Chapter 1

The encyclicals of the Roman pontiffs are of the utmost importance to this work.The Church claims that the Popes enjoy a divine teaching authority, which they exercise when issuing encyclicals among the other means by which they ex- ercise their teaching authority.The original texts of an encyclical are written in Latin and published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, a monthly journal published by the Roman Curia.Through the use of encyclical letters, the Pope exercises his Petrine ministry of teaching.The Catholic Encyclopedia clarifies:
It should be noted that encyclicals pertain per se to the Pope’s exercise of his ordinary magisterium…. The contents of an encyclical are presumed to belong to the ordinary magisterium unless the opposite is clearly manifested…. While encyclicals are not of themselves infallible pro- nouncements, and although their teachings are subject to change, Catholics are nevertheless obliged to assent to their doctrinal and moral content… this assent must be not merely a respectful silence, but a true internal… assent of the intellect to the doctrines precisely as they have been proposed.22
Encyclicals are official Church documents written in the form of a formal letter addressed to the entire Church: “Christ has entrusted the Pope with a teaching authority whose purpose is to foster the unity of faith, safeguard the under- standing of truth and build up ecclesial communion… characteristically denotes the communion of faith and charity that exists among various ‘Churches’ that is, among the various communities that make up the Church. “23 The encyclicals are fashioned traditionally after the example of the epistles of the apostles in the early Church, which are contained in the canons of the New Testament of the Bible.
Because encyclicals have various forms and uses, they are placed in a hierarchical level of importance.24 They are generally divided into three major categories: doctrinal, social, or exhortational.Most of the encyclicals under consideration in this work will be doctrinal ones (there is one exception, an apostolic exhortation).Michael J. Miller distinguishes between “two kinds of doctrinal en- cyclicals …; first are those which deal with particular points of Catholic doctrine…