Table Of Content

A Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church Christians for National Liberation Foreign Languages Press Foreign Languages Press Collection “New Roads” #12 Contact – fl [email protected] https://foreignlanguages.press Paris, 2022 International Edition ISBN: 978-2-493844-00-2 Th is book is under license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ C ontents Foreword 1 A Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church Part 1. A Preliminary Overview 9 Part 2. On Poverty and Inequality, and What Can Be Done? 49 Part 3. On the Common Good, the Universal Destination of 103 Goods, and Private Property Part 4. On the Contradiction Between Capital and Labor, and 151 How Could It Be Resolved? Part 5. On Monopoly Capitalist Globalization; Quo Vadis 231 Humankind Part 6. On Terrorism, War, Violence, and Worldwide Peace 307 Part 7. CNL Declares Firmly: Only When Monopoly Capital- 387 ism, the Ideology of Imperialism, Would Be Replaced by Scientific Socialism Could the Global Environment Fully Recover and Be Safeguarded Part 8. CNL’s Concluding Remarks: God’s Kingdom As the Reign 459 of Truth, Justice, Peace, Love, Equality and Liberation Appendices On the CNL Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine 481 of the Church Jose Maria Sison, Fouding Chairman of the CPP, Chief Political Consul- tant of the NDFP Greetings to the CNL On Its 50th Anniversary and Comments on 487 the CNL’s Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church to Commemorate Its 50th Anniversary Coni Ledesma, CNL Founding Member On the 50th Anniversary of the CNL, Salutations and Commenda- 489 tions Luis Jalandoni, CNL Founding Member and Member of the National Council of the NDFP Bibliography 493 Foreword by Neo Padre Aglipay Foreword by Neo Padre Aglipay The 557-page book, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, has the imprimatur of Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican City Secretary of State, with their signatures dated April 2, 2004 and June 29, 2004, respectively; copyright 2004, Libreria Editrice Vat- icana, Vatican City. This book is co-published in the Philippines by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). As stated by Cardinal Sodano in his June 29, 2004 Letter to Cardi- nal Martino, the book is a compendium… systematically presenting the foundations of Catholic social doctrine… In this light, men and women are invited above all to discover themselves as transcendent beings, in every dimension of their lives, including those related to social, economic and political contexts.1 And in his presentation of the Compendium, Cardinal Martino also exhorts all Christians to participate in the challenge of transforming social realities… today at the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian era. The proclamation of Jesus Christ, the “Good News” of salvation, love, justice and peace, is not readily received in today’s world, devastated as it is by wars, poverty and injustices. For this very reason the men and women of our day have greater need ever of the Gospel: of the faith that saves, of the hope that enlightens, of the charity that loves.2 The objective of the Compendium is clearly stated in the Introduc- tion, entitled “An Integral And Solidary Humanism.” While “systematically presenting the foundations of Catholic social doctrine” on various global “social, economic and political” issues and reflecting on humankind’s social problems such as “wars, poverty and injustices” in the world, the book intends 1 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London, 2005, p. xiv. 2 Ibid., p. xvii. 1 A Commentary on the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” to propose to all men and women a humanism that is up to the standards of God’s plan of love in history, an integral and solidary humanism capable of creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity.3 It is in the spirit of the same contexts, as conveyed by Cardinal Soda- no’s Letter and Cardinal Martino’s Presentation as mentioned only in part above, that the Christians for National Liberation (CNL) chapters in the Philippines, through the leadership of Comrade Renmin Malaya, the CNL National Chairperson, have collectively studied the Compendium with the aim to comprehend the implications of the Roman Catholic Church’s social doctrine on various global concerns and glitches, and the Compendi- um’s proposal regarding the promotion of “an integral and solidary humanism” that would be “capable of creating a new social, economic and political order… to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity” in the world. The comments of the CNL collectives have, therefore, been based on the major global issues and social problems of humanity expounded on in the twelve chapters of the Compendium, and have the following three particular objectives: first, to help correct the nearly two-century old anti-Marxist attitude and partiality of the Christian Churches for capitalism that has been glo- balized by imperialist powers and to let Christians, particularly the Church people, understand that Christianity and Marxism, though not necessarily compatible with each other in terms of beliefs, can complement each other in such ways wherein Christians and Marxists can enjoy in common the freedom of thought and belief, can live together, dialogue and collaborate at the same time for the peoples’ common good, and would be able to experience the far-reaching significance of what Pope Francis told in one of his interviews at the Vatican City in 2016 that “It is the Communists who think like Christians”;4 second, to reinterpret the social doctrine of the Church in the context of the current world realities monopolized by imperialist powers and in the framework of CNL’s concrete involvements since 3 Ibid., p. 9. 4 Pope Francis: “Trump? I do not judge. I care only if he makes the poor suffer,” La Repubblica, November 11, 2016 (https://www.repubblica.it/vaticano/2016/11/11/news/ pope_francis_trump-151810120/). 2 Foreword by Neo Padre Aglipay 1972 for radical change of Philippine society, and in this way to attain one of the objectives of the CNL work set by the CNL National Council on February 5-6, 2019, i.e., “Achieve a common understanding on the global capitalist crisis and contradictions among imperialist countries as manifested in the decay of economic, political and cultural life among the Filipino masses”; and third, to serve as a basic guide for the ideological, political and organizational expansion and consolidation of CNL in its work of arousing, organizing and mobilizing Christians, particularly the Church people, to participate actively in advancing the National Demo- cratic Revolution (NDR) towards victory and a bright socialist future in the coming decades. Said three particular objectives of the CNL commentary are developed along the following eight topics: 1. A Preliminary Overview. 2. On Poverty and Inequality, and What Can be Done. 3. On the Common Good, the Universal Destination of Goods and Private Property. 4. On the Contradiction Between Capital and Labor, and How Could It Be Resolved. 5. On Monopoly Capitalist Globalization; Quo Vadis Humankind. 6. On Terrorism, War, Violence, and Worldwide Peace. 7. CNL Declares Firmly: Only When Monopoly Capitalism, The Ide- ology Of Imperialism, Would Be Replaced By Scientific Socialism Could The Global Environment Fully Recover And Be Safeguarded. 8. CNL’s Concluding Remarks: God’s Kingdom as the Reign of Truth, Justice, Peace, Love, Equality, and Liberation. It is the hope of CNL that this commentary would be for the benefit of CNL collectives in their revolutionary underground work of arousing, organizing and mobilizing (AOM) the Christians—the ordained, the reli- gious, and the laity especially the Christian youth from both the Catholic and Protestant Churches—who are of good will and open to radical change for the liberation of Christ’s least brethren, the PDO (poor, deprived and oppressed) within the overall context of the Filipino people’s revolutionary struggle for freedom, people’s democracy and socialism. In the course of doing revolution, the underground work is so important in expanding 3 A Commentary on the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” and consolidating the backbone of the people’s mass movement for radical change. Similar to the Christian catacombs, which were used during the persecutions of Christians for about 245 years from 68 AD to 313 AD, not only as secret burial places for Christians and chapels for wor- ships but most especially serving as secret rooms for catechesis (Christian education), the underground work of revolutionary organizations today is serving as effective defense and best approach against state fascism that uses the reactionary army and police forces which try maliciously to stop the Filipino people’s revolutionary mass movement for national and social liberation. At the same time, this CNL commentary can also help and contrib- ute in the promotion of “An Integral And Solidary Humanism” which the Compendium has proposed in its Introduction, and which can be comple- mentary with the socialist revolutionary objectives of resolving the roots and causes of “wars, poverty and injustices” in the world. Citing the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council’s Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium (1965) and Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (1966) as the source of its spiritual inspiration, the Compendium in its Introduction states: The Church, the sign in history of God’s love for mankind and of the vocation of the whole human race to unity as chil- dren of the one Father, intends with this document on her social doctrine to propose to all men and women a humanism that is up to the standards of God’s plan of love in history, an integral and solidary humanism capable of creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity. This humanism can become a reality if individual men and women and their communities are able to cultivate moral and social virtues in themselves and spread them in society. “Then, under the necessary help of divine grace, there will arise a generation of new men, the molders of a new humanity.”5 5 Compendium, p. 9. 4