Comment by Rich Accetta-Evans on 7th mo. 7, 2009 at 8:07pm

Nate Swift informs me that the title of the encyclical is not "Caritas et Veritate" as I had written, but "Caritas in Veritate". So now it sounds to me as if it means "Love In Truth" rather than "Charity in Truth". (Although, of course, in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians in the King James Version the word "Charity" is used where most more recent translations would use "love"). Either way, the meaning is the same.
I think that the New York Times article, when I first read it, had "et" rather than "in" as the preposition, but I see that it no longer does. Either I was hallucinating or an alert Times editor caught the error.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 7th mo. 9, 2009 at 11:30pm

Popes indeed call for good things as well as bad ones. But no doubt they are more easily heeded when their demands fit in with customary evils than when, as now, they try to go against the current.

To put one's hope in the prince of a church... doesn't seem that different from putting one's hope in some secular prince--and we can see how that has been turning out.

If you, and I, call for economic justice, it may not rate a headline, or wield tremendous influence. But it seems more meaningful--in that any power such a call has must depend on its own merits, and people's readiness to see them.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 7th mo. 10, 2009 at 1:18pm

Afterthought... So far as this necessarily invokes the authority of a spokeperson... The Bible clearly, repeatedly calls for economic justice. With good, practical sanctions imposed for not doing so (See Jeremiah etc!)

As people have increasingly freed themselves from the tyrannical use of scripture, this has been one of the first things to go. We've ended with the "freedom to sell junk-bonds" for anyone with the power to produce them, with the rest of us free to eat what's left over--less and less. (There are publicly available figures on the amount of money that moves each day between banks, etc. It is roughly 1000 times the amount invested in the 'real economy' of goods & services (including myriad bads & disservices) that sustains the rest of us.)

Do we need one tyranny to protect us from another? How do we turn ourselves & others to the Authority that relies on truth & love (& alas, consequences)?

Comment