Don’t keep Christ trapped up “there” in "Heaven" (Christ is Heaven), and “after this” at the end of the world. Let Him out into the present “now” of ordinary life.

December 23, 2013:

Pope Francis:

“There is a third coming of the Lord: that of every day. The Lord visits His Church every day! He visits each of us, and so our souls as well [experience something similar] : our soul resembles the Church , our soul resembles Mary. The desert fathers say that Mary, the Church and our souls are feminine, and that what is said about one can be said analogously of the others. Our soul is also in waiting, this waiting for the coming of the Lord – an open soul that calls out, ‘Come, Lord.’”

Pope Francis went on to say that the Holy Spirit moves each of us in these days to make this prayer his own, and recalled how all throughout the Advent season the Church has described herself as being in vigilant expectation – the attitude that is the hallmark of the pilgrim. “We are pilgrims,” he said:

“Are we expectant, or are we [indifferent]? Are we vigilant, or are we closed up ‘safely’ in an inn along the way, without desire to go forward. Are we pilgrims, or are we vagabonds? For this reason, the Church invites us to pray, ‘Come! ‘, in order to open our soul and in order that that our soul be, these days, vigilant and expectant. Keep vigil! Be mindful of the difference the Lord’s coming (or not) makes in us. Is there a place for the Lord, or only for parties, for shopping , for revelry ... Is our soul open , as is Holy Mother Church and as was the Virgin Mary? Or is our soul rather closed, with a “Do Not Disturb!” sign hung on the door to it?”

“The world,” warned Pope Francis, “does not end with us,” but with the Lord, with Our Lady and with Mother Church. “So,” he said, “we do well to repeat [the invocation”: ‘O Wisdom , O Key of David, O King of the nations, come!”:

“Now, repeat [the call] many times, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ and look to see our soul be not one of those souls that say, “Do not disturb!” No! Let ours be great souls – souls open to receive the Lord in these days and that begin to feel that, which tomorrow the Church will speak to us in the antiphon: ‘Know that today the Lord will come, and in the morning you will see his glory!’

MARANATHA

Pope To the Curia

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21 December 2013

Your Eminences, 
Dear Brother Bishops and Priests, 
Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

Once again the Lord has enabled us to journey through Advent, and all too quickly we have come to these final days before Christmas. They are days marked by a unique spiritual climate made up of emotions, memories and signs, both liturgical and otherwise, such as the crèche. It is in this climate that this traditional meeting takes place with you, the superiors and officials of the Roman Curia, who cooperate daily in the service of the Church. I greet all of you with affection. Allow me to extend a special greeting to Archbishop Pietro Parolin, who recently began his service as Secretary of State, and who needs our prayers! 

While our hearts are full of gratitude to God, who so loved us that he gave us his only-begotten Son, it is also good to make room for gratitude to one another. In this, my first Christmas as the Bishop of Rome, I also feel the need to offer sincere thanks to all of you as a community of service, and to each of you individually. I thank you for the work which you do each day: for the care, diligence and creativity which you display; and for your effort – I know it is not always easy – to work together in the office, both to listen to and to challenge one another, and to bring out the best in all your different personalities and gifts, in a spirit of mutual respect. 

In a particular way, I want to express my gratitude to those now concluding their service and approaching retirement. As priests and bishops, we know full well that we never really retire, but we do leave the office, and rightly so, not least to devote ourselves more fully to prayer and the care of souls, starting with our own! So a very special and heartfelt “thank you” goes to those of you who have worked here for so many years with immense dedication, hidden from the eyes of the world. This is something truly admirable. I have such high regard for these “Monsignori” who are cut from the same mould as the curiales of olden times, exemplary persons. We need them today, too! People who work with competence, precision and self-sacrifice in the fulfilment of their daily duties. Here I would like to mention some of them by name, as a way of expressing my esteem and my gratitude, but we know that, in any list, the first names people notice are the ones that are missing! Besides, I would also risk overlooking someone and thus committing an injustice and a lack of charity. But I want to say to these brothers of ours that they offer a very important witness in the Church’s journey through history. 

This mould and this witness make me think of two hallmarks of the curial official, and even more of curial superiors, which I would like to emphasize: professionalism and service. 

Professionalism, by which I mean competence, study, keeping abreast of things. This is a basic requisite for working in the Curia. Naturally, professionalism is something which develops and is in part acquired; but I think that, precisely for it to develop and to be acquired, there has to be a good foundation from the outset. 

The second hallmark is service: service to the Pope and to the bishops, to the universal Church and to the particular Churches. In the Roman Curia, one learns – in a real way, “one breathes in” – this twofold aspect of the Church, this interplay of the universal and the particular. I think that this is one of the finest experiences of those who live and work in Rome: “to sense” the Church in this way. When professionalism is lacking, there is a slow drift downwards towards mediocrity. 

Dossiers become full of trite and lifeless information and incapable of opening up lofty perspectives. Then, too, when the attitude is no longer one of service to the particular Churches and their bishops, the structure of the Curia turns into a ponderous, bureaucratic customs house, constantly inspecting and questioning, hindering the working of the Holy Spirit and the growth of God’s people. 

To these two qualities of professionalism and service, I would also like to add a third, which is holiness of life. We know very well that, in the hierarchy of values, this is the most important. 
Indeed, it is basic for the quality of our work, our service. And I want to say here that in the Roman Curia, there have been and there are saints; I have said this in public more than once, to thank the Lord. Holiness means a life immersed in the Spirit, a heart open to God, constant prayer, deep humility and fraternal charity in our relationships with our fellow workers. It also means apostleship, discreet and faithful pastoral service, zealously carried out in direct contact with God’s people. For priests, this is indispensable. 

Holiness in the Curia also means conscientious objection to gossip! We rightfully insist on the importance of conscientious objection but perhaps we, too, need to exercise it as a means of defending ourselves from an unwritten law of our surroundings, which unfortunately is that of gossip. So let us all be conscientious objectors; and mind you, I am not simply preaching! Gossip is harmful to people, our work and our surroundings. 

Dear brothers and sisters, let us feel close to one another on this final stretch of the road to Bethlehem. We would do well to meditate on Saint Joseph, who was so silent yet so necessary at the side of Our Lady. Let us think about him and his loving concern for his Spouse and for the Baby Jesus. This can tell us a lot about our own service to the Church! So let us experience this Christmas in spiritual closeness to Saint Joseph. 

I thank you most heartily for your work and especially for your prayers. Truly I feel “borne aloft” by your prayers and I ask you to continue to support me in this way. I, too, remember you before the Lord, and I impart my blessing as I offer my best wishes for a Christmas filled with light and peace for each of you and for all your dear ones. Happy Christmas!

Blogger's Take On Recent Events

For those of you are sensitive to the epistemology, and have spent some time with the person as relation over the years: What Pope Francis is doing is living out the “New Evangelization” in front of our eyes as person-in-relation, and, in Evangelii Gaudium, pointing to the failure to move the entire ecclesial and global culture from “nature” to person. In EG, he is outing American and global economics as built on the reductive, positivist, materialist calculus of supply and demand where the work of the human person is split from the person and treated as a commodity. At best we will have an ethic of material justice, but the person is trashed, and relationality and gift as demanded by the real metaphysics of the person is trashed. And sexuality, even in the pre Vatican II mind, is nature with ends.

      Pat Deneen (posted somewhere on my blog in recent days/weeks) shows this discrepancy with.which Francis has caused great disruption   What occurs to me after listening to Fr. William Smith of Brooklyn, is that the media is doing our job for us. They are bypassing this whole epistemological problem, i.e., how to move from a nature based ethic to a person based ethic semantically. They are doing it with pictures and headlines. The Church proposed the human person in GS#24 as moral criterion for all things sexual and economic. Both. The point made is that pope Francis is out of himself and into others living mercy, and that is on the side of the poor. He is cutting both ways because he is working with the human person as imaging Christ the prototype. This was the message of Vatican II, but it could not escape the gravitational pull of a reductive, objectified and abstractive way of knowing.

   The effect that Francis is producing resonates in  everybody. All buy it. And it turns out to be the central message of Christianity. Again, see Pat Deneen on  this below. This week Francis is on the cover of Time as “Person of the Year” and “The New Yorker” as pope in full regalia making snow angels in the snow. Perfect. He is an icon of freedom liberated from himself and at the service of the poor with heart. That is the message. Semantically, it has been a nightmarish quagmire of verbiage trying to get this kind of giftedness across from a reductive, objectivized conceptualism. But it is happening thanks to the media. They do not really  know what they are dealing with, but what they see, they like. They know the pubic likes it. It fits with what has played under the banner of political liberalism. And to the dismay of some, it turns out to be the truth. The “liberal” has been popularly conceptualized as non-truth, but as love for the other and being-in-relation, when turned into a metaphysics of person  imaging the Person of Christ, it is the “new evangelization” that the Spirit is communicating through  the person of this pope.

See P. Deneen below.

On the Sunday of Joy:  How to Start Over Again To Re-incarnate the Lord - Let Yourself Be Loved in Confession!

VATICAN CITY, December 15, 2013 (Zenit.org) - Here is the translation of the Holy Father's address before and after the recitation of the Angelus today to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square.

* * *

Dear brothers and sisters, hello!

Today is the third Sunday of Advent. It is called “Gaudete Sunday,” that is, the Sunday of joy. Often in the liturgy [today] we hear invitation to rejoice, to be happy. Why? Because the Lord is near. Christmas is near. The Christian message is called “gospel,” that is, “glad tidings,” an announcement of joy for the whole people; the Church is not a refuge for sad people, the Church is a house of joy! And those who are sad find joy in her, they find true joy in her.

But the joy of the Gospel is not just any joy. It is caused by our finding ourselves embraced and loved by God. As the prophet Isaiah (cf. 35:1-6a, 8a, 10) reminds us, God is he who comes to save us, and give succor especially to the fearful of heart. His coming among us strengthens, solidifies, encourages, lifts up and makes the desert and plain bloom, that is, our life when it becomes arid. And when does our life become arid? This happens when it lacks the water of the Word of God and his Spirit of love. However great are our limits and our dismay, we are not permitted to be downhearted and vacillating in the face of our infirmities. On the contrary, we are invited to get a grip and straighten our weak knees, to have courage and not be afraid because our God always shows us the greatness of his mercy. He gives us the strength to go forward. He is always with us to help us go forward. He is a God who truly wants what is good for us, he loves us and so he is with us, to help us, to strengthen us and go forward. Take heart! Always forward! Thanks to his help we can always start over. How? How do we start over? Someone might say to me: “No, Father, I have done a lot of... I am a great sinner... I cannot start over!” You’re wrong! You can start over! How? Because he waits for you, he is near you, he loves you, he is merciful, he forgives you, he gives you the strength to start over! He gives it to everyone! Then we are able to open our eyes again, to overcome sadness and tears and sing a new song. And this true joy remains in times of trial too, even in suffering, because it is not a superficial joy but enters into the very depths of the person who entrusts himself to God and confides in him.

Christian joy, like hope, has its foundation in God’s fidelity, in the certainty that he always keeps his promises. The prophet Isaiah exhorts those who have lost their way and are in trouble to trust in the Lord’s fidelity because his salvation will not delay in breaking into their life. Those who have met Jesus along the way have experienced a joy that nothing and no one can take away. Jesus Christ is our joy! His faithful love is inexhaustible! Thus, when a Christian becomes sad, it means that he has distanced himself from Jesus. But we must not leave him to his own devices. We must pray for him, and make him feel the warmth of the community.

The Virgin Mary helps us hurry toward Bethlehem to meet the Child who is born for us, for the salvation and joy of all men. To her the Angels says: “Rejoice, full of grace. The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). She obtains for us the joy of the Gospel in the family, at work, in the parish and everywhere. It is an intimate joy, made of wonder and tenderness. It is what a mother experiences when she looks at her newborn child, and feels that he is a gift of God, a miracle that she can only be grateful for!

3d Sunday of Advent - A

   

The Scandal: There have been no visual sightings of The Lord since the Ascension. Therefore, the Theologians Gave Up On Him and Consigned Him to Heaven Beyond the Stars and the Judgment at the End of the World. However, He is Present and Visible to Those Small Enough to be Like Him. 

   The Gospel of today is about John the Baptist in jail who has heard of the recent miracles of the Lord. Obviously (if not strangely for one who is the last of the Old Testament prophets and the greatest born of woman), he is disbelieving. He sends messengers to Him asking: "'Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?' And Jesus answered saying to them, 'Go and report to John what you have heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not scandalized in me" (Mt. 11, 3).

   The import of the gospel is that Christ is, indeed, present; and the evidence of  this are the miracles that have been performed. But John, like all of us, moves in and out of faith - and this precisely because faith is a voluntary act of the whole person, and not simply an act of the intelligence. It is an  act of  conversion away from the self and  the empiricism of the senses (particularly sight) to a transcending of the self, as Christ is the transcendence of His Self.

   Recall how Simon entered into prayer with Christ to the Father (Lk. 9, 18) and in that context was asked: "who do men say that I am?" and then, "who do you say that I am?" And the response: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt. 16, 16). The epistemological import is that "like is known  by like," or "only God knows God." That is, one must become "Ipse Christus" to be able to know - read "re-cognize" - Christ in His miracles.

   The Hidden Life and St. Joseph: 

   A like approach to understanding this is Pope Francis' words to the bishops of Spain in a retreat during Holy Week (year ?): "Nazareth is a permanent dimension of the apostolic man." Tellingly, he says: "We should not consider the hidden life of Jesus as a preparatory stage to the public life. Rather, it is the very synthesis of the whole life  of the Lord" (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, "In Him Alone Is Our Hope - The Church According to the Heart of Pope Francis," pp. 61-67. www. magnificat.com. 

   What's more, it is the very core of the spirit of St. Josemaria Escriva (cf. Christ is Passing By, #22). It is also the grounding of the true eschatology, particularly of the second millennium which has become bereft of the presence of Christ and hence secularized into a non-transcendent secularism that has morphed from the ideologies of communism and capitalism into the burgeoning nihilism of the present moment. Pope Francis is exercising the parrhesia of great prophecy denouncing the virulent consumerism of capitalist possessive individualism which can be answered only by the working Christ in Nazareth.

   This is the great answer for all times: Work as the action of a person who becomes ipse Christus by the pain of mastering himself to make the gift of himself in the work that is obedience to God and that itself becomes  gift to others. 

* * * * * * * * 

Benedict XVI and St. Josemaria Escriva

Our Scandal

Ratzinger (1964): “I believe the real temptation for someone who is a Christian, as we experience it today, does not just consist in the theoretical question of whether God exists; or even the question of whether he is three or one; or even the question of whether Christ is God and man in one person. What really torments us today, what bothers us much more 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. And if, after all our labor and efforts to live on the basis of what is Christian, we draw up the final balance sheet [and, of course, this is on the level of empirically discernible successes], then often enough the feeling comes over us that the reality has been taken away from us, dissolved, and all that remains in the end is just an appeal to the feeble light of our goodwill. And then in moments of discouragement like that, when we look back on the path we have traveled, the question forces its way into our minds: What is all this array of dogma and worship and Church, if at the end of it all we are still thrown back onto our own poor resources? That in turn brings us back again, in the end, to the question about the gospel of the Lord: What did he actually proclaim and bring among men?”[1]

* * * * * * *

Escriva Before the Same Scandal

“Let me tell you about an even 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. The redemption carried out by him is sufficient, and more than sufficient.”[2]

* * * * * * *

What Did Christ Bring? The Kingdom of God!

            But what is the Kingdom of God? “The kingdom of God 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.”[3]

            The Kingdom of God, in Benedict XVI’s “Jesus of Nazareth” is “(t)he core content of the Gospel…The center of this announcement is the message that God’s Kingdom is at hand. A look at the statistics underscores this. The phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ occurs 122 times in the New Testament as whole; 99 of these passages are found in the three Synoptic Gospels, and 90 of these texts report words of Jesus.”[4]

            Benedict’s basic point is that Jesus Himself – divine Person - is the Kingdom. He says: “Jesus is speaking in the present tense: the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, yet, unobserved, it is among those to whom he is speaking. It stands among them – in his own person… In him the future is present, God’s Kingdom at hand, but in such a way that a mere observer, concerned with recording symptoms or plotting the movements of the stars, might well overlook the fact. In a splendid coinage of Origen’s, Jesus is he autobasileia, ‘the Kingdom in person.’ This leads on to another text about the Kingdom whose reference to the present is (even less debatable. In Luke and Matthew we read: “If it is by the finger God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11, 20).  This verse carries the above reflections to a deeper level and clarifies them in the light of the Gospel’s own inner logic. Jesus is the Kingdom, not simply by virtue of his physical presence but through the Holy Spirit’s radiant power flowing forth from him. In his Spirit-filled activity smashing the demonic enslavement of man, the Kingdom of God becomes reality, God taking the government of this world into his own hands. Let us remember that God’s Kingdom is an event not a sphere. Jesus’ actions, words, sufferings break the power of that alienation which lies so heavily on human life. In liberating people, they establish God’s Kingdom. Jesus is that Kingdom since through him the Spirit of God acts in the world.”[5]

Kingdom of God = Kingdom of Heaven

           

The large point to be made here is that the Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are here and now insofar as they are determined christologically. Ratzinger states: “It (Heaven) is not an extra-historical place into which one goes. Heaven’s existence depends upon the fact that Jesus Christ, as God, is man, and makes space for human existence in the existence of God himself. One is in heaven when, and to the degree, that one is in Christ. It is by being with Christ that we find the true location of our existence as human beings in God. Heaven is thus primarily a personal reality and one that remains forever shaped by its historical origin in the paschal mystery of death and resurrection. From this Christological center, al other elements which belong to the tradition’s concept of heaven may be inferred. And, in pride of place, from this Christological foundation there follows a theological affirmation: the glorified Christ stands in a continuous posture of self-giving to his Father. Indeed, he is that self-giving. The paschal sacrifice abides in him as an enduring presence [the action of Calvary as instantiated as act of self-gift wherever there is transubstantiation of bread and wine into His Body and Blood].[6]

            And so, Heaven is here and now, and the believer, before his development through successive conversions, might expect that the divine power of Jesus Christ as God would transform the society into a res publica of law and order as well as peace and justice where the good would be rewarded and the bad punished. But the huge point that must be made is that the action of God cannot be perceived by our senses, nor perhaps by our understanding until we go through the necessary conversion to become like Him to be able to so recognize Him; that is, recognize His face.

The Clericalization of the Secular Humanity of Christ

“But We Don’t See the Kingdom of God. Therefore, We Project It Beyond the Stars and After the End of the World”

The genius and honesty of Benedict come forth here. He explains: “Christian theology, which was very soon confronted by this discrepancy between expectation [of the fulfillment of the Kingdom here on earth by the Incarnation such that we could recognize it with our senses] 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 hi embodied form, with his involvement in history and society; that he promised the kingdom o 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.”[7]

The Solution: The Experience of Giftedness

The will of Jesus Christ is the “conversion” of each person in the deep ontological sense of “metanoia” into “another Christ.” The following are the foundational moments of Opus Dei:

- August 7, 1931: Locution: “Et si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum” (Ioann. 12, 32). “A voice, as always, perfect, clear:… And the precise concept: it is not in the sense in which Scripture says it; I say it to you in the sense that you put me at the summit of all human activities, so that in all the places of the world, there may be

Christians with a personal and most free dedication, that they be other Christs.”

- October 16, 1931: Locution: “You are my son, you are Christ.” And I only knew how to repeat: Abba, Pater!, Abba, Pater! Abba!, Abba!, Abba!

The Spirit of Opus Dei: To become Christ, the Kingdom, in the Exercise of Ordinary work

Escriva: “We are celebrating, therefore, the most sacred and transcendent act which we, men and women, with God’s grace can carry out in this life: receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord is, in a certain sense, like loosening our ties with earth and time, so as to be already with God in Heaven, where Christ himself will wipe the tears from our eyes and where there will be no more death, nor mourning, nor cries of distress, because the old world will have passed away.

            “This profound and consoling truth, which theologians usually call the eschatological meaning of the Eucharist, could, however, be misunderstood. Indeed, this has happened whenever people have tried to present the Christian way of life as something exclusively spiritual – or better, spiritualistic – something reserved for pure, extraordinary people who remain aloof from the contemptible things of this world, or at most tolerate them as something that the spirit just has to live alongside, while we are on this earth.

            “When people take this approach, churches become the setting par excellence of the Christian way of life. And being a Christian means going to church, taking part in sacred ceremonies, getting into an ecclesiastical mentality, in a special kind of world, considered the ante-chamber to Heaven, while the ordinary world follows it own separate course. In this case, Christian teaching and the life of grace would pass by, brushing very lightly against the turbulent advance of human history but never coming into proper contact with it.

Encounter Christ in Everyday Life

            “On this October morning, as we prepare to enter upon the memorial of our Lord’s Pasch, we flatly reject this deformed vision of Christianity. Reflect for a moment on the setting of our Eucharist, of our Act of Thanksgiving. We find ourselves in a unique temple; we might say that the nave is the University campus: the altarpiece, the University library; over there, the machinery for constructing new buildings; above us, the sky of Navarre…

           

“Surely this confirms in your minds, in a tangible and unforgettable way, the fact that everyday life is the true setting for your lives as Christians. Your daily encounter with Christ takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work, and your affections are. It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God and all mankind….

            “Don’t doubt it, my children: any attempt to escape from the noble reality of daily life is, for you men and women of the world, something opposed to the will of God.

God and the Ordinary

            “On the contrary, you must realize now, more clearly than ever, that God is calling you to serve him in and from the ordinary secular and civil activities of human life. He waits for us everyday, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home, and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”[8]

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[1] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be A Christian,” Ignatius (1965-2005)25-26.

[2] Josemaria Escriva, “Christ is Passing By,” Scepter #129.

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

[4] Benedict XVI “Jesus of Nazareth,” Doubleday (2007) 47.

[5] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” CUA (1988) 34-35.

[6] Ibid 234.

[7] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means to Be a Christian” Ignatius (2006) 28-29.

[8] Josemaria Escriva, “Passionately Loving the World,” Scepter 3-5.

Moral Ground of Economics: The Working Person [Not Supply and Demand]

Market Economy and Ethics

June 30, 2009

by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Article presented in 1985 in a symposium in Rome, “Church and Economy in Dialogue.” ¹

Allow me to give a cordial welcome — also in the name of the two other protectors, Cardinal Höffner and Cardinal Etchegaray — to all the participants here present for the Symposium on Church and Economy. I am very glad that the cooperation between the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the International Federation of Catholic Universities, the Institute of the German Economy and the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, has made possible these world-wide conversations on a question of deep concern for all of us.

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The economic inequality between the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe is becoming more and more an inner threat to the cohesion of the human family. The danger for our future from such a threat may be no less real than that proceeding from the weapons arsenals with which the East and the West oppose one another. New exertions must be made to overcome this tension, since all methods employed hitherto have proven themselves inadequate. In fact, the misery in the world has increased in shocking measure during the last thirty years. In order to find solutions that will truly lead us forward, new economic ideas will be necessary. But such measures do not seem conceivable or, above all, practicable without new moral impulses. It is at this point that a dialogue between Church and economy becomes both possible and necessary.

Let me clarify somewhat the exact point in question. At first glance, precisely in terms of classical economic theory, it is not obvious what the Church and the economy should actually have to do with one another, aside from the fact that the Church owns businesses and so is a factor in the market. The Church should not enter into dialogue here as a mere component in the economy, but rather in its own right as Church.

Here, however, 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. ³ For a long time, then, business ethics rang like hollow metal because the economy was held to work on efficiency and not on morality. ⁴ 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.

The great successes of this theory concealed its limitations for a long time. But now in a changed situation, its tacit philosophical presuppositions and thus its problems become clearer. Although this position admits the freedom of individual businessmen, and to that extent can be called liberal, it is in fact deterministic in its core. It presupposes that the free play of market forces can operate in one direction only, given the constitution of man and the world, namely, toward the self-regulation of supply and demand, and toward economic efficiency and progress.

This determinism, in which man is completely controlled by the binding laws of the market while believing he acts in freedom from them, includes yet another and perhaps even more astounding presupposition, namely, that the natural laws of the market are in essence good (if I may be permitted so to speak) and necessarily work for the good, whatever may be true of the morality of individuals. These two presuppositions are not entirely false, as the successes of the market economy illustrate. But neither are they universally applicable and correct, as is evident in the problems of today's world economy. Without developing the problem in its details here — which is not my task — let me merely underscore a sentence of Peter Koslowski's that illustrates the point in question: “The economy is governed not only by economic laws, but is also determined by men...”. ⁵ Even if the market economy does rest on the ordering of the individual within a determinate network of rules, it cannot make man superfluous or exclude his moral freedom from the world of economics. It is becoming ever so clear that the development of the world economy has also to do with the development of the world community and with the universal family of man, and that the development of the spiritual powers of mankind is essential in the development of the world community. These spiritual powers are themselves a factor in the economy: the market rules function only when a moral consensus exists and sustains them.

If I have attempted so far to point to the tension between a purely liberal model of the economy and ethical considerations, and thereby to circumscribe a first set of questions, I must now point out the opposite tension. The question about market and ethics has long ceased to be merely a theoretical problem. Since the inherent inequality of various individual economic zones endangers the free play of the market, attempts at restoring the balance have been made since the 1950s by means of development projects. It can no longer be overlooked that these attempts have failed and have even intensified the existing inequality. The result is that broad sectors of the Third World, which at first looked forward to development aid with great hopes, now identify the ground of their misery in the market economy, which they see as a system of exploitations, as institutionalised sin and injustice. For them, the centralized economy appears to be the moral alternative, toward which one turns with a directly religious fervor, and which virtually becomes the content of religion. For while the market economy rests on the beneficial effect of egoism and its automatic limitation through competing egoisms, the thought of just control seems to predominate in a centralized economy, where the goal is equal rights for all and proportionate distribution of goods to all. The examples adduced thus far are certainly not encouraging, but the hope that one could, nonetheless, bring this moral project to fruition is also not thereby refuted. It seems that if the whole were to be attempted on a stronger moral foundation, it should be possible to reconcile morality and efficiency in a society not oriented toward maximum profit, but rather to self-restraint and common service. Thus in this area, the argument between economics and ethics is becoming ever more an attack on the market economy and its spiritual foundations, in favor of a centrally controlled economy, which is believed now to receive its moral grounding.

The full extent of this question becomes even more apparent when we include the third element of economic and theoretical considerations characteristic of today's situation: the Marxist world. In terms of the structure of its economic theory and praxis, the Marxist system as a centrally administered economy is a radical antithesis to the market economy. ⁶ Salvation is expected because there is no private control of the means of production, because supply and demand are not brought into harmony through market competition, because there is no place for private profit seeking, and because all regulations proceed from a central economic administration. Yet, in spite of this radical opposition in the concrete economic mechanisms, there are also points in common in the deeper philosophical presuppositions. The first of these consists in the fact that Marxism, too, is deterministic in nature and that it too promises a perfect liberation as the fruit of this determinism. For this reason, it is a fundamental error to suppose that a centralized economic system is a moral system in contrast to the mechanistic system of the market economy. This becomes clearly visible, for example, in Lenin's acceptance of Sombart's thesis that there is in Marxism no grain of ethics, but only economic laws. ⁷ Indeed, determinism is here far more radical and fundamental than in liberalism: for at least the latter recognizes the realm of the subjective and considers it as the place of the ethical. The former, on the other hand, totally reduces becoming and history to economy, and the delimitation of one's own subjective realm appears as resistance to the laws of history, which alone are valid, and as a reaction against progress, which cannot be tolerated. Ethics is reduced to the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of history degenerates into party strategy.

But let us return once again to the common points in the philosophical foundations of Marxism and capitalism taken strictly. The second point in common — as will already have been clear in passing — consists in the fact that determinism includes the renunciation of ethics as an independent entity relevant to the economy \. This shows itself in an especially dramatic way in Marxism. Religion is traced back to economics as the reflection of a particular economic system and thus, at the same time, as an obstacle to correct knowledge, to correct action — as an obstacle to progress, at which the natural laws of history aim. It is also presupposed that history, which takes its course from the dialectic of negative and positive, must, of its inner essence and with no further reasons being given, finally end in total positivity. That the Church can contribute nothing positive to the world economy on such a view is clear; its only significance for economics is that it must be overcome. That it can be used temporarily as a means for its own self-destruction and thus as an instrument for the “positive forces of history” is an ‘insight’ that has only recently surfaced. Obviously, it changes nothing in the fundamental thesis.

For the rest, the entire system lives in fact from the apotheosis of the central administration in which the world spirit itself would have to be at work, if this thesis were correct. That this is a myth in the worst sense of the word is simply an empirical statement that is being continually verified. And thus precisely the radical renunciation of a concrete dialogue between Church and economy which is presupposed by this thought becomes a confirmation of its necessity.

In the attempt to describe the constellation of a dialogue between Church and economy , I have discovered yet a fourth aspect. It may be seen in the well-known remark made by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912: “I believe that the assimilation of the Latin-American countries to the United States will be long and difficult as long as these countries remain Catholic.” Along the same lines, in a lecture in Rome in 1969, Rockefeller recommended replacing the Catholics there with other Christians ⁸ — an undertaking which, as is well known, is in full swing. In both these remarks, religion — here a Christian denomination — is presupposed as a socio-political, and hence as an economic-political factor, which is fundamental for the development of political structures and economic possibilities. This reminds one of Max Weber's thesis about the inner connection between capitalism and Calvinism , between the formation of the economic order and the determining religious idea. Marx's notion seems to be almost inverted: it is not the economy that produces religious notions, but the fundamental religious orientation that decides which economic system can develop. The notion that only Protestantism can bring forth a free economy — whereas Catholicism includes no corresponding education to freedom and to the self-discipline necessary to it, favoring authoritarian systems instead — is doubtless even today still very widespread, and much in recent history seems to speak for it. On the other hand, we can no longer regard so naively the liberal-capitalistic system (even with all the corrections it has since received) as the salvation of the world. We are no longer in the Kennedy-era, with its Peace Corps optimism; the Third World's questions about the system may be partial, but they are not groundless. A self-criticism of the Christian confessions with respect to political and economic ethics is the first requirement.

But this cannot proceed purely as a dialogue within the Church. It will be fruitful only if it is conducted with those Christians who manage the economy \. A long tradition has led them to regard their Christianity as a private concern, while as members of the business community they abide by the laws of the economy.

These realms have come to appear mutually exclusive in the modern context of the separation of the subjective and objective realms. But the whole point is precisely that they should meet, preserving their own integrity and yet inseparable. It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. ⁹ Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. An economic policy that is ordered not only to the good of the group — indeed, not only to the common good of a determinate state — but to the common good of the family of man demands a maximum of ethical discipline and thus a maximum of religious strength. The political formation of a will that employs the inherent economic laws towards this goal appears, in spite of all humanitarian protestations, almost impossible today. It can only be realized if new ethical powers are completely set free. A morality that believes itself able to dispense with the technical knowledge of economic laws is not morality but moralism. As such it is the antithesis of morality. A scientific approach that believes itself capable of managing without an ethos misunderstands the reality of man. Therefore it is not scientific. Today we need a maximum of specialized economic understanding, but also a maximum of ethos so that specialized economic understanding may enter the service of the right goals. Only in this way will its knowledge be both politically practicable and socially tolerable.

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[1] This article, translated by Stephen Wentworth Arndt, is provided courtesy of Dr. Johannes Stemmler, secretary emeritus of the BKU (Federation of Catholic Entrepreneurs) and secretary of Ordo socialis in Köln, Germany. This article appeared previously in English under the title “Church and economy: Responsibility for the future of the world economy,” Communio 13, no. 3 (Fall 1986): 199-204 [PDF].

[2] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

[3] Cf. Peter Koslowski, “Über Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeit einer Wirtschaftsethik,” Scheidewege. Jahresschrift für skeptisches Denken 15 (1985/86): 301, 204–305. This fundamental study has given me essential suggestions for my own paper.

[Ed. note: This paper, “On the Necessity and Possibility of an Ethics of the Economy,” is further elaborated and available in English in the book by P. Koslowski, Ethics of Capitalism; and, Critique of Sociobiology: Two Essays with a Comment by James M. Buchanan, vol. 10, Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996), with the 6th German edition 1998, along with Spanish, Korean, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese translations.]

[4] Koslowski, “Über Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeit einer Wirtschaftsethik,” 294.

[5] Koslowski, “Über Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeit einer Wirtschaftsethik,” 304; cf. 301.

[6] Cf. Card. J. Höffner, Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftsethik. Richtlinien der katholischen Soziallehre, ed. Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Bonn, 1985), 34–44. The English translation of this paper was published by Ordo socialis: Economic Systems and Economic Ethics–Guidelines in Catholic Social Teaching (Association for the Advancement of Christian Social Sciences, 1986).

[7] Koslowski, “Über Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeit einer Wirtschaftsethik,” 296, with reference to Lenin, Werke (Berlin, 1971), I 436.

[8] I found these two considerations in the contribution of A. Metalli, “La grande epopea degli evangelici,” Trenta giorni 3, no. 8 (1984): 9, 8–20.

[9] For detailed information see P. Koslowski, “Religion, Okonomie, Ethik. Eine sozialtheoretische und ontologische Analyse ihres Zusammenhangs,“ in Die religiöse Dimension der Gesellschaft, Religion und ihre Theorien, ed. P. Koslowski (Tübingen, 1985), 76–96.

[Ed. note: This paper, “Religion, Economics, Ethics: An Analysis of Their Relationship from the Perspective of Social Thought and Ontology,” in The Religious Dimension of Society: Religion and its Theories, is further elaborated and available in English in the book by P. Koslowski, Principles of Ethical Economy, vol. 17, Issues in Business Ethics (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), with a 2nd German edition in 1994 along with French, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish translations.]

PATRICK J. DENEEN “For the Salvation of Souls”: A Farewell to Georgetown

May 18, 2012

Patrick J. Deneen

In yesterday’s Washington Post, in anticipation of today’s address by Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at Georgetown University as part of its graduation exercises, the editorial staff pronounced that “Georgetown Gets it Right.” Like many defenders of the invitation to Secretary Sebelius, the editorial at once denied that the invitation constituted an honor—since the event is not officially a “commencement” and an honorary degree is not being conferred—and asserted that the invitation constituted an opportunity for the legitimate “exchange of ideas.” The editorial archly stated that Cardinal Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington—who, in an extraordinary step, publicly criticized the invitation—“fails to recognize” the “critical academic function” of “open-minded debate.”

These two reasons—that the invitation did not constitute an honor for Secretary Sebelius, and that her presence on campus is an opportunity for “open-minded debate”—have been the main responses of defenders of the invitation amid the intense controversy that has arisen in the wake of last Friday’s public announcement of the invitation. They have been invoked by spokespersons of the university, and even suggested by Georgetown’s President John J. DeGioia in an open letterpublished on May 14, and cited in the Washington Post editorial.

What the first defense appears to concede is that, were an honor in fact being conferred, there might indeed be something untoward about the invitation (however, this concession was not on display when President Obama was awarded an Honorary Degree in 2009 by the University of Notre Dame). This defense implies that, in particular, the bestowal of an honor upon Secretary Sebelius at this time would in fact be inappropriate. After all, Secretary Sebelius is the architect of the HHS mandate that would require Catholic institutions such as Georgetown to provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception to its students and employees, and which in turn has provoked strong and unanimous opposition from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. This justification seems to concede that if an honor were being conferred, that those who have opposed the invitation might in fact be justified in their belief that this invitation constitutes an offense to the Bishops and a scandal for the Church.

The second justification depends on the first: if the invitation does not constitute an honor, then it ought legitimately be understood to be nothing more than a regular university event, the opportunity to exchange ideas and debate views. This second justification thus depends upon the legitimacy and correctness of the first claim. If, however, the event does in fact constitute an honor to Secretary Sebelius because of the inherent honorific nature of an invitation to appear as a commencement event speaker, then this raises significant doubts about the legitimacy of the second claim that such an appearance can be understood as part of a University’s ordinary activity of debate and exchange.

In fact, neither of these conditions apply—and the editorial writers at the Post, other defenders of this decision, and even the official explanation of the leadership at Georgetown “gets it wrong” to suggest otherwise. For this reason, I was one of ten faculty of Georgetown to publicly state opposition to the invitation and, in a public letter, asked for Georgetown President DeGioia to withdraw the invitation.

Each spring, members of the Georgetown faculty receive a letter from the university’s Provost and from their Dean and Chairman reminding them that they are contractually obligated, and strongly encouraged, to attend two of the university’s Commencement exercises. These include the university-wide Convocation, presided over by the President and Provost; the conferral of diplomas, presided over by the Deans of the various schools; and each school’s “Tropaia” (Greek for “trophy”), also presided over by the school’s Dean (The event to which Secretary Sebelius has been invited combines these latter two events). At each event, faculty and administrators are to don their academic regalia and march in procession at the beginning and conclusion of the ceremony. For the duration of the event itself, they are to sit in array upon a raised podium or stage during the ceremony and addresses, a highly visible presence, separate from and facing the students and the audience.

The presence and display of faculty in this manner at these events—with all attendant academic “pomp and circumstance”—is intended to send a strong signal of approval, blessing, and witness upon such events. We pay honor and respect to our students who have successfully completed their course of education, conferring upon them our collective blessing and congratulation by our presence. Our presence denotes the university’s blessing (indeed, on these occasions we take out the colored robes that reflect that once we were actually “professors”—of the faith). In seven years teaching at Georgetown, it has never been suggested that any one of these Commencement events is any less deserving of our serious regard or constitutes less of an honor to our students or invited guests than any other—at least until several days ago, when the GPPI’s Tropaia was suddenly portrayed as less than a full commencement event. In fact, after the announcement of Secretary Sebelius as one of the many Commencement speakers, the university’s website was changedto reflect a kind of demotion of Secretary Sebelius to one of Commencement weekend’s “Other Speakers.”

The fact that the University’s first, and correct, impulse was to acknowledge that the event was centrally part of the Commencement exercises belies the notion that the appearance of Secretary Sebelius should be understood to be part of the regular “exchange of ideas” and “open-minded debate” that takes place on a university campus. Every week during Georgetown’s regular 28-week academic year, a newsletter of invited speakers, guests and events is circulated to all members of the Georgetown community. Each week there are dozens of planned events of every possible kind. Attendance at these events is wholly voluntary—they are not part of the faculty’s “contractual obligation”—and faculty show up in their regular garb, not in the full Technicolor array of academic regalia. They do not sit on a raised dais or stage at the front of the room, but—if they attend any of these events at all—they join and are part of the audience. At most of these events, an opportunity is given to attendees to pose questions and challenges to the invited speaker, thereby permitting the opportunity to engage in the “exchange of ideas.” At any point during these 28-weeks, Secretary Sebelius would have been an appropriate invitee, and—speaking for myself, a view I think that would be shared by those few other faculty who protested the decision of Commencement invitation—there would have been no protest by faculty and no request for withdrawal in such a circumstance. Assuredly there would have been a vigorous “exchange of ideas” at such a regular university event—something that will not take place this morning during Secretary Sebelius’s address during Commencement Exercises, when the arrayed faculty and administration of Georgetown will sit largely in silent approval and endorsement of the proceedings. There will be no question and answer period, no exchange of ideas—only the most magnificent, colorful, and stately display of approval, honor, endorsement and beneficence that a University is capable of mustering.

The claims of the Post, and those who have defended this decision, are altogether specious and disingenuous. They also finally confuse and mistake the purpose of aCatholic university.

The Post’s editorial states that “it is the essence of a university to be a place where students can hear from an array of thinkers—and doers.” While it is assuredly the case that the editorial staff of the Post, no less than the administration of a university, would in fact regard some speakers and topics as out-of-bounds (and assuredly there are some people or views even the Post would regard as inappropriate as the recipient of an invitation to speak at a Commencement event, with or without the conferral of an honorary degree), it is nevertheless certainly the case that the life-blood of any university is the exchange of ideas. However, the Postrests content to posit that the “open-minded” exchange of ideas is the sole end or purpose of a university. However, a Catholic university in particular engages (or ought to engage) in the “exchange of ideas” with a specific and constant goal in view—attainment of knowledge of the truth in the service and worship of God with an ultimate aspiration to join him, his Son, his Mother and the Communion of Saints in Heaven.

Perhaps the most magnificent room at Georgetown University—where many events of Commencement will take place—is Gaston Hall, named for William Gaston, one of Georgetown’s first students, who successfully lobbied Congress to grant to Georgetown the right to confer degrees. At the front of that room, amid many frescoes, paintings, insignia, and symbols, is a single phrase that stretches from one side of the Hall to the other in ornate gilded letters: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam Inque Hominum Salutem: “For the Greater Glory of God and the Salvation of Humanity.” The phrase is the motto of the Society of Jesus and is attributed to its founder, Ignatius of Loyola. In founding the myriad of schools and universities—many of the seals of which are on display high above Gaston Hall—the Society of Jesus sought not merely to ensure the “exchange of ideas,” but to promote the dogged search for truth in the service of the Church for the salvation of souls. Georgetown is thus not “merely” a modern university, aimed at producing research (although it does that, and proclaims this activity widely and loudly); rather, it is most fundamentally a part of the Church’s ministry—no less so than its churches, as well as its schools, hospitals, and charities—aimed above all at the “salvation of humanity.”

The scandal of the invitation to Secretary Sebelius lies in her central role in attacking that ministry—indeed, in her words, of being “at war” with those who disagree with her positions. The HHS mandate as currently promulgated will force institutions like Georgetown—as an entity of the Church—into an impossible position. In requiring the Church (in this case, its schools, hospitals and other institutions) to act against its own conscience and faith commitments, it requires the Church to cease to be itself.

Georgetown can elect to provide services that Georgetown’s own President recently declared it does not provide based upon its adherence to the Church’s teachings. It can elect to cease providing service altogether, as in the case of Franciscan University, or to cease admitting and hiring non-Catholics in order to meet the narrow qualification for an exemption. Or, in extremis, it can elect either to secularize or to shut down, given that these other options all constitute a betrayal of faith. While many dismiss this latter option, no less a figure than Francis Cardinal George of Chicago has stated that the HHS mandate, if left unchanged, within two years will result in the shuttering of the schools, hospitals and universities in his Diocese and perhaps beyond. What Cardinal George has concluded is that left the option to be the Church as established by Jesus Christ, or to cease to be the Church on terms set by a mandate by Caesar, the Church will not act against itself; yet, in ceasing to provide ministry to Catholic and non-Catholic alike, it will in fact be forced to do just that.

What is so scandalous about Georgetown’s invitation to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is that it incontrovertibly honors the architect of a Mandate that demands that the Church cease to be itself. Georgetown is under an obligation to invite the exchange of ideas to promote an understanding of God’s Creation with an aim of the “salvation of mankind”; it is under no obligation to honor its persecutor or to engage in self-immolation. Indeed, as an institution of the Church—the oldest Catholic university in the United States—it ought to be in the forefront with the Bishops, the successors of St. Peter and the apostles, in standing against this latest persecution of the Church by the State. I think I again can speak for my nine faculty colleagues who publicly opposed this decision in stating that my reaction was less anger and outrage—of which I felt some—than sadness and hurt.

Since learning of this decision by the University I have served for seven years, and which I leave with sadness and pain to join the University of Notre Dame in the belief that it has the possibility of retaining its Catholic identity—I have mostly felt sharp pain over an institution of the Church honoring one whose policy would force—in some form—the Church to cease to be itself. Of course, if Georgetown were truly and irrefutably acting as the Church, categorically and by definition it could not act in this manner. It is only in its own internal confusion about itself and its mission, a confusion that it sows among Catholics and non-Catholics alike—not, finally, the “open-minded exchange of ideas,” but Ad majorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salute—that it could have issued and followed through on this invitation. I leave the Hilltop with even greater sadness than I felt making the decision to depart earlier in the year—apparently at the very time the decision was made to issue this invitation to Kathleen Sebelius—and will pray for Georgetown and for the Church to be true to itself, and not to be snared by the temptations of Caesar and the world.

Patrick J. Deneen is, until May 30, 2012, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair of Hellenic Studies and Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University. In 2006 he founded the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy. On July 1, 2012, he will begin an appointment as Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.