All you need is love - 2
Many things have been said about Pope Benedict's first encyclical letter, God is Love. On the whole the comments were very positive. We had the rare, perhaps unique, innovation that the Pope himself wrote a short commentary about his own encyclical. He...
Many things have been said about Pope Benedict's first encyclical letter, God is Love. On the whole the comments were very positive. We had the rare, perhaps unique, innovation that the Pope himself wrote a short commentary about his own encyclical. He was writing in Famiglia Cristiana to introduce the magazine's initiative of distributing the whole text of the encyclical to its readers. In his comments the Pope admits that the encyclical may be "a bit difficult and theoretical at the beginning," but eventually, he says, the reader will realise that he is simply trying to "respond to some very concrete questions about human life."
A Christian Outlook presents some of the comments made about this encyclical.
'Attractive' - Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani, the film and television director, described the encyclical as "attractive," and the "work of a great intellectual." Cavani stated that, as the Pope revealed, the word "love" is somewhat depreciated today, "to give love, to receive love, to desire love - is art's motor."
"I think that the most beautiful and timely thing of the Gospel is precisely the proclamation of love," she said.
She recalled that in the second half of the 1960s, during her trips to Bulgaria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Russia, she felt sad "because there was fear, there was no joy".
"The encyclical sends out a very strong message," the director said. "It proclaims love as the fundamental project of life; it places it at the centre of everything, of the economy, of technology and of history. The object of everything is love - or everything is vain."
Speaking of the corporal element of "eros," Cavani added that "the resurrection of bodies is fundamental."
'Positive sign' - Hans Küng
The dissident theologian Hans Küng praised Pope Benedict XVI for his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, but added that the Pope should now take "courageous steps" to change Church teaching, in an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa.
He said that the Pontiff's next encyclical should treat "the structures of justice in the institutional Church", and relations between the Vatican and those who question Catholic teachings.
Specifically, Küng said, the Pope should reach out to "women and men who use contraceptives, the divorced and those who have remarried, priests who have left the priesthood because of celibacy, the critical voices inside the Church, Protestants and Anglicans whose communion is not recognized as valid." If he made that gesture, Küng said, "Joseph Ratzinger could become a great Pope."
He proposed that Pope Benedict should follow up on his discussion of love by creating a Vatican "Congregation for Love," to work alongside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This new 'ministry', Küng said, could "verify the conformity of every decree from the Curia with Christian love."
'Warmth' - The Tablet
The Tablet, in its editorial of January 28, said that "Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical confirms him as a man of humour, warmth, humility and compassion, eager to share the love that God 'lavishes' on humanity and display it as the answer to the world's deepest needs."
The editorial comments that while many thought that Pope Benedict would be out to hammer heretics we are in a different situation. "Instead he has produced a profound, lucid, poignant and at times witty discussion of the relationship between sexual love and the love of God, the fruit no doubt of a lifetime's meditation. This is a document that presents the most attractive face of the Catholic faith and could be put without hesitation into the hands of any inquirer."
The Tablet notes that "about the only flaw in the English text, indeed, is its non-use of inclusive language: for 'man' read 'man and woman'. But he makes no other sexist point; there is no attempt to distinguish female sexual love from the male version, no flirting with the madonna-whore dichotomy, no judgmental talk of what sexual love is ordained for, nor even of exploitation and sexual sin."
The Catholic periodical concludes that "this is a remarkable, enjoyable and even endearing product of Pope Benedict's first few months. If first encyclicals set the tone for a new papacy, then this one has begun quite brilliantly."
'A social encyclical' - Stefano Fontana
Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est is a social encyclical, says Stefano Fontana, the director of the Cardinal Van Thuân International Observatory on the Social Doctrine of the Church in an interview with ZENIT.
The encyclical "should also be considered a social encyclical, since it addresses contemporary social problems from the standpoint of the perennial Church: charity that, as a theological virtue, emanates directly from the life of the Trinity itself, and as a human virtue, is the first condition by which men keep staying together."
One of the arguments treated in the interview concerned the accusation that the Church meddles in politics.
Fontana mention three levels of the argument.
"First of all, there is an initial level: There are works of charity and care - Benedict XVI tells us - which belong specifically to the Church. They are the testimony of its loyalty to God who is love.
"The Church is not engaged in politics, in the sense that it does not contribute directly to the organisation of justice. First and foremost, the Church bears witness to charity also through the care it provides to the needy.
"Then there is a second level: Lay Christians take part in and take responsibility for the political construction of justice which they see as a lay form of testimony to the Church's charity.
"Lastly, there is a third level: The whole Church, with its own life-action, with the announcement, celebration and testimony, carrying out its religious mission because it is indeed religious, is also a beneficial force for society, because it brings the spirit of charity to it, which makes human beings more human and opens their eyes and hearts so that they can see more clearly and fulfil justice itself."
We conclude this review with one of the beautiful sentences in the encyclical. "It is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature."