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Caritas in Veritate and the anthropological question, according to Cardinal Ruini
Social Doctrine is an announcement of the truth of Christ in society

Social Doctrine is an announcement of the truth of Christ in society


Author: Antonio Gaspari | Source: Zenit.org



Caritas in Veritate and the anthropological question, according to Cardinal Ruini 
Social Doctrine is an announcement of the truth of Christ in society 

 
 Rome, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (ZENIT.org).-In the first of the meetings for 2010 in the cathedral in Rome, last February 8, cardinal Camillo Ruini explained the relevance of the Social Doctrine of the Church as an anthropological revolution that seeks to announce the truth of Christ in society. 
 
The theme of the meeting, organized by the Vicariate of Rome, was "Caritas in Veritate. Reflection on the anthropological foundations". 
Introducing the subject, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar of Rome, said that "with the Caritas in Veritate the Pope has offered to the Church and all men of goodwill a reflection of great argumentative effort on human development, an organic document of analysis and project for a new world; we could say: an ethical handbook for the economy, and also – in a certain sense – a guide to politics, understood in a high sense. In short, a text of broad looks and hope."
 
"For Pope Benedict," said the cardinal, "no matter of interest to man — and therefore not the social one — can do without referring to the fundamentals. That is, it does not change the concept of man or the way in which one interprets the relationship that subsists between man and nature, man and freedom, man and work, man and economy, but consequently change the concept of society , the end of the economic process, the rules and the objectives of development." 
 
Cardinal Ruini, current president of the Cultural Project of the Italian Episcopal Conference, has emphasized from the outset, retaking the concept of the papal encyclical, that "the social question has become radically an anthropological question" and that, "without truth, charity slips into sentimentality, and a Christianity of charity without truth easily becomes marginal." 
 
From here the assertion that "the Social Doctrine of the Church is Caritas in Veritate in rei social: the announcement of the truth of Christ in society." 
 
The previous president of the CIS and Vicar of Rome explained that "the truth of man is expressed above all in the centrality of the human person", the key principle of a "correct and fruitful realization of development". 
 
"It is the person, in fact, the subject who must assume primarily the duty of development, and the person is the fundamental resource that makes development possible, the first capital to safeguard for the development itself." 
 
In this context, according to the cardinal, "the encyclical dismantles the thesis, disseminated for some time, which the excessive demographic increase is at the origin of the underdevelopment, or at least the delay in development." 
 
"It is rather low birth, he said, which is revealed today as a cause of uncertainty and even decay in economically developed nations, and while morally responsible openness to life represents a social and economic richness." 
 
"Therefore, respect for life and openness to life are at the heart of true development, while the antinatalist mindset and anti-life laws, such as government-imposed demographic control practices, behave very serious human and social costs," he added. 
 
In the context that unites social ethics and the ethics of life, the close relationship of Caritas in Veritate is evident, not only with Populorum Progressio but also with Humane Vitae, as well as with Evangelium Vitae. 
 
On this point, cardinal Ruini strongly supported Pope Benedict XVI's invitation to overcome the gap in the moral sensibility that characterizes the current west. 
 
Retaking the Evangelium Vitae of John Paul II, the cardinal said that "there can be no solid foundation a society that – while affirming values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace – is radically contradicted by accepting and tolerating the most diverse forms of dismissed and violated human life, especially if it is weak and marginalized." 
 
Having denounced the risk of the nihilism of the technique, with the use utilitarian and scientific of the new technologies, the former president of the Italian bishops drew attention to the "current tendencies to separate the culture of nature, decisive problem also for the safeguarding of creation."








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