Abstract
The richness of St. John Paul II’s social teachings is so great that some compare it to the achievements of Leo XIII. His specific approach to social issues and to everyday human life should be called ‘social personalism”. His social teaching is extensive, and abundant in theories, tackling the most current and difficult problems of the modern times, focusing primarily on defending of human beings from the external threats of totalitarianisms and dictatorships, as well as from the internal pressure of erroneous ideologies. However a lot has been changed since the John Paul II’s era, the imperative in his teaching to establish and proclaim the full truth about the man, his personal dignity, his conscience, as well as his temporal and eschatological vocation still remains relevant, posing a challenge to the successive generations. He built his social teaching with a strong dependence on the Biblical contents and the Magisterium of the Church. He wanted it to serve not just as a theoretical approach of the Magisterium to the everyday social issues, but to sound as the Gospel in the ears of the modern man. He put together social philosophy with theology of worldly matters, economics with eschatology, ethics with kerygma. Thanks to John Paul II, the Church's social teaching has taken on the sound of a prophetic vision that restores to people the joy of life and the hope of regaining of the meaning in building the world together and increasing the value of the quality of human relationships in it. Without the prospect of the eternal life and the Redemption, social issues would have become just an ideology seasoned with the Catholicism. Thanks to the Polish Pope, they began to sound like a social Gospel.