Any day now, Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical will be released. As you can imagine, the Catholic blogosphere is abuzz. I have only read two of Ratzinger's works, but I was very impressed with what I read: he's clearly a brilliant man. His writings struck me as startlingly fresh. It makes me wish I could read German!
Anyway, the encyclical is reportedly entitled Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, has commented publicly on the content. The headline in the Chicago Sun-Times is Pope on divine love vs. erotic love, but it appears that the "versus" is inappropriate:
Pope Benedict XVI may try to "save eros," in the first encyclical of his papacy, Chicago's Cardinal Francis George told the Chicago Sun-Times.
George expects the new pope will try to explain that erotic love, eros, and unconditional love, agape, are both inherently good in God's eyes in his encyclical titled "Deus, Caritas Est," Latin for "God is Love."
It's not quite the same tactic as in the Theology of the Body --- in which John Paul II showed that marital love images the being of God --- but it's very related, and exciting.
Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping has some wonderful commentary. Click here and scroll down to Thursday, January 5, under the heading "Thoughts on the Forthcoming Encyclical." Look for the big pic of Papa Ratzi at the top.
JP II's work was more focused on the inner life of the Trinity, and how marital love images God's being; it sounds like Benedict will be focusing instead on how eros fits into our relationship with Christ. I imagine he will also draw on his vast knowledge of Patristic theology (so rich with its exploration and definition of the person of Christ) and liturgy, and perhaps even make the point that liturgy is marital and marriage is liturgical, as the Byzantine priest Fr. Thomas Loya would put it.
The subject fits perfectly into Benedict's great love of liturgical spirituality. We live in an essentially disembodied and gnostic age. Despite our prurient fascination with other people's bodies, we really don't understand them, and are even a little bit prudish--witness the inevitable sniggering when schoolkids pass a naked statue in an art museum. The naked body has become solely associated with illicit lust, rather than God-given beauty. Couple this with our modern sense of Cartesian dualism--that we are only our consciousness, and the body really doesn't matter that much, hence I can do with it what I like--and you get a distrust of the physical, the corporeal, and a fashionable postmodern gnosticism. We treat our bodies with respect because they are the work of God, and God knows things are important--flesh, blood, water, wine, bread, incense, and the bones of the martyrs.
Read the whole thing. Will we get it today, to celebrate Epiphany?
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