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Encyclical signals church not pulling out of politics
Justice has not be subordinated to charity
Jul. 07, 2009
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PDF versionIn Caritas in Veritate, Benedict honors Paul VI's Populorum Progressio as the "Rerum Novarum of the present age" and takes up his own responsibility to bring Catholic social thought to bear in a much changed economic and political landscape.
The title expresses Benedict's distinctive concerns. He proposes caritas as a virtue with the moral, intellectual, and political force desperately needed in our globalizing world. Caritas -- grounded in God's Trinitarian life -- impels us to seek the good of the other. Just as God refuses to leave humanity suffering in its sinful state, so charity prevents us from accepting the myriad ways that our economies dehumanize and despoil. Just as God saves humankind within history, so charity impels us to realize the positive potential of economic life for human communion and mutual flourishing.
More than a simple motive for good deeds, Caritas drives us to passionately question the status quo and to understand the full moral truth about the human person. in Veritate signals Benedict's wager on the possibility of a profound and critical conversation of religions, cultures, and human sciences to work together to know and enact human flourishing.
Papal teaching seldom maps to our domestic political and cultural divides. We expect calls for "fidelity to the truth" about the human person to precede discussions of sexuality and bioethics. Here they address human economic activity. Benedict insists that market activity is neither destructive nor even morally neutral. "It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner." From this perspective he offers a reflection on economic activity as an expression of virtue and undertakes an unflinchingly critical assessment of contemporary capitalism. If Ayn Rand would applaud some passages, others read like litanies from a 21st century Grapes of Wrath.
Fears and hopes that Benedict would subordinate justice to charity in a manner that signaled a withdrawal of the Church from politics were not realized. On the contrary, Benedict offers a complex account of the interplay of justice and charity. With Paul VI, he asserts that justice is the "minimum measure of charity." Charity demands justice, but goes beyond "what is due" seeking to build "relationships of gratuitousness, mercy, and communion."
Benedict builds upon Paul VI's notion of "integral development" to face the question of modernity squarely; rejecting both the idolatry of modern "progress" and the apocalyptic rejection of the earthly city as irrelevant to the Kingdom of God. Charity manifests God's love in history, "it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world." Such work in the "earthly city" is "to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God."
Benedict offers one of the most extended discussions of the common good in a magisterial text, describing it as "the institutional path -- we might also call it the political path -- of charity, no less excellent and effective than the …charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis."
It is precisely the common good that is threatened by contemporary globalization. The encyclical wrestles with this epochal challenge: the economy has grown beyond the reach of the political structures that we have relied upon to yoke the market's enormous power to the moral service of the common good.
In response, Benedict proposes that economic action must be rendered moral from within. The breakdown of external controls on the economy allows it to realize its internal potential as an exercise of human solidarity that respects subsidiarity. If this warms the hearts of Catholic apologists for capitalism, it is accompanied by a call for an international political authority with power so robust that it would make Eleanor Roosevelt blanch. The encyclical frequently avers to creative socio-economic movements: fair trade, social entrepreneurship, the Focolare movement's "economy of communion," even attempts to return to indigenous agricultural methods. Such examples complement catholic social teaching's medieval nostalgia with movements that arouse the enthusiasm of a new generation of activists across the political spectrum.
Benedict displayed media moxie by releasing a document that condemns the dominance of wealthy "hyper-developed" nations over the global economy as the G8 prepares to meet in his back yard.
The document provides a provocative frame for the Pope's upcoming meeting with president Obama. The two are surprisingly similar in their very great differences. Benedict, often viewed as an Augustinian pessimist, offers Aquinas's optimistic view of reason to the world as the basis of dialogue. Obama, the candidate of hope, prefers to speak of truth in a minor key, informed by the tragic portrayal of religious certainty in Lincoln's second inaugural. Both nonetheless share a living faith and hope that the political process can be open to conversion to the truth and real action for the common good.
Benedict the pope offers a more radical economic critique than any elected politician could ever dare. It calls all of us, including President Obama to take seriously the historic nature of the challenge we face and to summon the honesty, courage, and ... love to respond adequately.
[Vincent Miller is a professor of theology at the University of Dayton.]
So much help is required and
So much help is required and government should assist. When it comes to helping the poor and the underclass the airwaves ought to be filled with the voices of our Catholic pastors and also the voices of all Catholics as per Vatican II. I am so glad that this Encyclical has been written. It is a wonderful encouragement to Catholics, to all Christians and to all people of good will. Alleluia!
Pope Benedict has given the
Pope Benedict has given the Church, and the modern world, a great gift in the form of this encyclical. He challenges us to make the free market moral from within, which is what economists from the Austrian School have been advocating for decades. Far from being afraid of, or hostile to, the free market, the Holy Father has challenged us to use the tools of that market to make the world a better place.
He specifically speaks about "subsidiarity", which is a wonderful thing to see. Subsidiarity, that is, the understanding that people at the lowest (or closest) level to the problem should be the ones to solve it, is an historically Catholic idea. It works in the free market, in that, in place of government bureaucrats serving those in need, it is the ones closest to those in need who should be offering them assistance and charity. This maintains human relationships and human dignity, both of which are damaged by government interventionism.
Further, the Holy Father advocates a strong international organization that will sustain and support the market. Again, I agree with that, since it is absolutely necessary that there be some governmental support structures that permit free trade to exist. After all, some support must exist to insure that people are treated fairly, deals are done equitably, and, should cheating or unfair trade practices take place, there must be some sort of institution to provide redress.
The Holy Father, however, is not an economist. The wealthy, "hyper-developed" nations do have some measure of control over the global economy and over trade. There is no way to mitigate that, since it is those nations who produce the VAST majority of items and who consume the vast majority of those goods as well. Further, it is the people of those nations who support the international market by the influx of their capital into the system. Certainly, wealthy developed nations have an obligation to assist their poorer neighbors, which most attempt to do.
However, again we run into government intervention that limits the help we can give in the form of protectionism. Unions demand certain protections for their workers, agricultural operations are paid subsidies, steel workers demand, and receive, protectionist tariffs on imported steel into the US. What this all means is that smaller nations cannot compete. When the US government buys crops from farmers at a low price (the farmers are compensated by the subsidies that they receive) and then, in turn, gives those crops away, it creates a situation that is untenable for farmers in less developed nations. A prime example is in Kenya. Farmers in Kenya cannot compete with free grain from the US and Europe. Thus, farmers in Kenya suffer.
The answer, of course, is found in the old saying: "Give a man a fish and you feed him today. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for his lifetime". Developed nations should be less about free give-aways and more about helping to teach underdeveloped nations how to manufacture goods, how to farm efficiently, and how to enter into trade in a fair way.
The Holy Father has advocated a classically liberal (that is Austrian School) economic policy. Obviously, there are aspects of that policy that Austrian School economists would find fault with, but I find his support for, and encouragement of, the free market most gratifying. At the same time, the Holy Father's understanding of the ideal free market is a challenge, but one I believe we can, and should, meet.
I'm sorry but the Pope is
I'm sorry but the Pope is just plain wrong. 'Caritas in Veritate' does not comport with the Catholic ideals described in the writings of Michael Novak the pre-eminent Catholic scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, vis a vis the virtues of wealth creation and the endless opportunities for self reliance, as opposed to being a burden on the rest of society.
Regarding "social justice" (whatever that means) we must remember that God helps those who help themselves. Always be on alert for the green worm of envy displayed by those members of society who are unwilling to work, preferring instead to whine and rely on taxpayer charity in the form of entitlement programs. As Mr. Novak points out - and I completely agree - "Envy never travels under its own name; it prefers prettier names, good names to which it has no right: "justice," "fairness," and the like." Benedict would have been well advised to heed the warnings and seek the counsel of Mr. Novak before issuing this encyclical. Instead he has sadly revealed himself to be a neophyte in matters of Catholic social thought.
Authentically Orthodox, You
Authentically Orthodox,
You might do well to re-read the gospels, specifically Matthew 5.
Of course, the Church is not
Of course, the Church is not pulling out of politics. It left its emphasis on spirituality and opted for an emphasis on political clout many centuries ago. But the Church's political clout has been decining ever so gradually since the medieval Boniface VIII and Innocent II. It will continue to do so. In the new encyclical BXVI apparently calls for a world political body to manage the world economy. Capitalist conservative Catholics are reportedly appalled. And I, as a liberal Democrat, see it as pie-in-the-sky moralism and wholly unworkable. Rome still imagines it can pontificate on any and all subjects whether it has competence to do so or not. It still wants to be a major political player. It's an almost unbelievable distortion of what Jesus taught and why it will fail.
In my view the "money quote"
In my view the "money quote" that has been missed in the coverage on the new Encyclical is: "If development were concerned with merely technical aspects of human life, and not with the meaning of man's pilgrimage through history in company with his fellow human beings, nor with identifying the goal of that journey, then the Church would not be entitled to speak on it."
God bless Pope Benedict XVI and thank you Jesus-God come in the flesh for such a wise universal pastor! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Authentically Catholic...Ah
Authentically Catholic...Ah yes, we are to see that Michael Novak is the authority on Catholic thought? Novak the expert on Catholic social thought, and the Pope a neophyte? Wow. Such pride. Such arrogance. How is the seat of the scornful these days? Getting comfortable there?
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