Antonio Socci: Spe Salvi contra Gaudium et Spes?

Part of an article by Antonio Socci offering an interesting take on the Holy Father's new Encyclical On Christian Hope, Spe Salvi, has been translated into English at Rorate Caeli ("Spe Salvi: the Anti-Gaudium et Spes," December 1, 2007). Socci's remarks on the Encyclical are, in true Italian form, dramatic:

A bomb. It is the new encyclical of Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, in which there is not a single quotation from the Council (a choice of huge significance); in which at last Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory are spoken of again (and even the Anti-Christ, even though in an excerpt of Kant); in which horrors are called by their name (for instance, "Communism," a word which, at the Council, it was forbidden to pronounce and condemn); in which, instead of greeting the powerful of this world, the powerful witness of Christian martyrs, the victims, is mentioned; in which the rhetoric of the "religions" is wiped out, by affirming that the Savior is only one; in which Mary is shown as the "star of hope"; and in which it is shown that blind faith in progress (alone) and in science (alone) leads to disaster and despair.

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. The Pope invites, in fact, at n. 22, to a "a self-critique of modern Christianity". Particularly on the concept of "progress."

[Hat tip to New Catholic]