I've been kind of worried about the new pope. He's not the guy I would have voted into the Throne of St. Peter, having been responsible for some pretty reactionary stuff during his tenure as, well, the guy in charge of (what used to be) the Office of the Inquisition.
Anyway, he's finally issued his first encyclical. (Read the English translation here and the wikipedia analysis here.)
Contrary to what I and others have feared, it's not really all that dark.
It's called Deus Caritas Est (God is Love).
He spends a while talking about charity and the need for good works -- and the importance of good works in and of themselves, rather than as a strategy towards other ends.
"Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving other ends," he wrote. "Those who practice charity in the church's name will never seek to impose the church's faith upon others. They realize that a pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love."
But it might also set some interesting church precedent -- he's reversed some prior Catholic writing by defining a relationship between eros and agape... that is, he links sexual love to sacred love. And he says the main challenge in properly developing eros is commodification. Makes me wonder how up he is on Adorno and the Frankfurt School (I'm guessing he knows 'em pretty well). (He also quotes Nietzsche early on - freaky.)
He gets into sacred prostitution, and he gets into the Song of Songs, the slinkiest, sexiest book of the Bible (...the joints of thy thighs are like jewels.... Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor... Thy two breasts are like two young roes...). And although he talks in terms of "healthy development" of eros, he doesn't use the term "disorder" (which would've been a code for homosexuality).
It's all a bit surprising.
And he also talks about the Church's role as a political entity: This is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: it has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.
Either this is just shy of mendacity, or else he's backing away from that whole "excommunicate the pro-choice politicians" movement that's been picking up steam in conservative Catholicism.
I'm interested in any critiques of this encyclical that I haven't made or seen yet, and any other ongoing papal news. |
