The Building of a Civilization of Love

The third area of commitment that comes with love is that of daily life with its multiple relationships. I am particularly referring to family, studies, work and free time. Dear young friends, cultivate your talents, not only to obtain a social position, but also to help others to “grow”. Develop your capacities, not only in order to become more “competitive” and “productive”, but to be “witnesses of charity”. In addition to your professional training, also make an effort to acquire religious knowledge that will help you to carry out your mission in a responsible way. In particular, I invite you to carefully study the social doctrine of the Church so that its principles may inspire and guide your action in the world. May the Holy Spirit make you creative in charity, persevering in your commitments, and brave in your initiatives, so that you will be able to offer your contribution to the building up of the “civilisation of love”. The horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world!

- Pope Benedict XVI, WYD 2007 MESSAGE, Growing in love each day


3:12. Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect: but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.
3:13. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself to those that are before,
3:14. I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.

-St. Paul to Philippians

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Love and Responsability

An excellent 32 page document on a JP II info web site. Here are some of the highlighted quotes in the document:

  • “Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness....he must not forget that he is a person” — Pope John Paul II

  • Any one who treats a person as the means to an end does violence to the very essence of the other

  • The paternalistic norm: the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love

  • The sexual urge...is a natural drive born in all human beings, a vector of aspiration along which their whole existence develops

  • To be able to rely on another person, to think of that person as a friend who will never prove false, is for the person who loves a source of peace and joy

  • If love remains mere sentiment it will equally be unlike love in the complete sense of the word

  • The fundamental ethical characteristic of love: it is an affirmation of the person or else it is not love at all

  • “Don’t be afraid to do what is necessary to make love happen, to be people of affirmation”

  • The unification of the two persons must first be achieved by way of love, and sexual relations between them can only be the expression of a unification already complete

  • From the desire for the‘unlimited’ good of another ‘I’ springs the whole creative drive of true love — the drive to endow beloved persons with the good

  • The essence of chastity consists in quickness to affirm the value of the person in every situation

  • Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of truelove

  • Control of concupiscence has as its objective not only the perfection of the person who attempts to achieve it, but...the realization of love in the world of persons

  • Continence is a condition of love,the only attitude towards a partner in marriage, and particularly towards a wife, compatible with affirmation of the value of the person

  • Genuine human love, love ‘for’ a person,and love ‘between’ persons, must combine two elements: tenderness and a certain firmness

  • A ‘marital’ sexual relationship outside the framework of marriage is always objectively a wrong done to the woman

  • Willing acceptance of parenthood serves to break down...reciprocal egoism

  • Willingness for parenthood is an indispensable condition of love

  • “Love cannot be irresponsible”Responsible parenthood is the necessary condition for human love, and it is also the necessary condition for authentic conjugal love, because love cannot be irresponsible. Its beauty is the fruit of responsibility. When love is truly responsible, it is also truly free.— From “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” by Pope John Paul II, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994

  • Continence is a condition of love, the only attitude towards a partner in marriage, and particularly towards a wife, compatible with affirmation of the value of the person

  • That man can give life to a being in his own likeness makes plain his intrinsic value

  • Any attempt to diminish human beings by...denying the central social importance of maternity and paternity is incompatible with the natural development of man

  • Love should help one to understand and to feel for a human being... The man must reckon with the fact that the woman is in a sense in another world, unlike himself not only in the physiological but also in the psychological sense

  • The indispensible requirement of correct behavior and health is training from childhood upwards in truth and in reverence for sex
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