Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe Salvi has not met with the publicity of his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est." It is not hard to discern that Benedict is focusing his papacy on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, in inverse order. In this project Benedict continues the work of the Second Vatican Council.

This claim may sound surprising, especially if one reviews some of the initial responses to the encyclical. An Italian commentator, Antonio Socci, called the encyclical "a bomb . . . Benedict XVI does not quote, from the Council, even "Gaudium et spes", which nonetheless had in its title the word "hope", but wipes out the very mistake disastrously introduced in the Catholic world by that which was the main Conciliar constitution, "On the Church in the Modern World". This "conservative" interpretation of the encyclical finds an interesting partner in the "liberal" group, Wir Sind Kirche, who, according to John Allen in the National Catholic Review, asks, "Why doesn’t it cite Gaudium et Spes, or “Joy and Hope,” the Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), long seen as a sort of charter document for the reform wing of Catholicism?" Does the lack of a citation of Vatican II show Benedict's repudiation of the renewal efforts of Vatican II? A reading of Gaudium et Spes shows that this is not the case at all. Though "hope" occurs in the conciliar document's title, the use of "hope" is incidental to its purpose. When it is used as a theological virtue, Benedict remains in the center of the "spirit" of Vatican II.

"Hope" occurs in eight of the ninety-three sections of Gaudium et Spes. The term is most often used descriptively of an unpleasant dialectic in which the "modern human" finds herself. The Conciliar Fathers placed "hope" as the opposition to "anxiety". It represents a psychological term rather than the theological virtue. The document begins with the church identifying with "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age" (par. 1). Caught in ambiguity of the contemporary world, "many of our contemporaries are kept from accurately identifying permanent values and adjusting them properly to fresh discoveries. As a result, buffeted between hope and anxiety and pressing one another with questions about the present course of events, they are burdened down with uneasiness" (par. 4). The progress that Gaudium et Spes supposedly so heartily endorses brings simultaneously the possibility of disaster. Disorientation results, the disorientation of living in the middle of a movement between hope and anxiety: "In these conditions it is no cause of wonder that man, who senses his responsibility for the progress of culture, nourishes a high hope but also looks with anxiety upon many contradictory things which he must resolve" (par. 56). In the issues of war and militarization, this dialectic opens past a false hope toward the theological virtue: "But we should not let false hope deceive us. For unless enmities and hatred are put away and firm, honest agreements, concerning world peace are reached in the future, humanity, which already is in the middle of a grave crisis, even though it is endowed with remarkable knowledge, will perhaps be brought to that dismal hour in which it will experience no peace other than the dreadful peace of death. But while we say this, the Church of Christ, present in the midst of the anxiety of this age, does not cease to hope most firmly" (par. 82). Benedict does not annul the concept of human hope in Gaudium et spes, but develops the tension already recognized in the concilar document: "the ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil—possibilities that formerly did not exist" (par. 22).

In Gaudium et Spes the church transcends the dialectic of hope and anxiety through the theological virtue of hope, a raising, purification, and perfection of the contemporary psychological experience by its placing its proper eschatological end in God, a way beyond the anxiety of the age: "to every thoughtful man a solidly established faith provides the answer to his anxiety about what the future holds for him. At the same time, faith gives him the power to be united in Christ with his loved ones whohave already been snatched away by death; faith arouses the hope that they have found true life with God" (par. 19). This eschatological hope does not signify a withdrawal from the material world, but provides the basis for human action within it: "a hope related to the end of time does not diminish the importance of intervening duties but rather undergirds the acquittal of them with fresh incentives. In contrast, when a divine instruction and the hope of life eternal are wanting, man’s dignity is most grievously lacerated, as current events often attest; riddles of life and death, of guilt and of grief go unsolved with the frequent result that men succumb to despair. . . . Above all, the Church knows that her message is in harmony with the most secret desires of the human heart when she champions the dignity of the human vocation, restoring hope to those who have already despaired of anything higher than their present lot (par. 21). As the document began with a psychological "natural" experience of hope caught in a dialectic with anxiety, it concludes with the theological virtue sublimating the dialectic by anchoring hope as the Spirit's presence of the Father's love: "By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope – the gift of Holy Spirit – that some day at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord" (par. 93).

Gaudium et spes should have included the Son to complete the complete witness to the Triune God involved in true hope, the theological virtue. But its concept of hope remains profoundly eschatological and in God. Benedict XVI completes this Trinitarian formula for the theological virtue of hope as he concludes his discussion of "the true shape of Christian hope" that also recognizes how a natural sense of hope is raised and perfected by the eschatological hope in God: "we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life" (par. 31).

the Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of the whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.

Benedict XVI's encyclical "Spe salvi" does not repudiate Vatican II or Gaudium et spes, possibly to the dismay of the conservatives and liberals who wish to push the church in ways from the very catholicity that the council was meant to renew and even in ways past some of the facile statements made in the document itself. The encyclical provides a careful, nuanced reading of the council. Benedict XVI continues to strive to fulfill the hope of John XXIII for calling the Second Vatican Council: "The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more
efficaciously. . . . In order, however, that this doctrine may influence the numerous fields of human activity, with reference to individuals, to families, and to social life, it is necessary first of all that the Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers. But at the same time she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate" (Opening Sermon for the Council of Vatican II).

The contemporary "present" is not the "present" of the early 1960s. Even Francis Fukayama's neo-liberal declaration of Hegel's "end of history" rings empty today as Pakistan faces civil disruption with its nuclear arsenal "up in the air" so to speak, an unintended consequence of George Bush's Wilsonian foreign policy to transform the world for democracy. Meanwhile urban centers throughout the world find themselves encircled by poverty ridden slums and the earth's temperature continues its steady rise. Moltmann's Theology of Hope seems to belong to an entirely different epoche than ours. It is hard not to agree with Benedict: "A self-critique of modernity is needed in dialogue with Christianity and its concept of hope. In this dialogue Christians too, in the context of their knowledge and experience, must learn anew in what their hope truly consists, what they have to offer to the world and what they cannot offer. Flowing into this self-critique of the modern age there also has to be a self-critique of modern Christianity, which must constantly renew its self-understanding setting out from its roots" (par. 22). This self-critique is not merely for the academic halls; it is for each and every parish and congregation and every Christian believer in the church catholic to live out performatively: "a message which shapes our life in a new way" (par. 10).

Hope in Gaudium et Spes

1. The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.

4. Influenced by such a variety of complexities, many of our contemporaries are kept from accurately identifying permanent values and adjusting them properly to fresh discoveries. As a result, buffeted between hope and anxiety and pressing one another with questions about the present course of events, they are burdened down with uneasiness.

19. Hence, to every thoughtful man a solidly established faith provides the answer to his anxiety about what the future holds for him. At the same time, faith gives him the power to be united in Christ with his loved ones whohave already been snatched away by death; faith arouses the hope that they have found true life with God.

21. She further teaches that a hope related to the end of time does not diminish the importance of intervening duties but rather undergirds the acquittal of them with fresh incentives. In contrast, when a divine instruction and the hope of life eternal are wanting, man’s dignity is most grievously lacerated, as current events often attest; riddles of life and death, of guilt and of grief go unsolved with the frequent result that men succumb to despair.

Above all, the Church knows that her message is in harmony with the most secret desires of the human heart when she champions the dignity of the human vocation, restoring hope to those who have already despaired of anything higher than their present lot.

56. In these conditions it is no cause of wonder that man, who senses his responsibility for the progress of culture, nourishes a high hope but also looks with anxiety upon many contradictory things which he must resolve:

82. But we should not let false hope deceive us. For unless enmities and hatred are put away and firm, honest agreements, concerning world peace are reached in the future, humanity, which already is in the middle of a grave crisis, even though it is endowed with remarkable knowledge, will perhaps be brought to that dismal hour in which it will experience no peace other than the dreadful peace of death. But while we say this, the Church of Christ, present in the midst of the anxiety of this age, does not cease to hope most firmly.

91. We have relied on the Word of God and the spirit of the Gospel. Hence, we entertain the hope that many of our proposals will prove to be of substantial benefit to everyone, especially after they have been adapted to individual nations and mentalities by the faithful, under the guidance of their pastors.

93. By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope – the gift of Holy Spirit – that some day at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord.