Back to 5.3.6
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We are now half way through PP.
In both concluding Part I and beginning Part II, Paul VI returns explicitly to integral human development, referring to Maritain’s book entitled Integral Humanism and quoting de Lubac. The fact that he comes back to this foundation here emphasizes that the whole of Part I has been on the theme of integral or complete development (#6).
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Reading (1p)
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Populorum Progressio, ##42-44
This reading includes the conclusion of Part I, #42, even though you read this earlier (5.3.3).
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Part II has the title ‘Towards the Solidary Development of Humanity’ – this is a literal translation of the French.1. Here ‘solidary’ translates solidaire. The word ‘solidary’ is not often used in English, although it is, simply, an adjectival form of ‘solidarity’. (It is, therefore, similar to the term ‘solidarist’, which was introduced earlier when we looked at Heinrich Pesch’s vision of economic life, known as ‘solidarism’: 5.2.2.) Here in PP solidary means ‘in the spirit of solidarity’ – which is how the English translation of the first sentence of #43 puts it.
English is relatively unusual in not having any widely-used adjective with this meaning. French, Spanish and German all do, among other languages. Indeed, Catholic social thought is perhaps the only context in which the word ‘solidary’ is sometimes used in English. One prominent example is in the Compendium of 2004. At the very start, the Introduction has a title that seeks to summarise the vision the whole book will present: ‘An Integral and Solidary Humanism’ (Compendium, #1).
I am focusing on this term because translations that don’t use it can fail to put across clearly the prominence of the concept of solidarity in Part II of PP. Implying all that this had already come to mean in CST (see 5.2.2), here the term ‘solidary development’ gives the big picture. The three chapters of Part II fill in some detail.
Overall, then, Part II is about the duty “to work together to build the common future of the human race” (#43). Its focus is on what this means especially for “the better-off nations” (#44), in the context of the time when PP was written. That overall duty has “a threefold aspect”, and the first of these is also described in terms of solidarity. The three (as summarised in #44) are:
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* the duty of solidarity to bring aid to developing countries (chapter 1; ##45-55)
* the duty of social justice to ensure there is equity in trade relations (chapter 2; ##56-65)
* the duty of universal charity to promote a more human world in which all give and receive (chapter 3; ##66-75)
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We shall look at each of these on the next three screens.
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End of 5.3.7
Go to 5.3.8 II.1 Solidarity: aid to poor nations (##45-55)
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The French is, ‘Vers le Developpement Solidaire de L’Humanité’. In the English translation at www.vatican.va, the title of Part II is ‘The Common Development of Mankind’. ↩