Mid-Term Review Questions:  Gaudium et Spes 1. What were the Council fathers talking about when they wrote at the beginning of Gaudium et Spes that it was always and everywhere the duty of the Church to scrutinize the signs of the times and interpret them in the light of the Gospel message?  How do they show what they mean by that phrase in the body of the document itself?  (Give at least one example.) 2. Describe how the Council fathers saw “the situation of men in the modern world” in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes? 3. Describe the view of the human person found in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes. 4. Discuss the new form of atheism found in the modern world described in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes. 5. What two passages from the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes did Pope John Paul II use in every one of his encyclicals?  What do they say?  What do they mean?  Why were these insights especially relevant given the challenges of the new forms of “atheist humanism” that arose in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries? 6. Discuss what, according to the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, is the proper understanding of the relationship between the person and society. 7. How does the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes describe the nature of the common good? 8. According to the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, does “equality-of-dignity-before-God” mean “sameness”?  Explain.  Why is this point relevant to the situation of men in the modern world? 9. What, according to Gaudium et Spes, are some of the problems of “radical individualism”? 10. Discuss what Gaudium et Spes has to say about the “value of human activity” and the “right ordering of human activity.” 11. Discuss what Gaudium et Spes has to say about the “proper autonomy of earthly affairs”?  Is there an “improper autonomy”?  Explain the difference. 12. Discuss what Gaudium et Spes has to say about the paradox of human progress infected by sin. 13. Discuss what Gaudium et Spes has to say about the relationship between human progress and the establishment of a “New Heaven and a New Earth.” 14. According to Gaudium et Spes, are the laity called to a life of holiness?  Where are they to live out this call to holiness?  Explain. 15. Discuss the ways in which, according to Gaudium et Spes, the Church has benefitted from the world. 16. What, according to Gaudium et Spes, is the situation of marriage and family in the modern world? 17. Just as the Council turned to divine revelation to discover the true nature of the human person, so also in Gaudium et Spes the Council turns to divine revelation to discover the true nature of marriage.  Discuss the importance of the following for the Council’s understanding of the true nature of marriage:     a) the covenant     b) Old Testament spousal imagery     c) the relationship between Christ and His Church 18. What according to the Council are the two ends of conjugal love?  How does the Council describe the relationship between the two? 19. What does Gaudium et Spes mean when it speaks of the family as the “school of humanity”?  How is this term similar to John Paul II’s notion of the family as the “domestic church”?  What is the role of this “domestic church” in the context of the modern state?