Veritatis Splendor

With this podcast we begin a study of Pope Saint John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) on moral theology. You can find the encyclical here: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html.

Published in 1993, Veritatis Splendor has come under heavy scrutiny in recent times, especially since the publication in 2016 of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which some interpreted to cast doubt on certain of the Church’s moral teachings, especially concerning the remarriage of divorced Catholic couples. In four Cardinals submitted a list of dubia to the Holy Father asking precisely whether his Apostolic Exhortation was consistent with John Paul II’s teaching in Veritatis Splendor. Their questions went unanswered. However, subsequently, many moral theologians began to propose that Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical may well be outdated and in need of serious revision, that it along with Humanae Vitae, constitutes a roadblock to a healthy development of moral theology. In this next series of podcasts, I intend to give you my listeners a kind of guided tour through the encyclical so that you may see what it actually says and means.

Veritatis Splendor was written in response to the widespread dissent over the Church’s moral teaching since Vatican II and Humanae Vitae. John Paul II wrote,

“The specific purpose of the present Encyclical is this: to set forth, with regard to the problems being discussed, the principles of a moral teaching based upon Sacred Scripture and the living Apostolic Tradition, and at the same time to shed light on the presuppositions and consequences of the dissent which that teaching has met.” (§5)

As we will see as we work through this document, Veritatis Splendor is much more than simply a refutation of views that the Holy father thought were erroneous. Rather it provides a beautiful but challenging vision of the Christian life of holiness.

In my own book, The Ethos of the Christian Heart: Reading “Veritatis Splendor” (available here: https://www.staugustine.net/9781587312427/the-ethos-of-the-christian-heart/), I explain more thoroughly my own perspective on this.