Magnifica Humanitas §186

¹⁸⁶ When Saint Paul VI coined the phrase “the civilization of love,” the world was in the midst of the Cold War, an arms race and severe economic instability. In that context, the Church proposed an alternative path to that of ideological opposition between systems, and envisioned a social order in which justice and charity are intertwined and love becomes the guiding principle of economic, political and cultural life. Today, we must resolutely recover this vision, for the civilization of love is no naïve utopia, but a demanding project, which consists in translating charity into structures of justice, giving institutional form to fraternity and regarding others — whether individuals or peoples — as allies necessary for building the common good. As the Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti reminded us, only this social love is capable of becoming a culture and a norm, and thereby of bringing about a stable international order, transforming mere armed coexistence into a community with a shared future.