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The term “social justice”… is the key term and concept of Catholic social teaching … with all the other aspects of the Church’s social doctrine—the principle of subsidiarity, the just wage or the right to private property—are related to, and rely, on the existence of social justice. The term “social justice,” though common enough today, is little understood by most of those who use it—whether they consider themselves friends and practitioners of social justice, or they regard it as a suspect term of probably socialist origin. But the term does have a precise meaning. That meaning and the significance of...

I found some extraordinarily important distinctions in Pope Benedict’s recent address to the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. These distinctions ought to affect significantly how we approach the Church’s social teaching regarding governmental authority in general, and world governmental authority in particular. Recent popes have called for the exercise of administrative authority at the global level to deal with those problems that are global in scope, and therefore not amenable to solution at lower levels. This would seem to be an extension of their call for intervention and collaboration by national governments to address widespread...

The Pope has called for the world economy to be restructured in line with the principles of "love, truth and charity" in a new encyclical issued today. He urges the reformation of the United Nations and economic institutions to address the global economic crisis, which he links to relativism, globalisation and the abuse of modern technologies. The encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, interpreted variously throughout the document as charity or love in truth, is Pope Benedict XVI's third but his first on social issues. It is timed to coincide with the G8 in Italy and is intended to bring objective moral...

Pope Benedict XVI’s New Book Will ‘Get People to Think More Deeply About Jesus’VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI’s second volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth is expected to challenge modern biblical scholarship and provoke readers into thinking more profoundly about Jesus. That’s according to the president of Ignatius Press, the book’s appointed English-language publisher. Mark Brumley told the Register July 30 that he expects the second volume, which will reflect on the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to provoke “a great conversation about modern biblical scholarship” not only within the Church, but also between Catholics and...

L’Osservatore Romano of 8 July has a few articles pertaining to the new encyclical. Here is one of them. Some folks helped to ferret out the corresponding English. These bullet points were offered to help a reading of the encyclical. Call them… call them…. "encycli-bites".

What exactly is in Benedict XVI’s new encyclical on the economy and labor issues is not yet known. Catholic leftists and progressives, though, are already trembling with excitement. Three glaring errors have already appeared in these heavily panting anticipations. An accurate presentation of real existing capitalism requires at least three modest affirmations: 1) Markets work well only within a system of law, and only according to well-marked-out rules of the game; unregulated markets are a figment of imagination. 2) In actual capitalist practice, the love of creativity, invention, and groundbreaking enterprise are far more powerful than motives of greed. 3)...

Some people's faith in the marketplace is almost religious. It is so absolute that even the current economic crisis has not convinced them of the importance of sensible government regulation. Such faith is certainly not part of Catholic doctrine. In his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict looked at the economic disaster and acknowledged the need FOR government regulations. He was critical of those who refused to recognize the value of such regulations. "The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from 'influences' of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic...

If a Latinist were asked to translate the phrase caritas in veritate into English without more information, he would almost certainly reply "love in truth." In the German translation, caritas becomes simply Liebe [love] . However, in the English version of this encyclical, caritas is rendered "charity." The English word is derived from the Latin, but the use of one for the other is a choice that seems to me to require a little explanation. Caritas, like "charity" as that word is used in theology, is not so much an emotion as an operation of the intellect. "Love" can cover...

Recent global events awaken us to the importance of sustained Christian reflection on the nature and goal of economic life, both within our own societies and in other parts of the world. Accordingly, as evangelical Protestants we applaud the release of Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) by Pope Benedict XVI. We call on Christians everywhere, but especially our fellow evangelicals in the global North, to read, wrestle with, and respond to Caritas in Veritate and its identification of the twin call of love and truth upon our lives as citizens, entrepreneurs, workers and, most fundamentally, as followers of Christ....

Pope Benedict XVI's social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), is a complex and occasionally obscure document, replete with possible implications for the future development of Catholic social doctrine. Sorting those implications out will take much time and even more careful reflection. Along the information superhighway, however, careful reflection hit a few potholes in the early going, as sundry partisans sought to capture Caritas in Veritate as a weapon with which to bolster the Obama administration's economic, health care and social welfare policies. Thus in the days immediately following the encyclical's July 7 release, we were treated to the...

enedict XVI‘s Caritas in Veritate must be read in light of a debate going on in the Catholic Church for a century. It first arose in the mid-1800s with the social question, and new ideas like liberalism and socialism. Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII’s encyclical (1891), was considered the Catholic answer to these new challenges. But it was really the result of a wide debate between two different schools of Christian economists and sociologists. One taught that the social question required the primacy of the theological virtue of charity, the other the primacy of the moral virtue of justice. The primacy...

Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), may not be the kind of encyclical that everybody needs to read. It is an incremental addition to the Church’s social teaching with the stated purposes of observing the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s great social encyclical, Populorum Progressio, and of bringing it up to date with respect to global developments since the 1960’s. Unlike her dogmas of Faith, the Church’s social teaching operates at the intersection of faith, natural law and specific contemporary conditions. As such it is very much part of a larger conversation. Not everyone...

The Pope’s Gift to the President and to Us July 14th, 2009 by Fr. Frank Pavone At Pope Benedict’s meeting with President Obama, the Pope gave the President two gifts: the new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, and the recent document on bioethics, Dignitas Personae. The latter gift was apparently a last-minute addition. Upon leaving the meeting, the President said to the Pope, “I’ll have some reading to do on the plane.”The timing was perfect, because these two new documents have much to say to the current administration, and to the wider culture, both within and outside the Church.The new encyclical...

Brian Griffiths, Lord of Fforestfach and vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, says Pope Benedict's Caritas in Veritate offers the single best analysis of the current global economic crisis. The language may be dense, but the message is sufficiently rewarding. The encyclical analyses modern capitalism from an ethical and spiritual perspective as well as a technical one. As a result it makes the Government’s White Paper on financial reforms published two days later look embarrassingly one-dimensional and colourless.It is highly critical of today’s global economy but always positive. Its major concern is how to promote human development in the context of...

  Benedict's Third Encyclical: A Summary t | t | t | t     by Dr. Jeff Mirus, July 9, 2009 Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), may not be the kind of encyclical that everybody needs to read. It is an incremental addition to the Church’s social teaching with the stated purposes of observing the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s great social encyclical, Populorum Progressio, and of bringing it up to date with respect to global developments since the 1960’s. Unlike her dogmas of Faith, the Church’s social teaching operates at the...

When President Obama meets with Pope Benedict XVI tomorrow, there will be no right-wing Catholic demonstrators upbraiding the pontiff, as they did Notre Dame earlier this year, for conferring the church's legitimacy upon this liberal politician. In fact, whether he is the beneficiary of providence or merely good luck, Obama will have his audience with Benedict just three days after the release of a papal encyclical on social justice that places the pope well to Obama's left on economics. What a delightful surprise it would be for a pope to tell our president that on some matters, he's just too...

On the 3rd Encyclical "A Better Future for Everyone Is Possible" VATICAN CITY, JULY 8, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience in Paul VI Hall. He reflected on his third encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," which was released Tuesday. * * * Dear brothers and sisters: My new encyclical "Caritas in Veritate," which was officially presented yesterday, was fundamentally inspired in a passage from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, in which the apostle speaks of acting according to truth in charity: "Rather," we have just heard, "living...

Pope Benedict XVI's third encyclical -- Caritas in Veritate -- arrived today containing 30,468 words: an introduction, six chapters, conclusion, and 159 footnotes. It's not thrilling reading, even by encyclical standards, but as the latest papal statement on the Church's social teaching, "Love in Truth" will be a work of lasting significance.   Those who dig through the document to see whether it leans left or right will be disappointed: There is something here for everybody. For the Left, anxious to set the scene for President Barack Obama's meeting with Benedict in a few days, there are plenty of...