While this community-oriented vision of the “blessed life” is certainly directed beyond the present world, as such it also has to do with the building up of this world—in very different ways, according to the historical context and the possibilities offered or excluded thereby.
— Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi , 15.
The Pope’s encyclical, Spe Salvi, is out, and it contains, among other things, an examination of Christian hope, where it comes from, what its goal is, and how it is not just an individualistic hope but one with communal dimensions which requires us, not only to look to the world to come, but to live in hope and work for that hope here in the world we live in. Moreover, in the encyclical, he shows a similar concern to one I posted upon here, where he points out that proper political structures are necessary, but they must not be thought of as more than they are: they are limited and imperfect, always needing revision and change; they will not make utopia on earth:
What this means is that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed. Yet every generation must also make its own contribution to establishing convincing structures of freedom and of good, which can help the following generation as a guideline for the proper use of human freedom; hence, always within human limits, they provide a certain guarantee also for the future. In other words: good structures help, but of themselves they are not enough.
–ibid, 25.
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