Prologue
Overall Eschatological Context of the Encyclical: The Experience of God (or Lack Thereof).
The three encyclicals of Benedict XVI, “Deus Caritas Est,” “Spe Salvi” and “Caritas in Veritate” are his attempts to recover the experience of Christ in history that has been lost since the 13th century. He wrote: “I have tried to show in my professorial dissertation that this was what was believed concerning the theology of history throughout the first millennium of Christianity. The division of history into ‘before Christ’ and ‘after Christ,’ into redeemed and unredeemed time that seems to us nowadays the essential expression of the Christian consciousness of history, for we think we cannot formulate any concept of the redemption, thus of the keystone of Christianity, without it – this division of history into periods is in fact simply the result of the great change in thinking about the theology of history that occurred in the thirteenth century. This was prompted by the writings of Joachim of Fiore: his teaching about the three epochs was indeed rejected, but the understanding of the Christ-event as a point in time separating different periods within history was adopted from him. The change in the overall understanding of everything to do with Christianity that results from this has to be seen as one of the most significant turnarounds in the history of Christian consciousness. A reappraisal of this will constitute an urgent task for theological study in our time.”[1]
It is principally Bonaventure who explicitly rejects Joachim’s ‘third age’ of the Spirit because it destroys the central position of Christ. Ratzinger wrote in his thesis: “If is justified to say that for Joachim, Christ is merely one point of division among others, it is no less justified to say that for Bonaventure, Christ is the ‘axis of the world history,’ the center of time. Even though Bonaventure accepts and affirms the parallel structure of the ages which had been rejected by Thomas [Aquinas], he is led in this by a completely different tendency than that which led Joachim to his structuring of time. If Joachim was above all concerned with bringing out the movement of the second age to the third, Bonaventure’s purpose is to show on the basis of the parallel between the two ages, that Christ is the true center and the turning point of history. Christ is the center of all. This is the basic concept of Bonaventure’s historical schema, and it involves a decisive rejection of Joachim.”[2]
It is principally Bonaventure who explicitly rejects Joachim’s ‘third age’ of the Spirit because it destroys the central position of Christ. Ratzinger wrote in his thesis: “If is justified to say that for Joachim, Christ is merely one point of division among others, it is no less justified to say that for Bonaventure, Christ is the ‘axis of the world history,’ the center of time. Even though Bonaventure accepts and affirms the parallel structure of the ages which had been rejected by Thomas [Aquinas], he is led in this by a completely different tendency than that which led Joachim to his structuring of time. If Joachim was above all concerned with bringing out the movement of the second age to the third, Bonaventure’s purpose is to show on the basis of the parallel between the two ages, that Christ is the true center and the turning point of history. Christ is the center of all. This is the basic concept of Bonaventure’s historical schema, and it involves a decisive rejection of Joachim.”[2]
Ratzinger understands the Parousia (the “advent” – “presence” of Christ) to be “already-not yet.” We cannot see Him because we have lost the likeness to Him whereby we experience Him in ourselves, and therefore, “know” Him. Not experiencing Him in ourselves we cannot re-cognize Him with our external senses. We are scandalized by His “absence” and we lose hope. We are alone, thrown back on ourselves, and alienated in the world. The three encyclicals are calling us to conversion so that we begin to experience Him as Love, hope in His presence and power, and exercise that presence and power as self-gift in the world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“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 second handedly. To proclaim God is to introduce to the relation with God: to teach how to pray.”[3]
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”[4]
Three Subjects and Three Logics
The Subjects
“My predecessor John Paul II drew attention to this question in Centesimus Annus, when he spoke of the need for a system with three subjects: the market, the State and civil society” (38).
The Logics
“The economy in the global era seems to privilege the former logic, that of contractual exchange, but directly or indirectly it also demonstrates its need for the other two: political logic, and the logic of the unconditional gift” (37).
Three Subjects: the market [commutative justice]; the government regulation [distributive justice]; and the working person.
Three Subjects: the market [commutative justice]; the government regulation [distributive justice]; and the working person.
Two Logics:
1) experience of sensation, abstraction, proposition, syllogism and return to sensation for verification: First Order Logic.
2) experience of the “I” in the moment of free moral action, i.e. the experience of the self in the moment of the act of faith and all subsequent free moral acts. See Wojtyla’s “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” 34.
The Logic of the Market: (commutative justice: contractual exchange, in a dynamic of supply and demand, available to mathematic symbolization and deterministic in nature as an abstraction: “Liberal Capitalism”). “We must face the objection raised especially after the Second Vatican Council, that the autonomy of specialized realms is to be respected above all. Such an objection holds that the economy ought to play by its own rules and not according to moral considerations imposed on it from without. Following the tradition inaugurated by Adam Smith, this position holds that the market is incompatible with ethics because voluntary ‘moral’ actions contradict market rules and drive the moralizing entrepreneur out of the game. For a long time, then, business ethics rang like hollow metal because the economy was held to work on efficiency and not on morality. The market’s inner logic should free us precisely from the necessity of having to depend on the morality of its participants. The true play of market laws best guarantees progress and even distributive justice”[5] (My underline).
“The market is the economic institution that permits encounter between persons, inasmuch as they are economic subjects who make use of contracts to regulate their relations as they exchange goods and services of equivalent value between them, in order to satisfy their needs and desires” (35)….[6]
The Temptation of the logic of the market is “the conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action. Than, the conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom,[7] and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.”[8]
B) Political Logic: (Distributive and Social Justice) “Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics…” (37).
The Logic of the Market: (commutative justice: contractual exchange, in a dynamic of supply and demand, available to mathematic symbolization and deterministic in nature as an abstraction: “Liberal Capitalism”). “We must face the objection raised especially after the Second Vatican Council, that the autonomy of specialized realms is to be respected above all. Such an objection holds that the economy ought to play by its own rules and not according to moral considerations imposed on it from without. Following the tradition inaugurated by Adam Smith, this position holds that the market is incompatible with ethics because voluntary ‘moral’ actions contradict market rules and drive the moralizing entrepreneur out of the game. For a long time, then, business ethics rang like hollow metal because the economy was held to work on efficiency and not on morality. The market’s inner logic should free us precisely from the necessity of having to depend on the morality of its participants. The true play of market laws best guarantees progress and even distributive justice”[5] (My underline).
“The market is the economic institution that permits encounter between persons, inasmuch as they are economic subjects who make use of contracts to regulate their relations as they exchange goods and services of equivalent value between them, in order to satisfy their needs and desires” (35)….[6]
The Temptation of the logic of the market is “the conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action. Than, the conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom,[7] and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.”[8]
B) Political Logic: (Distributive and Social Justice) “Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics…” (37).
“Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”[9]
C) The Logic of the “Unconditional Gift[10]:” “The Church's social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or “after” it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner.”[11]
With this, we reach the key of the entire point of the encyclical and the entire social doctrine of the Church: The defining center, the moral criterion and the protagonist of all business activity is the human person as worker: “The continuing hegemony of the binary model of market-plus-State has accustomed us to think only in terms of the private business leader of a capitalistic bent on the one hand, and the State director on the other. In reality, business has to be understood in an articulated way. There are a number of reasons, of a meta-economic kind, for saying this. Business activity has a human significance, prior to its professional one[12]. It is present in all work, understood as a personal action, an 'actus personae'[13], which is why every worker should have the chance to make his contribution knowing that in some way 'he is working "for himself"'.[14] With good reason, Paul VI taught that “everyone who works is a creator[15]”[16]
An Intellectual Revolution - Broadening Reason - Integrates the “Three Logics” to Give New Solutions to World Economics
An Intellectual Revolution - Broadening Reason - Integrates the “Three Logics” to Give New Solutions to World Economics
“The Church's social doctrine, which has “an important interdisciplinary dimension”[77], can exercise, in this perspective, a function of extraordinary effectiveness. It allows faith, theology, metaphysics and science to come together in a collaborative effort in the service of humanity. It is here above all that the Church's social doctrine displays its dimension of wisdom. 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[78], for which “a clear vision of all economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects”[79] is required. The excessive segmentation of knowledge[80], the rejection of metaphysics by the human sciences[81], 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[17] and its application”[82] 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. 32. The significant new elements in the picture of the development of peoples today in many cases demand new solutions. These need to be found together, respecting the laws proper to each element and in the light of an integral vision of man, reflecting the different aspects of the human person, contemplated through a lens purified by charity. Remarkable convergences and possible solutions will then come to light, without any fundamental component of human life being obscured.”[18]
The Working Person is Relation as Self-Gift
The Working Person is Relation as Self-Gift
What the pope is attempting to do is to introduce the Church and global society to the realism of Who God is and who man is. We have lost touch with reality over the past millennium. This world economic moment can be a decisive moment of recovery and projection of history in a new direction, that of a civilization of Love.
The topics of Chapter Five are astounding and dra
matic:
- Isolation as the deepest form of poverty.
- Alienation as detachment from reality (relation to God and others): strangers in a random universe. Loss of ultimate sense of meaning.
- “The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side.[19] Communio is not “community.” Communio involves constitutive relations as in the Trinity; community is a grouping of individual substances related accidentally.
- “Caritas in Veritate” is explicit in this revolutionary affirmation by calling for a “new trajectory of thinking is needed in order t 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.”[22]
- Metaphysics and theology: “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.”[23]
“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”[24] (bold mine).
The Redefinition of man (from rational animal): “As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal 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”[25] (bold mine).
"Development:" means “inclusion-in-relation of all individuals and peoples within the one community of the human family.” The development of the person in relation is development of the “humanum,” which includes activity as gift of self, including the economic and the political.
- The Church’s Social Doctrine, Not a Third Way: “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).
Critical Texts:
“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.”[26]
“(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.[27]
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.[28] 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.”[29]
The Critiques of George Weigel
“So John Paul dumped the Justice and Peace draft and crafted an encyclical that was a fitting commemoration of Rerum Novarum. For Centesimus Annus not only summarized deftly the intellectual structure of Catholic social doctrine since Leo XIII; it proposed a bold trajectory for the further development of this unique body of thought, emphasizing the priority of culture in the threefold free society (free economy, democratic polity, vibrant public moral culture). By stressing human creativity as the source of the wealth of nations, Centesimus Annus also displayed a far more empirically acute reading of the economic signs of the times than was evident in the default positions at Justice and Peace. Moreover, Centesimus Annus jettisoned the idea of a “Catholic third way” that was somehow “between” or “beyond” or “above” capitalism and socialism — a favorite dream of Catholics ranging from G. K. Chesterton to John A. Ryan and Ivan Illich.
“It was, in a word, a rout — the Waterloo for Justice and Peace. Ever since, Justice and Peace — which may forgive but certainly does not forget — has been pining for revenge. “It didn’t get it during the last years of the pontificate of John Paul II, despite efforts to persuade the Pope to mark the 30th anniversary of Paul VI’s 1967 social encyclical, Populorum Progressio, with a major statement — or, when that stratagem failed, to mark Populorum Progressio’s 35th anniversary. Evidently incapable of taking “No” for an answer, Justice and Peace kept beavering away, with an eye toward Populorum Progressio’s 40th anniversary in 2007. It is one of the worst-kept secrets in Rome that at least two drafts of such an encyclical, and perhaps three, were rejected by Pope Benedict XVI. “That Justice and Peace should imagine a Populorum Progressio anniversary encyclical as the vehicle for its counterattack against Centesimus Annus is itself instructive. For in the long line of papal social teaching running from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, Populorum Progressio is manifestly the odd duck, both in its intellectual structure (which is barely recognizable as in continuity with the framework for Catholic social thought established by Leo XIII and extended by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno) and in its misreading of the economic and political signs of the times (which was clouded by then-popular leftist and progressive conceptions about the problem of Third World poverty, its causes, and its remedies). Centesimus Annus implicitly recognized these defects, not least by arguing that poverty in the Third World and within developed countries today is a matter of exclusion from global networks of exchange in a dynamic economy (which put the moral emphasis on strategies of wealth creation, empowerment of the poor, and inclusion), rather than a matter of First World greed in a static economy (which would put the moral emphasis on redistribution of wealth). Interestingly enough, Paul VI himself had recognized that Populorum Progressio had misfired in certain respects, being misread in some quarters as a tacit papal endorsement of violent revolution in the name of social justice. Pope Paul tried a course correction in the 1971 apostolic letter, Octogesima Adveniens, another Rerum Novarum anniversary document. “Now comes Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Benedict XVI’s long-awaited and much-delayed social encyclical. It seems to be a hybrid, blending the pope’s own insightful thinking on the social order with elements of the Justice and Peace approach to Catholic social doctrine, which imagines that doctrine beginning anew at Populorum Progressio. Indeed, those with advanced degrees in Vaticanology could easily go through the text of Caritas in Veritate, highlighting those passages that are obviously Benedictine with a gold marker and those that reflect current Justice and Peace default positions with a red marker. The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus. “The clearly Benedictine passages in Caritas in Veritate follow and develop the line of John Paul II, particularly in the new encyclical’s strong emphasis on the life issues (abortion, euthanasia, embryo-destructive stem-cell research) as social-justice issues — which Benedict cleverly extends to the discussion of environmental questions, suggesting as he does that people who don’t care much about unborn children are unlikely to make serious contributions to a human ecology that takes care of the natural world. The Benedictine sections in Caritas in Veritate are also — and predictably — strong and compelling on the inherent linkage between charity and truth, arguing that care for others untethered from the moral truth about the human person inevitably lapses into mere sentimentality.
“But herein lies the problem: what does it mean “to be more”? Paul VI answers the question by indicating the essential quality of “authentic” development: it must be “integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man”[42]. Amid the various competing anthropological visions put forward in today's society, even more so than in Paul VI's time, the Christian vision has the particular characteristic of asserting and justifying the unconditional value of the human person and the meaning of his growth. The Christian vocation to development helps to promote the advancement of all men and of the whole man.
The encyclical rightly, if gingerly, suggests that thug-governments in the Third World have more to do with poverty and hunger than a lack of international development aid; recognizes that catastrophically low birth rates are creating serious global economic problems (although this point may not be as well developed as it was in previous essays from Joseph Ratzinger); sharply criticizes international aid programs tied to mandatory contraception and the provision of “reproductive health services” (the U.N. euphemism for abortion-on-demand); and neatly ties religious freedom to economic development. All of this is welcome, and all of it is manifestly Benedict XVI, in continuity with John Paul II and his extension of the line of papal argument inspired by Rerum Novarum in Centesimus Annus, Evangelium Vitae (the 1995 encyclical on the life issues), and Ecclesia in Europa (the 2003 apostolic exhortation on the future of Europe).But then there are those passages to be marked in red — the passages that reflect Justice and Peace ideas and approaches that Benedict evidently believed he had to try and accommodate. Some of these 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. 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. There is also rather more in the encyclical about the redistribution of wealth than about wealth-creation — a sure sign of Justice and Peace default positions at work. And another Justice and Peace favorite — the creation of a “world political authority” to ensure integral human development — is revisited, with no more insight into how such an authority would operate than is typically found in such curial fideism about the inherent superiority of transnational governance. (It is one of the enduring mysteries of the Catholic Church why the Roman Curia places such faith in this fantasy of a “world public authority,” given the Holy See’s experience in battling for life, religious freedom, and elementary decency at the United Nations. But that is how they think at Justice and Peace, where evidence, experience, and the canons of Christian realism sometimes seem of little account.)If those burrowed into the intellectual and institutional woodwork at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace imagine Caritas in Veritate as reversing the rout they believe they suffered with Centesimus Annus, and if they further imagine Caritas in Veritate setting Catholic social doctrine on a completely new, Populorum Progressio–defined course (as one Justice and Peace consultor has already said), they are likely to be disappointed. The incoherence of the Justice and Peace sections of the new encyclical is so deep, and the language in some cases so impenetrable, that what the defenders of Populorum Progresio may think to be a new sounding of the trumpet is far more like the warbling of an untuned piccolo.
Benedict XVI, a truly gentle soul, may have thought it necessary to include in his encyclical these multiple off-notes, in order to maintain the peace within his curial household. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will concentrate their attention, in reading Caritas in Veritate, on those parts of the encyclical that are clearly Benedictine, including the Pope’s trademark defense of the necessary conjunction of faith and reason and his extension of John Paul II’s signature theme — that all social issues, including political and economic questions, are ultimately questions of the nature of the human person.”[30]
II) THE ENCYCLICAL:
“On a second, third, and even fourth reading, Caritas in Veritate remains a complex and sometimes obscure document, in which many intellectual influences are clearly at work. As such, it seems likely to generate continued debate, which will have to address at least these questions:
1. Throughout his pontificate, and in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI has been at pains to stress the continuity of Catholic life and thought before and after the Second Vatican Council: what he terms a “hermeneutics of continuity,” as distinguished from a “hermeneutics of rupture.” Or, in lay language, the claim that the Catholic Church reinvented itself at Vatican II is simply wrong. Yet the proponents of Populorum Progressio (the 1967 social encyclical of Paul VI that Caritas in Veritate commemorates) would seem to be promoting a “hermeneutics of rupture” when they claim that the tradition of Catholic social doctrine began anew with Populorum Progressio — a claim that at least some passages in Caritras in Veritate can be interpreted to support. This raises a very important question: Are there two Catholic social-doctrine traditions (one stemming from Leo XIII’s 1891 masterwork, Rerum Novarum, and a post-conciliar one beginning from Populorum Progressio), or is there one? This is not a merely theoretical argument, for the implications of the “two traditions” claim are considerable, especially in light of the fact that the Populorum Progressio “tradition” is the less disciplined of the two in closely identifying specific public policy recommendations with points of theological principle. Thus Benedict XVI’s entire effort to get the Catholic Church thinking of itself as a communion of believers in essential continuity over time is now back on the table of debate, because of the suggestion that something different in kind began, at least in terms of social doctrine, with Populorum Progresio.
2. In the debate over Caritas in Veritate, as in all such debates, it will thus be important to distinguish between principles of Catholic social doctrine and specific prudential judgments about public policy. This is not, pace some partisans on both the Catholic left and the Catholic right, a matter of “picking and choosing” your Magisterium, but of recognizing the difference (which the social doctrine itself has always acknowledged) between those principles of justice that can be known with certainty and the available public-policy options, which involve the questions of prudence — will it work, or will it make matters worse? Caritas in Veritate repeats the teaching of John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, that the Church has no “technical solutions” to offer in public policy: a self-denying ordinance that emerges from the thick philosophical and theological structure of the Rerum Novarum tradition. Whether the Populorum Progressio “tradition” is so self-disciplined is not at all clear.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
My Comment:
What is most interesting in the critique that Weigel is directing at Benedict’s “Caritas in Veritate” is its explosiveness in bringing out what has been long buried in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Karol Wojtyla, a Council Father and Cardinal of Krakow before becoming John Paul II, wrote a catechism of sorts for his diocese, Krakow, pointing out exactly what he understood the “enrichment of faith” that the Council intended to effect.
That “enrichment” consisted in a change of perspective on the content of the Catholic Faith. He remarked: “If we study the conciliar magisterium as a whole, we find that the Pastors of the Church were not so much concerned to answer questions like ‘What should men believe?,’ ‘What is the real meaning of this or that truth of faith?,’ and so on, but rather to answer the more complex question: ‘What does it mean to be a believer, a Catholic and a member of the Church?’”
Perhaps the clearest way to state this is to proclaim that the “Object/Subject” of faith is the Person of Jesus Christ Who is the revelation of the Father.[5] This being so, Josef Ratzinger writes, “then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down.”[6] It also means that one knows revelation (the Person of Christ), not primarily by concepts, but by the experience of becoming the Person of Christ and becoming conscious of this divinization in oneself. Ratzinger prefaced the above with this: “‘revelation is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act [the concept]. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of ‘revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive ‘revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it.”[7] This is why prayer as the act of transcending the self is the sine qua non essential condition of being “like” Him Who is nothing but relation to the Father, and as enfleshed lives out Who He is as prayer.
“For there to be continuity in the faith as experiential knowledge of the Person of Jesus Christ as experienced from the beginning - and growing in that experience – the Second Vatican Council proclaimed itself to be a “pastoral council.” Wojtyla wrote: “The question ‘What does it mean to be a believing member of the Church?’ is indeed difficult and complex, because it not only presupposes the truth of faith and pure doctrine, but also calls for that truth to be situated in the human consciousness and calls for a definition of the attitude, or rather the many attitudes, that go to make the individual a believing member of the Church. This would seem to be the main respect in which the Conciliar magisterium has a pastoral character, corresponding to the pastoral purpose for which it was called. A ‘purely’ doctrinal Council would have concentrated on defining the precise meaning of the truths of faith, whereas a pastor Council proclaims, recalls or clarifies truths for the primary purpose of giving Christians a life-style, a way of thinking and acting.”[8] And that “attitude” and “life-style” is the relationality of self-gift. In a word, if the Church continued down the road of offering concepts of truth and not the experience of being the Truth, she would not have been in continuity with the faith of the Fathers of the Church from the beginning.
“Populorum Progressio”(as well as “Humanae Vitae”) published a scant two years after the end of the Council, carried this change in perspective from “object” to “subject” that was at the root of the Council. To understand this, it is imperative to read #10-20 again and again. Weigel’s complaint about Populorum Progressio is meaningless in even a casual read of those numbers. For example, his claim that there was a “hermeneutic of rupture” by “proponents of Populorum Progressio” who claimed that “Catholic social doctrine began anew” with the encyclical, flies directly against the expressed text of Benedict XVI: “The link between Populorum Progressio and the Second Vatican Council does not mean that Paul VI’s social magisterium marked a break with that of previous Popes, because the Council constitutes a deeper exploration of this magisterium within the continuity of the Church’s life. In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church’s social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it.”[9] And then Weigel launches a direct broadside against “Caritas in Veritate” by insinuating with cunning: “Are there two Catholic social-doctrine traditions (one stemming from Leo XIII’s 1891 masterwork, Rerum Novarum, and a post-conciliar one beginning from Populorum Progressio), or is there one?”
“That there be two would undermine the one Christ as Singular Subject of Revelation. That there be one, then “Populorum Progressio” as close progeny of Vatican II would have to be dismissed since Weigel stated at the outset that “the claim that the Catholic Church reinvented itself at Vatican II is simply wrong.” And besides, Weigel views the crafting of “Populorum Progressio,”as the work of parliamentary procedure which he characterized as “gold” and “red” in his “Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red.” The “gold” are words of Benedict XVI; the “red” are the words of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. This style of thought belongs to the so-called Bologna School founded by Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti in the 1960’s and headed by the late Giuseppe Alberigo. “The central thesis…is that the documents produced by Vatican Council II are not its primary elements. The main thing is the event itself. The real council is the ‘spirit’ of the council. It cannot be reduced to the ‘letter’ of its documents, and is incomparably superior to these.”[10]
Benedict’s Pre-emptive Rejection of Weigel’s Critique
Benedict XVI had pre-emptively rejected this approach to the documents of Vatican II immediately after his election as pope. He addressed the Roman Curia with the following remarks:
“The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
“These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
“In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.
“The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.[11]
[1] Weigel, National Review, July 13, 2009
[2] K. Wojtyla, “Sources of Renewal,” Harper and Row (1979) 17,
[3] “Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in her,” Dei Verbum 8.
[4] John Henry Newman, “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” Image Books (1960).
[5] Jn. 1, 18. “No one has at any time seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him.”
[6] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones, Memoirs 1927-1977,” Ignatius (1997) 108.
[7] Ibid 107,
[8] K. Wojtyla, “Sources of Renewal,” op. cit 17-18.
[9] “Caritas in Veritate #12.
[10] Sandro Magister, Blog: “Chiesa” June 22, 2005.
[11] Address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005:
Conclusion:
There is an enhanced continuity of the experience of the revealing Person of Jesus Christ precisely because of the shift in the Second Vatican Council from first order abstraction (objectified “truths) to a second order where there is the experience and consciousness of the Subject as self-transcending. The continuity is the Person-Subject, not the concepts, and this precisely because the experience of the self in transcendence is beyond conceptual categories. This was basically the conclusion of the thesis of John Paul II on the meaning of faith in St. John of the Cross. The self-loving is the proportionate medium of likeness, not the concepts. Hence, the dark night of the soul! This is also the basic mind of Benedict concerning the experiential knowledge of God. Consequently, the “newness” of Vatican II in its reach to ontological subjectivity is the guarantor of continuity with the Church of always.
The Practical Conclusion of the “Caritas in Veritate”
“Advent tells us that the presence of the Lord has already begun but also that it has only begun. This means that the Christian looks not only to the past and what has been but also to what is coming. Amid all the catastrophes of this world he has a transcendent certainty that the seed of the light is growing in secret, until some day the good achieves a definitive victory and all else is made subject to it. On that day Christ will come again. The Christian knows that the presence of God which has now only begun will some day be a full and complete presence. This knowledge sets him free and gives him a basic security.”[31]
Our Father’s Experience: This presence of the Person of Christ is the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom spreads only insofar as other persons become “Ipse Christus.” Everything just said will make sense of the words “already” – “not yet.” Christ is present, but not fully present as “The Whole Christ.” Therefore, we are not just waiting for the Second Coming as if Christ were not present here and now in the world. He is present in the world not only by the Eucharist, and not only by grace. But He is present as our Father said it in the get together in December 1970 in Rome:
“El Señor esta pasando muy cerca de vosotros; lo se, aunque vosotros no os dais cuenta. Pasa quasi in oculto. Además, sin ocultarse, esta en el corazón vuestro, en esas pequeñas batallas que a lo mejor no son tan pequeñas y que otras veces agrandáis con vuestras bobadas, como las agrando yo. Pero no me refiero a la vida interior cuando os digo eso.”
“Algún dia, cuando pasen los anos, veréis que Jesús ha estado muy cerca de vosotros: no solo in la Eucaristía, no solo por la gracia. No habéis tenido ocasión de verle, porque he procurado que no lo vierais, sabiendo que quiero que le améis con todas vuestras fuerzas, con toda vuestra mente, con todo vuestro corazón”[32]
Therefore, the most practical conclusion to this encyclical is to explain the how one lives out concretely the gift of self in the exercise of work in the world.
Bottom Line
“In the global era, economic activity cannot prescind from gratuitousness, which fosters and disseminates solidarity and responsibility for justice and the common good among the different economic players. It is clearly a specific and profound form of economic democracy. Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone, and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State. While in the past it was possible to argue that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement, today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place” (38). And the reason for this is that the primordial justice the human person requires is love. Hence, “if the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function”(35).
In the large picture of BXVI, we have the elimination of periods of history based on the presence or absence of Christ. Rather, Jesus Christ is the very center and meaning of history in which He is instantiated by the “development” of the human person into “another Christ.” The crisis of our times has been the absence of God. God can only be experienced in the Person of the God-man who being God has become one of us. Hence, as BXVI said in Brazil in 2007:
[1] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means to Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) ftn. 35-36
[2] J. Ratzinger, “The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure,” Franciscan Herald Press (1989) 118.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization,” Address to Catechists, Rome 2000.
[4] Benedict XVI, “Address to Young People at Barangaroo,” Sydney, 7/17/08.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Church and economy: Responsibility for the future of the world economy,” Communio 13 (Fall, 1986) 200.
[6] Benedict XVI “Caritas in Veritate,” #35 and #37.
[7] Consider Benedict’s remarks that, in effect, attention to only the laws of the market and self-interest has produced the so-called “Third World:” “The processes of globalization, suitably understood and directed, open up the unprecedented possibility of large-scale redistribution of wealth on a world-wide scale; if badly directed, however, they can lead to an increase in poverty and inequality, and could even trigger a global crisis. It is necessary to correct the malfunctions, some of them serious, that cause new divisions between peoples and within peoples, and also to ensure that the redistribution of wealth does not come about through the redistribution or increase of poverty: a real danger if the present situation were to be badly managed. For a long time it was thought that poor peoples should remain at a fixed stage of development, and should be content to receive assistance from the philanthropy of developed peoples. Paul VI strongly opposed this mentality in Populorum Progressio. Today the material resources available for rescuing these peoples from poverty are potentially greater than before, but they have ended up largely in the hands of people from developed countries, who have benefited more from the liberalization that has occurred in the mobility of capital and labour. The world-wide diffusion of forms of prosperity should not therefore be held up by projects that are self-centred, protectionist or at the service of private interests. Indeed the involvement of emerging or developing countries allows us to manage the crisis better today. The transition inherent in the process of globalization presents great difficulties and dangers that can only be overcome if we are able to appropriate the underlying anthropological and ethical spirit that drives globalization towards the humanizing goal of solidarity;” “Caritas in Veritate” #42.
[8] Benedict XVI “Caritas in Veritate” #34.
[9] Caritas in Veritate” #36.
[10] Ibid #37.
[11] Ibid “36.
[12] John Paul II, “Centesimus Annus” #32; Paul VI, “Populorum Progressio” #25.
[13] John Paul II, “Laborem Exercens” #24.
[14] Ibid #15. “The person who works desires not only due remuneration for his work; he also wishes that, within the production process, provision be made for him to be able to know that in his work, even on something that is owned in common, he is working ‘for himself.’ This awareness is extinguished within him in a system of excessive bureaucratic centralization, which makes the worker feel that he is just a cog in a huge machine moved from above, that he is for more reasons than one a mere production instrument rather than a true subject of work with an initiative of his own.”
[15] Paul VI, “Populorum Progressio” #27.
[16] Ibid #41.
[17] Consider the four addresses of Benedict from 2006-2008 on the topic of “broadening reason:” Regensburg, The Roman University La Sapienza, and two to the European Professors of philosophy.
[18] Caritas in Veritate #31-32.
[19] John Paul II, “Evangelium Vitae” #20.
[20] “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;” Benedict XVI, Synod October 7, 2008 (underline mine).
[21] “He is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.’ Here the decisive point comes beautifully to light. ‘Father’ is purely a concept of relationship. Only in being for the other is he Father; in his own being in himself he is simply God. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness.
“Expressed in the imagery of Christian tradition, this means that the first Person does not beget the Son as if the act of begetting were subsequent to the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of self-giving. Only as this act is it person… 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;” Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (2004) 183-184 (underline and bold mine ).
[22] “Caritas in Veritate” #53.
[23] Ibid #53.
[24] CV #53.
[25] Caritas in Veritate, #55.
[26] CV #53.
[27] “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).
[28] “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.
[29] CV #53.
[30] George Weigel, Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red,” National Review July 7, 2009.
[31] J. Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 71-73.
[32] (Cronica. January 1971, 37).
[33] “(O)nly 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. Yet here a further question immediately arises: who knows God? 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).
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); Brazil, Aparecida, May 17, 2007.
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