Benedict XVI: A New View

As a pastoral musician, I have sung at many a funeral, some of them people I knew fairly well. Without fail, a funeral throws new light on the person, revealing them in their entirety—as much as can be known in this life. Even the tragic early death of a drug addict exposes the child of God we may have missed during that frustrating life; and certainly at this passing of a truly remarkable person, whose virtues may have been distorted in our view during their time on earth.

So with Pope Benedict XIV, who passed from our view so recently.

In my view, and, I suspect, that of many others, Benedict is identified with his rulings on liturgy, both during his time as Karl Ratzinger, and as pope. Some seized upon these teachings with an enthusiasm that became divisive, and alienated those of us schooled in the liturgy of Vatican II. For this reason, I confess I had labeled this man as conservative and left it at that.

Thanks to the insights of some who saw the whole man, I began reading Caritas in Veritate,, an encyclical letter Supreme Pontiff Benedict addressed to the whole Church on June 29, 2009. Focused as we were at that point on upcoming changes in the Roman Missal, not much publicity was given this encyclical in the tradition of the Church’s teaching on social justice, along with his predecessors, Sts. Paul VI and John Paul II. Yes, in fact John Paul II did have a lot to say about justice; the media just weren’t listening.

Caritas in Veritate—Love in Truth—is 66 pages long, packed with insight, and not a quick read. I would like to write a series of essays unpacking the quite amazing thoughts contained in it in the hope that they may fill out his character for those who may have had the same narrower view of him as I had. Also in the hope that some may venture to get their own copy to read. It’s available at Vatican.va.

In the Introduction, Benedict puts out his basic premise: love is not love when not founded on the truth. “To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity.” (¶1) In Christ, he says, “charity in truth becomes…a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan.”

Charity is at the heart of the Church's social teaching

He goes on to say that charity is at the heart of the Church’s social teaching. I’ve heard Catholics cringe at the mention of the social teaching, as if it were a not-quite-kosher addition to the Ten Commandments. But he continues: “Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity…which is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). I think we can easily see the call to love those around us, but when it comes to the social, economic and political—is that realistic? Questions arise here, as one thinks: the Stock Market, taxes, minimum wage. Love in these settings? Benedict will have more to say about this.

The message of Love in Truth is particularly pertinent in a world which relativizes truth. It makes no sense to love in truth if there is no objective truth. Benedict stresses that love degenerates, in these circumstances, to emotionalism. It can also degenerate into “fideism,” the heretical belief that faith is independent of reason, and faith superior at arriving at particular truths. While we can easily fault our secular society with a love empty of truth, but how many Catholics have dismissed reason in favor of faith? How many inconvenient truths have been opposed as not really a matter of faith?

To communicate and be in communion

Charity, enabled by truth, allows us ”to communicate and be in communion.”(¶4) “Truth,” he goes on to say, “by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things.” This one sentence, taken to heart in today’s polarized society, could bring us closer together. How many people are stuck with “my truth,” unwilling to move beyond that to the whole picture? How many people want to relax with their side’s news with its unabashed mockery towards the other side, unwilling to push beyond their own subjective views?

In my blog Climb to the Center I have pointed out that truth is at the center. Unlike the middle of the road, the center is the summit from which reality comes into plain view. But anyone who has climbed to a mountain top knows how much effort that requires, as well as the thrill of seeing from that vantage point the way all sides fit together into a whole.

Then there is the relativizing of truth, so prevalent in our society. A Christianity without truth dissolves into a mere pool of good sentiments. This is not the message that transformed the known world of the First Century.

True love is giving of self, and so it is also grace. This graced giving orders the Church’s social justice, which cannot exist without truth in love. Justice can become fragmented “in a globalized society at difficult times like the present” when power struggles can mask as a search for equity that is not always just. This is just the trailer here on topics that will be fleshed out in the remaining 5 chapters of Charity in Truth.

The principle of Caritas in Veritate takes on practical reality in two of the criteria governing moral action: justice and the common good.

Benedict will have a great deal to say on the topic of justice. Here he introduces the idea that justice actually has to precede charity. Giving to another what belongs to him or her by right is not charity. Love means giving of what belongs to me to another. Does a company’s profit belong only to the owners and stockholders, or do the workers deserve a share? It’s not charity to pay just wages or provide decent working conditions. But justice, in the words of Paul VI, is “the minimum measure” of charity (from his Address for the Day of Development.)

As for the common good, Benedict points out that charity goes beyond the good of our own family and friends: it is the good of society, the common good.  Those who would practice justice and charity must care for “that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society…making it the polis, or ‘city’,” Benedict tells us. What would Benedict say to those Catholics who are agreeable to today’s rebels who disrespect and tear down those institutions? He calls this the “political path—of charity,” one not always highlighted in some areas of the American Catholicism.

Building the City of God

“Man’s earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of…the human family.” And in the global human family that we have become, the common good must embrace all of us.

In this global society, the Church must be faithful to the truth, which alone guarantees freedom and the possibility of “integral human development. This is the role of our social doctrine towards the truth: to assemble “into a unity the fragments in which it is often found,” and to mediate it “within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations.”

Benedict throws out a challenge to today’s Church, which he goes on to further detail in the chapters that follow. I would like to look closely at his further thoughts on these topics, as I reflect on them more deeply, and invite you to join me in that consideration.