Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine," writes Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of his new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate -- a sort of "long essay" to the faithful that deals with the matter of man's relationship to Mammon.
The Pontiff's emphasis on charity is consistent for the worldwide religious body whose adherents believe in divine love and the necessity to treat one's neighbors and even one's enemies as one wishes to be treated--Christianity's golden rule. In his new proclamation to Catholics, and to "all people of good will," the Pope calls on mankind to recall that "profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end . . ." However, he warns against profit as an exclusive goal.
The Pope examined globalization and the harm caused by rich countries exploiting poor countries and selected the ethical principle of charity to be the most important.
As the moral authority of millions his followers are encouraged to adopt this ethical principle of charity to economics. Then he supplies them with a moral imagination that applies this general principle of charity to specifically mean contributing a part of your business profits to charity.
POF 9-5 gives 4 levels of motives: 1. egotism, 2. moral authority, 3. moral insight, and the highest as 4. conceptual intuition. Those who accept the Pope's message as a command that must be followed because he is their authority operate at the second level of morality; moral authority. If you assume the Pope arrived at this leading moral principle by understanding that charity would do the greatest good for all humankind would put it at the third level: moral insight. It becomes a fixed principle to be applied to better the ethics of business. The Pope then puts his idea of "good" into a specific picture, a moral imagination of donating profits to charities.
The highest moral level is conceptual intuition which sees a certain value in all moral principles and always asks whether in the given case this or that principle is the more important. An ethical individualist would not be held to a fixed principle such as "doing the greatest good for humanity" but may select the principle of "the greatest good for myself". The particular moral principle would be selected for each single situation.
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So-Rat
Rudolf Steiner Polarities in Evolution pg 30
…. Modern minds will finally have to leave behind the narrow-minded views they hold today … we cannot develop and think ahead to the future unless we broaden the tunnel vision which has evolved in almost every sphere of life. We must expand the time horizons we survey and consider larger evolutionary time span than present-day history normally covers.
The things of the past, things that existed in historical and prehistoric evolution, do of course give way to other things as time progresses, but in certain areas they are retained.
They are retained by becoming external, continuing in an outer form and losing their inner meaning. The awareness of the godlike nature of the ruler that was a feature of earliest imperialism still comes up here or there in the present age, except that it no longer has any meaning, since mankind progresses and does not stand still.
Not long ago a Roman Catholic bishop addressed a pastoral to his diocese in which he stated nothing more and nothing less than that a Roman Catholic priest conducting an act of worship was more powerful than Christ Jesus himself.
Note 13 pg 174
Prince-Archbishop Johann Baptist Katschthaler, Salzburg, Austria. Pastoral of 2 February 1905 entitled ‘Die dem katholischen Priester gebührende Ehre’ (The honour due to Catholic priests), reprinted in Carl Mirbt Quellen zur Geschichte des Pabsttums and des römischen Katholizisms (Sources relating to the history of the papacy and of Roman Catholicism) 5. Aufl. Tübingen 1934, s. 497 ff. The powers relating to the powers of consecration is given below.
‘Honour your priests, for they have the power of consecration. Catholic priests have this wonderful power of consecration, Protestant pastors do not. This power of consecration, to make the Body of the Lord be present, with the precious Blood, with the whole of His sacred humanity and His divine nature in the Bread and the Wine – that is a great a sublime power, a truly extraodinary power! Where in heaven is a power like that of the Catholic priest to be found? Among the angels? Or does the Mother of God have it? Mary conceived Christ, the Son of God, in her womb and gave birth to Him in the stable in Bethlehem. Yes. But consider what happens during Holy Mass! Does not the same thing happen, as it were, when the priest raises his hands in blessing during the consecration? Christ is really and truly made present, to be reborn, as it were, in the Bread and the Wine. Mary bore her child in Bethlehem, wrapping it in swaddling clothes; a priest does the same, as it were, placing the wafer on the corporal cloth. Mary brought her child into the world just once. But see, a priest does this not once, but many hundreds and thousands of times, each time he celebrates the Mass. There, in the stable, the child which Mary gave to the world was small, capable of suffering and mortal. Here, on the altar, in the hands of the priest, we have Christ in His glory, not capable of suffering and also immortal, sitting in heaven to the right of the Father, glorious and triumphant, perfect in every regard. Do priests merely make the Body and the Blood be present? No. They sacrifice, offering sacrifice to the Heavenly Father. This is the same sacrifice that Christ brought by shedding His blood on Calvary and bloodlessly at the Last Supper. There eternal High Priest Jesus Christ sacrificed His Flesh, His Blood and His very Life to the Heavenly Father; here, at the Mass, He does the same through his representative, the Catholic priests. He ordained priests to take His place so that they might continue the same sacrifice that He had brought. He has transferred to them the authority over His sacred humanity, giving them power over His body, as it were. A Catholic priest is able not only to make Him be present on the altar, lock Him up in the tabernacle, take Him out again and give Him to the faithful to eat, he is actually able to offer Him, the Son of God become Man, as a bloodless sacrifice for the living and the dead. Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father by whom heaven and earth were created and who sustains the whole world, submits to the Catholic priests in this respect.’
Evil
Why does Ratzinger have an image of The Christ on the Cross?
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