venerdì, febbraio 17, 2006

Love Conquers All: An Encyclical and its Intertexts

Il commento più lungo alla Deus Caritas Est che ho letto finora l'ha scritto Joseph O'Leary. Molto interessante. Da prendere, come direbbe il piccolozaccheo, cum grano salis.



Uncontroversial? I have tried to indicate some lurking reefs of contention here and there in the encyclical. Yet the basic controversy is the one just touched on: is the world the work of a loving God or of blind, potentially malevolent forces? To many Benedict’s message will be long familiar, but to some it may indeed come as news. The religion they have received or rejected may have boiled down to the equation “God is Hell” (as a Dutch Calvinist woman once put it to me). So let me end by repeating the essentials that the Pope seeks to clarify: God made the world from love and continues indefectibly to loves what he has made; his love is infinitely compassionate even though we cannot always see or feel this, and infinitely forgiving; our love for one another, both in its erotic roots and in its agapeic enactment, is a reflection of the divine and a path to the divine; it is not to be frittered away; God draws all creatures to share in the ecstasy of heaven, which begins here on earth in the practice of love.

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