Veritas caritas est.
That is one of the continual keys in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger: the charity of the truth, what he calls "intellectual charity" (intellektuelle Nächstenliebe, intellectual love of neighbor).
Ratzinger speaks of charity of the truth and charity in the truth. I would simply say that truth is charity. Because any "truth which is not for the good, that of our neighbor included, is not true. What is true it is also good in every respect.
Another way Ratzinger expresses this same idea of the unity between the truth and the good is in speaking of orthodoxy and orthopraxis or of the dual "informative" and "performative" aspects of evangelization. These are two essential sides of every human reality. There is no orthopraxis without orthodoxy. Actually, "orthodoxy" itself includes orthopraxis because the word doxa means worship and praise. Orthodoxy therefore means right worship, the right action of giving God His due, which is itself a moral action, not just intellectual. To do the good one must know the good. And that knowledge of the good is what we call truth.
Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, 2002 Benevento lecture in On the Way to Jesus Christ, San Francisco, Ignatius, 2005, 107-109.
N.B. A good resource for "intellectual charity" is Pope Benedict XVI, A Reason Open to God: On Universities, Education & Culture, Washington, DC: CUA, 2013, xxii, 48, 58-59, 83, 109, 145, 239.
The expression "intellectual charity" was already used in 1930 by Giovanni Battista Montini when he was chaplain to the FUCI. Ibid. 145.
Intellectual Charity: An expression of probable Augustinian origin that occurs in the writings of Giovanni Battista Montini
And in a text of 1931 there is almost a monastic rule for the time of secularization, L'osservatore romano, March 1, 2013
The 2007 papal appointment of Gianfranco Ravasi, prefect for almost twenty years of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, to head the Holy See's institute for culture and, in the following years, the influence that, as president, he has exercised the area of cultural in the Church of Rome call to mind the dynamic of "intellectual charity". The expression is probably of Augustinian origin and is found in Rosmini and Fogazzaro, but it is, above all, Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI who reflects on it, he who in more than one respect can be compared to one of the last four cardinals he created in 1977, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, from 2005 his successor with the name of Benedict XVI.
In 1930 "intellectual charity" was chosen by Montini - at that time an official of the Secretariat of State and at the same time a national chaplain of the FUCI, the Italian Catholic University Federation - as the title of a short article written for the student magazine "Azione fucina." Based on a text by Pierre de Nolhac, the scholar who had discovered the autograph of the Canzoniere di Petrarca in the Vatican Library, Montini reflects on "one of the most moving documents that reconcile us with the modern world," that is, two texts by Erasmus and of Pascal. "Even science can be charity," writes the young prelate from Brescia, stating immediately after that "anyone who with the activity of thought and of the pen tries to spread the truth does service to charity." "Intellectual activity - continues Montini - which does not accept the limits, the demands, the implementations, the attitudes, the zeal, all of the external elements that do not prejudice the honesty of his work, of lived life, of the experiential human reality, where pain, feeling, morality and social needs continuously meet, remains sterile."
Precisely the need to communicate the truth appears as Montini's main concern: "We need to know how to be ancient and modern, to speak according to tradition but also according to our sensitivity. What is the point of saying what is true if the men of our time do not understand us?" He said that in 1950, after over thirteen years as chief of staff of the Secretariat of State of Pius XII, during his first meeting with Jean Guitton. Consistent with this sentiment, in 1965 Pope Montini established a Secretariat for non-believers. His successor John Paul II founded along side it in 1982 the Pontifical Council for Culture and in 1993 uniting to it the Paul VI organization. Precisely this structure gives way to one of the most evocative initiatives of Benedict XVI, the Courtyard of the Gentiles. In 1957 the "mission of Milan" is announced in the largest diocese of the world, which Montini, archbishop of the Lombard metropolis for three years, presents to the "distant" with words of unusual and frank self-criticism: "When you approach one who is distant, you cannot but feel a certain remorse. Why is this brother far away? Because he was not loved enough. He was not sufficiently cared for, instructed, introduced into the joy of faith. Because he has judged the faith based on our persons, those who preach it and represent it; and from our faults he may have learned to be bored by, to despise, to hate religion. Because he has heard more reproaches, than warnings and invitations. Because he saw, perhaps, some inferior interest in our ministry, and he suffered scandal."
The 2007 papal appointment of Gianfranco Ravasi, prefect for almost twenty years of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, to head the Holy See's institute for culture and, in the following years, the influence that, as president, he has exercised the area of cultural in the Church of Rome call to mind the dynamic of "intellectual charity". The expression is probably of Augustinian origin and is found in Rosmini and Fogazzaro, but it is, above all, Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI who reflects on it, he who in more than one respect can be compared to one of the last four cardinals he created in 1977, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, from 2005 his successor with the name of Benedict XVI.
In 1930 "intellectual charity" was chosen by Montini - at that time an official of the Secretariat of State and at the same time a national chaplain of the FUCI, the Italian Catholic University Federation - as the title of a short article written for the student magazine "Azione fucina." Based on a text by Pierre de Nolhac, the scholar who had discovered the autograph of the Canzoniere di Petrarca in the Vatican Library, Montini reflects on "one of the most moving documents that reconcile us with the modern world," that is, two texts by Erasmus and of Pascal. "Even science can be charity," writes the young prelate from Brescia, stating immediately after that "anyone who with the activity of thought and of the pen tries to spread the truth does service to charity." "Intellectual activity - continues Montini - which does not accept the limits, the demands, the implementations, the attitudes, the zeal, all of the external elements that do not prejudice the honesty of his work, of lived life, of the experiential human reality, where pain, feeling, morality and social needs continuously meet, remains sterile."
Precisely the need to communicate the truth appears as Montini's main concern: "We need to know how to be ancient and modern, to speak according to tradition but also according to our sensitivity. What is the point of saying what is true if the men of our time do not understand us?" He said that in 1950, after over thirteen years as chief of staff of the Secretariat of State of Pius XII, during his first meeting with Jean Guitton. Consistent with this sentiment, in 1965 Pope Montini established a Secretariat for non-believers. His successor John Paul II founded along side it in 1982 the Pontifical Council for Culture and in 1993 uniting to it the Paul VI organization. Precisely this structure gives way to one of the most evocative initiatives of Benedict XVI, the Courtyard of the Gentiles. In 1957 the "mission of Milan" is announced in the largest diocese of the world, which Montini, archbishop of the Lombard metropolis for three years, presents to the "distant" with words of unusual and frank self-criticism: "When you approach one who is distant, you cannot but feel a certain remorse. Why is this brother far away? Because he was not loved enough. He was not sufficiently cared for, instructed, introduced into the joy of faith. Because he has judged the faith based on our persons, those who preach it and represent it; and from our faults he may have learned to be bored by, to despise, to hate religion. Because he has heard more reproaches, than warnings and invitations. Because he saw, perhaps, some inferior interest in our ministry, and he suffered scandal."
