Conceptual Key: Progress
Featured /articles

Por: C.L. Rossetti | Fuente: Vatican.va

Conceptual Key: Progress 
Fragment of ecclesial documents that talk about human and social progress 

By: C.L. Rossetti | Source: Vatican.va 

It is about the evolution and the growth of the knowledge, the techniques and the capacities of the man. The criterion of real progress is → the integral development of → the person. The progress of science and technology, which had no account of the primacy of the human person and his dignity, would contradict the true development: "Both basic scientific research and applied research constitute a significant expression of Man's dominion over creation. Science and technology are precious resources when they are put to the service of man and promote their integral development for the benefit of all; however, they alone cannot indicate the meaning of existence and human progress. Science and technology are ordained to man, who has given them origin and growth; they have therefore in the person and their moral values the sense of their purpose and the consciousness of their limits" (CIC 2293). It will be noted that it is necessary to protect itself from a naive optimism about human progress, as a pessimism about the destructive capacities that modern technology has made available to the human race (armaments, genetics manipulations, prenatal diagnosis...); more than ever, there is a healthy critique of progress that will lead man to his just placement of "Dominating vicar of God" on earth (cf. Gn 1,26-28; 2.25). The enjoyed lordship by the man legitimate the operosity and the technical-scientific inventiveness; his vicariety with respect to God safeguards him from the idolatrous temptation of omnipotence. The earth and nature have been entrusted to man by the Creator, to dominate them, cultivate them and gain profit, but they are not a repository of potentialities that must be exploited foolishly. The healthy progress has its right means between the technicality (which absolutizes the human power and reduces in gross matter to the subhuman world) and the environmentalism (which absolutizes the nature and answers the superiority of the man).