By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
The Vatican has released Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical, “Caritas in veritate” (Charity in Truth), in which the Holy Father forcefully maintains the link between life ethics and social ethics.
The new encyclical consists of an introduction, six chapters and a conclusion, and is dated June 29, 2009, the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles.
A summary of the encyclical released by the Holy See Press Office, explains that in the document’s introduction, the Pope recalls how “charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine.” He also warns about the risk of allowing our charity to be detached from ethical living, saying that “a Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance.”
The first chapter of the encyclical focuses on the message of Paul VI’s “Populorum Progressio” which “underlined the indispensable importance of the Gospel for building a society according to freedom and justice. … The Christian faith does not rely on privilege or positions of power, … but only on Christ”. Paul VI “pointed out that the causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of the material order.”
They lie above all in the will, in the mind and, even more so, in “the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples”.
“Human Development in Our Time” is the theme of the second chapter. If profit, the Pope writes, “becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.” The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, he writes, but inequalities are on the increase”, and new forms of poverty are coming into being.
In this chapter the pope also dwells on the question of respect for life, “which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples. . . . (W)hen a society moves toward the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good.”
Another question associated with development is that of the right to religious freedom. “Violence”, writes the Pope, “puts the brakes on authentic development”, and “this applies especially to terrorism motivated by fundamentalism”.
Chapter three of the encyclical – “Fraternity, Economic Development and Civil Society” says development, “if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness.” As for the logic of the market, it “needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility.”
The fourth chapter of the Encyclical focuses on the theme: “The Development of People. Rights and Duties. The Environment”. Governments and international organisations, says the Pope, cannot “lose sight of the objectivity and ‘inviolability’ of rights”.
In this context he also dedicates attention to “the problems associated with population growth.” He reaffirms that sexuality “cannot be reduced merely to pleasure or entertainment”. States, he says, “are called to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family.”
He goes on to say that “The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly”, and “not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred.”
This document also deals with the energy problem. The pope notes how “the fact that some States, power groups and companies hoard non-renewable energy resources represents a grave obstacle to development in poor countries. … Technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption”, he says, at the same time encouraging “research into alternative forms of energy.”
“The Co-operation of the Human Family” is the title and focus of chapter five, in which Pope Benedict highlights how “the development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family.” Hence Christianity and other religions “can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm”.
Benedict XVI calls upon rich States “to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid”, thus respecting their obligations. He also express a hope for wider access to education and, even more so, for “complete formation of the person”, affirming that yielding to relativism makes everyone poorer. One example of this, he writes, is that of the perverse phenomenon of sexual tourism. “It is sad to note that this activity often takes place with the support of local governments”, he says.
The Pontiff dedicates the final paragraph of this chapter to the “strongly felt need” for a reform of the United Nations and of “economic institutions and international finance. … There is”, he says, “urgent need of a true world political authority” with “effective power”.
The sixth and final chapter is entitled “The Development of Peoples and Technology.” In it the Holy Father warns against the “Promethean presumption” of humanity thinking “it can re-create itself through the ‘wonders’ of technology”. Technology, he says, cannot have “absolute freedom”.
“A particularly crucial battleground in today’s cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics”, says Benedict XVI: “Reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence”.
The social question has, he says, become an anthropological question. Research on embryos and cloning is “being promoted in today’s highly disillusioned culture which believes it has mastered every mystery.” The Pope expresses his concern over a possible “systematic eugenic programming of births.”
In the conclusion to his encyclical Benedict XVI highlights how “development needs Christians with their arms raised towards God in prayer”, just as it needs “love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace”.
To read Pope Benedict XVI’s full encyclical, please visit: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/document.php?n=944
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