Abstract
The path followed by the Catholic Church in its social doctrine is the expression of the traditional hostility of its hierarchy towards the commitment of Christians to class struggles. This leads sociologists to question the acceptance by the Church's hierarchy of the theoretical notion of “class war”. Having analysed the theoretical (in the tradition of Karl Marx) and practical meaning of this concept, the author reviews all the social Encyclicals and shows that within the rationale of religion “class war” is presented in a rather descriptive manner, in order to infer human relations ethics which — owing to their epistemological character — do not fit with the theoretical meaning of the concept and cannot therefore be used to confute it.