STEP 4. THE PERSON IN THE WORLD: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
(THE PERSON IN SOCIETY: RECONCILIATION AND TRANSFORMATION)

This step deals critically with the broad category of obstacles to the fulfillment of human personal and communal life. According to Bonaventure, there are numerous obstacles on the way to human fulfillment, including psychological or mental. To detect these obstacles and deal with them is one of the most difficult tasks on the way of intellectual and psychological development as a person.

Suffering: personal and social obstacles on the way of personal development

Bonaventure. Itinerarium 4.1-2, 5

Text of Step 4, transl. by O. Bychkov

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. NY: Knopf, 1953, pp. xv-xxxiv.

King, Martin Luther. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A Martin Luther King Treasury. NY: Educational Heritage, 1964.

Explanations (Marx) and the ways to deal with it (Marx, Vatican)

Marx, and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.  In Marx: Selections, ed. Allen W. Wood. NY:  Macmillan, 1988, pp. 142-51.

Vatican Council II: The Basic 16 Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations, ed. Austin Flannery. NY: Costello, 1995. “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes),  paragraphs 1, 9-10, 12-13, 23-32.