Saturday, September 1, 2012

The first factor in human development: life in Christ

Three years ago today, on the Communion & Liberation-focused blog I used to maintain, shortly after it was promulgated (29 June 2009), I posted an extract from Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, Caritas in veritate, which translates as Charity in truth:

"In 1967, when he issued the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, my venerable predecessor Pope Paul VI illuminated the great theme of the development of peoples with the splendour of truth and the gentle light of Christ's charity. He taught that life in Christ is the first and principal factor of development and he entrusted us with the task of travelling the path of development with all our heart and all our intelligence, that is to say with the ardour of charity and the wisdom of truth. It is the primordial truth of God's love, grace bestowed upon us, that opens our lives to gift and makes it possible to hope for a 'development of the whole man and of all men', to hope for progress from less human conditions to those which are more human' obtained by overcoming the difficulties that are inevitably encountered along the way" (par. 8- emboldening and italicizing emphasis mine).

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