Something that passed almost unnoticed in these hectic days before Thanksgiving – for me and for many others – is the talk Pope Benedict XVI gave on November 21 to a group of over 260 artists in the Sistine Chapel. He wanted, among other things, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of John Paul II’s Letter to Artists (published on April 4, 1999) , and the occasion 45 years ago in 1964, when Pope Paul VI greeted artists in the same Sistine Chapel. After recalling those anniversaries, and reminding his listeners that they were in a place filled with some of the most famous works of art in the world, he said:
Dear friends, let us allow these frescoes to speak to us today, drawing us towards the ultimate goal of human history. The Last Judgement, which you see behind me, reminds us that human history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always transcends the present moment even as the two coincide. Yet the dramatic scene portrayed in this fresco also places before our eyes the risk of man’s definitive fall, a risk that threatens to engulf him whenever he allows himself to be led astray by the forces of evil. So the fresco issues a strong prophetic cry against evil, against every form of injustice. For believers, though, the Risen Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For his faithful followers, he is the Door through which we are brought to that “face-to-face” vision of God from which limitless, full and definitive happiness flows. Thus Michelangelo presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of history, and he invites us to walk the path of life with joy, courage and hope. The dramatic beauty of Michelangelo’s painting, its colours and forms, becomes a proclamation of hope, an invitation to raise our gaze to the ultimate horizon. The profound bond between beauty and hope was the essential content of the evocative Message that Paul VI addressed to artists at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: “To all of you,” he proclaimed solemnly, “the Church of the Council declares through our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!” And he added: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands… Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.”
The whole of Pope Benedict’s talk in English, with links to the others, can be found here.
For anyone in the arts, including writers (like me), whether they are poets, playwrights, novelists or even screenwriters, for painters, sculptors, and those in the performing arts, these texts are a rich feast for meditation.
Could anyone express better than John Paul II (who was a practicing poet and playwright) the relation between an artist’s work and the contemplation of God?
6. Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one’s own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it can only stammer in reply? True artists above all are ready to acknowledge their limits and to make their own the words of the Apostle Paul, according to whom “God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands” so that “we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a representation by human art and imagination” (Acts 17:24, 29). If the intimate reality of things is always “beyond” the powers of human perception, how much more so is God in the depths of his unfathomable mystery!
John Paul also said that Christ too was an artist on earth: “Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God.” (Both quotes from the Letter to Artists)
I posted here one of his predecessor John Paul I’s writings as a bishop on artists, though he never got to write a letter to artists as Pope. For him, a saint like Fra Claudio Granzotto, OFM Cap., had a similar idea:
Frau Claudio first remained in contemplation, he first heated his heart in the furnace of divine love, then, when he was well heated and had truly contemplated, only the did he set his hand to his masterpiece, and when his masterpiece was finished, he returned to contemplate and tried to bring what he had sculpted to life again.
The one art that Albino Luciani could lay any claim to practicing was that of a writer. And how did this insight work out in his life? One of his students at the seminary in Belluno, Don Aldo Belli, recalled that Luciani one day said to the class: “I don’t know what the prophet Isaiah did to find such clear and expressive images.” Aldo had the impression that Luciani wanted to learn his secret so as to imitate him. (Humilitas, Italian edition, November 1988, p. 15). That is, he saw the sacred writer first as a human writer, with the same difficulties in inspiration as all others. And he saw himself the same way.
I don’t know if the words Luciani wrote came from a vision like those of Isaiah, or, as I think much more likely from his own constant contemplation of the Word of God, which no doubt Isaiah did too. And though Luciani was capable of writing, and quite well, in a more elevated and poetic style, the result of his contemplation of the Gospels was something very like the Gospel simplicity of Jesus himself. What writer could ask for more?
Updated July 31, 2009 - I revised this recent post because due to my reading, it seems that this subject and John Paul I’s treatment of it is even more important than I first imagined.
One of the members of the heavenly choir who must be most happy at the appearance of Charity in Truth is John Paul I. Luciani was always very attentive to the Church’s social teachings. And especially to Populorum Progressio, the 1967 encyclical by Paul VI on which Benedict based his own just-published letter. Luciani based much of his own thought on Pope’s Paul’s encyclical. He commented on it at the time of its first appearance, and ten years later, in 1977, he recalled it as being like “one of the tongues of fire” that descended on the apostles at Pentecost, because like those tongues of fire, “it too put forth light, strength, and heat, it too was addressed to all peoples and treats the problems of all peoples.”(1)
Luciani’s own attention to the needs of the poor in the Third World was one of the hallmarks of his episcopate in Vittorio Veneto and in Venice. He also fortunately lived long enough to give a shout-out to Populorum Progressio as Pope. It was during his last public audience the day before he died.
I think there is something important about his few simple words that day that tie them to Benedict’s encyclical. He too spoke about Populorum Progressio in the context of love. That is, he saw the teaching of Paul VI revolving around the twin poles of justice and love. But his talk that day was about love, and that is the context in which he put the encyclical. John Paul I had set out to give talks on each of the three theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) and four moral or cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude). Perhaps it’s a good thing that it was during his talk on love, rather than the one on justice, that he spoke about the encyclical, for he didn’t live long enough to deliver the one on justice.
Why is this so important? Well, according to some (such as this article), in Populorum Progressio, Paul VI departed from the traditional balance of charity and justice in Catholic social teaching, to favor an outright emphasis on justice and even the taking of specific positions on government intervention in the economy, limitations on the private property of the wealthy, and the redistribution of wealth from poor nations to rich ones — all positions that some identified with leftist political positions and the solutions of technocrats. What about old-fashioned Christian charity? The same people see Benedict’s new encyclical as a return to sanity with its emphasis on charity.
I doubt that Paul VI himself saw his encyclical this way, and, from his words that day, it’s clear that his immediate successor didn’t either.
Here are John Paul I’s words:
And how [are we to love our neighbor]? Not only in our words, but in our actions. We will take an exam at the end of our lives, and Jesus has already said what the questions he will ask us will be. I was hungry in the persons of the least of my brothers: did you give me anything to eat? I was sick, I was a prisoner, did you come to visit me? These are the questions. Here we will have to give an answer (cf. Mt. 25:34).
Taking these words and some others from the Bible, the Church has made two lists, seven corporal works of mercy, and seven spiritual ones. They are not complete. We should update them. For example: hunger. Today it is no longer a question only of this or that individual. It is whole peoples who are hungry. We all remember the great words of the great Pope Paul VI. “The peoples who are hungry are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples who live in opulence. The Church shudders at this cry of anguish and calls on everyone to respond with love to his brother.” (Populorum Progressio, no. 3) And then, here justice is united to love. Because the Pope says, still in Populorum Progressio: “Private property is not a undeniable and absolute right for anyone. No one has the right to be able to make use of his goods exclusively for his own benefit, when others are dying because they have nothing.” (Ibid., no. 22). Hence “every debilitating arms race is an intolerable scandal” (Ibid., no. 53). . . In the light of these words, we must ask ourselves not only as nations, but as private individuals, especially we who are members of the Church: have we really carried out the plan of Jesus, who has said: “Love your neighbor as yourself”?(2)
By quoting those ringing words of Paul’s work, John Paul I made it clear that the principle it was based on was love: the cry from the heart of Christians responding to brothers and sisters in need. Also of note is his insistence that we must move from a purely individual concept of charity to one that equally embraced individuals and whole peoples, another thing he had in common with both Paul and Benedict.
The main part of his talk, which I’ve translated above, was in Italian. Here he is, saying it in English for the English-speaking pilgrims, from 2:18 to 3:18 (As far as I know, there isn’t any actual video of this part of the audience, so I put the audio together with images and other video):
A transcription, for those who might have trouble following his English (which he had only recently learned to speak)
There is also love of neighbor. These two loves are twins and they go together. Jesus spoke about the importance of loving our neighbors when he said: “I was hungry and you gave me food.” And Paul VI reminded us that there are whole peoples who are hungry and waiting for our fraternal love. Private property is not an absolute right, and the arms race is a scandal. From these things, we can see that as individuals and peoples we have still not fulfilled the command of Jesus: to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Many people may have wondered as I have what a social encyclical by Pope John Paul I might have been like. If we can believe the “person in Rome,” the anonymous source whose account was published in Camillo Bassotto’s book Il mio cuore è ancora a Venezia (My Heart is Still in Venice), he did indeed plan to write one, and from the description the Pope gave of it, it would have been very much along the lines of Populorum Progressio:
‘I will write and speak on “The poor and poverty in the world.” From the lands of famine and drought, of hunger and epidemics, voices are incessantly raised asking for help. The peoples of hunger, where the children die by thousands every day, are appealing to the peoples and the cities of opulence. There are peoples in the heart of Africa, in the countries of South America and in the communities of Vietnam and Cambodia that are struggling for survival, they are the poorest, the most wretched on earth. Those forms of poverty are the scandal of the western world, of the rich and of the Christians. The rich peoples must give life to a chain of solidarity and justice which will drastically reduce the debt of the peoples of the Third World: we must institute a vast worldwide network of exchanges and cooperation for the rebirth, development and independence and the religious, economic, cultural and racial freedom of those peoples who for centuries have been the prey and the servants of Europe and of the West. There will not be peace until justice is done to the underprivileged peoples.(3)
Much has happened in regard to poverty, the globalized consciousness of Christians, and especially the growing culture of death, that makes Charity in Truth a fitting update to Populorum Progressio. If Pope John Paul I had lived, his social encyclicals certainly would have done so too.
NOTES
(1) “La Populorum Progression dieci anni dopo,” Homily for the feast of Pentecost, June 6, 1977, in Albino Luciani /Pope John Paul I Opera Omnia 8:143.
(2) The text is from L’Osservatore Romano, September 28, 1978; but I have also followed the recording of the Pope’s words (which sometimes differs slightly from the official text because the Pope delivered it from memory); the video and audio are available here on YouTube, courtesty of Italian TV RAI; the translation from the Italian is mine
(3) Camillo Bassotto, Il mio cuore è ancora a Venezia (Venice, 1990).
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.
While I was looking around for information about blogging bishops, I came across this gem on YouTube. Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, who lived in the Vatican with Pope Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, tells what it was like to work with them. He has a great story about John Paul I at 3:18 (I already knew this story from a print interview with the cardinal, but never knew it was on tape). Rather fitting to put this up, for it was just a year ago today, the feast of St. Peter and Paul, if I remember right, that I began putting up my posts about John Paul I.
Now that this series is concluded, I’m posting links to all the parts here in order for readers’ convenience. They will also be available on a permanent link on the sidebar (under Pages).
Was Pope John Paul I Murdered? David Yallop’s In God’s Name
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child — I will not forget you — I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible — but even if she could forget — I will not forget you. And today the greatest means — the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in her Nobel Prize acceptance Speech, 1979
