I’ve just finished a first reading of Pope Benedict’s new encyclical
Caritas in Veritate.
It is a dense and complex text, deeply in continuity with the mainstream of the Catholic social teaching tradition but also fresh, filled with new ideas and proposals.
Let me highlight just a few of the major themes.
Very much in line with his predecessor John Paul II, Benedict insists on the tight connection between love and truth.
In a telling phrase, the Pope says that love without truth devolves into sentimentality and truth without love becomes cold and calculating.
The coming together of the two, which is the structuring logic of the church’s social teaching, is grounded in the God who is, simultaneously,
Agape (love) and
Logos (reason).