IN his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI calls for a deeper understanding of love as a gift from God to be shared in a self-sacrificial way, both at a personal and social level.
The Pope says love between couples, often reduced today to selfish sexual pleasure, needs to be purified to include “concern and care for the other”.
Love is also charity, he says, and the Church has an obligation to help the needy wherever they are found – but its primary motives must always be spiritual, never political or ideological.
The nearly 16,000-word encyclical, titled “Deus Caritas Est” (God is Love), was issued on January 25.
It is divided into two sections, one on the meaning of love in salvation history, the other on the practise of love by the Church.
The Pope said his aim was to “speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in return must share with others”.
The two aspects, personal love and the practise of charity, are profoundly interconnected, he said.
The Pope examined and rejected the Marxist arguments that the poor “do not need charity but justice”, and that charity is merely a means of preserving a status quo of economic injustice.
He said the Church must help the needy wherever they are found, and he cited Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta as an example of love in action.
