4. WHAT KIND OF PASTORAL ACTION IS REQUIRED?

We are taking for granted here the general and specific criteria of Christian anthropology and the vision of the world expressed by Vatican Council II in “Gaudium et Spes – the Church in the modern world’, as well as later Church teaching. It seems to us that the pastoral action in these sectors must be carried out around certain ideas: a) the function must be to provide the opportunity or space of encounter and prophecy, in the specific field, at the service of the human community;
b) the basic characteristic of the pastoral care should be that it creates a dynamism – not an association – that involves all the Catholics and other persons of good will who sincerely desire an improvement of society and of the world;
c) the fundamental value of this dynamism is human dignity, understood holisticallyd) the activity through which to promote this dynamism revolves around four aspects:
• reflection on the scientific-technical innovations, their impact in that sphere, and the structures that make them possible;
• spiritual attention to the persons and spiritual formation to enable them to discover and deepen their appreciation of the spirituality of that field;
• formation of the collective conscience of the Christian and human community regarding the field in question;
• the seervices of prophecy in that spere, in terms of announcing and denouncing, including mini-projects that demostrate the validity of their proposals.
e) the basic organisation needed to awaken the dynamism mentioned above is based on two crucial components:
• a group of persons who promote and accompany the dynamism or movement that has been created and keep it moving along;
• a network of groups that carry out the activities and organise themselves for that purpose.
f) the aim of this dynamism or movement is that those involved witness to their faith in their professional environment;
g) the final objective is to be able to count on a generalised dynamism, territorially promoted by a “network of centres” of renewal of society.

The movement that emerge are promoted either by the local Churches or by the Community Animation Service. In this latter case, we carry out a service of awakening, promoting and animating these movements so that at the opportune time they will be taken up by the local or national Church.