The Mystery of Love

As we have learned from the philosophers, and from the Pope Emeritus, there are different kinds of love. You may want to go back and look at my comments on Deus Caritas Est and Caritas in Veritate.

Recently, I have been observing middle-aged and even older friends experiencing a renewal of love in their good marriages. This has been a revelation to me, as I have not seen such rediscoveries of bridal love among couples for a long time. Sometimes, one sees this renewal in very old couples, like my parents, who at 92 and 87, love and respect each other openly more than ever before in their long marriage of 67 years.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it takes a long time for couples to rediscover that first love, after years of trials, tribulations, sufferings, illness, financial difficulties, problems with children and so on. These episodes, and, indeed, crises, either bring a couple closer together, or separate them forever. A couple must face suffering together, no longer looking merely at each other, but at the day that life has brought them, the struggle they must face together to overcome successfully.

I have witnessed women truly becoming helpmates, as God created a wife to be--a servant who is cherished and respected above all other women on earth. I have seen men become real protectors and spiritual leaders.

But, the real key to this rediscovery of bridal love must be the central love of God, the finding of the God Within, the awareness of the Indwelling of the Trinity in ones' self and in one's mate.

When a person finally gets in touch with the Trinity Who dwells within, life and love bubble up in a new fountain of grace. When both the man and wife discover God within, the chemistry becomes almost magical. This spiritual awareness in the couple is the great mystery of love--finally, the man and the woman have become truly one as God intended.

When God becomes the heart of the marriage, the heart of both hearts, bridal love is renewed.

For those who keep faithful to their marriage contract, this bridal love will happen if they keep God's commandments, especially the first one.

No other gods can replace God in a marriage, neither money, or status, or success, or possessions, or even children. The couple become one when God is first in each of their hearts, minds, imaginations, memories and wills.

This type of love is only possible when the couple share sanctifying grace. This type of love is only possible when the couple is traveling together towards God, attempting to bring each other to heaven, to the fullness of life in God.

And, this is only possible when love transcends all else, becoming, truly, agape love.

Only a man and a woman can become one in Christ.

Only a man and a woman can experience the renewal of bridal love.

Only in and with God can this bridal love occur, that first love, which renews itself in Christ until death parts the couple.

But, this love lasts as that of brother and sister in Christ in heaven, the real love of heaven, agape love.

Sacrificial love is another name for bridal love. And, yes, it is passionate, not only in the body, but in the soul. Zeal for each other's salvation marks this good love.

Those who experience this mystery of love renewed bring life into the Church in a way others cannot. This is the gift of true marriage to the Church-marriage in Christ, marriage according to God's plan.

I have never experienced living with a husband for years and years and coming to this renewal of mutual bridal love. But, I do understand and experience the bridal love for Christ, as His bride, as a single person, who has been blessed with such graces to know that Christ loves me eternally in a special way. He loves me as a woman in a unique contract of commitment and service where He leads me.

Singles can experience bridal love in one way-through their total giving of themselves to God directly, and not through another person. This is our call. It is another way to the discovery of the God within, the Indwelling of the Trinity.

God never denies love. He shapes all holy loves to His will. That is the mystery of love.

Collective Selfishness

Years ago, in England, in the late 1980s, a priest told me that Margaret Thatcher had "institutionalized greed". She was not the only one, and in fact, the same type of "collective selfishness" burst out of psychobabble into the mainstream politics of America and Europe.

The Pope is a good examiner of corporate sin and the reality that a sense of responsibility for the common good has all but vanished.

We are experiencing a serious shortage of doctors, nurses, teachers, and all service oriented types of jobs. Volunteerism has all but disappeared (remember my old article on Bowling Alone?)

The Pope is correct is both assessments; that the problems of narcissistic consumerism is dire, but that human beings can rise above this.....but only, in and with Christ, through His Church.

204. The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes “a seedbed for collective selfishness”.[145] When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears. As these attitudes become more widespread, social norms are respected only to the extent that they do not clash with personal needs. So our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.

205. Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning. We are able to take an honest look at ourselves, to acknowledge our deep dissatisfaction, and to embark on new paths to authentic freedom. No system can completely suppress our openness to what is good, true and beautiful, or our God-given ability to respond to his grace at work deep in our hearts. I appeal to everyone throughout the world not to forget this dignity which is ours. No one has the right to take it from us.

Ah, the beginning of self-knowledge and knowledge of others leads to knowledge of God.

Again, the Pope quotes the Pope Emeritus' encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which I examined on this blog almost two years ago.  Follow the tags.

“Purchasing is always a moral – and not simply economic – act”.[146] Today, in a word, “the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle”.[147]

I shall finish this encyclical tomorrow...I feel like reading Hard Times, by Dickens.

Being in Eastertide Is Down and Dirty

From today's First Reading:

Acts 14:19-28New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition 

19 But Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium and won over the crowds. Then they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. 20 But when the disciples surrounded him, he got up and went into the city. The next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.

The Return to Antioch in Syria

21 After they had proclaimed the good news to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch. 22 There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.” 23 And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.

24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. 25 When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. 26 From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work[a] that they had completed. 27 When they arrived, they called the church together and related all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith for the Gentiles. 28 And they stayed there with the disciples for some time.

Note that the great Apostle of the Gentiles just got up out of the dirt and carried on. He kept going despite horrible ordeals. Again and again, he and his fellow workers got up and kept preaching, teaching, setting up liturgies, moving on.  He opened the door of faith for the Gentiles.

We are to open the door of Faith. 


We are an Easter People, a community of the Resurrected Christ, Who "trampled death by death" and "led the captives out of prison"

However, many of us do not feel release from the pains of many prisons. With the increasing evil revealed in even the msm, one may feel overwhelmed with negativity and the proliferation of sin.

But, Christ has overcome evil and He has overcome death. However, some of us wear death in our souls from sin, from sins against us, from daily, almost constant persecution and the various consequences of sin in the larger society.

McDonald's, were I sit daily, and write to my Dear Readers, has a motto here in this state, "Your lovin'--Their healing." I assume the advertisers mean to state that a mom and dad who takes their kid or kids to Macs will be feeding them good food and helping charities at the same time.

Some of the billions of the money earned through places like this little outlet, goes to houses for medical treatment for children. A drop in the bucket... And, I am sure the vast majority of people who come here for coffee and a muffin, or the dollar menu actually care if any of the money goes to charity.

This type of charity, which is another word for love, is not the type of charity God, the Resurrected One, demands of us daily. Love cannot be compartmentalized. It cannot be pushed off to be done by others. We need, absolutely, to be involved with others who have needs.

Lately, I have noticed that most people do not want to get involved with the needy, or, only at a great distance. I see this in my own life, but then, I understand that people are limited in love, just as I am, and that we have to be pulled, even pushed out of our comfort zones.

Our charity must be direct, involved, "down and dirty" as Christ got down and dirty walking this earth created for happiness and perfection and not for sin.

Sin was mankind's idea, not God's.

When Christ appeared in His Resurrected Body, He wore and still wears for all time, the wounds from His Crucifixion.

Have you meditated on this fact? The Glorified Body of Christ bears all the major wounds-the marks on the Hands, the spear-thrust wound in the Side, the holes in the Feet.

Recently, a priest reminded me that the wounds I wear from trials, poverty, illness, especially is done for mortification and for the glory of God, will be part of my resurrected, glorified body.

Amazing--the wounds we carry will be part of our glory, and how these wounds will be manifested is a mystery.

But, one can guess. If one has been hated, perhaps one will emanate great love. If one has been poor, perhaps one will be adorned like a princess. If one has been calumniated, a great humility will be obvious.

Mary, Our Mother, shares in all the greatest of virtues, from her Immaculate Conception to her days with John in Ephesus.

What were those long days like as she waited for God to call her home?

She was in constant union with the Trinity.

Again and again, I return to this mystery of the Indwelling of the Trinity. The Trinity dwells within all who are in sanctifying grace.

St. Teresa of Avila's birthday is being celebrated by Carmelites and those of us who love her this year. She was born in 1515. More than many saints, she shared what it means to experience the Indwelling of the Trinity.

Here is one of her notes on this fact, also referred to by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine.

The spirit becomes enkindled and is illumined as it were, by a cloud of the greatest brightness. It sees these Three Persons, individually, and yet, by a wonderful kind of knowledge which is given to it, the soul realizes that most certainly and truly all these three Persons are one Substance and one Power and one Knowledge and one God alone; so that what we hold by faith the soul may be aid here to grasp by sight, although nothing is seen by the eyes, either of the body or of the soul, for it is no ordinary vision.

As Garrigou-Lagrange, who refers to this teaching of St. Teresa notes, this awareness comes after the Dark Night and when one is entering the Illumination State.

Even some great saints, such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, did not experience the awareness of the Indwelling of the Trinity until the very end of her life.

That some saints live in this awareness has been made clear by their writings-I think of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. I shall share more of her insights later this week.

While one is walking with God, one must keep in mind that although the lives of the saints are useful guides, God calls each one of us in a unique manner.

There is only one Thomas Aquinas, only one Teresa of Avila, only one Joseph of Cupertino, only one Mary of Egypt.

However, the universal truth of the Indwelling of the Trinity may be shared by all the baptized who are in sanctifying grace.

An exploration of the Indwelling of the Trinity will be my theme this week on this blog.

Knowledge of Divine Things 31 Caritas in Veritate 6

Vice controls both finances and social interactions of most governments and cultures. The great vice controlling the imaginations and decisions of most leaders and followers is avarice. Without defeating avarice in the soul. all political efforts are useless, to be honest. Without reason informing the soul, one is trapped in the sins of the passions.

Reflection must be part of our daily lives regarding all aspects of social and cultural life. One must put all things "under Christ".  Individual rights go hand-in-hand with duties, and part of the larger ethical dimension of Church teaching.  This is our framework for decision making regarding responsibility in the public sphere. Too many people have "private religion", which is one of the problems with some "thinkers" at the synod. There is not division between private and public expressions of the Faith. Reason informs faith on all aspects of human life.

43. “The reality of human solidarity, which is a benefit for us, also imposes a duty”[105]. Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except to themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people's integral development. Hence it is important to call for a renewed reflection on how rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere licence[106]. Nowadays we are witnessing a grave inconsistency. On the one hand, appeals are made to alleged rights, arbitrary and non-essential in nature, accompanied by the demand that they be recognized and promoted by public structures, while, on the other hand, elementary and basic rights remain unacknowledged and are violated in much of the world[107]. A link has often been noted between claims to a “right to excess”, and even to transgression and vice, within affluent societies, and the lack of food, drinkable water, basic instruction and elementary health care in areas of the underdeveloped world and on the outskirts of large metropolitan centres. The link consists in this: individual rights, when detached from a framework of duties which grants them their full meaning, can run wild, leading to an escalation of demands which is effectively unlimited and indiscriminate. An overemphasis on rights leads to a disregard for duties. Duties set a limit on rights because they point to the anthropological and ethical framework of which rights are a part, in this way ensuring that they do not become licence. Duties thereby reinforce rights and call for their defence and promotion as a task to be undertaken in the service of the common good. Otherwise, if the only basis of human rights is to be found in the deliberations of an assembly of citizens, those rights can be changed at any time, and so the duty to respect and pursue them fades from the common consciousness. Governments and international bodies can then lose sight of the objectivity and “inviolability” of rights. When this happens, the authentic development of peoples is endangered[108]. Such a way of thinking and acting compromises the authority of international bodies, especially in the eyes of those countries most in need of development. Indeed, the latter demand that the international community take up the duty of helping them to be “artisans of their own destiny”[109], that is, to take up duties of their own. The sharing of reciprocal duties is a more powerful incentive to action than the mere assertion of rights.

Sadly the bad developments, mostly coming from the United States government, in an effort to control the global economy, has set back some of the more optimistic ideals of the Pope Emeritus. the unreasonableness of socialism, condemned by every pope in the past 150 plus years, has been ignored by many governments.

Much in fact depends on the underlying system of morality. On this subject the Church's social doctrine can make a specific contribution, since it is based on man's creation “in the image of God” (Gen 1:27), a datum which gives rise to the inviolable dignity of the human person and the transcendent value of natural moral norms. When business ethics prescinds from these two pillars, it inevitably risks losing its distinctive nature and it falls prey to forms of exploitation; more specifically, it risks becoming subservient to existing economic and financial systems rather than correcting their dysfunctional aspects. Among other things, it risks being used to justify the financing of projects that are in reality unethical. The word “ethical”, then, should not be used to make ideological distinctions, as if to suggest that initiatives not formally so designated would not be ethical. Efforts are needed — and it is essential to say this — not only to create “ethical” sectors or segments of the economy or the world of finance, but to ensure that the whole economy — the whole of finance — is ethical, not merely by virtue of an external label, but by its respect for requirements intrinsic to its very nature. The Church's social teaching is quite clear on the subject, recalling that the economy, in all its branches, constitutes a sector of human activity[113].

Knowledge of Divine Things 30 Caritas in Veritate 5

Moving back a little, I am referring to the section in the encyclical on Original Sin.

Many Catholics do not believe in Original Sin; see my series on heresies, Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism.

Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin. The Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: “Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals”[85]. In the list of areas where the pernicious effects of sin are evident, the economy has been included for some time now. We have a clear proof of this at the present time. The conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action. Then, the conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise. As I said in my Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, history is thereby deprived of Christian hope[86], deprived of a powerful social resource at the service of integral human development, sought in freedom and in justice. Hope encourages reason and gives it the strength to direct the will[87]. It is already present in faith, indeed it is called forth by faith. Charity in truth feeds on hope and, at the same time, manifests it. As the absolutely gratuitous gift of God, hope bursts into our lives as something not due to us, something that transcends every law of justice. Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance. It takes first place in our souls as a sign of God's presence in us, a sign of what he expects from us. Truth — which is itself gift, in the same way as charity — is greater than we are, as Saint Augustine teaches[88]. Likewise the truth of ourselves, of our personal conscience, is first of all
given to us. In every cognitive process, truth is not something that we produce, it is always found, or better, received. Truth, like love, “is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings”[89].

The truth is that many Catholics no longer believe in Original Sin, which, unless one is baptized, keeps on in darkness, and, simply, "not saved."

Do not think that children in Original Sin have grace to combat the evils of the world and the devil, as well as the flesh. They do not. Reason is in darkness. And, those unbaptized do not have the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

to be continued...

Busy Day = Short Post on Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-Nine Caritas in Veritate Four

Today, I worked with a maintenance person who was taking out old skirting boards and putting in new ones; then, I cleaned the entire house after he left. After that, I showed the house to someone who was interested.

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].

Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-Eight Caritas in Veritate Three

For those who have not read the long series on grace and free will, please do so. Such basic teachings are necessary for understanding some of the encyclicals.

As I have noted, knowledge leads to praxis. And, we are responsible for cooperating with the graces given to us daily in order to learn, to know.

Here is the Pope Emeritus again:

5. Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity.

All baptized persons are given the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity in baptism. These virtues need to be cultivated through the other virtues, prayer and study. (See my posts on virtues and virtue training). The above phrase approves us and condemns us, "As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity."

God has loved us first, we respond, and make ourselves, through free will, into "instruments of grace" for others. The weakness of the Church, (see other posts as well on this subject), is that the laity and clergy alike for the most part, indeed, the majority, do not cooperate with charity and fall into self-seeking egotism.

This dynamic of charity received and given is what gives rise to the Church's social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the proclamation of the truth of Christ's love in society. This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth. Truth preserves and expresses charity's power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history. It is at the same time the truth of faith and of reason, both in the distinction and also in the convergence of those two cognitive fields. 

All isms, all ideologies have a philosophy behind the actions seen in history, If you remember the Gramsci posts, you will see how his view of history clashed with the Catholic view. We, as Catholics, have an anti-socialist view of history and society. We believe in the individual love of each person reaching out to other persons and individuals.

Faith and reason must move towards both the renewal of the person and the renewal of society through love, not isms.

Development, social well-being, the search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth. What they need even more is that this truth should be loved and demonstrated. 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, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present.

Would that every cardinal, bishop and priest truly believed this. We have so many Marxists and socialists in the Church, such condemned societal philosophies spoken even from the pulpit, that people no longer believe in charity.

The one world government to come, and any totalitarian state feeds on the destruction of individual charity. Social fragmentation allows tyrants to take over.

Benedict is clear on these points.

 “Caritas in veritate” is the principle around which the Church's social doctrine turns, a principle that takes on practical form in the criteria that govern moral action. I would like to consider two of these in particular, of special relevance to the commitment to development in an increasingly globalized society: justice and the common good.

Shades of Leo XIII! Charity goes beyond justice. None of this Victorian "deserving poor" mythology, or the ideology that all people should have the same things and wealth. There is a hatred of the poor in the States but also a hatred of the rich....an attitude ripe for tyrannical government. This envy of the rich and despising of the poor are both contrary to the Gospel.

First of all, justice. Ubi societas, ibi ius: every society draws up its own system of justice. Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI's words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. 

Would that Catholics were so holy as to transform the City of Man into the City of God.

On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God's love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.

Just a warning to those fuzzy Catholics in the Church--Revelation and Tradition, as backed up by philosophy and theology, must be part of the implementation of both justice and charity.

to be continued....

Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-Seven Caritas in Veritate Two

3. Through this close link with truth, charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations, including those of a public nature. Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. 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. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to explain to someone how sentimentality was a sin of inauthentic love.  Sentimentality is a false love without truth, without reason and only sensual feelings. With the use of reason and the intellect, one can love in truth.

This is the huge problem of some of the members of the synod who want a love, an acceptance, an inclusion without truth. This is a type of sentimentality towards sinners which does not demand change, metanoia, repentance or reparation. Reason and faith show us that subjectivity which is false love. With mere emotions and opinions, people lack the framework of sacrificial love, which is the only true love.

Emotionalism is "all about me" and not about the other person's good. 

Christ, the Word of God, the Logos, is Agape, the True Love of selflessness.

Faith without reasons destroys love, making it subjective and not objective. Our reference in true love is always Christ, not ourselves.

The "public dimension" is revealed in the authentic human being who has not separated himself into a private life and a public life. This authentic type of life is the integrated life of the saint, who is consumed with love of Christ and neighbor.

to be continued....

Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-Six Caritas in Veritate One

I cannot do justice to the end of Fides et Ratio, but you all can read it yourselves. I want to move on to Caritas in Veritate, because of circumstances with time.

Again, I may not have the Internet much longer....

The entire theme of the then Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical is that love is in truth an truth is in love.

Simple, but not really.

What this encyclical has to do with faith and reason will become clear as I move along in the text.

Here is part of the preamble or introduction.

All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. 

Typical Benedict, is that he gets to the pith of the matter immediately. All of us want love and all of us deep down inside, as humans, wnat truth. But this desire and journey have to be purified, (yes! perfection again) and freed by the intiative and salvation which comes through Christ alone.

In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

What a packed sentence: only in Christ can we love first Him, as a Person, and then all others. Christ is truth.

This seeking is an intellectual pursuit, btw, and not merely emotional. In fact, when searching for the Truth, Who is a Person, we must be prepared for a ruthlessness of seeing ourselves as we really are.

Charity is love in Christ, not some gooey emotional feeling. Remember, love is in the will.

2. Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbour; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). For the Church, instructed by the Gospel, charity is everything because, as Saint John teaches (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16) and as I recalled in my first Encyclical Letter, “God is love” (Deus Caritas Est): 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.

Two years ago, I walked you through Deus Caritas Est. Some of you may have time to go back and review those posts.

All commitment comes from charity. All personal relationships which are good and true are based on charity.  We start with the small groups around us and spread out this detached love to all.

Love orders all relationships, and is the great gift of God. Yes, we receive faith and hope through God's love for us. But, because this love is in the will, one must always see it as connected with truth, even in the market place. There is, simply, no real charity without truth. As the Pope Emeritus points out here, relativism destroys charity, as it becomes disconnected with truth.

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.

to be continued...