"The Church's Mission & Social Doctrine"

Patrick Murphy is back! As Charlie Brown would say, "Ugh!"

• "At a debate in Philadelphia last month, Murphy argued that Pennsylvanians 'need someone to be a counterbalance to [Gov. Corbett] and the right-wing agenda'....
  
  "The attorney general should engage the office in legal challenges that reflect the political debates of the day - everything from women's reproductive rights to environmental class-action lawsuits, he said [days later].
  
  "'In a way it looks like he's modeled himself on Eliot Spitzer,' said Borick, referring to the former New York governor who, as that state's attorney general, made a name for himself taking on the financial sector....
  
  "Murphy...may owe credit to an unlikely source - Corbett, the most recent elected attorney general....
  
  "No former attorney general had successfully used the office as a launching pad for a higher political career" (Philly.com, 3/11/12)

Murphy's failure to understand/accept the teaching of his Church is clear to his former constituents in the 8th Congressional District. Chapter 2 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, for example, presents a vision vastly different from that of Murphy:

• “With her social teaching the Church seeks to proclaim the Gospel and make it present in the complex network of social relations....
  
  “The Church has the right to be a teacher for mankind, a teacher of the truth of faith....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....This right of the Church is at the same time a duty, because she cannot forsake this responsibility without denying herself and her fidelity to Christ....
  
  "The object of the Church's social doctrine is essentially the same that constitutes the reason for its existence: the human person called to salvation, and as such entrusted by Christ to the Church's care and responsibility....at play in society are the dignity and rights of the person, and peace in the relationships between persons & between communities of persons….the Church's social doctrine has the task of proclamation, but also of denunciation....
  
  "The first recipient of the Church's social doctrine is the Church community in its entire membership....This social doctrine implies...obligations of a secular nature — which belong to the lay faithful, not to priests or religious. These responsibilities belong to the laity in a distinctive manner, by reason of the secular condition of their state of life, and of the secular nature of their vocation"

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
Part One
Chapter 1, God's Plan of Love for Humanity
Chapter 2, The Church's Mission & Social Doctrine
Chapter 3, The Human Person and Human Rights
Chapter 4, Principles of the Church's Social Doctrine

Part Two
Chapter 5, The Family, the Vital Cell of Society
Chapter 6, Human Work
Chapter 7, Economic Life
Chapter 8, Political Community
Chapter 9, The International Community
Chapter 10, Safeguarding the Environment
Chapter 11, The Promotion of Peace

Part Three
Chapter 12, Social Doctrine & Ecclesial Action

Conclusion, For a Civilization of Love