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This past Tuesday, September 13, I taught my first RCIA class, offered at St. Peter’s Catholic Student Center at Baylor University. Although I have been teaching philosophy to college students for twenty-five years, I was a bit nervous. Thankfully, I have a minor role in the class, leading only one session this semester with perhaps another one or two in the Spring. Our RCIA team consists of several seasoned parishioners, with St. Peter’s gifted pastor, Fr. Anthony Odiong, overseeing the entire enterprise. I spoke on the topic of Revelation, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium, focusing on how I came to...

Featured Term (selected at random):RERUM NOVARUM Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, issued on May 15, 1891, on the condition of labor. It refutes the theories of the socialists and defends the rights of private ownership. It advises employers and workers to organize into both mixed and separate associations for mutual help and self-protection. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

    Pope Benedict XVI's latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, was published on July 7. With the appearance of a new papal document, various factions in the Church, as well as some outside, eagerly attempt to score points on their own behalf. This is particularly true of Caritas in Veritate, since both its length and the variety of its content allow plausible misreadings supported by selective citations.     The 'Progressive' Reading   As everyone should know by now, "progressive" is the term of preference liberals apply to themselves and what they claim for their own. The progressive reading...

President Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI last week at the Vatican. During the meeting, the Pope provided the president with a copy of his new encyclical letter, Caritas In Veritate. Most of the press coverage has focused on the pro-life elements of the treatise and the obvious disagreements between the Church and President Obama over issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. But it should be noted that the Pope’s encyclical dedicates as much (if not more) time to the issues of globalization and the current economic crisis, and in this respect the Pope and the President are...

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...

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 Pope Benedict XVI's third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, was released on July 7, it sparked world-wide discussion and commentary. Catholic World Report asked a group of leading Catholic intellectuals to reflect on the encyclical, its place in the larger body of Catholic social teaching, and Pope Benedict's vision of a well-ordered and just society.J. Brian Benestad, Francis J. Beckwith, Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., Richard Garnett, Thomas S. Hibbs, Paul Kengor, George Neumayr, Joseph Pearce, Tracey Rowland, Father James V. Schall, and Rev. Robert A. Sirico share their thoughts on Caritas in Veritate, below.  J. Brian Benestad:In 1986 the Congregation...

Newspapers, blogs, talk-shows on radio and television are full of discussion over Pope Benedict XVI's supposed call for a "new world order" or a "one-world government."  These ideas are, however, neither based in reality nor a clear reading of the Pope's latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the release of which yesterday spawned the heated discussion.The Pope actually speaks directly against a one-world government, and, as would be expected from those who have read his previous writings, calls for massive reform of the United Nations.  Confusion seems to have come from paragraph 67 of the encyclical, which has some choice pull-quotes...

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...

ENCYCLICAL LETTERCARITAS IN VERITATE OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF BENEDICT XVI TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS THE LAY FAITHFUL AND ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL ON INTEGRAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN CHARITY AND TRUTHINTRODUCTION1. Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is...

Supreme Knight Carl Anderson Denver, Colo., Jul 7, 2009 / 03:26 pm (CNA).- The head of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, has responded to Pope Benedict’s newly-released encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (Love in Truth), by denouncing attempts to use it to further political agendas rather than viewing it from the Church’s comprehensive understanding of the human person.In an interview with CNA on Tuesday morning, Carl Anderson, leader of the world’s largest lay Catholic organization, decried the “spin masters who will try to spin the encyclical in one direction or the other” and emphasized that “the Catholic reader should...

The revenge of Justice and Peace (or so they may think). By George Weigel In the often unpredictable world of the Vatican, it was as certain as anything could be in mid-1990 that there would be a 1991 papal encyclical to commemorate the centenary of Rerum Novarum — the 1891 letter of Leo XIII that is rightly regarded as the Magna Carta of modern Catholic social doctrine. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which imagines itself the curial keeper of the flame of authentic Catholic social teaching, prepared a draft, which was duly sent to Pope John Paul II...

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...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Christian call to love one another and to work for justice requires the active participation in the political process, Pope Benedict XVI said in his new encyclical. "To desire the common good and strive toward it is a requirement of justice and charity," the pope said in his encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth"). The encyclical, published July 7, said God's love for all his creatures must be mirrored in the way they love and care for one another, engaging in acts of charity and solidarity with respect for the truth that every human...

... to the world at large. Today, at the noontime Angelus, which followed this morning's Pallium Mass, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he had signed his third encyclical, "Charity in Truth." Some apparent excerpts have already been leaked by an Italian newspaper. The encyclical is expected to be released on July 6th or 7th, shortly before President Obama is scheduled to meet with the Holy Father on the afternoon of July 10th. Already there is growing discussion of how the encyclical will play with "liberals" and "conservatives." Such discussion is understandable to some degree, but I'm willing to bet it...

Pope Benedict XVI signed his latest encyclical Monday, a text on ways to make globalization more attentive to meeting the needs of the poor amid the worldwide financial crisis. The document, entitled "Charity in Truth," is expected to be published soon.

Pope Benedict XVI offered a quick preview of his forthcoming social encyclical, and disclosed that it would be issued "soon," during a June 13 audience with members of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation. The Holy Father said that a market economy serves society "only if oriented toward the common good." Moreover, he said, "freedom in the economic sector must be circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality." The Pontiff said that reflections on economics and the common welfare are particularly necessary today in light of the worldwide...

Let's just imagine that you're the Pope. For months now you've been working on an encyclical about Catholic social teaching. The expected publication date has been pushed back several times; evidently you haven't been happy with the early drafts. Just when the project finally seemed near completion, the world economy went into a nosedive, and since the encyclical is devoted largely to a discussion of the global economy, you realized that you'd need to work over the draft once again, to provide some responses to the questions that everyone is now asking. Now at last the encyclical is near completion--...

Now slated for an autumn release, while on tour in the Ukraine the "Vice-Pope" Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone SDB offered a word on B16's third encyclical, the long-expected social manifesto being prepared under the working title Caritas in Veritate ("Charity/Love in the Truth"): In an interview with the APCOM news agency, the Vatican Secretary of State disclosed that the Pope's next encyclical will not be ready for publication before the fall. "The encyclical is still being written," he said. Cardinal Bertone said that Pope Benedict is also working on the second part of his book Jesus of Nazareth. The Pope...