ABSTRACT
The new phase in the development of the Catholic Church's political theology, which Pope Leo XIII introduced toward the end of the 1870s, confirms the papal see's attempts to free itself from its defensive and judgmental attitude to modern society. The normative premises for the Church's encounter with culture and politics are found in ecclesiology. Church gives its assent to modern liberal democracy because it fundamentally respects man's right of free inquiry and hence his potential for finding the Truth. Pope Francis has signalled a more active involvement on the part of the Church in the ecological field, something which is now beginning to take shape. The Second Vatican Council, the primary goal of which was to bring the Church into dialog with the modern world, such that its future could be formed by the Christian view of man and culture, was in this perspective a fruit of postwar optimism.
