Gifts and rights -
and Benedict XVI's distinction
between one and the other
by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
November 21, 2011
“The family model of the logic of love, of free giving and a reciprocal gift should be extended to a universal dimension. Commutative justice — ‘giving in order to acquire’—and distributive justice — ‘giving through duty’ are not sufficient to build up society. In order for true justice to exist it is necessary to add free gifting and solidarity.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, to Centesimus Annus Conference, October 15, 2011
I.
In a brief talk on the fiftieth anniversary of the German charitable foundation, Adveniat, Benedict XVI remarked: “In the Lord’s Prayer, Christ teaches us to pray for the coming of the Kingdom. We cannot simply create it because it is above all a gift.”
In Plato’s shortest dialogue, the
Clitophon, Socrates is chided because he is able to move souls by his speeches of how things ought to be, but he seems unable to bring those things about. Socrates, however, is not fooled by the import of this criticism.
He knows that it is not easy to reform man, especially if man does not reform his own soul first. Moreover, we may not be able to supply to ourselves everything we need for our highest end. We are by nature not just natural beings but supernatural ones, as Aquinas tells us.
Behind the claim that we can do everything by ourselves, there is something haughty, something critical of the gods. If they could, should they not simply give us everything we need, especially what is most important for us?
But if the Kingdom of God is a gift, it cannot come to us directly as a result of our own enterprise. As we read the epistles and gospels of the Masses at the end of any year, we are always reminded that Christ will come as a “thief” in the night, that we know not the day or hour. Christ will come when He wills, not when we demand or expect.
Yet, we live in a “rights” oriented culture. Our discourse, even our religious social discourse, is dominated by the concept of “rights.” This word in modern philosophy has a very specific meaning.
It is often claimed in Catholic literature that “rights” refer to that which is “owed” to human beings as such. Yet, the term really comes from Hobbes.
It means that each of us has a “right” to whatever we will. If we give up this “right” to the state or society, the word does not change its meaning.
It means that whatever the organization “wills” is “right.” Try as we may, this latter meaning will still be present no matter what we think the word means.
What does a “rights”-oriented world culture imply? If I have a “right” to everything I need for my happiness, however we define it, it follows that someone owes us what we do not have. We are made to be not giving but receiving beings.
If we do not have what we “have a right to,” it follows that someone else is at fault. We are victims. We demand our “rights.” Again, “rights” are whatever we want. Society is to be designed to give everyone what he wants, no matter what it is. W
e are unable to say that anything we or anyone else “wants” is “wrong.” It is only something different. We must organize things so everyone gets something of what he wants.
As a result of this mentality, no one can really “do” anything for anyone. If I lack something, someone else owes it to me. When I finally get it, I have no reason to thank anyone, for I only received what was “due” to me. As a result, a “rights” world leaves us with a profound sense of isolation.
If we do not have anything, whether it be material or spiritual, it is not our fault, but it is our “right” to have it. This situation gives governments enormous powers and ethical justification. They conceive it their duty to provide for everyone’s rights, whatever they are.
“Charity” becomes politicized. And even the donations and sacrifices whereby the poor receive from or are taken from for the poor, the “taking” action, whether it be by taxation or confiscation, is conceived as a “right.”
The rich and enterprising really had nothing to give. Their product was by definition a “social product.” And those who "created” wealth were not working for themselves. Whatever they produced was seen as a wealth to be redistributed in the name of someone’s “right” to have whatever he lacked.
Such often unperceived dangers of the notion of “rights” bring us to the question of gifts. Christianity is a “gift”-oriented revelation, though its representatives are constantly using the word “rights” in a way that has little relation to the manner in which the word is understood in the culture.
A “rights-oriented” mentality would maintain that man had everything he needed for human purposes. The Promethean tradition of man’s bravery in stealing fire from the gods is still with us. Aristotle’s advice that we should not listen to those who tell us that, being mortal, we should only listen to mortal things, strikes us as odd, even un-comprehensive. Yet it lies at the very origin of our culture, including Christian culture.
Yves Simon, in many of his works, spoke of the fact there is in man not only a need to have things but also, at a higher level, a need to give. If we prevent the capacity to give, we cease being human. One of the very reasons for the existence of private property is that it allows us to give freely what is ours.
If, in giving, the receiver thought he had a “right” to what was given anyhow, we would not only cease giving, but cease giving thanks. And the act of giving thanks is almost the most profound thing about us.
We have all received gifts that we did not “need.” And yet, if we examine the phenomenon of gift-giving, we see that the gift given is not primarily what a gift is about. Certainly, we give little gifts to neighbors or colleagues that do not mean much. Yet, the smallest gift is often the best we have.
The famous widow in the New Testament is praised not for the value of her gift, but because it represented all she had. She gave of herself. The gift, at its highest meaning, is our human effort to love one another, to give of ourselves to those willing we hope to receive it.
In his talk to the Centesimos Annus congress, Benedict used the phrase “free giving.” He even cites the phrase of John Paul II of a “law of ‘free giving,’” which of its very nature would be something beyond “law,” in the strict sense.
A “law” of giving would be like a “law” of friendship, something that cannot be a law. Of course, we can use the phrase “law” of giving or charity or friendship in the sense of describing its nature intellectually.
In such a description, the notion of free giving would have to appear. Friendship is a “reciprocal” willing to the other of what is good for him, not us, even though it is also our good. If it is “our good” that dominates such a relationship, by its own “law,” it is not really friendship. And yet we cannot will not to want friends or not to give them something.
Nor can we be friends or even human if we do not have a capacity to receive gifts. In a real sense, in spite of St. Paul’s insistene that it is better to give than to receive, the capacity to receive graciously is a better sign of our humanity than our capacity to give.
Simon points out that we are different from God in this, that God creates the objects of His love. We do not do this; we find them already created. Hence our primary relation to reality itself is that of receivers. And in revelation we are “receivers” of grace, of the Word, of life itself.
Benedict points out that marriage is itself based on “free giving.” Thus, it is also based on “free receiving.” One could not conceive of a marriage in which there is only “giving.”
Benedict tells us that “the family is the first place where one learns that the right approach in the social context and also in the world of work, economics and business, must be guided by
caritas, in the logic of ‘free giving,’ giving, of solidarity, and of responsibility for each other.” “Free giving” is, presumably, opposed to “forced giving.”
This awareness explains why justice and charity are different yet related. Sometimes it seems that all we ever hear about is justice. This feeling is logical in a rights-oriented world. People are ever talking about what is “owed” to them, not what they can give.
But it is also true that we need something to give. This need, as I said earlier, is not just a material thing. Indeed, the greatest need we have is that someone love us, from our beginning. We cannot know what love is unless we are first loved.
That relationship is the very heart of the Christian revelation. We are what we are because we have received what we are. It is true that we are not automata. The primary result of our experience of being loved is to love in return, freely.
Benedict cites John Paul II who also used the term “free giving” in
Centesimus Annus. “This ‘free giving’ takes the form of heartfelt acceptance, encounter and dialogue, disinterested availability, generous service, and deep solidarity” (#43).
In the family, we are not seen as an “object.” We are human subjects who see each other’s faces. Likewise in
Caritas in veritate, Benedict stressed “the family model of the logic of love, of free giving and of reciprocal gift.”
Indeed, he foresaw this model as capable of universal extension, though it would require some thinking lest this extension end up in an ideology of universal “rights” that approved of anything on the grounds of charity or love.
It is of interest that Benedict specifically distinguishes charity from the two classic forms of justice.
Commutative justice returns to the individual what is owed to him. We “give in order to acquire,” as the Pope puts it.
Distributive justice is based on duty. I give because it is my obligation to others.
The Pope insists there is yet another notion, that of “free giving.” This can be service, love, money, intelligence, anything. And it is not “due.” It arises out of what we see in others. We do not just love them to “help” them, or to make them “right.” We do so because of the good we see in them. We are bound together by more than needs. We are bound also by truth.
In
Caritas in veritate, as Benedict recalls, he observed that “the market of gratuitousness does not exist, and attitudes of graciousness cannot be established by law. Yet both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift” (38).
Aristotle has already said that the polity needs friendships more than it needs justice. The legislators should be concerned about this even though they should not be so foolish as to impose it. This latter was the danger we saw in the French Revolution and in most socialist movements where everyone was called "brother".
The Holy Father added that “Christians are duty bound to report evils, to witness to and to keep alive the value on which the person’s dignity is founded.” When we think of how much agony the Church and society has recently undergone because “evils” were not reported, we can better appreciate what the Pope had in mind.
But we must add that probably our greatest problem is — to go back to the “rights” question — the will that makes “rights” whatever we want, so there is no “reporting” of evils necessary, except the “evil” of not acknowledging all evils to be “human rights.”
This is why Benedict says that our love, ultimately, must be “truth-filled.” It is not true that we have a “right” to everything or a “duty” to give everyone what they “want.”
What is true is that we are, each of us, gifts of God in our very being. We are the beings who first discover what and that we are by first being loved, by receiving our very being.
Our response to this gift is not primarily what we have a “right” to, but what we can “freely give” in return for a gift of which none of us is worthy.
These reflections are very much apropos to the unpardonable class warfare now being carried on in the United States by President Obama, the Democrats and assorted leftists of all colors, who advocate the idea that the less privileged are entitled (they consider it their 'right') to coerce a share [to 'be gifted forcibly'] - of what the more privileged have worked for under the free enterprise model of democracy. Seeking to live off the honestly earned wealth of others without lifting a finger to help oneself, which is the goal of this new culture of entitlement - is just repulsively wrong and profoundly counter-productive. That is not what 'the American dream' is about.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/11/2011 05:10]