Comments on: New B16 Encyclical! http://adventus.org/en/benedictus/new-b16-encyclical/ Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:19:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: jayd http://adventus.org/en/benedictus/new-b16-encyclical/comment-page-1/#comment-11768 jayd Sun, 09 Dec 2007 05:30:53 +0000 http://adventus.org/en/benedictus/new-b16-encyclical/#comment-11768 I began to read the encyclical on line and finally got a print version which was in the Pilot (I live in Boston). It is simply wonderful. The second of the theological virtues always sort of confused me and was I just getting to the point of asking how is faith different from hope, when out pops a thirty some odd page answer to my ill-formed musings. Elsewhere on line I have seen others isolating this nugget of wisdom (title is mine): Prevailing Over Evil and Suffering "Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an "undoing" of past suffering, reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgment is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfillment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ's return and for new life become fully convincing." [Spe Salvi, § 43]. Isn't that just superb? Isn't it a blessing that the world's smartest, most lucid theologian became Pope? I began to read the encyclical on line and finally got a print version which was in the Pilot (I live in Boston). It is simply wonderful. The second of the theological virtues always sort of confused me and was I just getting to the point of asking how is faith different from hope, when out pops a thirty some odd page answer to my ill-formed musings.

Elsewhere on line I have seen others isolating this nugget of wisdom (title is mine):

Prevailing Over Evil and Suffering
“Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an “undoing” of past suffering, reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgment is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfillment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.” [Spe Salvi, § 43].

Isn’t that just superb? Isn’t it a blessing that the world’s smartest, most lucid theologian became Pope?

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