(ENI) – "Love is a single reality with different dimensions", Pope Benedict XVI stated in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), issued in January. "Yet when the two dimensions are totally cut off from one another, the result is a caricature or at least an impoverished form of love."
Benedict added: "True, eros tends to rise in ecstasy towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing."
Some commentators have seen in the encyclical an attempt to portray a softer, gentler papacy and a few have mused whether permission for Western Catholic priests to marry, may be next. (Eastern Rite priests have long been permitted to marry.)
Benedict went on to say that while the church cannot impose itself on the state, it must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.
