32 years ago today, on the feast of the Transfiguration, at the papal villa at Castelgandolfo. His death began that extraordinary season of papal elections that brought us John Paul I and John Paul II.
I think he was a great and much misunderstood Pope. Here’s a little piece from Rome Reports:
Note: There was one really major error in this video: Montini was given his cardinal’s hat on December 15, 1958, very shortly after John XXIII’s election, not in 1962!
And in case you are wondering, yes, I do plan to blog some more about John Paul I and his “God as Mother” theology soon.
Once more unto the breach – because the AP and the New York Times have once more demonstrated their lack of understanding of the Church and their outright malice in the latest attempt to smear Pope Benedict by selective documentation and misinterpretation of his role as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in regard to cases involving sexual abuse of minors.
I learned about this newest case from Yahoo News yesterday afternoon (April 9) while working at the library. I could hardly bear to read it; it was a tangle of insinuations, botched chronology, missing dates, lack of context and sheer ignorance. Around 6:30, as I was about to leave for home, I got an e-mail from a reader of my blog, who pointed out to me that the Italian papers had a facsimile of a Latin letter by Ratzinger, the only document by him in the case. I printed out copies of this and the Italian articles and read them at dinner.
The AP story had translated parts of Ratzinger’s Latin letter, which was to the bishop of Oakland, Ca, about the laicization of a priest who had abused minors, and it made him look heartless and uncaring about the gravity of the issue, citing as reason for the delay the youth of the petitioner, and the need to consider “the common good” and “the good of the Universal Church.”
I thought this letter was not exactly what it seemed; at home I began to translate it; only later did I find the New York Times article which had a translation. Nevertheless, the NYT neglected to translate another letter with important facts in it. Here are the facts in order (which is more than you will get from the MSM).
Fr. Steven Kiesle, a young priest in the diocese of Oakland, had molested at least six young boys between the ages of eleven and thirteen. He was arrested in 1978, pleaded no contest and received a three-year suspended sentence. He requested laicization voluntarily in 1981.
Fr. Kiesle’s request for dispensation from priestly obligations and celibacy was one of many that would be pouring into the Holy See that year – a mass exodus from the priesthood had begun in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The petitioners ranged from those who wanted to leave the ministry to marry to those who wanted to join Marxist revolutionaries, become Buddhists or otherwise “find themselves.” (I have corrected this somewhat: see the update below). A priest who asked to be voluntarily released who was also a pedophile would be unusual. It’s not clear if that was the exact reason that Kiesle requested the dispensation. But the pastor and the bishop both agreed that he was an immature individual who had little taste for the ministry and never should have become a priest.
The request on Kiesle’s behalf went to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which at that time handled these dispensations. It should be noted that it did not go there because Fr. Kiesle had committed sexual abuse of minors. The CDF did not gain control of such cases until 2001. It would have been treated simply as a laicization case.
Neither the AP nor the NYT article mentions the fact that the first letters sent by Fr. Kiesle’s pastor (April 25, 1981) and Bishop Cummins (May 8, 1981) were addressed not to Cardinal Ratzinger but to Franjo Cardinal Seper, Ratzinger’s predecessor as Prefect of the CDF. (1) Ratzinger did not take office until February 1982.
A reply came from Cardinal Seper on November 17, 1981. He requested more information, among other things asking the bishop “not to neglect to send together with the records your votum (vow, solemn statement) on not fearing scandal.” It is obvious from the way that this is put that this is a declaration that the bishop was required to make as part of canon law, and – note carefully – would be required for ALL requests for laicization. In it, the bishop declares that releasing this priest from his ministry and vow of celibacy would not create scandal. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that this particular case involved sexual abuse of a minor. It doesn’t necessarily mean that either Seper or Ratzinger feared scandal because such abuse was involved. Of course, neither the AP nor the New York Times thought to make this clear, probably because of a complete lack of understanding of canon law.
Bishop Cummins forwarded the information, and on February 1, 1982, wrote to the new Prefect, Cardinal Ratzinger with yet more details.
There was no reply from Ratzinger’s office. The bishop wrote again on September 24, 1982, and received a reply on October 21 saying that no further information could be given at that time.
Now (though neither the Times nor the AP mentions this) there is a three-year gap with no communications from the diocese of Oakland to the CDF; on September 13, 1985, Bishop Cummins again writes to Ratzinger (and mentions that his last communication was in September 1982). This time he got a more detailed reply. The fact that he received a reply may be due to the fact that unlike the previous times he actually forwarded it to the Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S. to be put in his diplomatic pouch. These letters would be more likely to be considered than the general flood of mail in the offices of the CDF.
Here is my translation of Ratzinger’s reply – I had just about finished when I learned that the New York Times had provided one. However, I think mine is better; at least more idiomatic.
November 6, 1985
Sacred Congregation
For the Doctrine of the Faith
Prot. No. 469/81a
Most Excellent Lord,
Having received your letter of September 13 of this year, about the case of the dispensation from all sacerdotal obligations which concerns Rev. Steven Miller KIESLE, of your diocese, it is my duty to communicate to you as follows.
Although this Dicastery considers the reason cited for dispensation in the case being asked about to be of grave importance, it nevertheless judges it necessary to consider along with the good of the petitioner, the good of the Universal Church, and therefore it is unable to make light of the detriment that the granting of the dispensation may cause to the Christian community, attentive especially to the youth of the petitioner.
It is fitting therefore, for this Congregation to subject this kind of case (2) to a more careful examination, which necessarily requires a longer period of time.
In the meantime, may Your Excellency not fail to attend to the petitioner as much as possible with paternal care, and in addition explaining to him the reason for acting of this Dicastery, which is habitually accustomed to proceed with an eye first of all to the common good.
Having met with this fortuitous occasion, I attest to you my great esteem, remaining
Your Rev. Excellency’s most devoted(?) [add.mus]
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
The most Excellent and Reverent Lord
John S. Cummins
Ordinary of Oakland
When I first read the letter, it struck me as being so remote and bloodless and unconnected to the actual case, that I thought “It can’t be anything but a form letter.” I wrote this to the man who sent me the original e-mai. Soon after getting home, I found a discussion of the letter on Fr. Z’s blog; he calls it “boilerplate” – and he used to write letters for the Vatican. As I mentioned the Congregation must have been getting a steady stream of requests for laicization when this was written. Essentially the letter is saying, “your request is important to us, we’ll get to it soon, please be patient.” It may not even have been written by Ratzinger personally but perhaps with a stamped signature.
Unfortunately, since the AP and New York Times stories were published on a Friday night (perhaps deliberately), there was very little official comment from the Vatican. Father Lombardi did say that Ratzinger’s letter “was taken out of context.” However, points made by an anonymous source, a canon lawyer, that appeared the same day in the Italian paper La Repubbica, are important. He explained: “It was and still is the practice that dispensations from the priesthood were not granted to those who asked for them until they turned 40 (except for particular cases, where there were children).” When Kiesle was granted his dispensation in 1987, he was 40 years old. He was in fact, undoubtedly laicized in the end by Ratzinger, but this letter is not in the files. (No need to wonder why; the files were supplied by attack lawyer Jeff Anderson, who wants to sue the Vatican in U.S. federal court for its supposed complicity in sexual abuse by the clergy).
It’s more than likely that any application for laicization from someone under the age of 40 would have gotten this reply when their case first came in, and then their individual case would have been looked at and judged more personally.
But hadn’t the case already been there for some time? Why hadn’t it been attended to? According to the AP story, the file was lost at one time – perhaps bouncing around another dicastery in the Vatican. Perhaps it was only returned to the CDF at this time and was treated as a new file/case. It’s impossible to tell on the basis of the meager documentation given in the NYT article, which evidently didn’t reproduce everything in the lawyer’s files.
So it would be very imprudent for anyone (and of course, the NYT has shown itself very imprudent on this subject) to take this letter as an actual comment on any aspect of Fr. Kiesle’s case or the reason for the delay.
The usual bureaucratic red tape, and perhaps Ratzinger’s self-admitted lack of administrative skills, as well as the changeover from Seper’s administration of the Congregation to his, could have caused the delay or losing of the file. (Also see the update below)
Several other things to note: the articles, especially the AP one, mention that the Kiesle was allowed for a time to volunteer for a youth program after he was removed from ministry, until a youth minister insisted on him being removed. It seemed to me that the AP journalist wrote of this in such a way as to suggest that the delay in laicizing the priest (the final decision on which rested with the Pope, not Cardinal Ratzinger) was endangering children. This is completely ridiculous. Fr. Kiesle’s local bishop had the task of restricting his ministry in such a way that he did not endanger children. He evidently did a bad job at this, but this has nothing to do with the fact that the priest had not been laicized. A local bishop has full powers to restrict a priest’s ministry in any way he sees fit (a power he actually loses once a priest has been laicized and no longer under obedience to his bishop—read what Jimmy Akin has to say about this). If the bishop cannot keep the priest from children, the police can and should. What a distant official in Rome does cannot affect this at all.
That the police gave Fr. Kiesle only probation is a crime. That his bishop was careless in keeping him from children is a crime. But whatever the New York Times may think, bureaucratic bungling is not a crime. But reporting this shoddy and malicious is. Where do we apply to “laicize” incompetent journalists?
I will correct and update this story as more comes in.
Update: Saturday, April 10: I saw this great piece by Fr. Fessio last night (or rather way into the early hours of the morning) but was too tired to link to it. He supplies much-needed context: while hundreds if not thousands of laicizations a year were granted during the papacy of Pope Paul VI, under John Paul II, who instituted a stricter policy, in order to protect the nature of the priesthood, it was almost impossible for a bishop to get a laicization of a priest by 1980. This undoubtedly continued for some time afterward. Here is another good reason for the bureaucratic backlog: the much stricter standards for laicization.
Another update, same day: Because I’m too infuriated to work! What infuriated me perhaps even more than the new accusations was the fact that the AP story repeated its own original reporting on another case from Tucson, where Cardinal Ratzinger had supposedly tried to block the laicization of Fr. Michael Teta for soliciting young men in the confessional, a laicization that the local bishop, Manuel Moreno, had pleaded for. They repeated this lie, although the story had already been exploded by the bishop who succeeded Moreno, Gerald Kicanas.
A reporter for the Arizona Star came to Kicanas bristling with the question: “Why shouldn’t I draw the conclusion that Ratzinger’s office significantly delayed resolution of the Teta case, considering the documents I have before me?” The good bishop kindly pointed out to her that she had completely misread her documents. The 1997 letter to Ratzinger, pleading with him to expedite the case, which had been going on for seven years — the letter was the basis for the AP’s original claims and the reporter’s truculent question — was in fact sent to Ratzinger with the records for the just-concluded diocesan trial, and the decision of the judges formally asking for Teta’s laicization. In fact, this was the first point that Ratzinger was even going to be able to process the case. The seven-year delay mentioned was in the diocese! In addition, Kicanas said that his office had received several requests from 1992-97 from the CDF asking them to please hurry up with the trial! In fact, Ratzinger’s office quickly granted the laicization request, but the case dragged on for years on appeal. I cannot believe that AP was unaware of this. So even when it has been absolutely proven that Cardinal Ratzinger handled a case in an exemplary way, he still must be blamed, but now, it is necessary for the press not just to obfuscate, but to out-and-out lie and refuse to correct their stories.
Update: Sunday April 11: At last the AP is supplying some more details and dates. I’ll include just the relevant parts.
Timeline of defrocked priest Stephen Kiesle
The Associated Press
Posted: 04/09/2010 05:04:15 PM PDT
Kiesle timeline
# 1975-1978: Assigned to Our Lady of the Rosary in Union City.
# August 1978: Kiesle is arrested and pleads no contest to lewd conduct, a misdemeanor, for tying up and molesting two boys. Sentenced to three years of probation. His record is later expunged.
# 1978-1981: Takes extended leave of absence, attends counseling and reports regularly to probation officer.
# July 1981: Oakland Bishop John Cummins sends Kiesle’s file to the Vatican in support of the priest’s petition for laicization, or defrocking.
# November 1981: Vatican asks for more information.
# 1982: Kiesle moves to Pinole.
# February 1982: Cummins writes to Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, providing additional information and warning of possible scandal if Kiesle is not defrocked.
# September 1982: Oakland diocese official writes Ratzinger asking for update.
# September 1983: Cummins visits Rome, discusses Kiesle case with Vatican officials.
# December 1983: Vatican official writes Oakland to say Kiesle’s file can’t be found and they should resubmit materials.
# January 1984: Cummins writes a Vatican official to inquire about status of Kiesle file.
# 1985: Kiesle volunteers as a youth minister at St. Joseph’s Church in Pinole.
# September 1985: Cummins writes Ratzinger asking about status of Kiesle case.
# November 1985: Ratzinger writes to Cummins about Kiesle case.
# December 1985: A memo from diocese officials discusses writing to Ratzinger again to stress the risk of scandal if Kiesle’s case is delayed.
# 1987: Kiesle is defrocked.
So it’s clear that the reason there was no answer from Ratzinger for some time was because the file was lost. Odd that Bishop Cummins didn’t mention that in his letter.
Source: Associated Press
Update Monday April 12: This report is evidently from late Saturday, but I wasn’t able to post it until now.
In a Reuters story, a California-based Vatican lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, says that the 1985 missive from Ratzinger was “a form letter typically sent out initially with respect to laicization cases.”
Just as I’ve been saying all along.
NOTES
(1) Two of the internal memos from the Oakland diocese say that Ratzinger wrote the November 17, 1981 letter, but this is obviously incorrect, and must be due to a failure of memory on the part of the bishop. The letter has Seper’s signature on it.
(2) The AP mistranslated this as “these incidents,” evidently trying to make it sound as the Pope were referring to sexual abuse, where it is clear that it is referring to the petitioner’s request for dispensation from his vows.
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 Progressio 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.
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
"The history of the Catholic missions is by now a long road: at the beginning of that road is the Father of Mercy, who holds out his arms to all his children. All those who encounter the missionaries encounter the Father. And they also encounter the Son, the first missionary, who, obeying the Father, comes to earth, becomes flesh in human nature, is one of us, in solidarity with our misery (except for sin) and ends up dying for us in order to then return to heaven, carrying on his shoulders the human race his has won back.
Out of the same mold are the missionaries, who repeat, in some way, his journey. They too leave their fathers and families and depart to go among a foreign people. They too strip themselves of the refined culture they have acquired in their homelands; and of their native customs and habitat, of a hundred little comforts, in order to be in solidarity. With who? With a people who are on one hand naked and poor, and on the other rich in possibilities, which the missionaries intend to respect, value and elevate."
Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I), to the people of his diocese of Vittorio Veneto, on his return from the diocesan missions in Africa in 1966
