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ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH |
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Father
Schall: Encyclical Reconnects Rights and Duties |
"Caritas in Veritate" Is a Guide For
Temporal Life
By Father James V. Schall, SJ
WASHINGTON, D.C., 8 JULY 2009 (ZENIT)
Benedict XVI's new social encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," takes its
place in the Church's on-going effort accurately to state the
fundamentals of human living. It is not what our eternal life is about,
but what our temporal life is about, seen in the light of our eternal
life. We do not de-emphasize one or the other, but take them according
to their own truth as related to each other.
Though it repeats many of the matters that were dealt with in "Deus
Caritas Est" and "Spe Salvi," Benedict's two previous encyclicals, this
new document is not really intelligible without the profound analysis of
modern ideology and the last things that were found in the earlier
encyclicals on love and hope.
In "Spe Salvi," the Pope stated that politics could not be politics if
it confused itself with eschatology. That is, if we think that our
political life is our transcendent life, we in effect lose the proper
dimensions of both. In the present encyclical, Benedict XVI basically
states what we can and should do in this world seen now as the arena of
the actions that form our souls.
The title of this encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," is significant. Of
the three basic kinds of love
—
philia, eros and agape
—
none is safe if it is not pursued according to the truth of things, of
the proper object of love. Just as we cannot love something that is not
loveable, so we cannot love something unless we know what it is, which
is saying the same thing in other words. The separation of truth and
love in the name of love or "kindness" is the characteristic of our
times. Love, it is said, covers a multitude of sins. In the modern
world, it eliminates them altogether if truth is not a component of
love. "Two loves built two cities," very opposite cities, as Augustine
said.
One of the first things to note in this encyclical is that everything is
seen against a metaphysical and theological background. Much is made of
justice; even more of "gift." Our very existence is a "gift." We do not
create ourselves, nor does God need to create us for some completion in
himself.
The encyclical, distantly following Aristotle on friendship and
benevolence, is quite aware that more is needed and expected of us than
just what is our "right" or what is "due." An ancient criticism of
Christians was that they were so interested in the next world that they
did not have time for this world. This encyclical suggests the opposite
is true. Only if we have the next world right will we act rightly and
nobly in this one.
The encyclical is also a reflection on Paul VI's "Populorum Progressio,"
written just over 40 years ago. Benedict rethinks the notion of
"development," a word that relates to the old Aristotelian notion of
habits and how we acquire them. Benedict XVI follows a fine line that
seeks to accept everything in modernity that is good and defensible,
while at the same time pointing out its real problems. He is a natural
law thinker.
But on the other hand, he always begins from where we are. Whether he
speaks of business, finance, tourism, political structures, world
poverty or economics, he begins with human beings already having acted
in their public lives to make themselves into a certain kind of being
based on what they are given to be in nature. Catholic social thought is
not utopian, even when it insists that things can and ought to be
better.
Particularly pleasing was the way in which Pope Benedict finally came to
terms with the ambiguity from modern political philosophy in the word
"rights." In many ways, nothing has been more destructive to Catholic
social thought than its uncritical use of the word "rights." Benedict
admonishes us that we first begin with "duties." We can use the word
"rights" provided it has a fixed content and does not mean
—
what it in fact means in modern philosophy
—
whatever we want or legislate.
When it comes to essentials, "Caritas in Veritate" is frank and to the
point —
that is, what it means to be "charitable," what it means to be
"truthful."--- --- ---
Jesuit Father James V. Schall is a professor of political philosophy
at Georgetown University and a prolific author. He most recent book is
"The Mind That Is Catholic" (C UA Press).
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