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'CARITAS IN VERITATE'

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 29/08/2009 20:08
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Fr. Fessio proves himself a true student of Benedict XVI in his first commentary on Caritas in veritate. Thank you, Fr. Fessio, for eschewing the prevalent commonplace that this encyclical was to be read as a technocratic discourse, a prescription for the world's economic ills or a blanket denunciation of the flawed economic and financial institutions of our time. In short, for seeing without distraction that the encyclical is exactly about what its title says - charity in truth, charity and truth.



Pope advocates charity and truth
as the framework for social justice

By Father Joseph Fessio, SJ



NAPLES, Florida, JULY 7, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has something for everyone in Caritas in Veritate -- from praising profit (nO. 21) to defending the environment (nO. 48).

But in these cases, as in all the others, he calls for a discernment and a purification by faith and reason (nO. 56) that should temper immoderate and one-sided enthusiasms.

Once again, Pope Benedict shows himself to be a theologian of synthesis and fundamental principles. In the titles of his three encyclicals he has used only five nouns: God, Love, Hope, Salvation, and Truth -- the most fundamental of realities.

And in the opening greeting of this encyclical he succinctly describes the contents: "on integral human development in charity and truth."

Note that from this very greeting Pope Benedict has changed the whole framework of the debate on "the social question." This was expected to be -- and is -- his encyclical on "social justice." And indeed "justice" and "rights" find their proper place in a larger synthesis.

But the priority is established from the outset, the foundation is laid, with "charity" and "truth." "Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine" (2).

"Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power" (5).

Another fundamental principle, and a central theme of this pontificate, is the continuity of the Church and her teaching. Surprisingly, the central ecclesiastical text from the past is Pope Paul VI's Populorum Progressio, and Pope Benedict makes it clear that we do not have "two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: On the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new" (12).

This principle of continuity was expressed centrally in Benedict's first address as Pope on April 20, 2005, and again to the Roman curial cardinals on Dec. 22 of that year.

Within this fundamental material context of charity and truth, and the fundamental formal context of the continuity of the Church's teaching, Pope Benedict situates the centerpiece of the Church's social teaching: "integral human development." And by "integral" he means "it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man" (18, quoting Paul VI).

Among the important dimensions of this wholeness, he notes that integral human development must be open to the transcendent (11: "authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension. Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space.") and it must be open to life (28: "Openness to life is at the center of true development").

The inclusiveness of this integration is emphatically and perhaps surprisingly exemplified in paragraph 39. There, the Pope states that the "logic of the market and the logic of the state," i.e., free economic exchange with political oversight and restraint, are not enough to secure human flourishing.

There must also be "solidarity in relations between citizens, participation and adherence, actions of gratuitousness" or, as he says in summary, "increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion."

Pope Benedict insists on a "third economic factor" in addition to the market and the state: gratuitousness.

Here is a radiant example of the fundamental, synthetic, and discerning character of Pope Benedict's formulation of the Church's social teaching, one which for me is worth the whole encyclical for its clarity, depth, and common sense:

If there is lack of respect for the right to life and a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational system and laws do not help them to respect themselves".(51)


There are times when one is especially proud of the blessing of the Catholic faith. This is one of them.





I must say that waking up in the morning yesterday, it was not easy to read Chapters 3-6 of the encyclical - with its analysis of what has been wrong with human 'development' programs and the systems for attempting this in the modern world - after Chapters 1 and 2 with which Benedict XVI underpinned the entire encyclical, and which were as compelling in their way as DCE and Spe salvi.

In part, there was also the surprise novelty of Benedict's open homage to the thinking of Paul VI in Populorum progressio - which is more than a notch above the dutiful summary of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum that begins John Paul II's own social encyclical, Centesimus Annus.

So it wasn't easy going when it was time to read through the 'technocratic' part of the encyclical - my brain kept saying one does not have to be a technocrat to see what's wrong with a global market economy whose top and bottom line is financial profit and material gain for whoever wins out in a dog-eat-dog world!

Of course, I appreciated the philosophical incursions into the concept of 'gratuitousness' and even of 'solidarity' [a word that I truly dislike as one of those heavyhanded words that has lost any emotive meaning - I hear it or read it and I feel 'BLAH!', and I cringe that the Pope has no choice but to use it often. I therefore try to translate as often as I can into the more 'comprehensible' word 'brotherhood' or 'brotherly togetherness'. For one, is there any English adjective that corresponds to the noun 'solidarity'? 'Solid with' is awkward and forced. Italian uses 'solidale' as the adjective but when you look that up, it means "being together in a brotherly way'].

But most of all, I appreciated the Pope's 'audacity' of suggesting to a materialistic world that it should factor in these concepts into the eocnomic system. Of course, he is the Pope, and of course, he would hold up high standards one would consider unrealistic in the material world. (Sorry, Holiness, I am much too cynical to be as well-disposed to everyone as you are.)

But it was rather depressing to read the initial pre-cooked, pre-digested commentaries that looked at the encyclical primarily as a politico-economic tract, as though the Pope were going to state some groundbreaking economic theory like a Malthus or a Keynes.

He is the Pope, for heaven's sake - he preaches the Word of God. However profound or simple, intellectual or pedestrian, the doctrine of the Church is expressed, in the end, it can only be consistent with what Christ taught and did.

And that is why I am very appreciative of the commentators who have not lost sight of this.





Here's one of the most original commentaries in the Italian media:


The Pope and
the 'tables of the law'
on economic ethics

by Domenico Rosati
Translated from

July 8, 2009


Those who expected that Benedict XVI's social encyclical would be an act of irruption onto the current economic crsis, or a tirade against the pathologies of liberalism, could only have been disappointed with Caritas in veritate.

One will search it in vain for those searing expressions that have marked the social magisterium of his predecessors. For instance, the denunciation of the 'less than servile condition' of laborers ( Leo XIII), or of the 'imperialism of money' (Pius XI), decrying nuclear weapons as 'alienum a razione' (John XXIII), the menace of the 'rage of the poor' (Paul VI), the identification of 'structures of sin' in today's society (John Paul II).

The very images of the subterranean financial tremors that have in recent months shattered a planetary equilibrium which had been considered firm and solid, figure as a background for the document, which advocates "integral human development in charity and in truth", and better still, and the encyclical title has it, according to the principle of 'charity in truth'.

Tne entire encylical is fashioned from the interweaving of these two threads, with a homogeneous tension that characterizes it from beginning to end.

It is this constitutive elememt that specifically distibguishes this encyclical from previous expressions of the social dostrine of the Church.

Rather than starting from an analysis of the historical context - which is ny no means ignored but is treated as a given - the encyclical involves us right away in an elaboration that does not avoid a critical consideration actual of problems, but frames everything in the precise theological context that is characteristic of Papa Ratzinger's thinking.


"Truth." he writes, "needs to be sought, found and expressed within the 'economy' of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be be understood, confirmed, and practised in the light of truth".

In this way, he said, "we do service to charity enlightened by truth, but we will also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living."

This, he points out, "is a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its exsitence".

It would be similarly misleading to maintain that such a premise makes the entire document into little more than sedative.

The accent on truth, up to the sentence that says, "Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even udnderstands who he is", does not get in the way of diagnosing the evils of the world, but rather makes such an analysis, in many aspects, even more critical and demanding.

In every sector - economic, social, political, work, the State, subsidiarity, the environment, bioethics, just to cite some of those analyzed - the concern that dominates is eminently ethical in discerning what is useful to man and what harms him.

But even ethics must be qualified, and this can only come from the truths which make charity authentic. The Pope's dicourse is aimed more at individual consciences than to world powers, even if the latter are certainly not left in peace.

Assiduously and often punctually, the encyclical notes their inadequacies (towards the poor of the world) and their dysfunctions (the selfish market).

But the Pope says 'new men', enlightened by truth, would be capable of making human coexistence better by the very consistrency of their testimony.

Of course, no summary can do justice to the encyclical's complex argumentation which merits a leisurely examination, particularly when it gets into the modalities of economic and entrepreneurial life free (or freed from) the nagging worry of aggressive competition.

To what degree, for instance, could a discreet re-evaluation of the role of the State respond to certain decidedly 'anti' manifestations, even among Catholics, against the American free-market model?

And in what way would such a compact configuration of Catholic ethics lend itself to a necessary confrontation in a global and pluralistic society, if one starts, as Barack Obama suggests, "from the bias that even the other side is acting in good faith"?

Some answers are already found in the Magisterium of the Church. If the duty of every man to search for truth is inherent in human nature, "then when I respect the other, I respect in him his capacity for truth".

Benedict XVI modulated his own approach in direct reference to Paul VI's Populorum progressio which he cites frequently, But the Pauline text itself refers back to John XXIII's Pacem in terris which says that even before the intervention of divine grace, human nature itself is capable of giving rise simultaneously to the concepts of universal rights and the inviolability of persons; and that therefore, there exists a human platform of values which represents common ground for all men of good will.

And it is to this common ground - the common good - to which Caritas in veritate is devoted, which could well open up a fruitful debate in all of society.


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