The Pope and the poor
A Jesuit reflects on the new pontificate
and the problem of poverty
by James V. Schall, S.J.
March 19, 2013
The day following the election of the archbishop of Buenos Aires to the papacy, I must have received fifty e-mails from friends and fampolm009802ily asking if I knew the man or had any comment on him. What struck me was how little we knew about him.
If he has a paper trail (the previous three popes had extensive ones), it is yet to reach us, though I did read the following comment from a statement in Buenos Aires a couple of years ago: “We hope legislators, heads of state, and health professionals, conscious of the dignity of human life and the rootedness of the family in our peoples, will defend and protect it from the abominable crimes of abortion and euthanasia, that is their responsibility.”
I presume Ignatius Press is busily translating and preparing what we do have for English publication. What we do have are actions taken and gestures made while he was Jesuit provincial and a bishop in Argentina. He rides the bus, leads a simple life, and loves the poor.
Though Cardinal Bergoglio was reportedly a contender in the previous conclave, his age and health seemed to militate against him, but in retrospect only “seemed.” They turned out to be advantages. We are reminded that Pope Leo XIII was elected as a sort of interim pope but he lasted twenty-five productive years.
With the voluntary retirement of Benedict XVI, the whole issue of a pope’s health has changed. I have heard it said that Pope Francis has only one lung. Well, I figure if Schall can get by with one eye, the man on the Chair of Peter can get by with one lung!
Two things immediately strike us about Pope Francis: he is from Argentina and he is a Jesuit. Neither one of these may mean much in the long run. He is now in an office that transcends both, but does not necessarily bypass them. Pope Francis will clearly, I think, have cordial relations with Benedict XVI, as well as with the Jesuit General and the Latin American Bishops’ Conference, not to mention the Franciscans. He is a friend of Opus Dei.
With John Paul II and Benedict, we have become used to the attention paid to the various Orthodox traditions, and this connection will continue. Francis was a friend of the Ukrainian Catholic community in Argentina, and he will be meeting this Wednesday with delegates from several Eastern Catholic Churches.
It seems pretty well settled that Francis is Francis of Assisi, not Francis Borgia, Francis Xavier, or Francis de Sales. Yet probably every Francis is ultimately named after Francis of Assisi. We think of Chesterton’s book on St. Francis of Assisi. It helps to know who a man’s heroes are, as I think we are defined by our heroes. If we consider the names that he did not take — Linus, Michael, Eusebio, Alexander - we cannot help but concluding that Francis was chosen for virtues that Francis manifested in his own life.
In his earlier administration in the Jesuits, Pope Francis showed that he understood the temptation to ideology that lies in much modern political and religious concern for the poor. One might say that most modern ideology is presented in the name of “helping the poor.” This concept is its moral grounding.
The problem is usually not that of intention but of fact. Does the program or attitude advocated help the poor? Even more basic: do we want the poor to remain poor?
Is the purpose of Christian revelation to make everyone poor and keep them that way so that we can “care” for them and thereby give ourselves a seemingly lofty purpose? We should not approach the problem of poverty without some idea of why the poor are poor, or how they might cease to be poor.
The trouble with such considerations is that the fact and feeling of poverty can diverge. If I live in a home that is worth a million dollars, it is possible that I feel deprived if the folks all around me are in houses worth three million. But no one would say that I am poor.
The same holds true in the barrios. There are richer and poorer “poor” people. And there are poor people who try not to be poor and others who are content permanently to receive aid without their doing anything to earn it. It has long been pointed out that usually a relation exists between envy discussions and poverty discussions. One man’s poverty is another man’s riches.
Moreover, in the modern world, a close connection exists between ecology and poverty. Paul Johnson rightly pointed out that, at the fall of Marxism, the left often migrated into ecology. Why? It gives to the state vast new powers over the people, over both their desires and their very existence.
Indeed, a good part of ecology thinking is based on the need not to grow so that men can take care of everyone but to reduce the population to two or three billion so that we do not have many to take care of.
The “increase and multiply” admonition of Genesis, which is the major stimulus for man to develop ways of taking care of himself, is replaced by a reluctance to do anything but keep the planet in a state of permanent under-development in the name of “future” generations that may or may not ever exist or exist with only our present level of development.
It is one thing for a member of a religious order with a vow of poverty to live more like a poor man. It is quite a different thing if he wants everyone to live like he does so that he does not know how or refuses to make the world more abundant and prosperous by the application of mind to matter.
Thus, we not only want to know how a man lives, but what he thinks about how he lives. For whom is his example intended? The reason the poor are poor is not because the rich are rich. Indeed, if we have a no-growth theory, which lacks the incentives to create riches, we must end up with a “redistributionist” mentality.
We think that one man’s wealth is taken away from some other man unjustly just because there is disparity. What caused the disparity is often overlooked.
In the modern world, probably the greatest producers of poverty are government plans to alleviate it. Not only is this a problem of poverty but one of freedom also.
If we misunderstand the causes of poverty and fail to understand what causes wealth, we will make everyone poor in the noble name of helping the poor.
A further element arises from Benedict’s encyclicals, which warn us of the limits of government bureaucracy in dealing with the poor. Modern governments often want and demand complete control of the economy so that they are the ones who “take care of the poor.” In this sense, no room is left except for state control in the name of helping the poor, usually with policies of abortion, "gay marriage", euthanasia, and other such devices to control population.
Francis has urged Argentines to not come to Rome to celebrate his elevation to the papacy. He suggests they stay at home and spend the money on the poor. Now if we consider that a good part of the income of Romans and Italians has to do with the tourist trade, by which many poor are helped, we can see some of the problems connected with such suggestions.
Do we also advise Japanese, Germans, Swedes, and Mexicans not to come to Rome? What would this approach do to world economy? If we universalize this admonition we also imply that the traveling to see beauty and worthwhile human things has something wrong with it. We reduce human life to one dimension.
And if we all stay at home and help the poor, just what do we do?
If we take all the existing world wealth and simply distribute it, what would happen? It would quickly disappear; all would be poor.
We need ways to create wealth. We sometimes forget that the only real resource in the world is the human mind, not, say, oil or minerals or land. Without thought, these raw materials are useless. We often project what we can do in the future based on a present technology that is soon out of date.
Henry Adams, in his studies of the Virgin, said that she was a greater producer of wealth than the dynamo. And one of the sources of wealth in the Eternal City itself are the beautiful things that the popes inspired to which all the world comes to visit. It is difficult to see how the world would be better if everyone stayed at home. We come to visit, see, and experience beautiful things precisely to show we are not bound to material things.
Some have suggested, on the basis of Francis’s understanding of what a bishop is, that he will not travel as John Paul and Benedict did. He will concentrate on ruling the Diocese of Rome and suggest that other bishops do the same. He will concentrate on appointing good bishops. Francis has already made it clear that he does not want priests engaging in political movements. He does not consider opposition to abortion to be simply “political.”
So, in the light of such speculations, what are we to make of this new bishop of Rome? The cardinals have chosen a worthy man. His will be a different papacy. Benedict and John Paul have pretty well cleared the intellectual scene within the Church and indeed within the world.
What remains is what Francis seems to understand midst growing threats of persecution throughout the world including in the democracies. Benedict often told us that we need to live our faith. We find our models in the saints and Francis comes across as a man who understands this well.
We are here primarily, as St. Ignatius said, “to praise, reverence, and serve God and thereby to save our souls.” The world can choose not to listen to the brilliance of a John Paul or a Benedict. It can also, but with less confidence, choose to vilify or reject the example of a Mother Teresa in order to reject what she stands for.
But a bishop of Rome who sets about governing the Church quietly and firmly in the light of orthodox Christian living may be something else, a completion of what the Holy Spirit has begun in the previous bishops of Rome.
I am glad Fr. Schall - a Jesuit who is anything but jesuitic in his thinking, and moreover, one of the great minds writing about the faith today - has brought up the points he did. It allows me to say something I have inhibited myself from doing because it might be considered in poor taste, or worse, as criticism of Pope Francis for 'partisan' reasons.
I have a congenital intolerance for bleeding-heart liberals, whom I have always found pharisaic. And so, I have always been uneasy about anyone, politician or priest, pontificating about 'the poor' or their 'love for the poor". But if our new Pontiff has been doing just that, he is the Pontiff after all and the only one who can pontificate, and more important, he does so with the credentials of someone who has spent his long years as Archbishop of Buenos Aires in the service of the poor. And so I found it very strange that, as the Pope himself recounted days later, the first thing whispered to him, after he reached 77 votes in the Conclave, by his friend from Brazil, Cardinal Hummes, was "Do not forget the poor"! Surely, Cardinal Bergoglio did not have to be reminded of that.
By now, we've all read testimonials by some of the Pope's former diocesan faithful among 'the poor' of Buenos Aires, and one gets the impression that what he achieved was to make the residents of Buenos Aires's poorest neighborhoods feel the nearness of the Church by his frequent presence among them, preaching the faith which teaches us to entrust ourselves to God, but to work hard and never lose hope, as well as setting an example by his simple life.
And it is admirable that he has done that, rather than, one gathers, engaging in what has generally been called social work, a euphemism for doing charity. Obviously, the Church does what it can by way of charity for the neediest, but it is never enough, and meanwhile, someone must be teaching the 'able poor' to fish instead of just giving them fish.
And so, like Fr. Schall, I was disturbed by the Pope's call for those Argentinians planning to come for his inauguration to just give the money they would have spent 'to the poor'. Fr. Schall has raised larger arguments I did not even think of, since my first reaction was of a practical nature: And how exactly are they going to do that? Should they send the money to Caritas or some similar organization? Or should they go to a poor neighborhood and find a needy family or person to 'adopt' and take care of? Or maybe as cardinal, the Pope had an effective mechanism through which the charitable intentions of the better-off faithful were channelled appropriately to the really deserving, so he did not have to spell out to the would-be pilgrims what they ought to do.
In any case, when Pope Francis talks of 'the poor', he apparently means those whose poverty is primarily material and physical, which is the only sense which the secular world has of poverty. So I was even more struck, re-reading Benedict XVI's inaugural homily today, by the powerful section where he speaks of the deserts in the contemporary world - internal as well as external:
The pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert.
There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love.
There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.
Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.
The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.
Of course, Pope Francis also leads everything to Christ, to God, but I do have some trouble with some of the statements in the homily:
"We must not be afraid of goodness, of tenderness!"...
[Is anyone really 'afraid' of goodness and tenderness? Some may be reluctant to express tenderness - maybe macho men - but it is said even the most hardened gangsters are often very tender to those they love. The 'Do not be afraid' (of letting Christ into your life) of John Paul II's inaugural homily was movingly reiterated by Benedict XVI in his own homily. For some reason, Pope Francis limited his exhortation to 'goodness and tenderness'.]
"It means protecting people, showing loving concern for each and every person, especially children, the elderly, those in need, who are often the last we think about"...
[I do not know who started the practice, but Benedict XVI always ended his GA and Angelus greetings with messages directed especially to "newlyweds (as future parents and generators of family), the young, older people, and all who are sick or in difficulties", varying his messages to the different groups according to the Gospel of the day or a holy feast being observed. It was a thought that was constantly and regularly expressed. ]
"To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope; it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds; it is to bring the warmth of hope!"...
[Did earlier Popes then not speak about protecting Creation and protecting every man and woman, and in many other ways, offered hope to the faithful? The 'dark clouds' over mankind are not the fault of the Church - she, too, suffers under these dark clouds, but she has never not offered Christian hope, which is beyond merely 'hope for a better future here on earth" - at least in the universal Magisterium, though we well know this is not always preached - not in words, and much less in deeds - by willfully 'autonomous' bishops and priests, among whom, obviously, Cardinal Bergoglio was not one.
Moreover, 'protecting Creation' in today's world takes us to environmentalism, and 'protecting every man and woman' [and child, including the unborn] evokes the problems of Christian persecution, abortion and euthanasia.
Popes set the priority and direction of Church teachings and activities, but execution of good intentions does not depend on them. Everything must be brought down to the diocesan and parish level, and that will not happen if bishops and priests continue to believe they know best and can safely ignore what the Pope says!
John Paul II, for all his charisma, certainly did not get everyone in the Church to heed him - despite his insistence on the 'correct reception and implementation' of Vatican-II, the 'spirit of Vatican II' was alive and booming over those 26 years. Moreover, it is pretty much agreed by most Vatican commentators that his episcopal appointments were flawed because those around him pushed names who were known liberals and progressivists, who would and have undermined Catholic orthodoxy in their respective jurisdictions. Benedict XVI has, on the whole, named bishops who share his orthodox but creative thinking on Catholic doctrine and practice and how they must be applied in their work as pastors.
As for social justice - which goes beyond merely taking care of the weakest and the poorest - the Social Doctrine of the Church, first articulated and compiled under Leo XIII, has since been enriched by the social encyclicals of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, applied to the concrete social problems of the contemporary world. (BTW, part 2 of Deus caritas est is very much a 'social justice' discourse, anticipating Caritas in veritate).
Perhaps, Pope Francis's first encyclical will be on social justice and will tell us how the Church can do more than she already does to care for the weakest and the poorest, and propose new ways for the Church to encourage protection of the environment and of natural resources.
