In my personal opinion, Chapter V was the most surprising part of Gaudium et Spes, in the sense that it was very different from what my initial expectations of the passage were. Learning that the topic my group was going to be writing on was reconciliation, I expected read a fairly blasé section of this document that extolled the virtues of forgiveness as it emerges from the Gospel and the Sacraments. After all, the Catholic Church even has a Sacrament named Reconciliation, and theme of forgiveness is found all throughout the Catholic Mass. While Chapter V certainly did draw upon the Gospel and the Mass, the reconciliation Gaudium et Spes speaks of doesn’t come solely from these sources. In order to better articulate what type of reconciliation Gaudium et Spes was speaking of, I turned, as English majors often do, to Dictionary.com. A quick search of the word “reconciliation” returned these two different definitions:
The first definition fit perfectly with what I though Gaudium et Spes would be: a rather unenlightening comment on how the world needs to be in “a state of being reconciled” through “an act of reconciling”. How is this definition helpful with understanding anything of what the word “reconciliation” means? Thus it is the second definition “the process of making consistent or compatible”, which leads to the most insight into what reconciliation is, and Gaudium et Spes wisely chooses to use a form of this definition in Chapter V, titled “The Fostering of Peace and the Promotion of a Community of Nations”. To fully explore the theme of reconciliation in Gaudium et Spes, I would like to focus on how the Catholic Church, its poorest parishioners all the way up to the Pope, can be agents that bring about consistently and compatibility in the world.
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