Is Caritas in Veritate a response to secular Humanism? I have read interesting pages on the encyclical where this is mentioned on the Know Britain website:
know-britain.com/life_love_freedom/caritas_in_veritate/charity_in_truth.html
On this website the “driving force” of divine origin mentioned in the encyclical is contrasted with the social passion of the secular Humanist.
I would appreciate the views of others on the issue.
Caritas Veritate is almost a humanist document. Without going into the various strands of humanist thought, humanism rejects the supernatural, but accepts the inherent rational capacity of human beings. The Church, in its formative years actually embraced a clasical humanism, which gave rise to the use of reason in theological and philosophical thought, later refined by Aquinas. Renaissance humanism broke of with the reformation led by Martin Luther, but it has since broken down into a moral relativity which is very much at odds with classical humanism. So in a sense, Caritas Veritate is also a reafirmation of the Church’s classical humanist beginnings.
Of course, this document is fully of the Church’s doctrine, because as Benedict writes in only the second paragraph,
“…charity is…everything has its origin in God’s love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God’s greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope.”
That firmly differentiates Catholicism from secular humanism.
Why Benedict is writing Caritas in veritate is evident in paragraph three, which ois worth quoting fully -
I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility. Hence the need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of* caritas in veritate*. Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth. In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living. This is a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its existence.
He tells us charity is being “emptied of meaning” and “detached from ethical living” and at the end of the paragraph he acknowledges how truth is being relativized. In other words, the ‘supernatural’, the Theological, faith itself, is being abandoned for a humanistic moral relativity in the context of social living. Compare that observation to Benedicts recognition of Absolute Truth in his opening paragraph." God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth’ leads to Love as described by St. Paul In Corintians 1.
Further into the document, benedict states
"Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived." and then points out that -
Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.
Without truth, the absolute truth which springs from God, love is contingent, empty, a matter of opinion and is no longer what it should be. We can see here the point that benedict is making and that the moral relativity of the modern, secualr and humanist world is distorting the true meaning of love, because it is becoming dissacotiated from absolute truth.
Benedict writes of coherent social doctrine of the Church, which has grown and developed since the days of the Apostles. He then goes on to warn of the movements that would stifle human development, because they are placing too little faith in man and God. He warns of the attacks and lack of support for the family unit as a coehesive element of society and he warns of the lack of respect being shown towards life itself. He writes against the state actively teaching atheism and so robbing himans of true developement, which is not the same, he says, as evolving.
He does indeed write about the driving force of human development. truth and Charity, benedcit says, empower human thought and human achievement,* “… to discover the causes of misery, to find the means to combat it, to overcome it resolutely.” *Then he points out that *"…Intelligence and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in intelligenc**e and intelligence is full of love." * He is reaserting the rational humanism of all the early fathers and doctors of the Church. From this rational humanism, springing from Absolute Truth, comes the ability to discern a moral dimension that can guide man in economics and national development, as well as discening the rights of others. Reason springs from God and is used to discern moral virtue as rooted in Absolute Truth. That’s where secular humanism and Catholicism part company. Secular humanism arose during the Renaisance when reason and theology were divided. Benedict has closed the gap.
