The joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of people today, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are also the joys and hopes. In the light of these the author seeks to discover in what sense the social teaching of the Church today is the fruit of a growing understanding of Jesus' teaching as given in the gospels. Fr Townsend compares the social ideas of Jesus with what Christians have made of them, selecting a few joy ideas, such as property, freedom and the state, and traces the Church's response to the New Testament message at crucial moments of its history.