Pope Benedict XVI's First Encyclical Letter

Pope Benedict XVI just released his first Encyclical letter called Deus Caritas Est or God is Love. The Encyclical is available online to read here.

Protestants (or all non-Catholics) probably are wondering what exactly an Encyclical is. An encyclical letter is essentially a teaching document of the Church. As the Encyclopedia of Catholic History notes:

Encyclicals bear full authority regardless of whether they are letters or epistles. While an encyclical is not considered an infallible pronouncement by the supreme pontiff, it should always be noted that it does belong to the ordinary teaching authority of the Church, the magisterium, and therefore merits the respect and interior assent of all Catholics.

In other words, an Encyclical is a teaching document that should be accepted by all Catholics. Many encyclicals lay out infallible teaching of the Church.

This specific Encyclical letter deals with God and Love (as obvious by it's title). It isn't overly long and is very readable, so I recommend everyone take a few minutes and read through it. From God through Marriage to charity, the encyclical covers a range of topics and does a great job of identifying the types of love and rejecting some things that are called love. From Deus Caritas Est:

Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory. Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world—this is the invitation I would like to extend with the present Encyclical.

God bless,
Jay