of what he has.
In the same way, all that men do to secure greater justice, more widespread brotherhood and a more humane structure of social relationships has more value than advance in technology. Technological development may provide the raw material for human progress, but of itself it is totally unable to bring it into being.
The criterion, therefore, for assessing man’s activity is this: does it, in accordance with God’s plan, fit in with the true good of the human race and allow man, individually and corporately, to develop and fulfill his vocation in its entirety?
Many of our contemporaries, however, seem to be afraid that a closer relationship between religion and man’s activity will injure the autonomy of men or societies or the different sciences. If by the autonomy of earthly realities we mean that created things and even societies have their own distinctive laws and values, which must be gradually identified, used and regulated by men, this kind of autonomy is rightly demanded. Not only is it insisted on by modern man, it is also in harmony with the design of the Creator. By the very fact of creation everything is provided with its own stability, its own truth and goodness, its own laws and orderly functioning. Man must respect these, acknowledging the methods proper to each science or art.
One should therefore deplore certain attitudes of mind which are sometimes found even among Christians because of a failure to recognize the legitimate autonomy of science. These mental attitudes have given rise to conflict and controversy and led many to assume that faith and science are mutually opposed.
If, on the other hand, the autonomy of the temporal order is understood to mean that created things do not depend on God, and that man may use them without reference to the Creator, all who believe in God will realize how false is this teaching. For creation without the Creator fades into nothingness.
Christian Prayer With Jesus Christ
God of wisdom and truth,
you have entrusted the world to human hands
and called us to shape it with care and responsibility.
Guide our work and our decisions,
that they may serve the true good of all people.
Teach us to value justice, solidarity, and dignity
above mere success or possession.
Grant us respect for the order of your creation
and humility in the use of our knowledge and skill.
Keep us from forgetting you
as we explore and develop the world you have made.
May all our activity lead us closer to you
and help us to fulfil our vocation
as your children and stewards of creation.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Human activity | Work and action carried out by individuals and societies
Vocation | God’s call to a full and meaningful human life
Human dignity | The worth of the person based on what one is, not what one has
Justice | Right ordering of relationships within society
Brotherhood | Solidarity and mutual responsibility among people
Technological development | Advances in tools and techniques
Autonomy of earthly realities | The proper independence and laws of created things
Created order | The structure and coherence given to creation by God
Science and art | Disciplines with their own methods and principles
Temporal order | Earthly and historical reality
Creator | God as the source of all that exists
Faith and reason | Two complementary ways of seeking truth
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
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