I am stilll pouring over the Pope’s encyclical.
In sections 53 and 54, he talks about humanity being defined through relationships. He makes the comment, “… the relation between individual and community is a relation between one totality and another”, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas. He then goes on to say that true openess in relationships does not lead to loss of individual identity, but rather “profound interpenetration.” He uses the mystery of the Trinity as the example par excellence of this. “The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality,” he says.
In other words, you don’t lose your individuality when you enter into profound relationships. This applies to individual human beings (marital couples are good examples), as well as to individual cultures.
The interpenetration of one with another, of one culture with another, is becoming more and more evident with the advancement of globilization. There is a real temptation to either lose one’s personal or cultural identity here in some sort of effort to become a global melting pot. There is also the temptation of evaluating all religions and cultures as equally “true” and in doing so, losing the awareness and acknowledgment of the Truth. Finally, there is the temptation of religious intolerance, isolationism and in the extreme, religious terrorism.
The point of the whole encylical comes to bear here. Love in Truth. Love is possible only when one knows the truth. Acknowledging the truth frees one to love as one ought. Love is a response to the interrelatedness, one with another, that defines us. If we fail to acknowledge the truth, which comes to us from God Himself, we fail in our efforts to love as we must. Then, human development fails in the last analysis.
