Also, I did some spiritual direction and finish cleaning the patio, which I stated yesterday by raking leaves and pruning the rose bush. I also did my regular prayers and ordered groceries, as a reader sent me a gift card to buy food, (thankyou, R.).
In other words, I did not have time to work on Caritas in Vertitate, but I shall tomorrow. Let me just quote this section, showing the great need for Catholics to regain a foothold in the larger society, a foothold which they have removed in order to pursue either American values, which are not those of the saint necessarily or the values of certain "isms". The problem is that Catholics do not know how to love, or to think or to believe in an objective manner. Truth must be approached in faithfulness and with rigor.
9. Love in truth — caritas in veritate — is a great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized. The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value. The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), opening up the path towards reciprocity of consciences and liberties.
The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11]She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations[12].
