The Pope's New Encyclical: Spe Salvi is A Bombshell

Warning Long Post :)
This new Encyclical is quite something. I am still digesting it. I am kinda of amazed that people are not realizing the significance of it. I have to admit I fell for that. You Know yes we are saved by Hope Yada Yada Yada nothing new under the sun.

Well of course that is a great thing we need to reminded of and live of course. I thought basically I was going open up this piece and start reading a nice Homily or lecture. Well I was a tad astonished when I read it. There is a lot here. It goes into unexpected places. Especially into the Catholic Doctrine of purgatory in which I did not expect. In fact a good part of it seems to be a meditation on what we Catholics call the "Last Things". One Italian Paper commented:
A bomb. It is the new encyclical of Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, in which there is not a single quotation from the Council (a choice of huge significance); in which at last Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory are spoken of again (and even the Anti-Christ, even though in an excerpt of Kant); in which horrors are called by their name (for instance, "Communism", a word which, at the Council, it was forbidden to pronounce and condemn); in which, instead of greeting the powerful of this world, the powerful witness of Christian martyrs, the victims, is mentioned; in which the rhetoric of the "religions" is wiped out, by affirming that the Savior is only one; in which Mary is shown as the "star of hope"; and in which it is shown that blind faith in progress (alone) and in science (alone) leads to disaster and despair.
Benedict XVI does not quote, from the Council, even "Gaudium et spes", which nonetheless had in its title the word "hope", but wipes out the very mistake disastrously introduced in the Catholic world by that which was the main Conciliar constitution, "On the Church in the Modern World". The Pope invites, in fact, at n. 22, to a "a self-critique of modern Christianity". Particularly on the concept of "progress.

Is that too strong? Perhaps but maybe it is not strong enough. I thought John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter had a very good summary of it in his piece Spe Salvi a 'Greatest Hits' collection of core Ratzinger ideas. Of course as Mr Allen correctly points out the Pope would say these are ideas that are essence of the Deposit of Faith not his. He says:
If one were to compile a list of the core concerns of Joseph Ratzinger, his idees fixes over almost sixty years now of theological reflection, it might look something like this:
• Truth is not a limit upon freedom, but the condition of freedom reaching its true potential;

• Reason and faith need one another – faith without reason becomes extremism, while reason without faith leads to despair;

• The dangers of the modern myth of progress, born in the new science of the 16th century and applied to politics through the French Revolution and Marxism;

• The impossibility of constructing a just social order without reference to God;

• The urgency of separating eschatology, the longing for a “new Heaven and a new earth,” from this-worldly politics;

• Objective truth as the only real limit to ideology and the blind will to power.

All those themes take center stage once again in the encyclical Spe Salvi, released today in Rome. In that sense, one could argue that the text represents a sort of “Greatest Hits” collection of Ratzinger’s most important ideas, developed over a lifetime, and now presented in the form of an encyclical in his role as Pope Benedict XVI.

Mr Allen then sums it up very well:
In essence, the message of Spe Salvi can be expressed this way: If human beings place their hopes for justice, redemption and a better life exclusively in this-worldly forces, whether it’s science, politics, or anything else, they’re lost. The carnage of the 20th century, the pope suggests, illustrates the folly of investing human ideology and technology with messianic expectations.
Instead, ultimate hope – what the pope describes as “the great hope” – lies only in God, because only through the moral and spiritual wisdom acquired through faith can technology and political structures be directed towards ends which are truly human.

I think that is exactly what the Pope is doing here. It is far more than it appears in the secular news clippings. There is a lot here and it touches on all faces of life. Including the political. However I was very struck by the last parts. It seems the Pope is talking purgatory. Now contrary to popular belief the Catholic Church is very wary of describing what Purgatory is. We know it exists but the particulars have never been defined. I think what the Holy Father says here is significant. It also touched me. When I converted , the priest that brought me in the Catholic Church used much the same description the Holy Father is using. The fact that the Holy Father seems to be going out of his to delve into Eastern Church seems significant on many levels. Let me quote this in full:

This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history.

In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell[37]. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].

46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God's judgement according to each person's particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ[39]. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).
48. A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2 Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too[40]. As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.

Now if you still with me on this post that part is quite something. The London Telegraph is again one of the best English secular papers that gives serious analysis of Christian and Catholic things and don't fail us here. Even though quite ironically the Telegraph notes that the English UK Bishops might have failed their faithful by not alerting them to this document.

I think that people shall commenting more on this the next week. After I read on it and pray on it I will have some further posts on it. However what again struck me was this. Pope Benedict's writings are very in your face. They are not lofty sounding and very directed to us folks in the pews. I think this interview that has been translated from Vatican Radio was right on. I shall end with this for now

An encyclical that calls us to examine ourselves

Alessandro Gisotti interviewed Fr. Salvatore Vitiello, professor of Introduction to Theology at the Catholic University of Rome, and asked him what he thought to be the distinctive characteristics of the Pope's second encyclical :

Prof. Vitiello: First of all, I think one must ask everyone to read the text in full and reflect on it, because the Pope leads the reader on an analysis not only of the great contemporary philosophical and theological issues, but to an introspective self-examination. To ask oneself, one's heart: What is it that you really desire most? The answer is obviously life - a full life. And for Christians, that can only mean eternal life, a life that is so much life that it can never end.

And the Pope clearly says this is the goal of Christian hope, and only Christ, who triumphed over death, can guarantee such a life that comes only from God. In this encyclical, the Pope affirms that faith draws the future into the present, and so, there is a strong eschatological dimension in it [discussion of the final end for man and the world].

Certainly - while correcting a certain eschatologism which has never been truly Christian. We can say this. The risk of eschatological consideration is to present a Christianity that is divorced from reality, a Christianity that I would describe as 'evaporating' into a future which is obviously not here yet. The opposite risk, which is much more prevalent today, is to reduce Christianity simply to an immanent dimension, something relevant only to the here and now, and therefore looking at it merely as a possible response to economic and social problems.

Both positions are limiting, since they negate their complementarity. So, what the Pope is saying very forcefully is this: Men of our time, do not forget that Christianity has always been a tension between 'what is already' and 'what is to come'. He must remind us, because today, even among Christians, we are all immersed in the materialism that pervades the Western world. Therefore, to remind Christians of this eschatological perspective is quite fundamental.

The second part of the encyclical about the 'settings' to learn and exercise Christian hope, the Pope underscores that our belief in the Last Judgment is "above all, hope"...
Precisely because the encyclical is premised on valuing two extraordinary faculties given to men - freedom and reason - it can go on to say that, in view of man's freedom to choose, hell is a real possibility, as Catholic doctrine says. And about the Last Judgment, he says: "It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value." This takes account of individual freedom to choose the life one chooses to live. Therefore, the Last Judgment has to be considered in the light of hope. If man's final end is salvation, hope for salvation is activated during our lifetime by the simple choices that we make, day after day.