Build global economy on 'Christian humanism' pope says

Pope issues his third encyclical

Jul. 07, 2009
By John L Allen Jr
A boy injured by fighting in in eastern Congo sits in a hospital. Pope Benedict XVI's newest encyclical addresses social issues, including assaults on human dignity and human life, poverty, war and p eace, and other concerns. (CNS photo/Finbarr O'Reilly, Reuters)

Rome

Blending a call for increased aid to developing nations, support for a world government with “real teeth,” alarm at the “unregulated exploitation” of the environment, and staunch opposition to population control programs, Pope Benedict XVI today sketched what he called a “Christian humanism” for the globalized age in his long-awaited social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”).

To be sustainable, Benedict argues, economic policies must be rooted in a comprehensive vision of human welfare, including spirituality – as opposed to a “technocratic” approach, or one driven by “private interests and the logic of power.”

Read the full story here: Pope proposes a 'Christian humanism' for the global economy

He does an excellent job! I

Submitted by Michael Bindner (not verified) on Jul. 07, 2009.

He does an excellent job! I don't agree with everything he says, since I still content he lacks needed information on both gay marriage and contraception - however his linkage of life issues with economic issues is spot on! Life issues are economic issues and economic issues are life issues.

Not Catholic can, with a straight face, claim that taxation and redistribution are theft after reading this encyclical. I am not sure any Catholic can remain in either the Libertarian or Republican Parties after reading this encyclical.

Gotta love it!

The Oneness of Love and

Submitted by Acolyte (not verified) on Jul. 31, 2009.

The Oneness of Love and Truth: The reciprocal nature of the relationship between God and humankind is that of love (caritas) and truth (veritas). To the extent that “understanding” (hypostasis) informs their mutuality, to that extent God and humankind co-identify and evolve together. From the divine perspective love motivates all existence; and from the human perspective truth informs the valorization of relationship and self-authentication. Truth is a conscious compulsion that opens humankind to love; love is purposeful, divine valorization that Self-reveals in the authentication of truth.

The theological virtues (faith, hope and love), expressions of communication (trust), consciousness (insight), and conscience (judgment), authenticate truth in their tri-form reciprocation. “Caritas in veritate” and “Veritas in caritate” speak to the reciprocal nature of love and truth. In this light, “justified living” reveals the reciprocity of love and truth in the authentication of the divine and the human:

"The Second Enlightenment is about mopping up the messy aftermath of the unfinished work of the First Enlightenment and moving beyond to social civility and harmony in communal imitation of Godlike Resonance. Jesus self-identifies with The Way, The Truth and The Light, the resonant energy of communal harmony. Saint Anselm qualifies the character of faith as a groaning for understanding: 'fides quaerens intellectum' — The Way. The wholeness of Trinitarian spirituality is the virtue of trimorphic resonance, wherein, reason groans for truth: 'intellectus quaerens veritatem' — The Truth; and truth groans for love: 'veritas quaerens caritatem' — The Light.

“From the advantage of modern insight, history can level judgment against institutional Catholicism… namely, that those who do not learn from past wrongdoings are doomed to continue them, specifically, with respect to the devastating lessons that came together in the seventeenth century.

“Those who ignore capital catastrophes rooted in cultured arrogance are fated to live by the consequences of ignorance, justify it and repeat its wrongdoing. The Second Vatican Council is the Reform Council that should have happened in the 1600s instead of the Council of Trent, which was counter-reformation more than reform. Had true reform occurred in the seventeenth century it is safe to surmise that the great splintering of Roman Catholicism into many protesting denominations might have been avoided and Christianity [c]would be today a much different global reality. Dare it be hoped that healing of Catholicism might yet happen? If one believes that truth will win out, the answer must be, yes.” [From RELIGION & CIVILITY, pg 298]

“The past is filled with future lessons; experience can teach us if we let it. Good Earth and good faith are burdened with rubble and ruin, the waste of religion and civility. Conventional politeness aside, RELIGION & CIVILITY puts religion and politics upfront and close — and repents history’s calamity of lies. Sensitively but firmly, RELIGION & CIVILITY calls for the end to church complicity in deceitful cover-ups — an end to the parody that calls irreligion ‘religion’ and incivility ‘civility’.” [Id; from the back cover].
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=24059

In the evolving cosmos

Submitted by Acolyte (not verified) on Aug. 01, 2009.

In the evolving cosmos everything correlates with everything else in equations of correspondence, in which, the correlatives correspond with each other as numerator and denominator. John Courtney Murray, SJ, set up the correlation: “faith supposes reason as grace supposes nature.” Another way to say it is: “reason is to faith as nature is to grace.” The propositions of faith evolve from reason as grace (growth of consciousness, spirituality) evolves in/ from nature. Faith is authenticated/ augmented (evolves) by/ on reason as grace is authenticated/ augmented by/ in nature. In like manner, all correlatives interdepend as numerator (nominator) and denominator.

“The theological principle [that] grace supposes nature reveals a universal understanding of cosmic relationship that applies mutually to faith and reason; and as stated by Louis Dupré: “Reason [and faith]…functions in a system [evolutionary] where everything has become end and means.” (“The Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture” pg. 17, © 2004, Yale University Press, New Haven and London) [From “The POSSIBLE JOURNEY”, pg. 54]
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=39143

This fundamental proposition of interdependent rootedness puts all life on the same page in evolution, that is, in the intimate relationship of interdependency: relationship is reality. The relationship of intimate interdependency drives symbioses, in the conscious and in the subconscious. Subconscious (intensional) symbiosis occurs unreflectively, whereas, intentional symbiosis (Christian Humanism) occurs reflectively.

“Reality” not only puts all life on the same page, but it compels reflective religion to be on the same page “in veritate” and “in caritate.”

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