Issues of life had been somewhat quarantined from Catholic social teaching and were considered a separate branch of moral theology. The implications for their integration into CST in Centesimus Annus were potentially huge but were not entirely sorted.
While Pope Benedict XVI identifies in Caritas in Veritate that implementing Catholic social teaching is a way for the lay faithful to “give flesh to their faith” he makes an even stronger case: implementing CST is a binding ‘requirement’ of lay spirituality – of living out our lives in the world.
Pope Benedict XVI identifies that the Church “above all…works…to protect mankind from self-destruction.”
