num_pages: 157
description: Benedict XVI has something for everyone in Charity in Truth from praising profit to defending the environment from calling for a role for government in the economy to insisting on the necessity of moral transformation and gratuitousness in economic life from the issue of immigration to the importance of technology. However he also insists on discernment and the purification of our ideas by faith and reason in order to temper any immoderate and one-sided enthusiasms. Charity and Truth was expected to beand isthe Pope's encyclical on social justice. And indeed justice and rights find their proper place. But charity and truth are shown to be the fundamental principles. Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine he writes. Without truth without trust and love for what is true there is no social conscience and responsibility and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power. Benedict calls for integral human development which promotes the good of every man and of the whole man including the spiritual dimension the perspective of eternal life. Without this human progress in this world is denied breathing-space. What's more true development requires openness to life. If there is lack of respect for the right to life and a natural death he writes if human conception gestation and birth are made artificial if human embryos are sacrificed to research the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and along with it that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational system and laws do not help them to respect themselves. With respect to economics the Pope insists every economic decision has a moral consequence. He avoids the extremes of an unbridled capitalism and socialism. Instead he holds that the logic of the market and the logic of the Statefree economic exchange with political oversight and restraintare not enough to secure human flourishing. There must be a generosity and gratuitousness among citizens and nations that goes beyond economic and political systems. Charity is necessary for justice to be justice. Benedict also argues that technology must not be seen as automatically providing solutions to problems without the need for morality. Nor must man seek to avoid responsibility for overcoming social problems by rejecting technological development as inevitably evil. Benedict insists that man must be humble yet confident that he can through faith and reason make true progress in human development.
language: English
title: Charity in Truth: Caritas in Veritate
publisher: Ignatius Press