Category: Thinking

I’ve been mak­ing my way through Pope Bene­dict XVI’s first encycli­cal Deus Car­i­tas Est again. Essen­tial­ly it offers clar­i­fi­ca­tion and direc­tion on the uses of αγαπη, or spir­i­tu­al love, or char­i­ty, in Chris­t­ian prac­tice. There is much of worth in this encycli­cal, but also some delib­er­ate­ly missed oppor­tu­ni­ties and some impli­ca­tions that make me uneasy. Encycli­cals may or may not be sub­ject to the rule of papal infal­la­bil­i­ty, it basi­cal­ly depends on both the con­tent of the let­ter and whether or not the pon­tiff decides to invoke his pow­er. Often they are mere­ly reit­er­a­tions of present Church doc­trine and offer focus an encour­age­ment for lead­ers or lay per­sons regard­ing a present mat­ter of impor­tance.

Deus Car­i­tas Est is addressed to all Chris­tians [the word Catholic does not appear until over halfway through the encycli­cal] and takes the form of an exhor­ta­tion to char­i­ta­ble acts and also nav­i­gates its way through sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, Marx­ism, and mis­use of char­i­ty for oth­er ends. Based on the tone of the piece, I do not think that Pope Bene­dict is invok­ing his infal­li­bil­i­ty, nor does the con­tent stray from doc­trine enough to war­rant its use. Now on to the excerpts of the con­tent that I found most inter­est­ing.

In a world where the name of God is some­times asso­ci­at­ed with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and vio­lence, this mes­sage is both time­ly and sig­nif­i­cant. For this rea­son, I wish in my first Encycli­cal to speak of the love which God lav­ish­es upon us and which we in turn must share with oth­ers. That, in essence, is what the two main parts of this Let­ter are about, and they are pro­found­ly inter­con­nect­ed.

…

Let us note straight away that the Greek Old Tes­ta­ment uses the word eros only twice, while the New Tes­ta­ment does not use it at all: of the three Greek words for love, eros, phil­ia (the love of friend­ship) and agape, New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers pre­fer the last, which occurs rather infre­quent­ly in Greek usage.

The focus of this encycli­cal is on agape, because the writ­ings in the bible focus on agape. Bene­dict is address­ing the con­fu­sion that mod­ern trans­la­tions have, using the word “love” which is often too broad for the nec­es­sary con­text. He then goes off on a rather long tan­gent about erot­ic love and its prop­er man­i­fes­ta­tions, and how it dif­fers from char­i­ta­ble love. I was there­fore expect­ing an impor­tant state­ment of pur­pose on the Church’s stance regard­ing eros. Instead, through the rep­e­ti­tions of “love between a man and woman in mar­riage” we find the Church’s stance essen­tial­ly unchanged. How­ev­er, I found all of that dis­cus­sion to be irrel­e­vant once I real­ized that the sec­ond half of the encycli­cal was focus­ing sole­ly on agape. Why not just say “I’m here to talk about agape not eros” and be done with it? Instead there is this con­vult­ed rea­son­ing that claims agape is nec­es­sary for eros to reach its ulti­mate expres­sion. No offense to the Supreme Pon­tiff, but he sounds like a celi­bate cur­mud­geon who is treat­ing erot­ic fire-blood love as a pure­ly philo­soph­i­cal and seman­tic object while claim­ing

Chris­tian­i­ty of the past is often crit­i­cized as hav­ing been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that ten­den­cies of this sort have always exist­ed. Yet the con­tem­po­rary way of exalt­ing the body is decep­tive.

And

Should he aspire to be pure spir­it and to reject the flesh as per­tain­ing to his ani­mal nature alone, then spir­it and body would both lose their dig­ni­ty. On the oth­er hand, should he deny the spir­it and con­sid­er mat­ter, the body, as the only real­i­ty, he would like­wise lose his great­ness.

seems a bit out of place con­sid­er­ing that Catholic voca­tions require rejec­tion of flesh and ani­mal nature in the pur­suit of spir­i­tu­al mat­ters.

The mech­a­nism of the equa­tion of eros and agape is applic­a­ble to the sec­ond por­tion of the encycli­cal, and is essen­tial­ly what I wrote about a few weeks ago: Our per­spec­tive should be that our bod­ies are a loan from God and should not be used in a way that he would dis­ap­prove of. But enough of this.

The sec­ond por­tion of the encycli­cal offers prac­ti­ca­ble direc­tion for exer­cis­ing char­i­ta­ble love, some meat to go with the meta­physics. By high­light­ing the Church’s his­tor­i­cal prece­dents of char­i­ta­ble action [dat­ing from the estab­lish­ment of dia­conal office [Acts 6: 1–6]]. There is much good advice here, but also a state­ment that gov­ern­ments should sub­si­dize the Church’s char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties and at the same time not inter­fere with aims of the activ­i­ties.

The State which would pro­vide every­thing, absorb­ing every­thing into itself, would ulti­mate­ly become a mere bureau­cra­cy inca­pable of guar­an­tee­ing the very thing which the suf­fer­ing person—every person—needs: name­ly, lov­ing per­son­al con­cern. We do not need a State which reg­u­lates and con­trols every­thing, but a State which, in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­i­ty, gen­er­ous­ly acknowl­edges and sup­ports ini­tia­tives aris­ing from the dif­fer­ent social forces and com­bines spon­tane­ity with close­ness to those in need. The Church is one of those liv­ing forces: she is alive with the love enkin­dled by the Spir­it of Christ. This love does not sim­ply offer peo­ple mate­r­i­al help, but refresh­ment and care for their souls, some­thing which often is even more nec­es­sary than mate­r­i­al sup­port. In the end, the claim that just social struc­tures would make works of char­i­ty super­flu­ous masks a mate­ri­al­ist con­cep­tion of man: the mis­tak­en notion that man can live “by bread aloneâ€? (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a con­vic­tion that demeans man and ulti­mate­ly dis­re­gards all that is specif­i­cal­ly human.

While I agree that the State can­not sup­ply “lov­ing per­son­al con­cern”, I think that any “State which, in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­i­ty, gen­er­ous­ly acknowl­edges and sup­ports ini­tia­tives aris­ing from the dif­fer­ent social forces” is tac­it­ly revok­ing its own sov­er­eign­ty in favor of theo­crat­ic con­trol. DANGER! DANGER!

But ulti­mate­ly, the mes­sage of char­i­ty and its prac­tice on an indi­vid­ual lev­el, is some­thing that any per­son with the slight­est bit of agape can agree with.

Part of Marx­ist strat­e­gy is the the­o­ry of impov­er­ish­ment: in a sit­u­a­tion of unjust pow­er, it is claimed, any­one who engages in char­i­ta­ble ini­tia­tives is actu­al­ly serv­ing that unjust sys­tem, mak­ing it appear at least to some extent tol­er­a­ble. This in turn slows down a poten­tial rev­o­lu­tion and thus blocks the strug­gle for a bet­ter world. Seen in this way, char­i­ty is reject­ed and attacked as a means of pre­serv­ing the sta­tus quo. What we have here, though, is real­ly an inhu­man phi­los­o­phy. Peo­ple of the present are sac­ri­ficed to the moloch of the future—a future whose effec­tive real­iza­tion is at best doubt­ful. One does not make the world more human by refus­ing to act humane­ly here and now.

“One does not make the world more human by refus­ing to act humane­ly here and now.”

This is the fun­da­men­tal point of the whole encycli­cal. And a bit lat­er Bene­dict uses this same point to cas­ti­gate those who would mis­use char­i­ty.

Char­i­ty, fur­ther­more, can­not be used as a means of engag­ing in what is nowa­days con­sid­ered pros­e­lytism. Love is free; it is not prac­tised as a way of achiev­ing oth­er ends.[30] But this does not mean that char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ty must some­how leave God and Christ aside. For it is always con­cerned with the whole man. Often the deep­est cause of suf­fer­ing is the very absence of God. Those who prac­tise char­i­ty in the Church’s name will nev­er seek to impose the Church’s faith upon oth­ers. They real­ize that a pure and gen­er­ous love is the best wit­ness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are dri­ven to love. A Chris­t­ian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is bet­ter to say noth­ing and to let love alone speak. He knows that God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and that God’s pres­ence is felt at the very time when the only thing we do is to love. He knows—to return to the ques­tions raised earlier—that dis­dain for love is dis­dain for God and man alike; it is an attempt to do with­out God. Con­se­quent­ly, the best defence of God and man con­sists pre­cise­ly in love. It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Church’s char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions to rein­force this aware­ness in their mem­bers, so that by their activity—as well as their words, their silence, their example—they may be cred­i­ble wit­ness­es to Christ.

“Love is free; it is not prac­tised as a way of achiev­ing oth­er ends.”

This is the fun­da­men­tal point of the whole encycli­cal, and again a very strong argu­ment against those who believe that sal­va­tion can be found through belief alone. Faith with­out works is ulti­mate­ly no faith at all, because if “ó θεòς αγάπη εστίν” [God is love/charity] [1 John 4:16] and one does not prac­tice char­i­ty, God is not present.

While Pope Bene­dic­t’s papa­cy is expect­ed to be quite polit­i­cal­ly and moral­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, and there are indi­ca­tions of that con­ser­vatism in this encycli­cal, the expres­sion of agape remains a rad­i­cal, prac­ti­ca­ble, tan­gi­ble and pow­er­ful way of express­ing that

Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illu­mi­nate a world grown dim and give us the courage need­ed to keep liv­ing and work­ing. Love is pos­si­ble, and we are able to prac­tise it because we are cre­at­ed in the image of God. To expe­ri­ence love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world—this is the invi­ta­tion I would like to extend with the present Encycli­cal.