Abstract

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