From the editor’s desk

Hope and the Kingdom

Pope Benedict XVI's lucid and profound encyclical Spe Salvi - "Saving Hope" - failed to gain much notice in the secular media but deserves serious attention in the Church, both for what it says and for what it signals. Of the three theological virtues, so called because they are impossible without divine grace, hope is the least understood and therefore the most neglected. Under the papal microscope, a vast treasury of spiritual riches is revealed within this concept for those with eyes to see. These are insights relevant not only to the interior spiritual life but also to humanity's pursuit of progress and its search for justice in the world.

However this encyclical, like his previous one, Deus Caritas Est, is not a pronouncement or proclamation in the manner of his predecessors' encyclicals. It is rather a calm and deep reflection in which, to quote Cardinal Newman's motto, heart speaks to heart. And although technically the teachings of an encyclical are rated the most authoritative of all papal pronouncements save only ex cathedra infallible ones, Benedict gives no impression that he wishes to impose his views on others. His tone is conversational. He uses phrases like "I think that ..." in one place, and later, "I would like to add here another brief comment ..." Even when he writes, "I am convinced that ..." it is to persuade, not to instruct. This is the welcome tone of a spiritual counsellor, rather than an authoritarian. Even more than his first, similar in style in many ways, this extends the definition of what an encyclical can be.

That also helps to define what this encyclical is not. No doors are closed by it; more remains to be said. The Pope is understood to be working on a social encyclical, which may be sufficient explanation of why he does not in this one say more about the concept of hope in the domain of politics. He confines himself to warnings, in common with the long tradition of Catholic social teaching, that there are no ideologies or blueprints for a perfect world - although he attributes good motives to those, like the Marxists, who have tried to build one. Because God allows human nature the freedom to choose the bad instead of the good, all such efforts are doomed to unravel as ultimately hopeless. But this raises a legitimate query, as put by the Bishop of Durham in this week's Tablet, about what Benedict means when he prays, in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come". If human endeavour is invariably undermined by human nature, in what sense can the Kingdom of God still be foreshadowed in this world, before it arrives in the next?

His refusal to be optimistic about purely human political constructs, in contrast to the confident mood of, say, the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes, needs further exploration. It is instructive to recall how Professor Ratzinger, as he then was, was appalled by the student protests that spread across the campuses of the Western world in 1968, which it seems was the moment the progressive theologian of Vatican II turned into the conservative watchdog of Pope John Paul II. Now he seems to have turned again, away from his former Vatican role as a doctrinal enforcer to the more genial voice of a spiritual adviser with some helpful thoughts to offer. At the start of Advent, that is a very hopeful sign.