Pope talks of love and charity in first encyclical.

Could someone please explain to me what makes the pope an expert on sex and love? He is the last man on earth who knows anything about sex. To advise a billion people on a subject he is totally ignorant about is very strange, almost a joke.
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Pope talks of love and charity in first encyclical.

Jan 25, 2006x

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - In his first encyclical sounding the keynote for his papacy, Pope Benedict on Wednesday told Catholics love and charity must have a primary role in their lives in a world where religion is at times linked with calls for hatred and violence.

The encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est" (God is Love), ranged from the difference between erotic and spiritual love in a personal relationship to the role of the Catholic Church's vast network of charity organizations around the world.

"In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message (of love and charity) is both timely and significant," he said in the encyclical, the highest form of papal writing.

The document of about 70 pages was divided into two parts; one which he called "a more speculative" discussion on personal love and the second a "more concrete" overview of love and charity.

"This is a strong text that seeks to contest the improper use of God's name and the ambiguity of the notion of 'love' that is so prevalent in the modern world today," Archbishop William Joseph Levada, who succeeded the Pope as the Vatican's doctrinal chief, told a Vatican news conference.

In the first part of the encyclical the Pope said that erotic love between a man and a woman risked being reduced to a "commodity" of sex if it was not part of a higher spiritual love within marriage.

"Today, the term 'love' has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings," the German-born pontiff said.

EROTIC VS SPIRITUAL LOVE

Much of the first part is dedicated to the relationship between "eros," or erotic love, and "agape" (pronounced ah-gah-pay), the Greek word referring to unconditional, spiritual and selfless love as described in Scriptures.

In it, the Pope speaks of "an intoxicated and undisciplined eros" which leads not to God but to human degradation unless it is purified to provide much more than "just fleeting pleasure."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1539434