Word from Rome examines further Deus Caritas Est

In this week's Word From Rome, John Allen projects what more about Pope Benedict XVI can be expected if Deus Caritas Est is mined for clues.

Even apart from policy questions, there's much to learn about Benedict XVI's
papacy from Deus Caritas Est.
First, he will not, as some feared, lead the Catholic church to collapse in on itself and become preoccupied with its own internal business. One can hardly imagine a theme of more universal human concern than love.
Second, while he possesses vast erudition (in the first 20 pages of Deus Caritas Est, he manages to cite Nietzsche, Descartes, and Plato), Benedict expresses himself as a pastor. He treats a core theme of Christian faith, and for the most part uses terms that don't require a license in systematic theology to grasp. While history will remember John Paul II as a great evangelist, Benedict XVI may go down as the most classic example of a "teaching pope" in modern times.
Third, for all the talk about Benedict as an Augustinian pessimist, he actually believes there are still people in the world who can be influenced by unadorned argument, shorn of theatricality or grand symbolism. In its own way, it's a remarkably optimistic stance.
Fourth, Benedict grasps the old bit of wisdom about governing the Catholic church expressed by John XXIII, who once said, "I have to be pope both of those with their foot on the gas, and those with their foot on the brake." Deus Caritas Est reflects an obvious concern for balance. He warns Catholic charitable groups they must not forget about Christ, yet understands there are times when this faith must go unspoken, so charity workers don't give the appearance of "proselytism"; he stresses the "vertical dimension" of prayer and worship, yet also writes that "a Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented."
Finally, the encyclical shows that Benedict's determination not to impose his personality upon the papacy will sometimes mean we don't get what some consider the "real" Ratzinger. One senior Vatican official, for example, told me that he felt Deus Caritas Est could have been a courageous encyclical on sexual morality, but the pope's collegial willingness to pick up the threads of a pre-existing document on charity prevented that. The reaction is analogous to frustrations that the pope is not moving fast enough to "shake up" the Curia, to reverse "business-as-usual" in the appointment of bishops, or to bring dissenting forces into line. For good or ill, his approach seems to be patient, gradual, and articulated in a "still, small voice" rather than bellowed from the rooftops.
For example, prior to the release of Deus Caritas Est, Benedict submitted his text to examination by Vatican doctrinal consultors, an act of humility that even Archbishop William Levada, the pope's successor at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, admitted Jan. 25 that he found "a little bit surprising."
In an age when public figures normally distinguish themselves by shouting and showboating, it is a fascinating management style to watch.

And speaking of erudition, apparently to show he is just as smart as the Pope (see point two above), Cardinal George used Derrida to explain what was to be expected from this encyclical on January 24.

George noted that Jacques Derrida, the Algerian-born French literary critic and
philosopher, once made a pun in German about gifts being a kind of poison (the
German word Gift means "poison"). Gifts are poison, Derrida suggested, because
they involve both giver and receiver in a relationship of debt and obligation,
inferiority and superiority.
The only way out, George argued, is to enter into the logic of God, who has no need of our gifts, and we have no claim upon God's. The Roman Missal expresses the point by saying that God "has no need of our praise." Thus we enter into the "loop of grace," George said, rather than the "carefully calculated loop of exchange and obligation."
"That's the solution to Derrida's problem," he said.

Allen further discusses Cardinal George's take on thePope's encyclical that Allen bleieved was mostly overlooked after the fact.

George made an intriguing point about Benedict's motives for writing Deus Caritas Est, which most other commentary has missed.
"Love is the measure of, and the source of, a truly lasting peace," he said. "The desire
to be a peace-maker is, I think, a driving factor behind the Holy Father's writing to
the world about love in his first encyclical."