Table Of ContentA 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 “systemati-
cally presenting the foundations of Catholic social doctrine” on various
global “social, economic and political” issues and reflecting on human-
kind’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 human-
ism” 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 objec-
tives: 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 impe-
rialist 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 commen-
tary 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 rad-
ical 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
