Deus Caritas Est

Deus Caritas Est by Pope Benedict XVI, 108 pages

Deus Caritas Est - "God is Love" - was Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, released on Christmas Day 2005.  It is the first of a trilogy on the theme of the three theological virtues - Spes Salvi ("Saved in Hope") was issued in 2007 and Benedict's successor Francis released Lumen Fidei ("The Light of Faith") in 2013.

Pope Benedict begins with the familiar distinction between eros (desiring love) and agape (selfless love).  He attempts to establish that, contrary to popular misconceptions, the two are complementary rather than competing.  Eros draws lovers out of themselves and towards the beloved - it is, as Plato demonstrated, both a form of ecstatic divine madness and a longing for fulfillment - but it also easily turns possessive and destructive.  As grace perfects nature, so agape purifies eros in the love of the God who is Love.

Key to this purification is the role of the Church.  Love, by its very nature, cannot exist in a vacuum - it creates and sustains communities.  To thrive, then, it requires order and direction.  The Church exists both as the ordinary channel of divine love through the sacraments and a nexus of the neighborly charity which is the only genuine response to an encounter with that divine love.  Benedict distinguishes this charity from impersonal philanthropy by stressing that it seeks the good of the entire human person.  The struggle for social justice, while vital for a healthy society, can never replace charity precisely because it can never minister to spiritual needs, primary among which is the need to love and be loved.

Laudato Si'

Laudato Si'' by Pope Francis, 177 pages

Promulgated on the Feast of Pentecost this past May, Laudato Si' is Pope Francis' encyclical "On Care of Our Common Home", the Earth.  The title is, as is customary with papal pronouncements, taken from the first words of the document (usually Latin, in this case Italian), "Laudato Si', mi' Signore" - "Praise be to You, my Lord", a passage from "The Canticle of the Sun" written by the Pope's namesake, St Francis of Assisi, a celebration of the greatness of God and the kinship of all created things.

St Francis is sometimes deformed by ignorance or ideology into a free-spirited pantheist, and Laudato Si' can be oversimplified into an environmental manifesto or an "encyclical on global warming".  "The Canticle of the Sun" climaxes with a celebration of divine mercy and justice as the crowning features of providential Creation, which includes the reality of "Sister Death" alongside "Brother Sun" and "Sister Moon".  Laudato Si' is a call for a turn towards the nature of things - against a utilitarian focus on technique and the manipulation of reality, and towards a renewed respect for Creation as it is given to us.  This does not mean rejecting any sort of improvement of nature - to the contrary, productive labor is a fundamental need of man, a necessity of his nature.  What it does mean is ceasing to view the world as a neutral, passive object, and beginning to recognize the essences and ends of natural things, using them respectfully, instead of according to our own insatiable appetites.

Lumen Fidei

Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith) by Pope Francis, 111 pages

During his eight year long pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI released three encyclicals - open letters intended to teach and encourage Catholics and engage non-Catholics - Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope), and Caritas In Veritate (Charity In Truth).  Since the first two focused on two of the three theological virtues, love and hope, it was widely anticipated that he would write an encyclical on the last virtue in the set, faith.  Indeed, when he resigned in 2013, he left behind a draft of this encyclical, which his successor, Francis, revised and promulgated.  Some passages are redolent of Benedict, with careful exposition of biblical texts and references to German theologians, while others have the more extemporaneous style associated with Francis.  It is an interesting game speculating on which pope wrote what, but entirely beside the point.

The message of both men is the same.  Faith, they propose, is precisely the opposite of a subjective closing-in.  It is, in fact, the antidote to the relativistic solipsism of postmodernity.  Only in faith can the individual escape the horizon of self and reach out in love to God and neighbor.  Only in faith do we discover the dignity of man and the giftedness of creation.  Only in faith, they submit, is there found meaning in suffering and hope for the future.

Apart from the office its author holds, Lumen Fidei is a short, intriguing work in the same vein as Cardinal Ratzinger's contribution to Without Roots.