Benedict XVI and the truth about charity

Pope Benedict XVI's social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), is a complex and occasionally obscure document, replete with possible implications for the future development of Catholic social doctrine. Sorting those implications out will take much time and even more careful reflection.

Along the information superhighway, however, careful reflection hit a few potholes in the early going, as sundry partisans sought to capture Caritas in Veritate as a weapon with which to bolster the Obama administration's economic, health care and social welfare policies.

Thus in the days immediately following the encyclical's July 7 release, we were treated to the amusing, if somewhat ironic, spectacle of self-consciously progressive Catholic magazines, bloggers and free-lancers, many of whom would have preferred to eat ground glass rather than see Joseph Ratzinger as Bishop of Rome, blasting those who dared raise questions about the encyclical's intellectual provenance and some of its formulations.

Caritas in Veritate has now put Catholic legislators and politicians on notice: you can't duck the life issues, or vote the wrong way on the life issues, by hiding behind an alleged commitment to the Church's social justice agenda.

Where were these stout-hearted crusaders when the going was tough --- when, for example, the Pope was under fire for his Regensburg Lecture on Islam, or for attempting to reconcile four excommunicate Lefebvrist bishops to the Church?

But that was before we entered the new Messianic Age.

In any event, there is an important theme in Caritas in Veritate that, were all Catholics to take it seriously, might have a measurable impact on the American culture wars and on the U.S. Church's internal struggle to define Catholic identity --- and that is the encyclical's insistence, repeated several times, that the life issues are social justice issues, so that Catholic social doctrine includes the Church's defense of life from conception until natural death.

This teaching began with John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), in which John Paul warned that democracies risk becoming "tyrant states" if moral wrongs are legally declared "rights." Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger went a step further in his homily at the Mass for the Election of a Pope, on April 18, 2005.

There, Ratzinger warned against a "dictatorship of relativism" in which coercive state power would be used to enforce the by-products of a culture skeptical about the human capacity to know the moral truth of anything: by-products such as abortion-on-demand, euthanasia, and "gay marriage." Now, as Benedict XVI, Ratzinger has moved the discussion further still, teaching that the defense of life is crucial to building the "human ecology" necessary to sustain just economic practices and protect the natural environment.

Caritas in Veritate has now put Catholic legislators and politicians on notice: you can't duck the life issues, or vote the wrong way on the life issues, by hiding behind an alleged commitment to the Church's social justice agenda. Catholic social doctrine and the Church's commitment to the right to life flow from the same source: the Catholic conviction about the inalienable dignity of every human life. A robust culture of life, the Pope proposes, is essential for economic justice and environmental protection; it is also necessary if we are to avoid the dehumanization of a brave new world of stunted and manufactured humanity, the slippery slope to which is paved with misconceived compassion and embryo-destructive stem cell research.

Caritas in Veritate thus reminds the whole Church that there is neither justice nor charity without truth. No society can claim to be promoting justice or solidarity if its law denies the truth of others' humanity.

That is what Roe v. Wade and its judicial progeny have done in the United States; that is why laws protective of life from conception until natural death are an imperative of social justice; and that is why "common ground" efforts to lower the incidence of abortion, while welcome, are inadequate from the point of view of Catholic social doctrine --- the moral equivalent of saying, in 1955, "OK, let's see if we can't get you black folks into one or two segregated restaurants in every county."

Catholic legislators have been forcefully reminded of all this by the new Benedictine encyclical. The results in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and our state legislators should be instructive.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Try reading the actual encyclical, Dr. E. Here’s a link:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

As some of us have noted, the English translation isn’t so good, at least it doesn’t seem to say the same thing in some areas as the French, Italian and German say and there is no link to a Latin original. If you can read French, Italian and/or German, I suggest you skip the English version.

The letter is NOT a political document, the efforts of partisans on the right and the left, especially here in America, to make it so to the contrary notwithstanding. The fact that the Vatican itself has said that is of no consequence to those who would use the Popes words to advance their own particular political agendas.

Anyway, I urge you to read the whole thing. Your opinion may not change, but at least you’ll have come to it based on primary source material.

“So the futile justification of the pope’s pathetic socialism as revealed in his recent outburst urging a one-world financial and judicial overlord continues.”

Ironic isn’t it that the author of this post works for a rightist think tank dedicated to convincing people that American corporations operate on a Judeo-Christian moral foundation.

Ironic isn’t it that the author of this post works for a rightist think tank dedicated to convincing people that American corporations operate on a Judeo-Christian moral foundation.

I think you mean the author "of this thread." The author of the "post" you referenced is not a member of any "rightist think tank" except FR. lol

Regardless, no one says there aren't deceivers and the deceived among conservatives. This forum testifies to that fact.

Try reading the actual encyclical

I have read the encyclical, Kolo, last week when it was being discussed.

It hasn't aged well. It is still a noxious blueprint for world socialism "with teeth" -- the goal of many men and groups of men for a very long time.

Like all clever propaganda, it is couched in palatable phrases here and there. You are correct that one must actually read the document to understand the foul agenda that is being pushed here. Thankfully, like the Bible, it is printed and available to be read by men everywhere. I am, however, surprised and saddened to see you agree with it.

And to blame the justifiable disgust over this document on a "bad translation" is just another flimsy defense of the indefensible. This is the Vatican's translation, after all. It reads how they want it to read.

From the encyclical as noted in another post on another thread...

67. In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect[146] and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. 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. 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[147], and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization [149]. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.

Therein lies the snake among the grass. With that paragraph America's sovereignty is destroyed and handed over to a "global authority" who will dole out and "balance" the world's resources as it sees fit.

No checks and balances. No elected representatives. No individual rights. Just one massive, bloated authoritarian royalty decreeing whatever it pleases.

Much like Rome itself.

No wonder it appeals to Ratzinger and some of his supporters. Thank God for the Roman Catholics who are as repulsed by this encyclical as most Protestants and Jews are repulsed.

That paragraph is more disgusting every time its read. It is helpful, however, to know where everyone stands on this proposed global financial authority with the power of enforcement aided by a strengthened U.S. Now we know where you stand.

“It is helpful, however, to know where everyone stands on this proposed global financial authority with the power of enforcement aided by a strengthened U.S. Now we know where you stand.”

Dr. E, so far as I recall, I haven’t endorsed the encyclical beyond observing that it is an excellent exposition, generally, of what The Church in the West, and probably in the East too, teaches. To the extent that Latin Rite Catholics, or anyone else for that matter, takes what the Pope says seriously, then this encyclical must give them pause as they on the one hand claim to be good Latin or Orthodox Christians and on the other embrace the sort of world economic system which has developed over the past 25 years or so and which the Pope calls into question.

Even the Fathers could be wrong and so could this or any other Pope. The encyclical is not an infallibly proclaimed dogmatic statement and no Latin Rite Catholic needs to believe it or implement it. It is not, as I said, a political document; it is a socio-economic theological document designed to make people think by presenting Church social and economic thought. I suspect it is keeping some very committed and faithful Latins awake nights.

By the way, its more than a bit parochial of you to think that +BXVI is attempting to undermine American sovereignty. He doesn’t need to do that even if he looked forward to it. Our lust for markets, dirt cheap/virtual slave labor and laissez faire capitalism resulted in globalization and that, Dr. E, is where our sovereignty eroded...right into the bank accounts of the Chicoms and globalists with no more loyalty to this country than the Rosenbergs had.

I do apologize for suggesting that you hadn’t read the original. I should have known better.

It is not, as I said, a political document

Yes, that is Rome's talking point. Somehow I had expected less naivety from you. The following excerpt from the encyclical sounds very "political"...

"This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy...

Thus speaks the "political document."

Our lust for markets, dirt cheap/virtual slave labor and laissez faire capitalism resulted in globalization

"Laissez faire capitalism" is what has created the wealth of this planet in the first place. To blame "globalism" on capitalism is almost humorous if it weren't such a destructive deflection of the truth. It is important Americans know their enemy...and it isn't capitalism. And it isn't us.

Rather, it isn't most of us.

Here's a book I urge everyone to read as reveiwed here...

MELTDOWN
by Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Pinging a few others to the review, the site and the book. Knowledge is power.

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