SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS

Pope John Paul II paints a somber pic­ture of the state of glob­al devel­op­ment in The Social Con­cerns of the Church. He cites the orig­i­nal­i­ty of Pope Paul VI’s The Devel­op­ment of Peo­ples and empha­sizes the moral/ eth­i­cal dimen­sion of devel­op­ment. After sur­vey­ing the dif­fi­cult state of the poor coun­tries, the Pope lays strong blame on the con­fronta­tion between the two glob­al blocs, lib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism of the West, and Marx­ist col­lec­tivism of the East. He refers to the obsta­cles hin­der­ing devel­op­ment as the “struc­tures of sin” and calls for con­ver­sion toward sol­i­dar­i­ty and the option for the poor. While he does speak of the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the poor coun­tries, by far his strongest chal­lenge is to the afflu­ent world.