Monday morning mission meditation for week of July 12: Pope Benedict's Angelus and reflection on Caritas in Veritate

Church Is an Expert in Humanity, Says Pope Affirms It Also Preaches Gospel of Love and Justice

VATICAN CITY, JULY 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).-

Although the Church may not have all the technical solutions to the problems afflicting the world today, it is an expert in humanity and offers to all mankind teachings of truth, justice and love, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope said this today before praying the midday Angelus with crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square, days after the conclusion of the annual Group of Eight summit, held this year in L'Aquila.

The G-8 comprises the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. Several developing nations, including China, India, Brazil and Mexico were invited to the summit.

"Some of the topics on the agenda were dramatically urgent," the Pontiff said. "In the world there are social inequalities and structural injustices that are no longer tolerable, that demand, besides the right and proper immediate interventions, a coordinated strategy to find long lasting general solutions."

During the summit the heads of state and of governments of the G-8 again stressed the necessity of arriving at common accords with the purpose of assuring humanity a better future."

"The Church does not have technical solutions to present," the Holy Father continued, "but, as an expert in humanity, she offers to everyone the teaching of the sacred Scripture on the truth about man and proclaims the Gospel of Love and justice."

Referring to his third encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," published ahead of the summit, Benedict XVI noted that a "new economic plan is needed that will reshape development in a global way, basing itself on the fundamental ethics of responsibility before God and before man as a creature of God."

"This is because," he said, quoting the encyclical, "in an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family."

The Holy Father said his encyclical was dedicated to the "global horizon of the social question," which has become in our time a "radically anthropological question."

He explained: "The solutions to the current problems of humanity cannot be merely technical, but must take account of all the needs of the person, who is endowed with soul and body, and must thus take the Creator, God, into consideration.

"The 'absolutism of technology,' which finds its highest expression in certain practices that are contrary to life, could design gloomy scenarios for the future of humanity.

"The deeds that do not respect the true dignity of the person, even when they seem to be based on a 'loving decision,' are in reality the fruit of a 'materialistic and mechanistic understanding of human life' that reduces love without truth to 'an empty shell, filled in an arbitrary way' and could in this way lead to negative effects for integral human development."

"Despite the complexity of the current situation of the world," Benedict XVI concluded, "the Church looks to the future with hope and reminds Christians that 'the proclamation of Christ is the first and principal factor of development.'