We can only develop into the people he wants us to be through our relationships with him and with one other. The doctrines of the Creation and Incarnation also stress God's involvement in the whole of life, material as well as spiritual. Our calling as Catholic Christians is the sanctification not only of ourselves but of the created world we live in. Salvation does not remove us from the world and promise only 'pie in the sky when we die'. We must start building the Kingdom here and now, and resist the attempt to make morality a purely personal and individual concern.
Christian morality is as much a social, political and environmental matter as a personal one.
Some of the most famous pioneers of Anglo-Catholicism in the Church of England were priests who worked in slums which no other Christian influence touched, and who combined their personal ministry and evangelism with political action for justice. It is some time since Anglican Catholics were noted for their social concern or defence of the underprivileged. Yet in our own time there is hardly less division and injustice in our society and our world, and hardly fewer 'no go' areas for the Church. In addition there are many new and pressing concerns about discrimination, violence and social disintegration, economic oppression, genetics and medical ethics, and global threats to the environment. Affirming Catholicism underlines the urgent social implications of our faith which have been neglected in the ecclesiastical navel-gazing of recent years.