On the evening of August 26th, a crowd of 350 gathered at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer for a public forum on Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. The panel of speakers included: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P., the editor-in-chief of Magnificat; Fr. Allen Moran, O.P., a professor of economics at Providence College; and the Most Reverend Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York. Each speaker highlighted a certain aspect of the Holy Father's wise and in some ways innovative treatment of the Church's social doctrine. After the presentations, members of the audience addressed questions to the panel.

Click above for video of the forum's introductions.  We will post the speeches themselves one at a time in the coming days.

In the first presentation of the evening, Fr. Cameron reflected on Pope Benedict's concept of "human ecology." Employing numerous quotations from the encyclical itself, Fr. Cameron made clear the Pope's concern that the contemporary interest in conservation and ecology be shaped by an overarching concern for the conservation of human dignity. From the Christian point of view, the Pope argues, a proper and just concern for the environment can only be exercised from within a prior and larger concern for the human person and his flourishing. Through several poignant real-life illustrations, Fr. Cameron demonstrated the Holy Father's point. He explained that once a person discovers his inherent human dignity, which for many occurs through adversity and suffering, that dignity becomes something he naturally begins to protect not only in himself but also in others. This spontaneous drive to protect others' dignity, Fr. Cameron explained, points to the reality of "human ecology."

Fr. Allen then addressed the more practical aspects of Caritas in Veritate, particularly Pope Benedict's assessment of the economic crisis that currently grips a large portion of the world. After first distinguishing positive and normative economics, Fr. Moran demonstrated why this distinction is important. Positive economics, he explained, seeks simply to describe what is happening in the financial world. It reports on the ups and downs of financial activity and tries to uncover their causes. Not completely detached from positive economics, normative economics has a different goal. While it also tracks movements in the world's economies, at the same time it makes certain judgments about them against a measure that it considers normative. For example, whereas a positive economist might say that unemployment in America is at 9.5%, a normative economist would argue that the rate is too high (or too low, depending on his measure). From this basic distinction between positive and normative economics, Fr. Moran explained how Pope Benedict calls economists to work more within the normative realm, where they should feel obliged to make real judgments about economic activity against the norm of human dignity and the justice human nature requires for its full flourishing.

Finally, Archbishop Dolan described how in the encyclical Pope Benedict applies his famous "hermeneutic of continuity" to the Church's social tradition. In so doing, the Holy Father stresses that the social teaching of the Church stretching back to the late nineteenth century should be read as a whole, as one long normative commentary on the social implications of the Gospel, and not as divided moments in the tradition where certain teachings can be favored and others jettisoned. For example, there has recently opened up within the Church a contentious relationship between what Archbishop Dolan described as "economic and social justice" Catholics and "life justice" Catholics. Such a rift should not exist, he lamented. Instead, to wave the social justice banner of the Church is to concern oneself necessarily with poverty, education, health care, immigration, the environment, marriage and family, and first and foremost the promotion and protection of human life, from conception to natural death. Archbishop Dolan explained that reading Church's social doctrine, as Pope Benedict does, with a proper "hermeneutic of continuity" reveals the evangelical concern for human life and human dignity as the common thread that unites all of the Church's social teachings.

After a brief Q & A session, those attending the forum enjoyed a light reception prepared by the Frassati Fellowship.