Google+
 

'CARITAS IN VERITATE'

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 29/08/2009 20:08
Autore
Stampa | Notifica email    
18/08/2009 16:37
OFFLINE
Post: 18.221
Post: 878
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Senior



Michael Novak, who is on the editorial board of First Things, has also written the most so far about CIV, both in the English and Italian press.

Much of it has been from his ideological viewpoint as a leading Catholic 'neo-con', and is therefore critical of what would seem to be 'leftist' ideas in CIV, starting with its textual reference point, Paul VI's Populorum progressio/. [Catholic liberals have used PP as a rallying standard for their social advocacy issues, as much as they have anathematized Humanae Vitae by the same Pope as the symbol of everything wrong with the Church - while conservatives have taken the two encyclicals in the exact polar opposite sense).

Novak tries to present a more balanced view of CIV in this piece, seeing it as it should be seen - a non-ideological, or supra-ideological, statement - but he still concludes with his now-familiar list of criticisms, and worse, almost accusing the Pope directly of stating 'untruths'. I find his concluding sentences terribly offensive.




Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas
by Michael Novak

August 17, 2009


It is no secret that in U.S. Catholicism these last twenty or so years there has been an increasingly bitter split between two large factions on matters of political economy.

Some tilt left, some right. Some favor a Reaganomic approach to political economy and rejoiced in the boom that lasted thirty-some years. Others favor Clintonomics (which in practice looked a lot like Reaganomics), while others favor something more robustly state-run and state-centered on the order of Obamanomics.

In his new Encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI stressed that the Church should be understood neither as holding a particular ideology about political economy nor as imposing specific practical solutions on individual countries or regions. He does not intend to pronounce upon the disagreements in political economy among Catholics or others.

On the contrary, his aim is to put questions of political economy in a larger context, theological and philosophical, dealing with such questions as the role of caritas in theology, and in philosophy sound concepts of the common good, the human person, and human community.

Moreover, in his concrete discussions about current affairs, almost every time Benedict seems to give a point to the left, rooted usually in Populorum Progressio(1967), he takes it back or qualifies it by drawing on lessons learned in between 1967 and 1991, as recorded in Centesimus Annus [John Paul II's post-Communism social encyclical).

His practice follows his intention. He lets both horses run, and does not himself choose to side with either one.

In some ways, this openness seems to be baffling many readers, and making this particular piece of Benedict XVI’s writing come across as uncharacteristically waffly and opaque. It often seems to go in two directions at once.

[Looking at both sides of an issue is not going in both directions! It is a necessary premise to making a definitive statement about the issue - even if it is to say that 'there is merit on both sides, but consider their faults'.]

Some sentences are almost impossible to parse in practical terms: What on earth does that mean in practice?

[One would think Novak had never ever in his life written any statements that would baffle his readers! Besides, I wonder if he has read CIV in its original German - a language not given to waffling or nebulous expression. Has he ever considered that the passages he finds 'difficult' may be more a question of less-than-optimal translation than it is of fuzzy thinking? Especially on technical matters, it is almost insulting to think that Benedict XVI would ever express himself fuzzily! Besides, even the English translation, awkward as it is in places, appears to be quite clear enough in its principles to any average informed reader who has no ideological biases.

Practical applications that may be cited are necessarily amorphous because the Pope has already said he is not proposing any technical solutions. It is not for him to flesh out the principles he states as he has no direct influence at all on any such practical applications!]


This refusal to indulge in ideology has a great strength that compensates for the above-mentioned weakness. Its strength is that it raises the mind to other dimensions of the truth, and avoids squabbles that belong more to the City of Man than to the City of God.

For instance, this higher perspective enables the Pope to link the gospel of life to the social gospel, so to speak. That makes immense practical sense.

For instance, in the United States about fifty million children have been aborted since 1973. If those girls and boys had been allowed to live, millions of them would now be in the workforce, helping by their social security taxes to close the deficits in our programs for the elderly. Policies regarding the beginning of life profoundly affect the welfare state as the population ages.

Europe, with its failure to keep population at a level of growth, or even bare replacement is condemning its welfare state to accelerating death.

Here is one of my favorite practical passages in this encyclical. The sentences read more like bureaucratic jargon than like Benedict’s usually profound and warm pastoral way of putting things. Still, they reinforce some of the most important gains for Catholic social thought over the past 115 years:

By considering reciprocity as the heart of what it is to be a human being, subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state.

It is able to take account both of the manifold articulation of plans—and therefore of the plurality of subjects — as well as the coordination of those plans. Hence the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development.

In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together.

Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice. (57

)
[Don't tell me Novak thinks such language is unusual in an encyclical! It's the usual language of Church documents, including those of Vatican II.

Benedict XVI has spoiled us because the two first encyclicals were primarily theological and philosophical, and he could express himself as he usually does - even if passages in Part II of DCE had an institutional tone by the nature of its subject, the Church's institutional charity works.

To reproach him for using institutional language ('bureaucratic jargon') for the more technical passages of CIV should not be taken against him. As it is, he does a good job of seeking to express reciprocity and subsidiarity as principles of good economic practice in a few sentences - seeking to use the very terms that the authorities concerned use. That's not a bad communications rule, either - to speak to those you address in the terms they use about specific concerns.


Within this section, and several other places in the encyclical, a pattern begins to emerge whereby Benedict XVI makes a point important to the political economic left, and then qualifies it in terms important to the political economic center and center-right. [Or vice-versa. And it's elementary common sense to do so, as commented earlier.]

For example, regarding his concern to help the welfare state, the pope first advises that “more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, thus respecting the obligations that the international community has undertaken in this regard.”

He then immediately frames this suggestion within the limits of subsidiarity and personal accountability: “One way of doing so is by reviewing their internal social assistance and welfare policies, applying the principle of subsidiarity and creating better integrated welfare systems, with the active participation of private individuals and civil society.” (60)

As for global government, we see Benedict XVI again call for a true world political authority:

To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago.


But he is quick to define this authority in terms of restraint and of adherence to the core principles of Catholic social thought:

Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. (67)


[I fail to see why Novak should place particular merit on the Pope's obvious careful balancing of positions throughout the encyclical. It would have been remarkable - negatively - if he had not done so!]

For myself, though, I love best the starting point in caritas. When I was a young man, I wanted to write a book about the centrality of God’s unique form of love, called caritas rather than the more common, down-to-earth amor, in the architecture of the theology of Thomas Aquinas. I loved his little treatise on charity (the poor English translation of caritas), and often taught seminars on it.
[Perhaps Novak should have mentioned here, even if parentheticallly, that the first translation undertaken by then seminarian Joseph Ratzinger, 19, was precisely that Aquinas treatise on love, as his mentor and prefect of studies at the time, Alfred Laepple, has recalled. Or maybe Novak simply is not aware of it.]

And in recent years, prompted in part by challenges from my friend and sometime sparring partner David Schindler of the John Paul II Institute in Washington, I have been developing the caritas underpinnings of my own understanding of democracy, capitalism, and a Republic of Virtue.

The free society is differentiated into three interdependent systems, the polity, the economy, and the moral/cultural institutions of human life. Each of these different types of freedom (political, cultural, and religious) is needed by the other two, in order to be held to the protection of true freedom. You can find essays of mine on this point beginning from at least 1995 at my website.

I have been trying to steer Catholic social teaching in this direction — beginning with my own thinking — for a long time. So watching Benedict XVI write about caritas so beautifully brings me immense satisfaction.

In all candor, however, if we hold each sentence of Caritas in Veritate up to analysis in the light of empirical truth about events in the field of political economy since 1967, we will find that it is not nearly so full in its veritas as in its caritas.

For instance, the benefits for the poor achieved through the spread of economic enterprise and markets (capitalism is for some too unpleasant a word to use) should be more resoundingly attended to.

[Can one really expect a 130-page encyclical to give equal emphasis on every subject it raises as one would be able to do in a textbook???? It's not as if the benefits of the market economy and globalization were never referred to at all in CIV. As for the use of the word capitalism, isn't 'markets' a more general term? 'For some too unpleasant a word to use" - refers to Benedict XVI as well in CIV, because he avoids using it, clearly to minimize ideological labelling.]

In 1970, for instance, the mortality age of men and women in Bangladesh was 44.6 years old, but by 2005 it had risen to 63. Think what a joy and what vigor such increased longevity means to individual families.

Similarly, infant mortality rate (deaths per 1000 live births) in Bangladesh in 1970 was 152, or 15.2 percent. By 2005 this average had been brought down to just 57.2, or a little less than 6 percent. Again, what pain this lifts from ordinary mothers and fathers, and what joy it brings. There is surely more to do to raise health standards for Bangladeshi. But the progress just in this past thirty years is unprecedented in world history.

There are many more omissions of fact, questionable insinuations, and unintentional errors strewn through this encyclical. The staff work has been rather poor.

[That is petty quibbling. If such omissions, insinuations and errors were so significant, they would bear specific enumeration and rebuttal. If they were so significant, perhaps Novak should devote an article to doing just that, so we can get these bugbears out of the way!]

Every deficiency of veritas injures caritas. That is the beautiful and powerful linkage in this encyclical.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/08/2009 21:36]
Nuova Discussione
 | 
Rispondi
Cerca nel forum

Feed | Forum | Bacheca | Album | Utenti | Cerca | Login | Registrati | Amministra
Crea forum gratis, gestisci la tua comunità! Iscriviti a FreeForumZone
FreeForumZone [v.6.1] - Leggendo la pagina si accettano regolamento e privacy
Tutti gli orari sono GMT+01:00. Adesso sono le 09:57. Versione: Stampabile | Mobile
Copyright © 2000-2024 FFZ srl - www.freeforumzone.com