Why Love?

ZENIT

Benedict XVI's first encyclical has sold a record 500,000 copies since its release just last week. Why?

Perhaps it is curiosity or maybe it is the fact the theme is so identifiable. Whatever it is, there's something to be said about the element of surprise surrounding the subject of "Deus Caritas Est."

During a visit to Rome, Samuel Gregg put the Pope's choice of topic into perspective for me by going back to the Holy Father's childhood. Gregg, an adjunct professor at the Lateran University, is the director of research at the Michigan-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

"Benedict XVI grew up in his very young, formative years under a totalitarian, pagan regime," Gregg observed. "We have to understand that National Socialism had no place for love, except for love of the state."

Gregg pointed out that many of the Nazi theorists at the time saw love as a sign of weakness.

"The idea of hate was actually elevated into a kind of principle, in the sense that the German people were the master race, which meant treating non-Germans as if they were subhuman," he said. "The idea that all people deserved to be loved was completely foreign to this ideology."

Gregg added: "Growing up in this society where love was not just trivialized but made out to be evil and somehow dehumanizing, may have contributed to Benedict XVI wanting to rehabilitate the idea of Christian love in the modern world."