“Without work life is wounded”

2014 marks the 20th anniversary since the adoption, by the LXII Plenary Assembly of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), of the document “The Pastoral care of work of the whole Church.” “This anniversary provides an opportunity to propose a renewed reflection on the changed and ever-changing situation in the job environment, based on the Gospel and the Social Doctrine of the Church,” reads a statement signed by Bishop Javier Salinas Viñals, President of the Bishops’ Commission for the Apostolate of the Laity, and by bishops members of the same Commission, released a few days ago and published on the occasion of the document’s 20th anniversary. “Work is the recognition of the sacred dignity of the human person, whether man or woman,” write the Spanish bishops. The aim, therefore, is to provide “reading keys” to all members of the Church so that “they may feel once again that their mission is to proclaim the Gospel, in words and deeds, within the essential reality of human labour.”No respect for human dignity. The statement underlines that “through human labour is also created social and political life, thereby contributing to the fulfilment of God’s plan for humanity, pre-empting, in human solidarity and in the fair distribution of goods universally distributed to mankind, the fraternal communion that our Lord Jesus Christ realizes among us by means of his Spirit.” The Spanish bishops underlined: “If work is lacking, human dignity is hurt, as Pope Francis has reminded us on various occasions.” However, “in some places the sacredness of human dignity is not taken into consideration and it is harmed by the working conditions prevailing in our world.” The prelates thus analyzed the changes in employment over the past twenty years and listed a set of concerns: precariousness, impersonal labour, minim labour that prevent people from overcoming social exclusion, excessive individualism that leads to work in egoistic terms and not for the creation of the common good, jobs that hinder social relations and that often prevent the creation of a family and personal life. Following paths of justice. Before this “new understanding of human labour”, continues the document, “we acknowledge the birth of a new subject whose existence is directed at production and consumption, distant from humanity”. However, “to deny the human dignity of workers, commercializing work, is to deny God himself and hinder His plan of salvation for all”, caution the bishops. In this light, calling upon the faithful to undertake “paths of justice”, the bishops conveyed closeness to the victims of accidents at work, to the legally disabled, to the unemployed, to those with precarious jobs or those “captured by the spiral of black labour, with no rights”, to young people “without hope before a future marked by uncertainties”, to women discriminated at work, to migrants, “forced to abandon their homes and their families in search of jobs that may enable them to live with dignity.”  Charity and solidarity. Thus the hope of the Spanish Church is “to propose renewed guidelines that may help fulfil the evangelizing mission of the Church in the job environment.” Published in 1994 in the framework of the LXII CEE Plenary Meeting, the document “The pastoral of labour of the entire Church” addressed an overarching theme directed to priests, religious, consecrated persons, seminarians, as well as lay people, theologians, apostolic movements, mass-media workers, social schools. The document highlighted the need for a new evangelization in the job environment and for a lifestyle that is consistent with the Gospel of Christ. Thus the prelates appealed to undertake a realistic planning of this pastoral work, looking at dignity and the justice of work from the perspective of “charity that animates true solidarity.”