Pope on love? Not the topic of alleged hardliner

Father Thomas Williams NBC Vatican Analyst

Pope Benedict XVI has proved a surprise for supporters and critics alike. Who, after all, would have predicted that the supposedly timid Bavarian would sport a fluffy fur cap at Christmas time?

When Joseph Ratzinger was elected to succeed John Paul II as pope last April, many expected a firebrand. In keeping with his reputation as the severe watchdog of Catholic doctrine, Ratzinger was anticipated to be an ecclesiastical house-cleaner, drawing lines in the sand and summarily cutting out dead wood.

Contrary to expectations, however, Benedict has left the Roman curia — the central administration of the Catholic Church — virtually untouched, has taken no disciplinary action against wayward theologians, and even appointed a relatively liberal San Francisco archbishop to be his successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Wednesday's release of the pope’s first encyclical letter will only further befuddle those seeking to pigeonhole Benedict as a doctrinal hardliner and disciplinarian. Vatican watchers emphasize the importance of a pope’s first encyclical — a teaching letter of highest papal authority — as a reliable indicator of the tone and direction a given pontificate will take.

Benedict’s choice of “love” as the topic for this important statement hardly squares with his moniker as “God’s Rottweiler.”

Hoping to rehabilitate the word ‘love’
Poetically, this encyclical coincides with Benedict’s nine-month anniversary as pope, eliciting unavoidable comparisons with childbirth. Benedict’s firstborn takes the form of a 71-page reflection, notably shorter than John Paul’s encyclicals, which regularly were double that length. Though a small baby by modern standards, the encyclical tackles tough questions and makes up in depth what it lacks in breadth.

“God Is Love” (“Deus Caritas Est)”  takes its title from a New Testament verse attributed to Saint John (1 John 4:16), one of Jesus’ twelve apostles and author of the fourth gospel account. Benedict uses the citation as a point of departure for his affirmation of the centrality of love in the Christian life as a sum of the commandments and heart of the gospel message.

The word “love,” Benedict recently stated when previewing the encyclical in Rome, “is so tarnished, so spoiled and so abused, that one is almost afraid to pronounce it.”  At the same time, he said, “it is a primordial word, an expression of the primordial reality, and we cannot simply abandon it. We must take it up again, purify it and give back to it its original splendor.” Such was the purpose of this first teaching letter.

The rehabilitation of love, Benedict notes, requires a return to its divine origins.  To understand the nature of love, we must look to God who is love itself. Christian theology sees the human person as created in the image and likeness of God. Loving and being loved is the very meaning of human existence. Therefore, the rediscovery of love means the rediscovery of humanity.

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