Catholic Social Teaching And The Aids Epidemic

The Church’s social teaching refers to a body of teaching on social, economic, political and cultural matters developed over a long period by the Catholic Church, but proposed more explicitly and systematically in the years since 1891. The fundamental assumption of this teaching is that each individual is a social being who at every stage of life depends on others for existence and for the fulfilment of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical and social needs. Almost seventy years ago, Pope Pius XII expressed this in picturesque language: “individuals do not feel themselves isolated units, like grains of sand, but (are) united by the very force of their nature and by their internal destiny, into an organic, harmonious mutual relationship”. The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this position very clearly in its statement that the human person is not a solitary being, but a social being who can live and develop his or her full potential only by relating to others.