Very true. And you don't seem to "see" that the Pope, a spiritual leader, has just meddled in temporal political affairs in a way so radical that no other Vatican document I can think of compares. It's astonishing. Simply amazing.
As I've said in earlier posts, I'm a cradle Catholic with clergy in the family. I cut my teeth on tales of Catholicism and spent many years in Catholic schools. So I'm not coming at this from a Catholic bashing perspective, like several others on the thread.
But no matter how gently I may want to deal with the Catholic faith, no amount of spin or denial can alter the Pope's words in this historic, radical Encyclical. It was released only seven days ago. I predict quite seriously that the uproar around it will grow so intense he'll have to alter it himself and remove the offending passages.
Cordially,
And your fixation on one paragraph while ignoring all of the other points that Benedict XVI makes in the rest of the document has greatly distorted your perception of what he is saying. Did you know that (at the end of the introduction) he says (emphasis mine):
"The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11] She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and skeptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations[12]."
The first sentence I highlighted contradicts your assertion that the Pope has meddled in temporal political affairs. He explicitly makes no such claim. Which other Vatican documents on social or economic issues have you read?
I beg you to sit down and prayerfully read, not skim, the entire document. As I said before, this Pope does not speak in sound bites. Taking one paragraph of a 50+ page document and overreacting without reading the context it came from or understanding the Catholic thought behind it (he is writing this primarily to Catholics with the understanding that they are familiar with Catholic history and thought) is not a rational approach. However, I can't stop you from running around yelling, "The sky is falling!"
I predict quite seriously that the uproar around it will grow so intense he'll have to alter it himself and remove the offending passages.
Apparently, you have not followed this Pope very closely. People were killed in response to the quote taken out of context from his lecture given at Regensberg University and he did not change what he said. Or when he changed the text of a prayer in the Roman Missal of 1962 and certain parties were still "offended" - he stood his ground. His modus operandi is to look at an issue from all angles before coming to a conclusion. He did not write this encyclical on a napkin and then just decide to publish it. He has looked at it through the lenses of faith and reason, which he has repeatedly said are both necessary.