Supreme Knight Carl Anderson
Posted on 07/07/2009 3:31:19 PM PDT by NYer
.- The head of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, has responded to Pope Benedict’s newly-released encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (Love in Truth), by denouncing attempts to use it to further political agendas rather than viewing it from the Church’s comprehensive understanding of the human person.
In an interview with CNA on Tuesday morning, Carl Anderson, leader of the world’s largest lay Catholic organization, decried the “spin masters who will try to spin the encyclical in one direction or the other” and emphasized that “the Catholic reader should read the encyclical in its entirety” in order to understand the underlying ethical and anthropological foundations that guide it.
“What this encyclical makes very clear is that there is a consistent ethics in the Catholic Church because there is a consistent view of the human person,” Anderson told CNA, explaining that this consistency is seen in Pope Benedict’s assertion that social issues cannot be separated from life issues.
While the idea that we are “morally responsible for one another” as part of “one human family” is not new to Christianity, Anderson said that the Pope challenges us in this encyclical “to take this seriously as a fundamental understanding of what it means to be a Christian.”
Anderson also responded to some analyses of the encyclical that try to describe it as promoting either a liberal or conservative political viewpoint by saying, “I think that’s precisely the wrong way to look at the encyclical, and I think that Benedict would be very disappointed if that’s the kind of analysis we give it.”
“What we ought to be doing is reading the encyclical and seeing what we can learn from it, what we might change as a way of doing our work as a result from it, and not to see whether or not it validates one position,” he added.
Anderson explained that when we divide the encyclical or use it to justify one position over another, “we fall into an error that I think Benedict himself would be the first one to attempt to correct.”
He observed that the issues dealt with by the Pope, such as defense of marriage, protection of human life, and a call to reform the United Nations, are not really questions of the political right or left. Rather, they flow from a comprehensive and consistent understanding of the human person.
In addition, Anderson noted that many Americans may see the Pope’s call for “just redistribution” as a left-leaning proposal, but when viewed in a global perspective, the idea takes on a new light.
“When you look in Africa where you see dictators that are presidents of countries that retire from office with billions of dollars in their Swiss bank accounts while their people are living on one dollar a day, is that just redistribution? Is that a question of the left or is that a question of the right?”
Explaining that these topics are human issues rather than those belonging to any political party, Anderson said that discussions of right and left have no place in analyzing the Pope’s encyclical and putting it into practice.
“I think Christians, particularly Catholics, have to move beyond that if they want to truly see with the eyes of the Gospel,” he told CNA. “Because there was a Gospel before there was a left and a right, and there will be a Gospel after.”
Calling on Catholics to read “Caritas in Veritate” and incorporate it into their lives, Anderson highlighted the encyclical’s sense of urgency. “We really do have a moral obligation to help those in need,” he said, adding that this obligation is comprehensive, and “therefore, not only is the ethic consistent, it has to be applied consistently in all the things we do.”
“We cannot contain that responsibility to Sunday morning,” Anderson said as he invited Catholics to make the Pope’s words a reality in their everyday lives. “Let’s put it into practice! Let’s find ways to make the encyclical count,” he said, encouraging people to leave behind their divisions and unite to put Benedict’s words into action.
“Those in government have a responsibility, those in the private sector have a responsibility, and we ought to work together from a consistent ethic and a consistent attitude to try to solve these problems.”
It's amazing how intelligent folks will believe the msm spin, yet won't make the time to read the encyclical and draw their own conclusions. I thought Freepers were above this nonsense.
Catholic Ping
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He has no education or experience in these matters.
Please cite the passage in the encyclical where he is wrong.
Thanks for the ping. Keep me in the loop.
He may as well have mentioned Obama or Clinton by name if his intent was to rile up Freepers.
Of course wealth is redistributed constantly in any kind of economic system from free market to socialist.
The reaction by many Freepers to this encyclical shows that conservatives are just as susceptible to Pavlovian conditioning as liberals.
You are looking at this encyclical through your 'political lenses'. Take those off and put on the ones of faith. Then reread what the pope has written.
The “social justice Catholics” will use this letter to justify their allegiance to Obama. Never mind that the pope’s whole argument hinges on the acceptance of the concept of natural law, which liberal Catholics do not accept.
I THINK that the Supreme Knight is wrong making a PC useless comment.
Pope’s last encyclique appears to be a great teaching which place human being at the centre and thye top of economy.
As far as i heard it is highlighting PERSONNAL RESPONSABILITY and human’s dignity and these are core CONSERVATIVE values
And these threads that post the teurh -- including this one.
Supreme Knight criticizes use of Pope's encyclical for political agendas
Benedict XVI explains gifts and limitations of free market economy
Benedict XVI Tightens Up the Church's Social Teaching
Excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI New Encyclical "CARITAS IN VERITATE" (CHARITY AND TRUTH)
Don’t take things out of context!
I appreciate what you say about personal responsibility, but this document explicitly calls for state involvement, and uses the word redistribution repeatedly. I’ll give the authors the benefit of the doubt about what they are calling for, but I think their language choice is questionable (redistribution) and falls into the hands of those who advocate socialism
35. “But the social doctrine of the Church has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy...”
36.”Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”
37.”Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics...”
39. “In this way he was applying on a global scale the insights and aspirations contained in Rerum Novarum, written when, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the idea was first proposed — somewhat ahead of its time — that the civil order, for its self-regulation, also needed intervention from the State for purposes of redistribution.
[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretense of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in their public acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
[24] The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers. The fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine, in monasteries, churches, and church-yards.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html
I wish a were wrong, but I sincerely believe that I am not wrong, in thinking that (1)the current Pope’s messages on economic issues are INTENTIONALLY euphemistic enough that Marxists will find common cause with them, (2)that Benedict knows this, and (3)he is, in terms of political philosophy, active on the side of “democratic” socialists. He is part of that generation of European Roman Catholic intellectuals who have made common cause with Marxists in Europe on so-called “social justice” issues, only to see the socialists resulting victories produce socialist majorities that compromise family and life issues in the end.
If I were a lay member of the Catholic Church, I would be praying for an “American” Catholic Church, devoid of ALL Europe’s influences.
“Obama: Social Justice in Catholic Church Has Had ‘Profound Influence’ on Me”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2287702/posts
Actually, with Obama (1) being neither Catholic educated, nor (2) having any major personal, life-experience, close Catholic leaders as mentors or peers, nor (3) ever being a practicing Catholic, I believe Obama’s Marxist leanings have often found concordance with Roman Catholic “social justice” teaching; and that is what is closer to the truth - not that he was influenced by Catholic “social justice” teaching, but that he found IT often agreed with his thinking.
Now, American Catholics, try to envision just where his concordance with the Pope in Rome hopes to take us.
Please, please wake up.
The Catholic haters and the headline only, readers have been busy today trying to make everyone believe that Pope Benedict is calling for the dreaded “One World Government!!!!”.
Good article, NYer. Thanks for the post. The Supreme Knight is spot on!
Maybe you should read posts before responding to them.
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