"Caritas in Veritate" and Eschatology

Let’s tie things together! The first three encyclicals of Benedict XVI are God is Love, We hope and Love is reality here and now. Again, he is saying that Christ is God’s Love in which we live in hope, in the historical here and now.

What does this have to do with eschatology and the spirit of Opus Dei? Everything.

The eschatology that we will be presenting teaches that Christ is not now; we will die and be judged by Him in a life after this, and finally He will come at the end of the world. Basically, we will be presenting the eschatology of the present state of secularization that, according to Ratzinger, would have been unthinkable 200 years ago.

In the interim, what has happened? Christians, like John the Baptist, have been scandalized by “the failure” of Christianity. As you recall, John preached “the Messiah as the judge with the winnowing fan in his hand that would separate the chaff from the grain and throw the chaff once and for all into eternal fire. He had portrayed him as one who would cast out this adulterous generation and, in need by, raise up children of Abraham from the very stones to replace the faithless people who called themselves the children of Abraham. Above all, amid the fearful ambivalence of this world where we are constantly waiting and hoping in darkness, John had expected and proclaimed a clear message: that the day would finally come when the hopeless darkness would be dispelled in which human beings wander to and fro and know not where they are going. The ambviguity would disappear, and men would no longer have tgo grope their way in the endless mist but woulde know for certain that this and no other is God’s unequivocal claim on them, that this and no other is their situation in relation to God…

“God’s presence had begun…but what a difference from what John had imagined! No fire fell from heaven to consume sinners and bear definitive witness to the just; in fact, nothing changed at all in the present would. Jesus went about preaching and doing good in the land, but the ambiguity remained.”[1]

This “ambiguity” before our senses is our scandal. We expect – as John – big spectacular things to happen that are empirically (to our senses) verifiable. And the result is that we lose faith. Like Thomas, unless we see with our senses, we will not believe.

Consider the tale told by our Father:

			Let me tell you about an event of my own personal life which happened many years ago. One day I was with a friend of mine, a man with a good heart but who did not have faith. Pointing toward a globe he said, "Look, from North to South, from East to West." "What do you want me to look at?" I asked. His answer was: "The failure of Christ. For twenty centuries people have been trying to bring his doctrine to men's lives, and look at the result." I was filled with sadness. It is painful to think that many people still don't know our Lord, and that among those who do know him, many live as though they did not. But that feeling lasted only a moment. It was shortly overcome by love and thankfulness, because Jesus has wanted every man to cooperate freely in the work of redemption. He has not failed. His doctrine and life are effective in the world at all times.”[2]

Now, consider the exact parallel to that in Ratzinger. He proposes that “What really torments us today, what bothers us much more [than whether there are 3 Persons in God or 2 natures in Christ] is the inefficacy of Christianity: after two thousand years of Christian history, we can see nothing that might be a new reality in the world; rather, we find it sunk in the same old horrors, the same despair, and the same hopes as ever. And in our own lives, too, we inevitably experience time and again how Christian reality is powerless against all the other forces that influence us and make demands on us”[3](my underline).

So what happened? Ratzinger gives this astounding insight: “Christian theology, which was very soon confronted by this discrepancy between expectation and fulfillment, in the course of time turned the kingdom of God into a kingdom of heaven that is beyond this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which again comes to pass beyond this life, after death. But theology did not thereby provide an answer. For what is sublime in this message is precisely that the Lord was talking not just about another life, not just about men’s souls, but was addressing the body, the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society; that he promised the kingdom of God to the man who lives bodily with other men in this history. As marvelous as the knowledge is that has been opened up for us by biblical scholarship in our century (that is, that Christ was not just looking forward to another life, but was talking about real people), it can also disappoint and unsettle us when we look at real history, which is in truth no kingdom of God”[4] (underline mine).

The question, then, is what epistemological horizon are we living in? This is the eschatological question: What is real? John the Baptist did not see it. He sent messengers with the question: “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Lk. 7, 19). And the response is the whole of the Ratzinger opus: “Go and tell John what it is that you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense [scandal] at me!” (Lk. 7, 22-23).

John Paul II made the exegesis of this text that Benedict is making through his encyclicals as pope: “Especially through His lifestyle and through His actions, Jesus revealed that loved is present in the world in which we live – an effective love, a love that addresses itself to man and embraces everything that makes up his humanity. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty – in contact with the whole historical ‘human condition’ … Christ, then, reveals God who is Father, who is ‘love.’”[5]

The question imposes itself: What is real? In Brazil in May of 2007, Benedict XVI asked the question::

“What is real? Are only material goods, social, economic and political problems "reality"? This was precisely the great error of the dominant tendencies of the last century, a most destructive error, as we can see from the results of both Marxist and capitalist systems. They falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God. Anyone who excludes God from his horizons falsifies the notion of "reality" and, in consequence, can only end up in blind alleys or with recipes for destruction.

“The first basic point to affirm, then, is the following: only those who recognize God know reality and are able to respond to it adequately and in a truly human manner. The truth of this thesis becomes evident in the face of the collapse of all the systems that marginalize God.”

Benedict then launches into the anthropological con-version that must take place in us such that we be able to re-cognize “Love” (Agape) that is present in the world here and now. (In a word, “Christ lives!”). Obviously, re-cognition demands that we possess in ourselves cognitively-experientially what we re-cognize outside of us. That change consists in becoming the Love that is self-giftedness. In a word, one must become “alter Christus” in order to be able to re-cognize the Christ that is present in the world now. Benedict then asks: “who knows God? … For a Christian, the nucleus of the reply is simple: only God knows God, only his Son who is God from God, true God, knows him. And he "who is nearest to the Father’s heart has made him known" (John 1:18).[6] This anthropological shift, necessary to experience God as pure relationality, is sitting in the scriptural verse: “No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11, 27).

Benedict makes an even more forceful appeal to the Person of Christ, the Word of God, as the true reality in his keynote address at the Synod on the Word of God in October 2008:

“At the beginning of our Synod the Liturgy of the Hours proposes a passage from Psalm 18 on the Word of God: praise for His Word, expression of the joy of Israel in learning it and, in it, to learn about His will and His face. I would like to meditate on a few verses of this Psalm with you.

“It begins like this: “In aeternum, Domine, verbum tuum constitutum est in caelo... firmasti terram, et permanet”. This refers to the solidity of the Word. It is solid, it is the true reality on which we must base our life. Let us remember the words of Jesus who continues the words of this Psalm: “Sky and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away”. Humanly speaking, the word, my human word, is almost nothing in reality, but a breath. As soon as it is pronounced, it disappears. It seems like nothing. But already the human word has incredible force. It is words that create history, it is words that form thoughts, the thoughts that create the word. It is the word that forms history, reality.

“Even more, the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our notion that matter, solid things, things we can touch, is the most solid, the most certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one’s life: sand and rock. He who builds on sand only builds on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will vanish. We can see this now with the fall of two large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. Who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is he who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is he who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life.”

All of this is the burden of the present encyclical. “Caritas in Veritate” means: the world is in a desperate need of development to experience what is real. “Tangible things, … success, … career, … money, … are of a “secondary order.” They are not really real. The only reality is the Word of God Who is a Person, a divine Person – nothing but ure relationality to the Father - Who is also man. And that Person is the Kingdom of God: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast our demons then the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk. 11, 20). This encyclical is an eschatological encyclical par excellence. The Kingdom of God, Heaven, death, judgment are not to be pushed out of the “now” and into the future. They are now.

The reason they have been pushed out of the physical world and off to an ethereal “heaven” is the loss of the experience of the self as relation (which in effect is the experience of God) that has accelerated in the last 200 years. Ratzinger mentions that “Two hundred years ago, the assertion that the Christian hope [my underline] was illusory would have been completely meaningless for most people in Europe. Though that assertion was in fact made, it remained for most people insubstantial and inconsequential, because the presence of Christianity governed their sense of reality. The Christian message was continually engaged in demonstrating its own reality as something on whose basis one could live and die. The joy which such certitude brought forth, even amid a host of afflictions, found expression in the radiant beauty of Baroque church-building and music. Today, we are faced with a phenomenon of an absolutely contrary kind. To maintain today that Christianity is the reality which bears up the world is to make an empty claim so far as the average person is concerned. For many, Christianity is nothing more than a gush of pious words which only the naïve could accept as a substitute for reality. And these two attitudes [my emphasis] dispose one to hear the same text in completely different ways. What we hear reflects the persons we who listen are and not simply what it is we are listening to.”[7]

Hence the topic of eschatology is the topic of Christianity itself. It is also the topic of Opus Dei. What else is the Word but the instantiation of the Kingdom of God by each one becoming “another Christ,” and becoming so in the achievement of self-gift in secular work. The Kingdom is present in the historical and physical here and now to the extent that there are person making the gift of self in work. Hence, The Kingdom is “not a concept, a doctrine, or a program subject to free interpretation, but it is before all else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the invisible God.”[8] And so, the Kingdom is invisible to the eye, and as such become a scandal.

“Caritas in Veritate” is such a scandal. All the commentaries that I have seen so far are scandalized. Weigel, Novak, Thomas Reese, S.J. all construe the encyclical to be a “left” leaning affair in that relationality and solidarity are constitutive to it. Weigel, for example, is looking for free market subsidiarity without the solidarity of the personal self-gift which he takes to be “red” socialism (attributable to the Pontifical Council of Peace and Justice). Even Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. seems to miss the ontological “constitutiveness” of the relationality. He says: “The Trinitarian and relational understanding of being in this encyclical shows the relation between our head and our deeds. Thinking properly is a precondition to acting properly. Of course, Aquinas said this long ago, but it is nice to see it here.”

I take the relational dimension to be far more than a “thinking” point. It is an experiential ontological point whereby we become who we are; i.e. if it is true that we image the divine Persons, that Jesus Christ is the prototype of man (GW #22) and the adequate anthropology reads that “man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes #24). This is constitutiveness, not mere accidents of a substance. Benedict does not mean that Charity is a virtue. It is a Personal Reality.

The misunderstandings of “Charity in Veritate” seem to have their root in the assumption and presumption of Greek anthropology that perceives man – sensibly - “from below” as “substance of a rational nature;” in brief, a rational animal. It is precisely here that Benedict is in the process of affecting a revolution. In 1967, after the Council, he launched the challenge that must rock the Church and the world. It is now, perhaps, that the moment has come for that challenge to be heard and understood. It is found in the prayer of Christ to the Father exhorting “that they be one as we are one” (Jn. 17, 23). It reads in the following way concerning the meaning of the divine Person:

“It [the divine Person of the Father] is identical with the act of self-giving. Only as this act is it person, and therefore it is not the giver but the act of giving… In this idea of relatedness in word and love, independent of the concept of substance and not to be classified among the ‘accidents,’ Christian thought discovered the kernel of the concept of person, which describes something other and infinitely more than the mere idea of the ‘individual.’ Let us listen once again to St. Augustine: ‘In God there are no accidents, only substance and relation.’ Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the sole dominion of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today ‘objectifying thought;’ a new plane of being comes into view. It is probably true to say that the task imposed on philosophy as a result of these facts is far from being completed – so much does modern thought depend on the possibilities thus disclosed, without which it would be inconceivable.”[9]

All the misperceptions concerning this encyclical and the previous two are rooted in the exegesis of this text.

---

[1] J. Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 75.

[2] St. Josemaria Escriva “The Great Unknown” Christ I Passing By Number 129

[3] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be a Christian” Ignatius (2006) 25-26.

[4] Ibid 28-29.

[5] John Paul II, “Dives in Misericordia” #3.

[6] Benedict XVI, Pope's Opening Address for Aparecida Conference: CELAM, "Not Only the Continent of Hope, but Also the Continent of Love!" APARECIDA, Brazil, MAY 13, 2007.

[7] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” 21.

[8] John Paul II, “Mission of the Redeemer,” #18.

[9] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (2004) 184.

Response to an Email Defending Weigel

Email from Janice: referring to his "Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red"

“I agree that Weigel goes too far here. Yet does there not remain the possibility that a layperson may legitimately highlight the portions of an encyclical that address only matters of faith and morals, which "Lumen Gentium" defines as alone possessing binding force (in the 1964 Notificationes, Appendix)? Certain technical details might be mentioned, for example of public policy or economic concern, but it is left open to the layperson's free prudential judgment to discern such issues. The point of this, perhaps, is that it is even possible to quibble a bit with the Holy Father on technical details: in this case, the dispute might be over how an "international political authority" might be structured, whether it would be consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, what "wealth distribution" means and how we should achieve it, etc. Doesn't the Pope affirm this general policy himself in his later comments on "Caritas" (a July 8th general audience), when he states that "the Encyclical does not aim to provide technical solutions to today’s social problems but instead focuses on the principles indispensable for human development", viz. principles pertaining to faith and morals?

If so, then it may be possible to interpret Weigel and Novak's political and economic position as not a "politicization of the Magisterium", but rather a faithful adherence to the Magisterium's sacred teaching authority while exercising one's free intellectual judgment as an individual layperson. Those who are truly guilty of "politicization of the Magisterium", it appears, are those who would compromise the Church's doctrine concerning faith and morals while embracing wholeheartedly every seemingly "progressive" suggestion on technical issues.

Respondeo: I would suggest that Weigel is not just quibbling about “technical details” that would provide “technical solutions to today’s social problems.” Weigel is raging against the constitutive social dimension of the human person and human work as “gratuitousness and communion” as well as “gift.” Interestingly, Weigel marks the references to the social dimension in “red” suggesting that perhaps we are dealing with an ideological socialism or Marxism in what he suggests to be so-called “default positions” by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace” and “that Benedict evidently believed he had to try and accommodate.”

Getting the enemy in his sights, Weigel now fulminates against this relationality and gratuitousness of gift. He rages: “Some of these [passages] are simply incomprehensible, as when the encyclical states that defeating Third World poverty and underdevelopment requires a ‘necessary openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion.’ This may mean something interesting; it may mean something naïve or dumb. But, on its face, it is virtually impossible to know what it means.” He thunders on: “The encyclical includes a lengthy discussion of ‘gift’ (hence ‘gratuitousness’), which, again, might be an interesting attempt to apply to economic activity certain facets of John Paul II’s Christian personalism and the teaching of Vatican II, in Gaudium et Spes 24, on the moral imperative of making our lives the gift to others that life itself is to us. But the language in these sections of Caritas in Veritate is so clotted and muddled as to suggest the possibility that what may be intended as a new conceptual starting point for Catholic social doctrine is, in fact, a confused sentimentality of precisely the sort the encyclical deplores among those who detach charity from truth.”

I must admit that this is the sort of language – “clotted and muddled,” “confused sentimentality” - is heard whenever there is a migration from a conceptual rationalism that reduces reality to neatly dissected bundles of intelligibility to the horizon of Being experienced as consciousness. It must be kept in mind that Benedict XVI is talking about development, and by development, he means that of the human person as “I.”. And since the person has been created in the image and likeness of the divine Persons who are relationalities constitutively – such that One cannot be given without the Other [and hence God, Who is nothing but Personal[1]] and therefore God is “One” (“Communio”), the human person must also be constitutively relational. The language of the encyclical is the following: “This perspective is illuminated in a striking way by the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity within the one divine Substance. The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality[2]. The reciprocal transparency among the divine Persons is total and the bond between each of them complete, since they constitute a unique and absolute unity. God desires to incorporate us into this reality of communion as well: “that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn 17:22)” (#54).


Hence, “thinking of this kind requires a deeper critical evaluation of the category of relation” (53). In fact, this is the entire task of the encyclical, i.e. “to embark on a new trajectory of thinking in order to arrive at a better understanding of the implications of our being one family” (#53); and to do this, there must be a “broadening [of] our concept of reason and its application” (31). Such language and thought is not originating from the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, but from the mind of Joseph Ratzinger now Benedict XVI and author of “Caritas in Veritate.”

Janice raises the question whether Weigel’s parsing out the “gold” which belongs to Benedict and the “red” which belongs to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, could be an exercise of the legitimate freedom of autonomy believers enjoy with regard to the Magisterium. Weigel’s “red” would be mere “technical solutions to today’s social problems” and could be otherwise than stated in the encyclical.

Authority of the Encyclical

As the short answer to Janice, I would reply that the authority of the encyclical is not limited to certain parts dealing with faith and morals and pronounced by the pope with Magisterial power, while the authority of other parts stands or falls according to rational coherency.

Ratzinger comments that if such were the case, “doctrinal decisions [could] exist – if at all – solely in situations where the Church may lay claim to infallibility; [and] outside of that sphere, only argument would hold weight. The result is that there could be no certainty shared by the whole community of the Church. It seems to me [Ratzinger] that we have before us a typically Western restriction and legalistic reduction of the notion of faith which radicalizes certain one-sided developments which begin to make their appearance around the High Middle Ages. A parallel may render the issue clearer: from about the thirteenth century on, interest in the conditions necessary for validity begins to push every other consideration to the margin of sacrament al theology. Increasingly, everything ceased to matter except the alternative between valid and invalid. Those elements which do not affect validity appear to be ultimately trivial and interchangeable. Thus, in the case of the Eucharist, for example, this is expressed in an ever-stronger fixation on the words of consecration; that which is actually constitutive for validity becomes more and more strictly limited. Meanwhile, the eye for the living structure of the Church’s liturgy is progressively lost. Everything other than the words of consecration appears to be mere ceremony, which happens to have evolved into its present form but in principle might just as easily have been omitted. The characteristic nature of liturgy and the irreplaceable liturgical sense cease to be regarded as important, falling as they do outside the narrow limits of a legally defined minimalism….

“Both in doctrine and in liturgy, what really matters is lost when one feels obliged to distill a juristical minimum, beyond which everything is left subject to arbitrariness. Here too we would do well to look once more beyond the fence of Western thinking and to make the attempt to understand anew the original vision which has remained largely intact in the East.”[3]

Caritas in Veritate is an act of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. Revelation is the Word of God as Person Who reveals Himself to the Church as Subject who hears the Word, receives the Word and becomes the Word. The entire encyclical is an act of the Magisterium that speaks the Word authoritatively and that is assisted in that speaking by the Holy Spirit.

Vatican II (LG#25) teaches that ordinary Magisterium must receive “loyal submission of the will and intellect… in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra…”

Conclusion: Weigel is excising a constitutive dimension of Christian anthropologys that is the very core of the mind of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, i.e. the human person as gift, relation and gratuitousness. He denigrates the reference to relationality as “clotted,” “muddled,” “confused sentimentality,” “incomprehensible” “multiple off-notes,” “incoherent,” “impenetrable,” “the warbling of an untuned piccolo,” “naïve or dumb,” “fantasy,” “fideist,” “a realism… of little account.” Since this relational dimension of the human person is as profoundly embedded in John Paul II (as spousal self-gift) as in Benedict XVI (Image of Trinity and Jesus Christ), it makes me wonder whether Weigel ever really reached the ground of John Paul II. Perhaps this may explain why it took him 864 Of "Witness to Hope"(which was a fabulous work) to hide what he now denies.

[1] Although Benedict uses the word “Substance,” he is not using it in the Greek philosophical mode but in the theological parlance of one reality with the Father.
[2] The person are neither “relations” neither as accidents or substance. The divine Persons are “other” than Greek metaphysical categories that are the result of abstraction from sense perception.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian’,” The Nature and Mission of Theology. Ignatius (1995) 111-113.

Elements for Understanding "Caritas in Veritate"

Class: MHP 7/20/09

“A secret, an open secret: these world crises are crises of saints.

God wants a handful of men ‘of his own’ in every human activity. And then… ‘pax Christi in regno Christi – the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.’[1]

1. God is not known because He is not experienced. We know “about” Him, but we do not now “experience” Him.

God: “The true problem of our times is the ‘Crisis of God,’ the absence of God, disguised by an empty religiosity. Theology must go back to being truly theo-logy, speaking about and with God.

“[J.B.] Metz [Ratzinger’s professor of theology at the University of Munster] is right: the ‘unum necessarium’ to man is God. Everything changes, whether God exists or not. Unfortunately –we Christians also often live as if God did not exist (‘si Deus non daretur’). We live according to the slogan: God does not exist, and if he exists, he does not belong.

“Therefore, evangelization must, first of all, speak about God…

“Here too we must keep the practical aspect in mind. God cannot be made known with words alone. One does not really know a person if one knows about this person secondhandedly. To proclaim God is to introduce to the relation with God: to teach how to pray.”[2]

If man is made in the image of God, if God is not known experientially, neither is man. Therefore, there is a loss of the meaning of man.

Realism: On my count, Benedict refers to God explicitly 66 times in the encyclical. His major assertion: “when God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose and the ‘good' begins to wane”[3]

More importantly, the experience of God is intimately connected with the experience of ourselves, and vice versa, the experience of ourselves is intimately connected with our experience of God. In fact, the flow of his argument comes from Scripture: a) The Person of the Father cannot be known except through the Son: “No one has at any time seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him” (Jn. 1, 18); b) “No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt. 11, 27); The Father and Son are One God, yet they are distinct Persons: “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10, 30); “The Father is greater than I” (Jn. 14, 29); And now, how we can know the Son experientially: “As he was praying in private, that his disciples also were with him, and he asked them, saying, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am/’ And they answered and said, “John the Baptist; and others, Elias; and others, that one of the ancient prophets ahs risen again.’

“And he said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘The Christ of God’” (Lk. 9, 18). Notice that not even the “feel me and see; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Lk. 24) is working on the level of experience of the “I” in prayer with Christ as mention in Luke 9, 18.

The only way Simon can know his true self as image of God is by expanding his self and becoming real as Christ is real. He does this by expanding self into prayer with Christ.

Caritas in Veritate: The Broadening of Reason – For Realism

Benedict gave 4 major addresses from 2006 to 2008 on Broadening Reason: The Regensburg Address, 2 to European professors of philosophy, and 1 to the Roman University “Sapienza.” He was asking for the philosophic and metaphysical recognition of the self, the “I,” as the really real, the experiential access to God, and the intrinsic relational character of the “I.”

It was exciting to see that in his taking up the theme of the economy, he placed it in the context of “Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth,” and since the economy is a human action, it must be a derivative of the development of the human person. And since the human person takes his prototype from Jesus Christ (GS #22), there can be no true human (economic and otherwise) development without the divinization (relationalizing-broadening) of the human person – which ultimately comes down to being “other Christs.” But to be “another Christ,” one must become relational to the Father and the others as Jesus Christ

The ontological measurements of the Person of the God-man, then, must be taken to understand what “development” in the created “imaging” man must look like. One of those measurements is the broadening of reason. Reason must “broaden” to take in the self as gift as Christ is gift. The state of this “giftedness” is a consciousness and attitude that would conform and become adequate to the expansion of the self into the generosity of gifted ness as Christ. The encyclical makes explicit reference to this:

“Paul VI had seen clearly that among the causes of underdevelopment there is a lack of wisdom and reflection, a lack of thinking capable of formulating a guiding synthesis for which “a clear vision of all economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects” is required. The excessive segmentation of knowledge,[4] the rejection of metaphysics by the human sciences,[5] the difficulties encountered by dialogue between science and theology are damaging not only to the development of knowledge, but also to the development of peoples, because these things make it harder to see the integral good of man in its various dimensions. The “broadening [of] our concept of reason and its application”[6] is indispensable if we are to succeed in adequately weighing all the elements involved in the question of development and in the solution of socio-economic problems” (31).

Note that in #83 of “Fides et ratio,” John Paul makes the large metaphysical identification of “being” with the human person. He says: “In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry.”

In a philosophical work in 1974, Wojtyla had explained the equivalency of broadening reason by attending to the “I” of the human person as this privileged locus for accessing being or reality:

“Today more than ever before we feel the need – and also see a greater possibility – of objectifying the problem of the subjectivity of the human being…. The antinomy of Subjectivism vs. Objectivism, along with the underlying antinomy of idealism vs. realism, created conditions that discouraged dealing with human subjectivity – for fear that this would lead inevitably to subjectivism. These fears, which existed among thinkers who subscribed to realism and epistemological objectivism, were in some sense warranted by the subjectivistic and idealistic character – or at least overtones - analyses conducted within the realm of `pure consciousness.’ This only served to strengthen the line of demarcation in philosophy and the opposition between the `objective’ view of the human being, which was also an ontological view (the human being as a being), and the `subjective’ view, which seemed inevitably to sever the human being from this reality.

“Today we are seeing a breakdown of that line of demarcation… I am convinced that the line of demarcation between the subjectivistic (idealistic) and objectivistic (realistic) views in anthropology and ethics must break down and is in fact breaking down on the basis of the experience of the human being. This experience automatically frees us from pure consciousness as the subject conceived and assumed a priori and leads us to the full concrete existence of the human being, to the reality of the conscious subject.” [7]

Realism: Broadening Reason to the Dimensions of Being Relation

Broadening Reason is Simon entering into the prayer of Christ such that he experiences in himself what Christ experiences (mutatis mutandis) in Himself in relating to the Father. Only in this way could Simon “know” the “I” of Christ as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16). By becoming relation in prayer, Simon becomes “Peter” and “experiences Christ in himself.”

In Caritas in Veritate #10, Benedict XVI refers to his discourse in Brazil in May 2007. There he explains that we have to update “the different terms in which the problem of development is presented today, as compared with forty years ago” in Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio. He talks about two levels of experience: the experience of the sense, and the experience of the self. Both are experiences of the real, but with a priority of importance of the self because it is there that we experience God by imaging Him. In Brazil, Benedict asked:

I. “What is real? Are only material goods, social, economic and political problems "reality"? This was precisely the great error of the dominant tendencies of the last century, a most destructive error, as we can see from the results of both Marxist and capitalist systems. They falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God. Anyone who excludes God from his horizons falsifies the notion of "reality" and, in consequence, can only end up in blind alleys or with recipes for destruction.

“The first basic point to affirm, then, is the following: only those who recognize God know reality and are able to respond to it adequately and in a truly human manner. The truth of this thesis becomes evident in the face of the collapse of all the systems that marginalize God.

Benedict then asks: who knows God? And responds:

“How can we know him? We cannot enter here into a complex discussion of this fundamental issue. For a Christian, the nucleus of the reply is simple: only God knows God, only his Son who is God from God, true God, knows him. And he "who is nearest to the Father’s heart has made him known" (John 1:18). Hence the unique and irreplaceable importance of Christ for us, for humanity. If we do not know God in and with Christ, all of reality is transformed into an indecipherable enigma; there is no way, and without a way, there is neither life nor truth.

“God is the foundational reality, not a God who is merely imagined or hypothetical, but God with a human face; he is God-with-us, the God who loves even to the Cross. When the disciple arrives at an understanding of this love of Christ "to the end", he cannot fail to respond to this love with a similar love: "I will follow you wherever you go" (Luke 9:57).

Benedict then says: “We can ask ourselves a further question: what does faith in this God give us? The first response is: it gives us a family, the universal family of God in the Catholic Church. Faith releases us from the isolation of the "I", because it leads us to communion: the encounter with God is, in itself and as such, an encounter with our brothers and sisters, an act of convocation, of unification, of responsibility towards the other and towards others. In this sense, the preferential option for the poor is implicit in the Christological faith in the God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9).

II. In Rome in 2008, Benedict gave the keynote address to the Synod on The Word of God. It was startling for the epistemological emphasis:

“Furthermore, the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life” Synod on the Word of God, October 2008: Benedict XVI Keynote Address.

Relation

The meaning of development will involve entering into and becoming relational – in everything. Everything will involve going out of self. Faith, work, manufacture, marriage, economy, politics, etc. will all be facets of self-giving on this deeper reality and experience of the self. The reality of oneself as image will involve Gaudium et spes #24 whereby one becomes self by the sincere gift of self.

Observe Caritas in Veritate: “54. The theme of development can be identified with the inclusion-in-relation of all individuals and peoples within the one community of the human family, built in solidarity on the basis of the fundamental values of justice and peace. This perspective is illuminated in a striking way by the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity within the one divine Substance. The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality. The reciprocal transparency among the divine Persons is total and the bond between each of them complete, since they constitute a unique and absolute unity. God desires to incorporate us into this reality of communion as well: “that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn 17:22). The Church is a sign and instrument of this unity[131]. Relationships between human beings throughout history cannot but be enriched by reference to this divine model. In particular, in the light of the revealed mystery of the Trinity, we understand that true openness does not mean loss of individual identity but profound interpenetration. This also emerges from the common human experiences of love and truth. Just as the sacramental love of spouses unites them spiritually in “one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mt 19:5; Eph 5:31) and makes out of the two a real and relational unity, so in an analogous way truth unites spirits and causes them to think in unison, attracting them as a unity to itself.

“55. The Christian revelation of the unity of the human race presupposes a metaphysical interpretation of the “humanum” in which relationality is an essential element.

Consider this in the light of Ratzinger’s remarks in ‘Introduction to Christianity” 131-132 (1990 edition). A replica of it (1967) is found here in 2009:

“a new trajectory of thinking:’ “a new trajectory of thinking is needed in order to arrive at a better understanding of the implications of our being one family; interaction among the peoples of the world calls us to embark upon this new trajectory, so that integration can signify solidarity[129] rather than marginalization. Thinking of this kind requires a deeper critical evaluation of the category of relation. This is a task that cannot be undertaken by the social sciences alone, insofar as the contribution of disciplines such as metaphysics and theology is needed if man's transcendent dignity is to be properly understood.”[8]

Key Texts

“(53)One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation. If we look closely at other kinds of poverty, including material forms, we see that they are born from isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love. Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love, by man's basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a “stranger” in a random universe. Man is alienated when he is alone, when he is detached from reality, when he stops thinking and believing in a foundation[125]. All of humanity is alienated when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies and false utopias[126] (underline mine).

Keep in mind that this is not a third way between liberal capitalism and Marxist Communism. It is on a completely different level of experience, that of the working person, who finds self by gift of self.[9]

What Benedict is talking about is the human person as ontological relation that heretofore cannot be accounted for by the Greek or Neoscholastic metaphysic so as to takes its place among the human sciences, and therefore communicable conceptually. This is the great task of Benedict as testifier to Vatican II, Paul VI and John Paul II. He said as much immediately after his election as pope.[10] We have no “category” or concept for a pure relation in the horizon of concrete, material beings. Hence, we describe rather than define. He says: “As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God. Hence these relations take on fundamental importance. The same holds true for peoples as well. A metaphysical understanding of the relations between persons is therefore of great benefit for their development. In this regard, reason finds inspiration and direction in Christian revelation, according to which the human community does not absorb the individual, annihilating his autonomy, as happens in the various forms of totalitarianism, but rather values him all the more because the relation between individual and community is a relation between one totality and another.”[11]

BOTTOM LINE

“These world crises are crises of saints:”

I'm invisible.

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.

Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you see I'm on the phone?" Obviously not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.

I'm invisible.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, "What time is it?" I'm a satellite guide to answer, "What number is the Disney Channel?" I'm a car to order, "Right around 5:30, please."

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude -but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again.

She's going ... she's going ... she's gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it.

I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:"To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:
* No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names.
* These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
* They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
* The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, "Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it."
And the workman replied, "Because God sees."

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become."

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree. When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table." That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, “You’re gonna love it there."

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

---

[1] The Way #301.

[2] J. Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization,” 2.

[3] Benedict XVI, “Address to Young People at Barangaroo,” Sydney, 7/17/08.

[4] John Paul “Fides et Ratio” (1998) #85.

[5] Ibid #83

[6] Benedict XVI “Address at the University of Regensburg,” 12 September 2006.

[7] Karol Wojtyla, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” Person and Community Lang (1993) 209-210.

[8] CV #53.

[9] “The Church's social doctrine is not a "third way" between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own. Nor is it an ideology, but rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church's tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation which is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behavior. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology” (Solicitudo Rei Socialis #41).

[10] “I forgot to mention the many documents that he left us -- 14 encyclicals, many pastoral letters, and others. All this is a rich patrimony that has not yet been assimilated by the Church. My personal mission is not to issue many new documents, but to ensure that his documents are assimilated, because they are a rich treasure, they are the authentic interpretation of Vatican II. We know that the Pope was a man of the Council, that he internalized the spirit and the word of the Council. Through these writings he helps us understand what the Council wanted and what it didn’t. This helps us to be the Church of our times and of the future.” Polish Television 2005.

[11] CV #53.

[12] CV #53.

[13] “The Church's social doctrine is not a "third way" between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own. Nor is it an ideology, but rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church's tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation which is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behavior. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology” (Solicitudo Rei Socialis #41).

[14] “I forgot to mention the many documents that he left us -- 14 encyclicals, many pastoral letters, and others. All this is a rich patrimony that has not yet been assimilated by the Church. My personal mission is not to issue many new documents, but to ensure that his documents are assimilated, because they are a rich treasure, they are the authentic interpretation of Vatican II. We know that the Pope was a man of the Council, that he internalized the spirit and the word of the Council. Through these writings he helps us understand what the Council wanted and what it didn’t. This helps us to be the Church of our times and of the future.” Polish Television 2005.

[15] CV #53.

[16] Caritas in Veritate (Henceforth CV) #18.

[17] CV #18.

[18] J. Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization,” 2.

[19] Benedict XVI, “Address to Young People at Barangaroo,” Sydney, 7/17/08.

[20] J. Ratzinger, “God in Pope John Paul II’s Crossing he Threshold of Hope” Communio 22 (Spring, 1995) 107.