Kresta in the Afternoon – July 8, 2009

Kresta in the Afternoon – July 8, 2009

• Description:

  First Topic – Kresta Comments

  Second Topic – Caritatis in Veritate

  The Vatican has released the text of Caritatis in Veritate, the long-awaited social encyclical in which Pope Benedict XVI calls for "a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise" and a global economic system that values the common good above private profits. Explaining the title of the encyclical, Pope Benedict writes that the social teachings of the Catholic Church offer a means of appraising the secular world, judging social and economic systems against a clear moral standard. The guiding principle of Catholic social teaching is charity, he says. The 144-page document, was released yesterday, just as leaders of the G8 industrial nations gather in Italy for their discussions of the global economy, defies easy categorization. A story in the National Catholic Reporter carried an accurate descriptive subhead, noting that the encyclical "offers something for both the political left and right to cheer… and something to be grumpy about." We talk with Sam Gregg in studio.