Caritas in veritate

Benedict XVI: "Justice is only brought about if there are just people. And there are no just people without the humble, daily endeavor of converting hearts, and of creating justice in hearts."

Caritas in Veritate (Template:Lang-la) is the third encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate is his first social encyclical. The encyclical was signed on June 29, 2009, and was published on July 7, 2009. It was initially published in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Pre-release discussion of themes and content

The encyclical is divided into six chapters, along with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter examines the encyclical Populorum Progressio of Pope Paul VI.

Benedict XVI examines the social changes that have taken place since Paul VI's encyclical, in particular globalization. The Pope has expressed the need to strengthen a humanism that reconciles the social and economic development of humans, and to reduce the excessive gap between rich and poor. It is widely believed his 2009 Message for Peace, with its heavy emphasis on the economics, is a foretaste of what will be covered in the encyclical.

In what seems to have been an unintentional release of marketing materials, some basic themes were announced by Ignatius Press, the English-language publisher of the encyclical. The announcement was removed from the publisher's website approximately one month later. The announcement read:

Pope Benedict's third encyclical, Love in Truth (Caritas in Veritate), applies the themes of his first two encyclicals -love and hope (God Is Love, Saved in Hope) – to the world's major social issues. Drawing on moral truths open, in principle, to everyone (the natural law) as well as on the teachings of the gospel (revelation), Pope Benedict addresses Catholics and non-Catholics alike, challenging us all to recognize and then to confront the social evils of our day. The first part of the encyclical examines the dynamic teaching of Benedict's predecessors, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II. [...] In the second part Benedict surveys the social issues that confront the human race today-assaults on the dignity of the human person such as the attack on human life, poverty, issues of war and peace, terrorism, globalization, and environmental concerns.

In November 2008, Benedict XVI met with the newly appointed Lithuanian ambassador to the Vatican, during their meeting he summarized what the essential message of the encyclical would be.

Since love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God toward others, the practice of Christianity leads naturally to solidarity with one's fellow citizens and indeed with the whole of the human family. It leads to a determination to serve the common good and to take responsibility for the weaker members of society, and it curbs the desire to amass wealth for oneself alone. Our society needs to rise above the allure of material goods and to focus instead upon values that truly promote the good of the human person.

On February 26, 2009 Pope Benedict met with parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome for a question-and-answer session. In response to a question concerning how the Catholic Church should respond to injustice and continue in its defence of vulnerable persons, he outlined key themes from the upcoming encyclical.

As you know, for a long time we have been preparing an encyclical on these issues. And on this long path I see how difficult it is to speak competently, because if the economic reality is not addressed competently, one cannot be credible. And, on the other hand, we must speak with a great ethical consciousness, created and inspired by a conscience forged by the Gospel. In the end, it is about human avarice as sin or, as the Letter to the Colossians says, of avarice as idolatry. We must denounce that idolatry that is opposed to the true God and that falsifies the image of God through another god, "mammon."


[...] Because egoism, the root of avarice, consists in loving myself more than anything else and of loving the world in reference to myself. It happens in all of us. It is the obscuring of reason, which can be very learned, with extremely beautiful scientific arguments but which, nevertheless, can be confused by false premises. [...] Without the light of faith, which penetrates the darkness of original sin, reason cannot go forward. But it is faith, precisely, that then runs into the resistance of our will. It does not want to see the way, which would be a path of self-denial and of correction of one's own will in favor of the other, not of oneself.


[W]hat is needed is the reasonable and reasoned denunciation of the errors, not with great moral statements, but rather with concrete reasons that prove to be understandable in today's economic world. [...] To realize that these great objectives of macro-science are not realized in micro-science — the macroeconomics in the microeconomics — without the conversion of hearts. If there are no just men, there is no justice either [...] Justice cannot be created in the world only with good economic models, even if these are necessary. Justice is only brought about if there are just men. And there are no just men without the humble, daily endeavor of converting hearts, and of creating justice in hearts.

On June 13, 2009, in an address entitled "A Modern Economy Respectful of the Rights of the Weakest," the pope received members of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation. He said

As you know...my Encyclical dedicated to the vast area of the economy and work will soon be published. It will highlight what, for us as Christians, are the objectives that need to be pursued and what values to be tirelessly promoted and defended in order to create a truly free and united form of human coexistence.

Information on delayed release

The social encyclical was initially intended to be published on the occasion of the forty year anniversary of Paul VI's Populorum Progressio (1967). Reasons for the first delay are not clear.

A final draft was produced for translation in March 2008. Translation difficulties caused further delays. It has been reported that the translation hold had to do with one of the major languages of China. Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said that the encyclical would be released sometime in the Fall of 2008.

In December 2008, a March 19 release was announced. One month later, a May 1 release date was announced. These third and fourth delays were reported by Vatican officials to be the result of the necessity for further reflection upon the global economic concerns of late 2008 and early 2009. Regarding this delay, much attention was given to a 1985 essay presented in Rome by then Josef cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) at a symposium on "Church and Economy in Dialogue.", entitled "Market Economy and Ethics". Speaking on social values and the common good, Ratzinger predicted that greed and corruption in economic polices would inject a fundamental instability into the global economic system.

On February 1, 2009 it was announced that the encyclical would be released sometime in April 2009.

Commenting upon the repeated delay of Caritas in Vertate, the president of the Osservatorio Internazionale: sulla dottrina sociale della Chiesa the Rt. Rev. Giampaolo Crepaldi wrote an article entitled "Awaiting the New Encyclical of Benedict XVI: What does it mean to say the social doctrine of the Church is timely?" He writes,

The “timeliness” of an encyclical does not merely depend on the new social problems or issues it addresses. Were this the case, establishing the timeliness of Benedict XVI’s upcoming social encyclical would merely be a question of listing the social issues it tackles and then checking which and how many of them were not touched upon in previous encyclicals. That, however, is not the way it is, for the simple reason that a social encyclical is not a sociological investigation.

It therefore becomes clear that the “timeliness” of SDC stems not only from the new facts humanity has to deal with, but from the Gospel itself, which, insofar as Word incarnate, is always new. New facts and developments in history can act as a stimulus for a re-reading of everlasting truth, because everlasting truth is essentially open to such an endeavor. Were this not true, each encyclical would speak only to the men and women of its time. Present in the Church’s social doctrine is an inexhaustible and irreducible element of prophecy bestowed upon it by the Gospel. Christ is ever timely, and let us not forget that the social doctrine of the Church is “announcement of Christ”.

On April 23, 2009, during a conference on globalization held at the Gregorian University in Rome, Vatican cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said that Pope Benedict XVI's third encyclical "on globalization and the poor" is expected to be released June 29, 2009 - the feast of St. Peter and Paul.

On May 28, 2009, an unnamed Vatican official is reported to have said that

Pope Benedict XVI has completed his long-awaited encyclical on social issues and the text is now being translated into several languages, according to a Vatican official. The new document – Caritas in Veritate (“Love in truth”) – is about 100 pages long, the official said. Originally planned for 2007 to mark the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s landmark social encyclical Populorum Progressio, the new papal document suffered a succession of delays as the current global economic crisis unfolded.

External links

• Full Text of Caritas in Veritate
• "Market Economy and Ethics" essay
• AP News Report for June 29 Release
• Article by John L Allen Jr "Econ encyclical 'more on ethics than structure'" March 05, 2009
• John Thavis, Catholic News Service, "'Love in Truth': Honing the idea that charity is litmus test of faith"
• Critique of Capitalism July 13, 2009