By sanctifying the rights and responsibilities of man as authorized by God, emphasizing the ontological justification for ensuring freedom of choice, the value of each person and its social character, the Catholic Church, including the UGCC, could not but express its position on specific forms of social order. The Second Vatican Council gave a significant incentive for the development of theological thought in this direction and for the implementation of its constructions into public practice. Since the Church is an institution (...) to which, according to the results of sociological research, Ukrainians have been most trusted for many years, and the UGCC is one of the most active Churches in Ukraine, the study of its attitude towards democracy is one of the topical scientific topics. (shrink)

Author analyses the teaching of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church over importance of democratic elections. The principles, which Church proposes as background to participation in elections, are explored.

The theme of the Church's influence on the political life of the state is one that is constantly focused on the attention of the scientific community, the media and its own politics. The current legislation in Ukraine clearly separates the church from the state. However, both the church and the state are important social institutions that can not but influence one another. The official position of the state in the relevant relations is outlined again by the law. Each of the (...) confessions of the country, through democratic freedoms and within them, is able to implement its own concept of relations with the state. Moreover, the positions of even the largest churches in Ukraine here are significantly different and significantly affect the social realities, which determines the relevance of the topic. (shrink)

The article of Volodymyr Moroz ―Normative character of the principles of Social doctrine of Catholic Church: an evolutional way of formation - is devoted to the analysis of Catholic Church’s Teaching over the human dignity. Author explores also the process of settling of the principles of common good, subsidiarity and solidarity in the Teaching of Catholic Church. Mentioned principles are investigated in the case of orientation to provide a reverence to transcendent human dignity. Author sums up that all three principles (...) have normative character. That is to say the principles are called to guarantee certain coordination between the social reality and the verities, which were declared by the Social doctrine of the Church. (shrink)

The functional principles on which the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (the UGCC) proposed to ground social relations during 1991-2011 are exercised. Principles of the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity are considered. Understanding and practice of usage of these principles are explored. Author demonstrates how he UGCC used the principle of common good as an instrument to examine social reality and society as a complete system. It is investigated why the Church threw off the conception of common good as divisible good for (...) some group of the people and also did not accepted utilitarian conception of common good. Instead of that the UGCC, according to the Social Doctrine of Catholic Church, interprets common good as "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily". Author ascertained the way of the UGCC for using the principle of common good to interpreting each social action as directed to sustentation or obstruction of society. The Church's practice of using the principle of subsidiarity to balance the principle's of common good demands is also explicated in the article. Subsidiarity in the Church's Social Teaching is called to approve ground for human autonomy in society and autonomy of smaller social communities concerning larger societies. It is cleared at the same time that the UGCC during 1991-2011 used the principle of subsidiarity with less intensive than the Catholic Social Doctrine of the Church declares. The UGCC applied the principle of solidarity for coordination demands of principles of common good and subsidiarity. Author accented that specific tendency of the UGCC's teaching conserning the Catholic Social Doctrine is to ground the principle of solidarity on a Church's mission to consolidate people in society. Thanks to the principle of solidarity, the Church overcomes boundaries of rational explications and attracts ethical dimention to analysis of concrete social reality. (shrink)