Clarity about Charity in Truth
Charity in Truth, Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, has been in preparation for some time. It was intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, which took up the problems of human solidarity and justice on a large scale, in particular the problems of the poor nations of the Third World, a trend toward the globalization of the Church’s social teaching that grown during the pontificate of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. The anniversary actually fell in 2007, but the encyclical has been delayed by over a year; partly it was because of updates necessitated by the world economic crisis that began last fall.
Pope Benedict looks at the question of “integral human development in charity and truth.” He tells us that “love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth.” The focus of the encyclical then, is that love is the motive for social action, but only truth can set love free to act and direct its course. The truth about humankind and the means to human justice can be sought only in God. A particularly bold challenge for a relativistic time.
Reading it — and I’m trying to go slowly to savor it — is re-acquainting me both with the force and vigor of Pope Benedict’s mind as well as the sweetness of his devotion, if I can put it that way; as I recall from Jesus of Nazareth, he has a powerful connection with Christ and what His love can do.
I wanted to put down some of my own thoughts, but first, it seems necessary to clear away some misunderstandings.
I’ve spent some time looking at the reactions to the encyclical. I’ll spare you the sillier ones from the professional pundits right and left, who fall all over themselves trying not to notice Benedict’s criticisms of their own social and political views, while loudly trumpeting his criticisms of their opponents. Misunderstanding is rife here, but it’s the type of misunderstanding anyone could easily predict.
Skipping all that, I’ll get right to the basic misunderstandings found among Catholics in blog comment boxes. I’ve noticed over time that the number of those who have made any study of Catholic social teaching or papal encyclicals on the subject is relatively small. At times the wildest misunderstandings of the Pope’s words occur.
Misunderstanding #1 Context, context, who has the Context?
Some errors come out of a near-total lack of knowledge of the history of Catholic social teaching, which forms the context in which the encyclical is written. For instance, the misunderstanding of those who read Bendict’s words about the need for “a true world political authority” and decided at once that he meant there should be a “one world government” that would absorb the powers of all other nations, whose governments would then presumably disappear. They reacted with tremendous — and completely unnecessary — alarm. What the Pope actually wrote was:
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, (Pacem in Terris no. 84) and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth.
For those who have read Pacem in Terris, the encyclical of John XXIII that Benedict refers to, and who are familiar with subsidiarity, one of the principal aspects of Catholic social teaching he refers to, there is no difficulty in interpreting this passage. John XXIII wrote in the cited passage: “one must bear in mind that, even when it regulates the relations between States, authority must be exercised for the promotion of the common good. That is the primary reason for its existence.” So good Pope John wanted an authority to regulate relationships between states, and was probably thinking of the model of the U.N., certainly not of one world government. And subsidiarity, clearly stated again and again in Catholic social thought, teaches that the smallest, most local and most de-centralized authority that has the competence is the best one to make decisions. In short, a “world political authority” would not have the authority to do those things that could best be done by the member states themselves.
But few Catholics are genuinely familiar with these things. This is a rather sad reflection in general on Catholic education. But on the other hand, if final encyclical texts were a little clearer, and made a greater effort to explain things to ordinary Catholics, some of this harm might be avoided. Benedict’s thought, as I said, is vigorous and well-expressed, but it’s also possible to tell when a text has been through the curial committee wringer one too many times.
And if I could make a small suggestion to the people who draw up the final text of an encyclical and its footnotes — would it really hurt to cite papal texts by their paragraph numbers, instead of their page numbers in the printed edition of the Acta Apostolica Sedis, which exists only in a few specialized libraries? This is especially helpful for those who want to look up the citations on the Vatican’s own website, as I have been trying to do today. It took me a long time to find the citation from Pacem in Terris by the Vatican webiste, because, of course, there are no page numbers there. The other method would make more sense considering the way most people get information today through the Internet. And, while we’re at it, why not put hyperlinks to the citations of other papal documents? (I put the paragraph number in the text above, so you can find it as well).
Misunderstanding #2: What does a Pope know about Economics Anyway?
“I don’t like the Pope’s ideas about one world government (sic). And why should I pay any attention to him anyway? I’m sure he knows very little about economics. After all, he never cites economists, just other Popes.”
This as actually said by someone in a combox yesterday, on a thoroughly Catholic site. And this is a pretty basic misunderstanding.
When a Pope writes an encyclical, he is primarily writing as a pastor, as a theological and moral authority. He is not writing to make specific social economic proposals — a task for Catholic economists, social scientists and politicians. At the same time, it would be very difficult for him to make the application of moral principles clear without any knowledge of the specifics of economics and social realities. In fact, papal social encyclical are all written after consultations with experts. Often there is a whole team of them overseeing the work, as with John XXIII’s encyclical above.
Now I’m going to bring in a little and (to readers of this blog) very familiar help. As it happens, I have been translating just this week a very pertinent text by Pope John Paul I on the subject of the preparation of one papal social encyclical Rerum Novarum, the grand-daddy of them all, written in 1891 by Leo XIII, when the problems of the working class became acute in industrialized Europe. One of the economists who helped Pope Leo with the encyclical was Giuseppe Toniolo, who lived in the diocese where Albino Luciani was bishop, Vittorio Veneto. Speaking in the Church of the Assumption in Pieve di Soligo, where Toniolo is buried, in 1961, for the 70th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Luciani spoke of the preparation and inspiration of the encyclical, and the mutual part of the Pope and social and economic thinkers in it. As usual his treatment is clarity itself.
But I must clarify in what sense and within what limits Toniolo contributed to preparing the encyclical.
Rerum Novarum, like other papal documents on social themes, contains three sorts of truths: truths of faith, of reason, and of simple observation.
Truths of faith: for example, in Rerum Novarum, the supernatural destiny of man is present from beginning to end; the reasoning that emerges, now here, and now there, is this: “Yes, let’s seek a good arrangement for the workers, but let’s recall that no arrangement can be good if it puts the other arrangement of heaven in danger!” In this area of truth, obviously, Toniolo had nothing to suggest to Leo XIII.
Nor did he in the sector of “truths of reason,” which is the sector of good sense, of natural law, old as the centuries, which the Pope interprets authentically. To this sector belong, for example, the statements of Rerum novarum about the right to property and the right of workers to unite in associations.
It is instead in the sector of observation that the advice of Toniolo could be useful. Social phenomena formed the material for observation. Society, in fact, changes as life changes, and to the changes there must correspond, on the part of the Church, not a different truth, but a different dose of the same truth. Hence a constant adaptation, an opening of our eyes to quickly register the signs of the new times.
I will supply an example: it is a truth of reason that the state must intervene in favor of the workers, in cases where they are not succeeding in reaching just and reasonable goals on their own. Well then, in Quadragesimo anno we hear Pius XI concerned with indicating the limits of state intervention and it is understandable; it was in 1931, the period of totalitarian governments that actually intervened too much in social questions.
In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII urged the state to intervene in favor of the workers. This means that the Pope was convinced that in 1891 the workers could not do it alone and that the states were taking little action. But from where did this conviction come to him? Not from Sacred Scripture or from philosophy, but from the world itself, which from the observatory that is the Vatican, he sought to read as though in a book. He tried to make the reading easier for himself with the help of Catholic thinkers, who, however, were divided on this point.
“The state is like pitch,” said some; “if we dip our finger in it, we will not get it out again; the workers must act alone without the state!” “If the state does not intervene with its massive power, the workers will remain as miserable as they are, the power of the employers are too great!” answered the others, and they were the flower of bishops, thinkers and politicians, in France, Belgium, Germany and England. Among these was none other than Giuseppe Toniolo and he was distinguished among them by the moderation of his tone and the acuteness of his reasoning.
Did he have an influence on inserting the thesis of state intervention and other points in the encyclical? The decree of introduction of the cause of Giuseppe Toniolo says the Leo XIII “doctissimos in hac encyclica conscribenda consuluit viros, quos inter Servum Dei Josephum Toniolo [consulted very learned men in the writing of this encyclical, among them the Servant of God Giuseppe Toniolo].”
(Toniolo was actually declared Venerable by Paul VI in 1971).
***Update July 12
Here’s an equally interesting passage Luciani wrote on this subject a few years later, in 1971, after the appearance of Populorum Progressio, in a Lenten sermon he gave in Venice called “We and the Third World”:
But does the Pope, does the Church, have the right to touch on these questions, beyond the generic call for justice and charity? I know: the Magisterium of the Church must limit itself to declaring what God has revealed. Now, God, by His revelation, has opened new spiritual horizons for humanity, but He has not directly proposed the solution to social problems. Jesus expressly denied being a social revolutionary; he urged us to be just and to share our substance with the poor, but he did not specify how society and property should be regulated in specific periods in history; he has said that people as individuals are the goal, the protagonists and the foundation of human institutions and activities (the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath), but he did not descend to details in socio economic matters.
The ecclesiastical Magisterium, therefore, can only touch on these questions indirectly, by expounding the principles of Christ and setting them beside the various concrete social situations. The analysis of these situations, on the other hand, is up to the experts, whose collaboration the Magisterium must humbly seek and accept. This might explain, for example, why private ownership of the means of production, although stated and reconfirmed as necessary to human liberty and dignity in Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio, occupies a less important place than at one time. And why the Pope, among other things, calls upon the responsible authorities for suitable international laws and an international authority capable of making them respected by the nations.
*** End of update
As for why Popes never cite economists — just as Toniolo went uncited — I’m sure it’s so no one economist or school of economics were be pinpointed as identical with the Pope’s views; since this would not be true in any case, and would be detrimental in some cases to the spiritual point he is making.
I dearly miss the encyclicals John Paul I would have written — something makes me think they would have excelled in clarity and readability as well as in charity and truth. And he did actually speak as Pope on social justice, very briefly, but in a way that resonates with the new encyclical.
But that’s a subject for another post. In fact, I’ll make it my next post.
In the meantime, here’s a useful primer on papal social encyclicals, as well as a link to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
And a good general roundup of the commentary on Charity in Truth.
Last of all, some excellent clarifications from Jimmy Akin. (I’ll let him handle the guy who insists that the Pope is far to the left of Obama).
