Witness Changes the World
The laity is called to change the world -- "on earth as it is in heaven" -- by the way we live our daily lives. In Church documents, the earth is called the "temporal order," as opposed to the "spiritual order" of heaven and the afterlife.
Key Insights
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Transforming Society
We don't live our lives differently only to attract people to our faith, but also to transform the society itself, bringing the love, justice, and peace that are part of the Good News. |
Changing Structures
Living out our faith as disciples has the power to change our society. We do not just change individuals, but also structures: businesses, neighborhoods, governments, and other organizations and institutions. |
Quotations
Catholicism does not call us to abandon the world, but to help shape it. This does not mean leaving worldly tasks and responsibilities, but transforming them. Catholics are everywhere in this society. We are corporate executives and migrant farm workers, senators and welfare recipients, university presidents and day care workers, tradesmen and farmers, office and factory workers, union leaders and small business owners. Our entire community of faith must help Catholics to be instruments of God's grace and creative power in business and politics, factories and offices, in homes and schools and in all the events of daily life. Social justice and the common good are built up or torn down day by day in the countless decisions and choices we make. This vocation to pursue justice is not simply an individual task -- it is a call to work with others to humanize and shape the institutions that touch so many people. The lay vocation for justice cannot be carried forward alone, but only as members of a community called to be the "leaven" of the Gospel. |