Encyclical of Benedict XVI "Caritas and Veritate" - a new word in the social doctrine of Catholicism

Abstract

For centuries in Catholic theology there is a hidden or open struggle between the tendencies of Augustinian and Tomistic. Augustinovtsi - optimists in epistemology and pessimism in anthropology and social science. Tomies, on the contrary, consider the possibilities of cognition to be limited, but they are cautious optimists in anthropology and social science. The social doctrine of the Catholic Church has long relied on the notion of natural law and the common good, as they are developed in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclicals returned to the Augustinian theology of love as the only force that can help humanity today, at a time when all the negative aspects of human nature, which were so well known by Augustine, were revealed.