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David Nirenberg has an article in The New Republic entitled "Love and Capitalism." He analyzes Pope Benedict's latest encyclical "Caritas in Veritate." He appreciates the content of the Pope's teaching. For example, Benedict says, "To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it." B16's assertion is that economic activity has to have love as the basis.
Now this is the kind of assertion about economics that you don't hear discussed on news programs. Nirenberg takes us back into history and reminds us that the Church has for centuries warned against the potential harm in economic exchanges. Jesus of course was very hard on people with lots of money or possessions. He practically said that they were locked out of heaven. In the Middle Ages, "merchant" and "Christian" were nearly mutually exclusive terms. In the Church's writings was this declaration: "a merchant can rarely or never please God. Therefore no Christian should be a merchant, and, if he wishes to be one, he should be expelled from the Church."
Even though Nirenberg appreciates the Pope's teaching on economic principles, he is critical of the exclusive religious language used by B16. The author thinks the Pope's language is too dogmatic. Well? Of course the Pope's teaching is going to be dogmatic. Of course it's going to be exclusive. The author's point though is well taken. He says, "The prescriptions that we produce from within our own communities of conviction must be intelligible and adoptable outside of them. They must make sense to people who do not already share all of those convictions."
This is a familiar problem for religious groups. Each group has its own terminology that is not shared by the general public. The ongoing questions is: can we in the church speak to our culture or society in terms that make sense to the common person and persuade using logic that is not foreign to the general public?
Or—can the church speak in terms that not only bear witness to our unique beliefs, but also communicate obvious truth to those outside our community of faith?
That's a real theological challenge. However, in defense of the Pope, he wasn't writing a Letter to the world in general. An encyclical is an official letter written to the church itself. The Pope does talk a lot about 'natural law'—that is, the truth that anyone can understand and accept because it is 'natural.' But the church cannot stop there. There is also supernatural truth—that which comes only by revelation. There's the rub.
