Questions to Guide Your Reading

Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate 68-77

1. According to Pope Benedict, “The development in question is not simply the result of natural mechanisms.” Why not? And yet, it is also the case that “our freedom is profoundly shaped by our being, and by its limits.”  Explain this seeming conundrum.  Are we free or are we not free?

2. “Technology,” writes Pope Benedict, “is the objective side of human action, whose origin and raison d'etre is found in the subjective element: the worker himself.” Explain what he means in terms of what Pope John Paul II has written in Laborem Exercens.

3. Pope Benedict writes that technology “is a response to God's command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15).”  Explain what he means and why it is significant.

4. Describe the elements of what Pope Benedict calls the “technical” worldview.

5. How, according to Pope Benedict, is the “deviation from solid humanistic principles that a technical mindset can produce” seen today in certain technological applications in the fields of development?

6. How, according to Pope Benedict, should give us the proper perspective from which to judge the meaning and purpose of the media so that it can have a “civilizing effect”? Explain.

7. A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility, claims the Pope, is the field of bioethics.  Why?

8. According to Pope Benedict, “Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth.”  Why?  Explain.

9. According to Pope Benedict, “The supremacy of technology tends to prevent people from recognizing anything that cannot be explained in terms of matter alone.” Explain. Why not?