“Social love” 172SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis (4 March 1979), 15: AAS 71 (1979), 288. makes it possible to advance towards a civilization of love, to which all of us can feel called. Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world. 173Cf. SAINT PAUL VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio (26 March 1967), 44: AAS 59 (1967), 279. No mere sentiment, it is the best means of discovering effective paths of development for everyone. Social love is a “force capable of inspiring new ways of approaching the problems of today’s world, of profoundly renewing structures, social organizations and legal systems from within”. 174Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 207.
Charity is at the heart of every healthy and open society, yet today “it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility”. 175Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009), 2: AAS 101 (2009), 642. Charity, when accompanied by a commitment to the truth, is much more than personal feeling, and consequently need not “fall prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions”. 176Ibid., 3: AAS 101 (2009), 643. Indeed its close relation to truth fosters its universality and preserves it from being “confined to a narrow field devoid of relationships”. 177Ibid., 4: AAS 101 (2009), 643. Otherwise, it would be “excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis”. 178Ibid. Without truth, emotion lacks relational and social content. Charity’s openness to truth thus protects it from “a fideism that deprives it of its human and universal breadth”. 179Ibid., 3: AAS 101 (2009), 643.
Charity needs the light of the truth that we constantly seek. “That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith”, 180Ibid.: AAS 101 (2009), 642. and does not admit any form of relativism. Yet it also respects the development of the sciences and their essential contribution to finding the surest and most practical means of achieving the desired results. For when the good of others is at stake, good intentions are not enough. Concrete efforts must be made to bring about whatever they and their nations need for the sake of their development.