from "The National Catholic Reporter"
Posted Wednesday Jan. 25, 2006 at 10:22 a.m. CST
First encyclical is on love,
'that beatitude for which
our whole being yearns'
By John L. Allen Jr.
Vatican City
As ironic as it may seem for a man who once termed rock 'n' roll "a vehicle of anti-religion," one could say that in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI essentially paraphrased The Beatles.
"All you need," the pope suggests over 71 pages of text, "is love."
There is, however, a catch -- it's got to be the right kind of love.
Released Jan. 25, the encyclical argues that love arising from human sexual desire, or eros, is perfectly good in itself, but it must be "purified" through transformation into agape, the total giving of one's self to another. Otherwise it risks being "degraded" into a continual, and ultimately self-defeating, quest merely to satisfy one's own desires.
Deus Caritas Est is not quite the "programmatic" treatise some expected, in the sense of laying out a program for Benedict's pontificate. It does, however, afford the pope a chance to put the church's message on eros, or human sexuality, in a new context. It's not that the church is against love, he suggests, but rather that it's in favor of a love that lasts.
Quoting German philosopher Friederich Nietzsche, the pope concedes that the church often comes across as a kind of "whistle-blower" on human pleasure. But when the church says "no," as on matters such as homosexuality and birth control, the encyclical indirectly suggests, it's in service to a deeper "yes," expressed in the term agape.
"An intoxicated and undisciplined eros is not an ascent in 'ecstasy' toward the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man," the pope writes.
"Eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns."
Deus Caritas Est is divided into two sections, which have separate histories. The first part, comprising the reflections on eros and agape, were written by Benedict during the summer months. The second section, concerned with the charitable activities of the church, is based on material originally prepared for a draft encyclical on charity under John Paul II, which Benedict opted to incorporate into this text.
In a Jan. 24 audience with members of Cor Unum, the Vatican office that oversees the church's charities, Benedict adverted to the differences in the two parts of the encyclical.
"On a first reading, the encyclical could give the impression of being divided into two parts that are little connected," he said. "To me, however, what's interesting is the unity of the two themes, which can be understood well only if they're seen together."
In the second section, Benedict argues that charitable works are as essential to the church's life as liturgy and the sacraments.
While the church must support efforts for social justice, it can never neglect direct service of individual people in need, he says. He criticizes what he terms a "Marxist" conception that charity can be an enemy of justice by allowing people to salve their consciences without changing unjust systems.
The church's charitable organizations must never "leave Christ and God aside," he writes, though the pope also said that charitable work should not be used as means of proselytism.
"A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God, and when it is better to say nothing and let love alone speak," Benedict said.
Benedict warned Catholic charities to steer clear of "parties and ideologies." He also said that Catholic charitable groups must always work in concert with the church, and especially with the bishops.
Unfortunately for Benedict, this rather lofty meditation on love appeared in a moment when the Vatican is caught up in a decidedly this-worldly fracas over copyrights and money, precisely over papal texts such as the encyclical.
After a May Vatican decree asserting control over all works by Benedict, including material from before his election, the Vatican has sent substantial bills to several publishers who have reprinted sections of his work, as well as texts from previous popes. While the move may be standard practice for commercial publishing houses, it runs contrary to recent custom, especially in Italy, where a constellation of small publishers operated by religious communities essentially subsist on editions of papal documents.
Critics have charged that if the Vatican wants the pope's message to get out, this seems an odd way of promoting it.
Benedict, however, has ignored the episode, instead speaking repeatedly about the encyclical even before its release.
In a Vatican news conference to present the encyclical Jan. 25, Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, head of Cor Unum, said the encyclical highlights the danger of "secularization" of the church's charitable works, leading to an excessive emphasis on "orthopraxis" lacking explicit roots in Catholic faith.
"Without a solid theological foundation, large ecclesiastical agencies could be threatened, in practice, by disassociating themselves from the church, and weakening their ties with the bishops," Cordes said. "In that case, their 'philosophy' and their projects would be indistinguishable from those of the Red Cross or the agencies of the United Nations."
At the same news conference, Archbishop William Levada, the pope's successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, admitted he was "a little bit surprised" that Benedict chose to submit his text to Vatican doctrinal consultors prior to publication, rather than simply putting it out, but he said it was "a normal practice, even for a great theologian."
Levada also played down reports of struggles over the translations of the encyclical, saying that Benedict signed the document Dec. 25 and it's not unreasonable that a month was needed to produce versions in the various languages.
"I don't think there's anything to investigate here," he said.
[John L. Allen Jr. is NCR Rome correspondent. His e-mail address is
[email protected].]
January 25, 2005, National Catholic Reporter
Hot off the press from the Vatican:
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
DEUS CARITAS EST
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN LOVE
INTRODUCTION
1. "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us".
We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John's Gospel describes that event in these words: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have eternal life" (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel's faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might" (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere "command"; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.
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. The first part is more speculative, since I wanted here?-at the beginning of my Pontificate?-to clarify some essential facts concerning the love which God mysteriously and gratuitously offers to man, together with the intrinsic link between that Love and the reality of human love. The second part is more concrete, since it treats the ecclesial exercise of the commandment of love of neighbour. The argument has vast implications, but a lengthy treatment would go beyond the scope of the present Encyclical. I wish to emphasize some basic elements, so as to call forth in the world renewed energy and commitment in the human response to God's love.
PART I
THE UNITY OF LOVE
IN CREATION
AND IN SALVATION HISTORY
A problem of language
2. God's love for us is fundamental for our lives, and it raises important questions about who God is and who we are. In considering this, we immediately find ourselves hampered by a problem of language. Today, the term "love" has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings. Even though this Encyclical will deal primarily with the understanding and practice of love in sacred Scripture and in the Church's Tradition, we cannot simply prescind from the meaning of the word in the different cultures and in present-day usage.
Let us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the word "love": we speak of love of country, love of one's profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbour and love of God. Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness. This would seem to be the very epitome of love; all other kinds of love immediately seem to fade in comparison. So we need to ask: are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate totally different realities?
"Eros" and "Agape" - difference and unity
3. That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called eros by the ancient Greeks. 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. As for the term philia, the love of friendship, it is used with added depth of meaning in Saint John's Gospel in order to express the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. The tendency to avoid the word eros, together with the new vision of love expressed through the word agape, clearly point to something new and distinct about the Christian understanding of love. In the critique of Christianity which began with the Enlightenment and grew progressively more radical, this new element was seen as something thoroughly negative. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice.[1] Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn't the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn't she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?
4. But is this the case? Did Christianity really destroy eros? Let us take a look at the pre- Christian world. The Greeks?-not unlike other cultures?-considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a "divine madness" which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness. All other powers in heaven and on earth thus appear secondary: "Omnia vincit amor" says Virgil in the Bucolics?-love conquers all?-and he adds: "et nos cedamus amori"?-let us, too, yield to love.[2] In the religions, this attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the "sacred" prostitution which flourished in many temples. Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine.
The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected eros as such; rather, it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it. Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had to bestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing "divine madness": far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in "ecstasy" towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.
5. Two things emerge clearly from this rapid overview of the concept of eros past and present. First, there is a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternity?-a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence. Yet we have also seen that the way to attain this goal is not simply by submitting to instinct. Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting or "poisoning" eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur.
This is due first and foremost to the fact that man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. 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. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: "O Soul!" And Descartes would reply: "O Flesh!".[3] Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is love ?-eros?-able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur.
Nowadays 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. Eros, reduced to pure "sex", has become a commodity, a mere "thing" to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great "yes" to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise "in ecstasy" towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.
6. Concretely, what does this path of ascent and purification entail? How might love be experienced so that it can fully realize its human and divine promise? Here we can find a first, important indication in the Song of Songs, an Old Testament book well known to the mystics. According to the interpretation generally held today, the poems contained in this book were originally love-songs, perhaps intended for a Jewish wedding feast and meant to exalt conjugal love. In this context it is highly instructive to note that in the course of the book two different Hebrew words are used to indicate "love". First there is the word dodim, a plural form suggesting a love that is still insecure, indeterminate and searching. This comes to be replaced by the word ahabà, which the Greek version of the Old Testament translates with the similar-sounding agape, which, as we have seen, becomes the typical expression for the biblical notion of love. By contrast with an indeterminate, "searching" love, this word expresses the experience of a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.
It is part of love's growth towards higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being "for ever". Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed "ecstasy", not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: "Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it" (Lk 17:33), as Jesus says throughout the Gospels (cf. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24; Jn 12:25). In these words, Jesus portrays his own path, which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection: the path of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies, and in this way bears much fruit. Starting from the depths of his own sacrifice and of the love that reaches fulfilment therein, he also portrays in these words the essence of love and indeed of human life itself.
7. By their own inner logic, these initial, somewhat philosophical reflections on the essence of love have now brought us to the threshold of biblical faith. We began by asking whether the different, or even opposed, meanings of the word "love" point to some profound underlying unity, or whether on the contrary they must remain unconnected, one alongside the other. More significantly, though, we questioned whether the message of love proclaimed to us by the Bible and the Church's Tradition has some points of contact with the common human experience of love, or whether it is opposed to that experience. This in turn led us to consider two fundamental words: eros, as a term to indicate "worldly" love and agape, referring to love grounded in and shaped by faith. The two notions are often contrasted as "ascending" love and "descending" love. There are other, similar classifications, such as the distinction between possessive love and oblative love (amor concupiscentiae - amor benevolentiae), to which is sometimes also added love that seeks its own advantage.
In philosophical and theological debate, these distinctions have often been radicalized to the point of establishing a clear antithesis between them: descending, oblative love?-agape?-would be typically Christian, while on the other hand ascending, possessive or covetous love ?-eros?-would be typical of non-Christian, and particularly Greek culture. Were this antithesis to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence, and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life. Yet eros and agape?-ascending love and descending love?-can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to "be there for" the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).
In the account of Jacob's ladder, the Fathers of the Church saw this inseparable connection between ascending and descending love, between eros which seeks God and agape which passes on the gift received, symbolized in various ways. In that biblical passage we read how the Patriarch Jacob saw in a dream, above the stone which was his pillow, a ladder reaching up to heaven, on which the angels of God were ascending and descending (cf. Gen 28:12; Jn 1:51). A particularly striking interpretation of this vision is presented by Pope Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Rule. He tells us that the good pastor must be rooted in contemplation. Only in this way will he be able to take upon himself the needs of others and make them his own: "per pietatis viscera in se infirmitatem caeterorum transferat".[4] Saint Gregory speaks in this context of Saint Paul, who was borne aloft to the most exalted mysteries of God, and hence, having descended once more, he was able to become all things to all men (cf. 2 Cor 12:2-4; 1 Cor 9:22). He also points to the example of Moses, who entered the tabernacle time and again, remaining in dialogue with God, so that when he emerged he could be at the service of his people. "Within [the tent] he is borne aloft through contemplation, while without he is completely engaged in helping those who suffer: intus in contemplationem rapitur, foris infirmantium negotiis urgetur."[5]
8. We have thus come to an initial, albeit still somewhat generic response to the two questions raised earlier. Fundamentally, "love" is a single reality, but with different dimensions; at different times, one or other dimension may emerge more clearly. Yet when the two dimensions are totally cut off from one another, the result is a caricature or at least an impoverished form of love. And we have also seen, synthetically, that biblical faith does not set up a parallel universe, or one opposed to that primordial human phenomenon which is love, but rather accepts the whole man; it intervenes in his search for love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions of it. This newness of biblical faith is shown chiefly in two elements which deserve to be highlighted: the image of God and the image of man.
The newness of biblical faith
9. First, the world of the Bible presents us with a new image of God. In surrounding cultures, the image of God and of the gods ultimately remained unclear and contradictory. In the development of biblical faith, however, the content of the prayer fundamental to Israel, the Shema, became increasingly clear and unequivocal: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (Dt 6:4). There is only one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who is thus the God of all. Two facts are significant about this statement: all other gods are not God, and the universe in which we live has its source in God and was created by him. Certainly, the notion of creation is found elsewhere, yet only here does it become absolutely clear that it is not one god among many, but the one true God himself who is the source of all that exists; the whole world comes into existence by the power of his creative Word. Consequently, his creation is dear to him, for it was willed by him and "made" by him. The second important element now emerges: this God loves man. The divine power that Aristotle at the height of Greek philosophy sought to grasp through reflection, is indeed for every being an object of desire and of love ?-and as the object of love this divinity moves the world[6]?-but in itself it lacks nothing and does not love: it is solely the object of love. The one God in whom Israel believes, on the other hand, loves with a personal love. His love, moreover, is an elective love: among all the nations he chooses Israel and loves her?-but he does so precisely with a view to healing the whole human race. God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape.[7]
The Prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel, described God's passion for his people using boldly erotic images. God's relationship with Israel is described using the metaphors of betrothal and marriage; idolatry is thus adultery and prostitution. Here we find a specific reference?-as we have seen?-to the fertility cults and their abuse of eros, but also a description of the relationship of fidelity between Israel and her God. The history of the love-relationship between God and Israel consists, at the deepest level, in the fact that he gives her the Torah, thereby opening Israel's eyes to man's true nature and showing her the path leading to true humanism. It consists in the fact that man, through a life of fidelity to the one God, comes to experience himself as loved by God, and discovers joy in truth and in righteousness?-a joy in God which becomes his essential happiness: "Whom do I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you ... for me it is good to be near God" (Ps 73 [72]:25, 28).
10. We have seen that God's eros for man is also totally agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love which forgives. Hosea above all shows us that this agape dimension of God's love for man goes far beyond the aspect of gratuity. Israel has committed "adultery" and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! ... My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst" (Hos 11:8-9). God's passionate love for his people?-for humanity?-is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God's love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.
The philosophical dimension to be noted in this biblical vision, and its importance from the standpoint of the history of religions, lies in the fact that on the one hand we find ourselves before a strictly metaphysical image of God: God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation?-the Logos, primordial reason?-is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape. We can thus see how the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe God's relation to man and man's relation to God. Thus the Song of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God?-his primordial aspiration. But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: "He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Cor 6:17).
11. The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen, in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in the image of man. The biblical account of creation speaks of the solitude of Adam, the first man, and God's decision to give him a helper. Of all other creatures, not one is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). Here one might detect hints of ideas that are also found, for example, in the myth mentioned by Plato, according to which man was originally spherical, because he was complete in himself and self-sufficient. But as a punishment for pride, he was split in two by Zeus, so that now he longs for his other half, striving with all his being to possess it and thus regain his integrity.[8] While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become "complete". The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24).
Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man's very nature; Adam is a seeker, who "abandons his mother and father" in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become "one flesh". The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature.
Jesus Christ - the incarnate love of God
12. Though up to now we have been speaking mainly of the Old Testament, nevertheless the profound compenetration of the two Testaments as the one Scripture of the Christian faith has already become evident. The real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts?-an unprecedented realism. In the Old Testament, the novelty of the Bible did not consist merely in abstract notions but in God's unpredictable and in some sense unprecedented activity. This divine activity now takes on dramatic form when, in Jesus Christ, it is God himself who goes in search of the "stray sheep", a suffering and lost humanity. When Jesus speaks in his parables of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, of the woman who looks for the lost coin, of the father who goes to meet and embrace his prodigal son, these are no mere words: they constitute an explanation of his very being and activity. His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. By contemplating the pierced side of Christ (cf. 19:37), we can understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move.
13. Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He anticipated his death and resurrection by giving his disciples, in the bread and wine, his very self, his body and blood as the new manna (cf. Jn 6:31-33). The ancient world had dimly perceived that man's real food?-what truly nourishes him as man?-is ultimately the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same Logos now truly becomes food for us?-as love. The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving. The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God's presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus' self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. The sacramental "mysticism", grounded in God's condescension towards us, operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation could ever accomplish.
14. Here we need to consider yet another aspect: this sacramental "mysticism" is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants. As Saint Paul says, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor 10:17). Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become "one body", completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. We can thus understand how agape also became a term for the Eucharist: there God's own agape comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us. Only by keeping in mind this Christological and sacramental basis can we correctly understand Jesus' teaching on love. The transition which he makes from the Law and the Prophets to the twofold commandment of love of God and of neighbour, and his grounding the whole life of faith on this central precept, is not simply a matter of morality?-something that could exist apart from and alongside faith in Christ and its sacramental re-actualization. Faith, worship and ethos are interwoven as a single reality which takes shape in our encounter with God's agape. Here the usual contraposition between worship and ethics simply falls apart. "Worship" itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented. Conversely, as we shall have to consider in greater detail below, the "commandment" of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be "commanded" because it has first been given.
15. This principle is the starting-point for understanding the great parables of Jesus. The rich man (cf. Lk 16:19-31) begs from his place of torment that his brothers be informed about what happens to those who simply ignore the poor man in need. Jesus takes up this cry for help as a warning to help us return to the right path. The parable of the Good Samaritan (cf. Lk 10:25-37) offers two particularly important clarifications. Until that time, the concept of "neighbour" was understood as referring essentially to one's countrymen and to foreigners who had settled in the land of Israel; in other words, to the closely-knit community of a single country or people. This limit is now abolished. Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbour. The concept of "neighbour" is now universalized, yet it remains concrete. Despite being extended to all mankind, it is not reduced to a generic, abstract and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment here and now. The Church has the duty to interpret ever anew this relationship between near and far with regard to the actual daily life of her members. Lastly, we should especially mention the great parable of the Last Judgement (cf. Mt 25:31-46), in which love becomes the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life's worth or lack thereof. Jesus identifies himself with those in need, with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison. "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40). Love of God and love of neighbour have become one: in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus we find God.
Love of God and love of neighbour
16. Having reflected on the nature of love and its meaning in biblical faith, we are left with two questions concerning our own attitude: can we love God without seeing him? And can love be commanded? Against the double commandment of love these questions raise a double objection. No one has ever seen God, so how could we love him? Moreover, love cannot be commanded; it is ultimately a feeling that is either there or not, nor can it be produced by the will. Scripture seems to reinforce the first objection when it states: "If anyone says, ?'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 Jn 4:20). But this text hardly excludes the love of God as something impossible. On the contrary, the whole context of the passage quoted from the First Letter of John shows that such love is explicitly demanded. The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbour is emphasized. One is so closely connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbour or hate him altogether. Saint John's words should rather be interpreted to mean that love of neighbour is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbour also blinds us to God.
17. True, no one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible. God loved us first, says the Letter of John quoted above (cf. 4:10), and this love of God has appeared in our midst. He has become visible in as much as he "has sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him" (1 Jn 4:9). God has made himself visible: in Jesus we are able to see the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Indeed, God is visible in a number of ways. In the love-story recounted by the Bible, he comes towards us, he seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last Supper, to the piercing of his heart on the Cross, to his appearances after the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of the Apostles, he guided the nascent Church along its path. Nor has the Lord been absent from subsequent Church history: he encounters us ever anew, in the men and women who reflect his presence, in his word, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist. In the Church's Liturgy, in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has "loved us first", love can also blossom as a response within us.
In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the "yes" of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never "finished" and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself. Idem velle atque idem nolle [9]?-to want the same thing, and to reject the same thing?-was recognized by antiquity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought. The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.[10] Then self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy (cf. Ps 73 [72]:23-28).
18. Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbour which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence. If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be "devout" and to perform my "religious duties", then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely "proper", but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints?-consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta?-constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its real- ism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a "commandment" imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is "divine" because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a "we" which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is "all in all" (1 Cor 15:28).
PART II
CARITAS
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE
BY THE CHURCH
AS A "COMMUNITY OF LOVE"
The Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of Trinitarian love
19. "If you see charity, you see the Trinity", wrote Saint Augustine.[11] In the foregoing reflections, we have been able to focus our attention on the Pierced one (cf. Jn 19:37, Zech 12:10), recognizing the plan of the Father who, moved by love (cf. Jn 3:16), sent his only-begotten Son into the world to redeem man. By dying on the Cross?-as Saint John tells us?-Jesus "gave up his Spirit" (Jn 19:30), anticipating the gift of the Holy Spirit that he would make after his Resurrection (cf. Jn 20:22). This was to fulfil the promise of "rivers of living water" that would flow out of the hearts of believers, through the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Jn 7:38-39). The Spirit, in fact, is that interior power which harmonizes their hearts with Christ's heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ loved them, when he bent down to wash the feet of the disciples (cf. Jn 13:1-13) and above all when he gave his life for us (cf. Jn 13:1, 15:13).
The Spirit is also the energy which transforms the heart of the ecclesial community, so that it becomes a witness before the world to the love of the Father, who wishes to make humanity a single family in his Son. The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man: it seeks his evangelization through Word and Sacrament, an undertaking that is often heroic in the way it is acted out in history; and it seeks to promote man in the various arenas of life and human activity. Love is therefore the service that the Church carries out in order to attend constantly to man's sufferings and his needs, including material needs. And this is the aspect, this service of charity, on which I want to focus in the second part of the Encyclical.
Charity as a responsibility of the Church
20. Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and to the Church universal in its entirety. As a community, the Church must practise love. Love thus needs to be organized if it is to be an ordered service to the community. The awareness of this responsibility has had a constitutive relevance in the Church from the beginning: "All who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need" (Acts 2:44-5). In these words, Saint Luke provides a kind of definition of the Church, whose constitutive elements include fidelity to the "teaching of the Apostles", "communion" (koinonia), "the breaking of the bread" and "prayer" (cf. Acts 2:42). The element of "communion" (koinonia) is not initially defined, but appears concretely in the verses quoted above: it consists in the fact that believers hold all things in common and that among them, there is no longer any distinction between rich and poor (cf. also Acts 4:32-37). As the Church grew, this radical form of material communion could not in fact be preserved. But its essential core remained: within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life.
21. A decisive step in the difficult search for ways of putting this fundamental ecclesial principle into practice is illustrated in the choice of the seven, which marked the origin of the diaconal office (cf. Acts 6:5-6). In the early Church, in fact, with regard to the daily distribution to widows, a disparity had arisen between Hebrew speakers and Greek speakers. The Apostles, who had been entrusted primarily with "prayer" (the Eucharist and the liturgy) and the "ministry of the word", felt over-burdened by "serving tables", so they decided to reserve to themselves the principal duty and to designate for the other task, also necessary in the Church, a group of seven persons. Nor was this group to carry out a purely mechanical work of distribution: they were to be men "full of the Spirit and of wisdom" (cf. Acts 6:1-6). In other words, the social service which they were meant to provide was absolutely concrete, yet at the same time it was also a spiritual service; theirs was a truly spiritual office which carried out an essential responsibility of the Church, namely a well-ordered love of neighbour. With the formation of this group of seven, "diaconia"?-the ministry of charity exercised in a communitarian, orderly way?-became part of the fundamental structure of the Church.
22. As the years went by and the Church spread further afield, the exercise of charity became established as one of her essential activities, along with the administration of the sacraments and the proclamation of the word: love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential to her as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel. The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word. A few references will suffice to demonstrate this. Justin Martyr ( c. 155) in speaking of the Christians' celebration of Sunday, also mentions their charitable activity, linked with the Eucharist as such. Those who are able make offerings in accordance with their means, each as he or she wishes; the Bishop in turn makes use of these to support orphans, widows, the sick and those who for other reasons find themselves in need, such as prisoners and foreigners.[12] The great Christian writer Tertullian ( after 220) relates how the pagans were struck by the Christians' concern for the needy of every sort.[13] And when Ignatius of Antioch ( c. 117) described the Church of Rome as "presiding in charity (agape)",[14] we may assume that with this definition he also intended in some sense to express her concrete charitable activity.
23. Here it might be helpful to allude to the earliest legal structures associated with the service of charity in the Church. Towards the middle of the fourth century we see the development in Egypt of the "diaconia": the institution within each monastery responsible for all works of relief, that is to say, for the service of charity. By the sixth century this institution had evolved into a corporation with full juridical standing, which the civil authorities themselves entrusted with part of the grain for public distribution. In Egypt not only each monastery, but each individual Diocese eventually had its own diaconia; this institution then developed in both East and West. Pope Gregory the Great ( 604) mentions the diaconia of Naples, while in Rome the diaconiae are documented from the seventh and eighth centuries. But charitable activity on behalf of the poor and suffering was naturally an essential part of the Church of Rome from the very beginning, based on the principles of Christian life given in the Acts of the Apostles. It found a vivid expression in the case of the deacon Lawrence ( 258). The dramatic description of Lawrence's martyrdom was known to Saint Ambrose ( 397) and it provides a fundamentally authentic picture of the saint. As the one responsible for the care of the poor in Rome, Lawrence had been given a period of time, after the capture of the Pope and of Lawrence's fellow deacons, to collect the treasures of the Church and hand them over to the civil authorities. He distributed to the poor whatever funds were available and then presented to the authorities the poor themselves as the real treasure of the Church.[15] Whatever historical reliability one attributes to these details, Lawrence has always remained present in the Church's memory as a great exponent of ecclesial charity.
24. A mention of the emperor Julian the Apostate ( 363) can also show how essential the early Church considered the organized practice of charity. As a child of six years, Julian witnessed the assassination of his father, brother and other family members by the guards of the imperial palace; rightly or wrongly, he blamed this brutal act on the Emperor Constantius, who passed himself off as an outstanding Christian. The Christian faith was thus definitively discredited in his eyes. Upon becoming emperor, Julian decided to restore paganism, the ancient Roman religion, while reforming it in the hope of making it the driving force behind the empire. In this project he was amply inspired by Christianity. He established a hierarchy of metropolitans and priests who were to foster love of God and neighbour. In one of his letters,[16] he wrote that the sole aspect of Christianity which had impressed him was the Church's charitable activity. He thus considered it essential for his new pagan religion that, alongside the system of the Church's charity, an equivalent activity of its own be established. According to him, this was the reason for the popularity of the "Galileans". They needed now to be imitated and outdone. In this way, then, the Emperor confirmed that charity was a decisive feature of the Christian community, the Church.
25. Thus far, two essential facts have emerged from our reflections:
a) The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.[17]
b) The Church is God's family in the world. In this family no one ought to go without the necessities of life. Yet at the same time caritas- agape extends beyond the frontiers of the Church. The parable of the Good Samaritan remains as a standard which imposes universal love towards the needy whom we encounter "by chance" (cf. Lk 10:31), whoever they may be. Without in any way detracting from this commandment of universal love, the Church also has a specific responsibility: within the ecclesial family no member should suffer through being in need. The teaching of the Letter to the Galatians is emphatic: "So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of faith" (6:10).
Justice and Charity
26. Since the nineteenth century, an objection has been raised to the Church's charitable activity, subsequently developed with particular insistence by Marxism: the poor, it is claimed, do not need charity but justice. Works of charity?-almsgiving?-are in effect a way for the rich to shirk their obligation to work for justice and a means of soothing their consciences, while preserving their own status and robbing the poor of their rights. Instead of contributing through individual works of charity to maintaining the status quo, we need to build a just social order in which all receive their share of the world's goods and no longer have to depend on charity. There is admittedly some truth to this argument, but also much that is mistaken. It is true that the pursuit of justice must be a fundamental norm of the State and that the aim of a just social order is to guarantee to each person, according to the principle of subsidiarity, his share of the community's goods. This has always been emphasized by Christian teaching on the State and by the Church's social doctrine. Historically, the issue of the just ordering of the collectivity had taken a new dimension with the industrialization of society in the nineteenth century. The rise of modern industry caused the old social structures to collapse, while the growth of a class of salaried workers provoked radical changes in the fabric of society. The relationship between capital and labour now became the decisive issue?-an issue which in that form was previously unknown. Capital and the means of production were now the new source of power which, concentrated in the hands of a few, led to the suppression of the rights of the working classes, against which they had to rebel.
27. It must be admitted that the Church's leadership was slow to realize that the issue of the just structuring of society needed to be approached in a new way. There were some pioneers, such as Bishop Ketteler of Mainz ( 1877), and concrete needs were met by a growing number of groups, associations, leagues, federations and, in particular, by the new religious orders founded in the nineteenth century to combat poverty, disease and the need for better education. In 1891, the papal magisterium intervened with the Encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII. This was followed in 1931 by Pius XI's Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. In 1961 Blessed John XXIII published the Encyclical Mater et Magistra, while Paul VI, in the Encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) and in the Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens (1971), insistently addressed the social problem, which had meanwhile become especially acute in Latin America. My great predecessor John Paul II left us a trilogy of social Encyclicals: Laborem Exercens (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and finally Centesimus Annus (1991). Faced with new situations and issues, Catholic social teaching thus gradually developed, and has now found a comprehensive presentation in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church published in 2004 by the Pontifical Council Iustitia et Pax. Marxism had seen world revolution and its preliminaries as the panacea for the social problem: revolution and the subsequent collectivization of the means of production, so it was claimed, would immediately change things for the better. This illusion has vanished. In today's complex situation, not least because of the growth of a globalized economy, the Church's social doctrine has become a set of fundamental guidelines offering approaches that are valid even beyond the confines of the Church: in the face of ongoing development these guidelines need to be addressed in the context of dialogue with all those seriously concerned for humanity and for the world in which we live.
28. In order to define more accurately the relationship between the necessary commitment to justice and the ministry of charity, two fundamental situations need to be considered:
a) The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. As Augustine once said, a State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves: "Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?".[18] Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God (cf. Mt 22:21), in other words, the distinction between Church and State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy of the temporal sphere.[19] The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated.
Justice is both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all politics. Politics is more than a mere mechanism for defining the rules of public life: its origin and its goal are found in justice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics. The State must inevitably face the question of how justice can be achieved here and now. But this presupposes an even more radical question: what is justice? The problem is one of practical reason; but if reason is to be exercised properly, it must undergo constant purification, since it can never be completely free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interests.
Here politics and faith meet. Faith by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God?-an encounter opening up new horizons extending beyond the sphere of reason. But it is also a purifying force for reason itself. From God's standpoint, faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly. This is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: it has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.
The Church's social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being. It recognizes that it is not the Church's responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve conflict with situations of personal interest. Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew. As a political task, this cannot be the Church's immediate responsibility. Yet, since it is also a most important human responsibility, the Church is duty-bound to offer, through the purification of reason and through ethical formation, her own specific contribution towards understanding the requirements of justice and achieving them politically.
The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.
b) Love?-caritas?-will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.[20] 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 alone" (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)?-a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.
29. We can now determine more precisely, in the life of the Church, the relationship between commitment to the just ordering of the State and society on the one hand, and organized charitable activity on the other. We have seen that the formation of just structures is not directly the duty of the Church, but belongs to the world of politics, the sphere of the autonomous use of reason. The Church has an indirect duty here, in that she is called to contribute to the purification of reason and to the reawakening of those moral forces without which just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long run.
The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens of the State, they are called to take part in public life in a personal capacity. So they cannot relinquish their participation "in the many different economic, social, legislative, administrative and cultural areas, which are intended to promote organically and institutionally the common good." [21] The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility.[22] Even if the specific expressions of ecclesial charity can never be confused with the activity of the State, it still remains true that charity must animate the entire lives of the lay faithful and therefore also their political activity, lived as "social charity".[23]
The Church's charitable organizations, on the other hand, constitute an opus proprium, a task agreeable to her, in which she does not cooperate collaterally, but acts as a subject with direct responsibility, doing what corresponds to her nature. The Church can never be exempted from practising charity as an organized activity of believers, and on the other hand, there will never be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is unnecessary, because in addition to justice man needs, and will always need, love.
The multiple structures of charitable service in the social context of the present day
30. Before attempting to define the specific profile of the Church's activities in the service of man, I now wish to consider the overall situation of the struggle for justice and love in the world of today.
a) Today the means of mass communication have made our planet smaller, rapidly narrowing the distance between different peoples and cultures. This "togetherness" at times gives rise to misunderstandings and tensions, yet our ability to know almost instantly about the needs of others challenges us to share their situation and their difficulties. Despite the great advances made in science and technology, each day we see how much suffering there is in the world on account of different kinds of poverty, both material and spiritual. Our times call for a new readiness to assist our neighbours in need. The Second Vatican Council had made this point very clearly: "Now that, through better means of communication, distances between peoples have been almost eliminated, charitable activity can and should embrace all people and all needs."[24]
On the other hand?-and here we see one of the challenging yet also positive sides of the process of globalization?-we now have at our disposal numerous means for offering humanitarian assistance to our brothers and sisters in need, not least modern systems of distributing food and clothing, and of providing housing and care. Concern for our neighbour transcends the confines of national communities and has increasingly broadened its horizon to the whole world. The Second Vatican Council rightly observed that "among the signs of our times, one particularly worthy of note is a growing, inescapable sense of solidarity between all peoples."[25] State agencies and humanitarian associations work to promote this, the former mainly through subsidies or tax relief, the latter by making available considerable resources. The solidarity shown by civil society thus significantly surpasses that shown by individuals.
b) This situation has led to the birth and the growth of many forms of cooperation between State and Church agencies, which have borne fruit. Church agencies, with their transparent operation and their faithfulness to the duty of witnessing to love, are able to give a Christian quality to the civil agencies too, favouring a mutual coordination that can only redound to the effectiveness of charitable service.[26] Numerous organizations for charitable or philanthropic purposes have also been established and these are committed to achieving adequate humanitarian solutions to the social and political problems of the day. Significantly, our time has also seen the growth and spread of different kinds of v
Today's feature article in today's "New Oxford Review"
"IF I'M WRONG, I'M DEAD WRONG" -- BISHOP SWING
The United Religions Initiative, A Bridge Back to Gnosticism
By Lee Penn
Bishop William Swing of the Episcopal Church's Diocese of California thinks he is building a religious bridge to the new millennium, and he wants everybody on Earth to cross it with him. His United Religions Initiative (URI) is trying to create a kind of parliament of religions, "a permanent assembly, with the stature and visibility of the United Nations, where the world's religions and spiritual communities will gather on a daily basis, in prayerful dialogue and cooperative action, to make peace among religions and to be a force for peace among nations." As Bishop Swing has said, the world is moving toward "unity in terms of global economy, global media, global ecological system. What is missing is a global soul." And how will this global soul be found or created? By conferences, networking, fundraising, declarations, and press releases.
The URI to date has held three annual summit conferences, each time with more attendees, among them various Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists, Bahá'is, Sikhs, Hindus, Zoroastrians, New Age followers, Wiccans, and representatives of aboriginal religions. (There have been no representatives from the Vatican or from evangelical Protestant churches.) These conferences have called for a 72-hour worldwide religious "cease-fire" on December 31, 1999, and have issued a draft "United Religions Charter." In June of 2000, the URI plans to stage global ceremonies marking the signing of this Charter, for by then the URI hopes to have enrolled 60 million people in what it describes as "a Worldwide Movement to create the United Religions as a lived reality locally and regionally, all over the world."
This may all sound like just a fond liberal dream, but the URI is gaining support, and it plans to raise $10 million between now and 2001, with Dee Hock, creator of the Visa card, helping Bishop Swing on fundraising and organizational development. In the past two years, interfaith meetings to build support for the URI have occurred in Great Britain, New York City, Argentina, South Africa, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Los Angeles, India, Kenya, Japan, Brazil, and Belgium.
The URI has branch offices in Washington, D.C., and Belgium, but its headquarters is in San Francisco, and on its full-time staff is the Rev. William Rankin, formerly the dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (It was Rankin who said -- regarding the ecclesiastical trial of Episcopal Bishop Walter Righter for ordaining an openly homosexual deacon -- "Heresy implies orthodoxy, and we have no such thing in the Episcopal Church." Truer words were never spoken.) In addition to Bishop Swing, two prominent Anglican bishops support the URI: James Ottley, the Anglican Observer at the United Nations, and Samir Kafity, Bishop of Jerusalem. Many liberal Protestants are participating in the URI; no evangelicals are doing so. No Eastern Orthodox bishops are currently active in the URI, though in 1996 Bishop Swing received a statement of support from Shenouda III, Pope of the Coptic Church, and from a bishop of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church.
Within the Catholic Church, opinion about the URI is divided. Rome stands firm against it, but some theologians, priests, and sisters -- and a few members of the hierarchy -- actively support it. At Rome in 1996, Bishop Swing met with Cardinal Arinze, head of the Vatican's Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. Bishop Swing received a firm rebuff from the Cardinal; he reported that the Cardinal "said that a United Religions would give the appearance of syncretism and it would water down our need to evangelize. It would force authentic religions to be on an equal footing with spurious religions." Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who works under Cardinal Arinze, pointedly ignored Bishop Swing's invitation to attend the 1997 URI summit conference.
Some Catholics, however, are not following Cardinal Arinze's lead. Paul Evaristo Cardinal Arns, the recently retired Archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil, is claimed by the URI as a "strong supporter," and Archbishop Anthony Pantin of Trinidad is forming a URI support group in his country. Fr. Gerard O'Rourke, director of ecumenical affairs for the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, has been an enthusiast for the URI from its beginning, serving on its Board of Directors. He took part in its 1995 interfaith service which announced the URI to the public. Other Catholic URI supporters include Fr. John LoSchiavo, S.J., Chancellor of the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco (and a member of the URI Board), and Fr. Luis Dolan and Sister Joan Kirby (associated with the Temple of Understanding). Theologians supporting the URI include Paul Knitter, senior editor of Orbis Books and professor at Xavier University, and Hans Küng. (Both are dissenters from the Magisterium.)
Meanwhile, the quest for a global soul is also attracting some global power brokers. Billionaire currency speculator George Soros has added the URI to the long list of recipients of his largesse. He also funds Choice in Dying (which supports legalizing assisted suicide), needle exchanges for drug addicts, and groups that his foundation believes "will protect women's access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion." Soros's ambitions, like Swing's, are large, but he is not daunted. "It is sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out," he has said.
The Gorbachev Foundation's "State of the World Forum" is another ally of the URI. There is no formal link between the Gorbachev Foundation and the URI, but URI staff member Paul Andrews has said, "We are friendly colleagues. Some people go to both meetings." One of these people is Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral (Bishop Swing's own parish); Jones is a member of the Forum's San Francisco Coordinating Council. URI supporter Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and Chancellor of the University for Peace in Costa Rica, is on the Forum's International Coordinating Council.
The State of the World Forum was a co-sponsor of the 1996 URI summit conference, and the Forum's own glittery annual meetings in San Francisco (intended to establish "a kind of global brain trust") attract the usual assortment of rich people, celebrities, activists, and gurus. On the spiritual side are Stanislav Grof (a "transpersonal psychologist"), Hal Puthoff (an ESP researcher), Barbara Marx Hubbard, Charlene Spretnak (of the Green Party), Matthew Fox, Sam Keen, Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, and Tony Robbins. The most prominent self-identified Catholic attending the meeting in 1997 was Frances Kissling, executive director of Catholics for a Free Choice, a group that supports legal abortion.
More substantially and more worryingly, other notable members of State of the World Forum committees include Bruce Alberts (President of the National Academy of Sciences), Kim Dae-jung (President of South Korea), Willie Brown (Mayor of San Francisco), John Schlegel, S.J., (President of the University of San Francisco), Federico Mayor (Director General of UNESCO), and, of course, Ted Turner.
Documents from the 1995 State of the World Forum show some of what these folks want us to do. We must "create an ecumenical, ecological theology centered in a renewed sense of reverence for the environment"; religions must "wrestle with questions of sexuality, contraception, abortion, and family planning" in order to control population growth. Gorbachev got more specific in 1997, saying that "for a certain transitional period families should limit themselves to one child." Once the world's population is stabilized, the former Communist premier would consider upping our ration to two children per family.
Schemes for global government and notions of the global soul drift in clouds of gaseous rhetoric from Gorbachev's Forum, Swing's URI, and various prophets of the New Age who support the URI. One such prophet is the aforementioned Robert Muller, who describes himself as a Catholic but whose many writings consistently offer a different notion of salvation. As he said in an interview in a Theosophist newsletter, "The UN is humanity's incipient global brain
. We still need a global soul, namely our consciousness and fusion with the entire universe and stream of time." He has written that our "supreme interests" include "the apotheosis of the human race," and blandly asserts that "the world's major religions in the end all want the same thing." He has declared his belief in karma and reincarnation, but to those who balk at political and spiritual globalization he promises a hellish destiny: "Their souls will be parked in a special corral of the universe for having been retarding forces
."
Muller wrote the World Core Curriculum, now being taught in 29 "Robert Muller Schools" around the world, and thinks it should be the basis for universal educational reform. The World Core Curriculum Manual says that the "underlying philosophy" of the Muller Schools "will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul (published by Lucis Publishing Company)
and the teachings of M. Morya as given in the Agni Yoga series books." What those books "set forth" is Theosophy, a Gnostic movement that arose in the 19th century and has had significant influence on New Age and occult movements worldwide in this century. A vice president of the Lucis Trust (which issues the Theosophist newsletter cited above and runs Lucis Publishing) has said of Muller that he "apparently has been influenced by Alice Bailey's works
. We have been a great supporter of his work."
(Alice Bailey, be it noted, wrote in 1946 that the new United Nations should be ready to use the atomic bomb against aggression, "whether that aggression is the gesture of any particular nation or group of nations or whether it is generated by the political groups of any powerful religious organisation, such as the Church of Rome, who are as yet unable to leave politics alone." You read it here first: This fountainhead of New Age globalism was prepared to nuke the Vatican.)
Another New Age supporter of the URI is Barbara Marx Hubbard, a "futurist." Hubbard endorsed the URI, saying that "joined with other comparable efforts," it may be the catalyst for a "great awakening" of the planet, a "Planetary Birth Day." Her basically Gnostic message is delivered in book after book. Here, culled from her works, is a synopsis of the gospel according to Hubbard.
Salvation? "Multitudes of self-saviors is what we are, for those who have eyes to see." The Fall? "The serpent symbolizes an irresistable [sic] energy that is leading us toward life ever-evolving." The body? "We will soon be released from the fleeting imprisonment of mind by the material world." Man's place in the universe? "We can create new life forms and new worlds. We are gods!" The problem of evil? "Evil -- the devil -- is evolution's selection process that constantly weeds out the weaker from the stronger." The Scriptures? Hubbard offers us Episcopal Bishop John Spong of New Jersey as a reliable interpreter of the Bible. He's the bishop who recently said, "Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead." The doctrine of Christ? "The New Order of the Future will help emancipate Christ from the walls of the church to reveal him to be the potential in each man and woman on Earth." The scandal of the particular? "The period of separate sects and dogmas gives way to the period of co-creative consciousness when everyone is attuning [sic] to the same pattern." Male and female? "Your adolescence will be a joy. You will be androgynous." As for self-murder: "When we feel that our creativity has run its course, we gracefully choose to die. In fact, it seems unethical and foolish to live on."
For those of us who don't get with the program, the alternative Hubbard offers is irrelevance and extinction -- "like the dinosaurs." Hubbard warns that "the selection process will exclude all who are exclusive." (And you thought evolution was a random process.)
Even better known perhaps than Muller and Hubbard is Neale Donald Walsch, whose cozy Conversations With God books have made him the Don Camillo of the New Age. The URI has given Walsch the leadership of its "Committee on Spirituality and the Global Social Agenda." Yet even with Walsch's and God's awesome responsibilities, the two still take time for the chats that have produced their bestsellers.
Walsch's celestial confidant has told him that "There's no such thing as the Ten Commandments." "God's Law is No Law. This is something you cannot understand. I require nothing." "Hitler went to heaven
." "There is no hell, so there is no place else for him to go." "Obedience is not what I want from you. Obedience is not growth, and growth is what I desire." Adam and Eve "are said to have committed Original Sin. I tell you this: it was the Original Blessing." The sin of envy? Envy, God informs Walsch, "is a motivator. It is pure desire. It gives birth to greatness." In fact, God has said, "Forget about religion," and "It is religion which has filled the hearts of men with fear
." God has also informed Walsch of His wish for a bicameral world government and the redistribution of wealth. One bit of this divine plan is worth quoting more fully: "Nothing could be purchased without [the world government's] Credits. There would be no other negotiable currency." There is a biblical warning about this kind of system: St. John the Divine said there would come a time when "no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name
. His number is 666" (Rev. 13:17-18).
Other New Age supporters of the URI include the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, formerly the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and now President of the Temple of Understanding. While at St. John the Divine, Morton said, "The language of the ?'Sacred Earth' has got to become mainline." He acted on this belief by holding St. Francis Day communion services that invoked the gods Ra, Ausar, and Yemenja. It was from the pulpit of this cathedral in 1979 that James Lovelock first publicly explained the Gaia theory -- that the earth as a whole is a living, conscious organism.
The attraction of New Age leaders to the URI should not be a surprise, given the influence of the New Age movement in Bishop Swing's own diocese. Matthew Fox, formerly a Catholic priest, was accepted into the Episcopal priesthood in 1994 by Bishop Swing. Since then, Swing has offered unswerving public support to Fox, allowing "Rave Masses" to occur at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and lending $85,000 of diocesan money to help Fox establish the University of Creation Spirituality. (Grace Cathedral is also home to Veriditas, led by Lauren Artress, an Episcopal priestess and an honorary Canon of the Cathedral. Veriditas promotes walking through labyrinths as a transformative spiritual experience, a way for people to "be reminded of our soul-assignments," a means for "being connected to the Divine feminine.")
Regarding New Age advocates' influence on the URI, Fr. O'Rourke has said, "No one person has that kind of dominance in this organization. If our board thought they were creating a platform for the New Age movement, they would hit the ceiling." Well, maybe the URI board should now meet in a room with a padded ceiling.
Despite concerns arising from the Twilight-Zone-ish agenda of some URI supporters and allies, shouldn't Catholics and other traditional Christians support the URI? Isn't a movement toward global understanding, even if imperfect, worth supporting?
In a word: No. The URI is gravely flawed, from its foundation up. Christians should not offer it any support, though they ought to monitor its activities closely.
The first problem is that many prominent URI supporters openly equate evangelism -- preaching the Gospel -- with conquest and manipulative proselytism; they see orthodox Christians as "fundamentalists" who put "peace" at risk. This bias does not appear in official URI documents, but it does appear when URI supporters speak as individuals. At a February 1997 URI forum at Grace Cathedral, URI board member Paul Chafee said, "We can't afford fundamentalists in a world this small." URI board member Rita Semel said that fundamentalism "comes out of fear and ignorance." At an April 1997 URI forum, board member Sri Ravi Peruman said that religions have "invaded and crusaded," "subverted and converted." Pacific Church News reported: "Calling statements about ?'authentic religious freedom' for everyone, ?'the freedom to proselytize,' Peruman said that there should be a universal Declaration of Rights not to be converted to another religion." The San Jose Mercury News reported that at the 1996 URI summit conference, URI supporter Robert Muller said that "peace will be impossible
without the taming of fundamentalism through a United Religions that professes faithfulness ?'only to the global spirituality and to the health of this planet.'"
The second problem is that many prominent URI supporters favor religious syncretism and wish to promote a novel, Earth-centered spirituality. Again, this is not in official URI documents; they reiterate that "there is no desire to create one big religion." However, in 1996 Bishop Swing spoke of the world's youth adding "a little yoga to the words of The Prophet. A little Catechism to a little Dharma
. One way or another, in Bangalore or in your grandchild, a United Religions will happen." Bay Area newspapers reported that in the 1995 interfaith service at which Bishop Swing announced the URI, "prayers, chants, and incantations were offered to a dozen deities." "Holy water from the Ganges, the Amazon, the Red Sea, the River Jordan, and other sacred streams" was mixed in a common "bowl of unity" on the altar of Grace Cathedral. At the 1997 URI summit conference, a public worship service included a procession of 15 banners representing 15 religions (including a banner for the Wiccans, the neopagan witchcraft movement). The fifteenth banner had on it an empty silver circle, representing "the religions which are to come."
The third problem is that the URI leaders take a feminist worldview for granted. Bishop Swing said in 1997 that one reason he expanded the scope of the URI to include New Age movements (he calls them "modern spiritual movements") is that they include women as leaders, while traditional religions do not. (Cardinal Ratzinger replied succinctly to feminism in Salt of the Earth: Feminist ideology "traces all existing institutions back to power politics. And this ideology corrupts humanity and also destroys the Church.")
The fourth problem is that URI leaders view religion as captive to the world. Anglican Bishop James Ottley, a URI supporter, said in 1997 that "the world's agenda is the agenda of the church," a sentiment expressed in other words by many URI proponents.
The URI's close connection with the New Age movement means the URI is promoting something Pope John Paul II denounced in Crossing the Threshold of Hope: "the return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age." The Pontiff added, "We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practicing gnosticism -- that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words." The Pope said that Gnosticism "has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian."
The documents of Vatican II and the encyclicals of John Paul II don't support Catholic participation in the URI either. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church rejects the notion that all religions are of equal value; it also states that "Each disciple of Christ has the obligation of spreading the faith, to the best of his ability." The Decree on Ecumenism -- which deals with unity among Christians, not unity among all religions -- says, "Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures its genuine and certain meaning." The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions states that the Church "is in duty bound to proclaim, without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life." The Declaration on Religious Liberty says that the Church's support for religious freedom "leaves intact the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one Church of Christ." In the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, John Paul II says that in Church-sponsored dialogue with "the leaders of the great world religions," care will always be taken to avoid "the risk of syncretism and of a facile and deceptive irenicism." And in Ut Unum Sint, an encyclical dealing with unity among Christians, John Paul says, "The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth."
Many of the URI's leaders, supporters, and allies are liberal Protestants, dissident Catholics, New Age adepts, feminists, and wealthy progressives with a plan to save the world. With a cast of characters like this, how could the URI go in a positive direction? Most prominent URI supporters have agendas that are inimical to orthodox Christianity, Orthodox Judaism, and traditional Islam. If the URI succeeds in gaining global influence, it will become another opponent of the Church, another supporter of the already dominant relativist worldview.
A prayer card issued in 1996 by the URI contains an image of the birth of a new star, with the slogan, "Join a world waiting
for the birth of a new light
United Religions." We Christians already have a light that cannot fail, for Christ said, "I am the light of the world" (Jn. 9:5). There is no reason to "join a world waiting for the birth of a new light" that is not Christ, for Christ said, "take courage, I have overcome the world" (Jn. 16:33).
Bishop Swing has asked for prayers on behalf of the URI. In a spirit of true ecumenism, let us respond to his request. Roman Catholics may begin: "O God, look mercifully upon all those who are seduced by the deceit of Satan, that all heretical impiety may be removed and the hearts of those who err may repent and return to the unity of Thy truth." The Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics may join in: "Those who depart from the Orthodox Faith, dazzled by destructive heresies, do Thou enlighten by the light of Thy holy wisdom, and unite them to Thy Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church." And evangelicals may close the prayer: "In Jesus' name, Amen!"
We can let Bishop Swing have the last word. On September 11, 1996, he extolled the URI to a meeting of 200 San Francisco Episcopal lay leaders, and said: "We're talking about salvation history here. If I'm wrong, I'm dead wrong."
The Bishop has spoken; the case is closed.
Lee Penn, a health-care information systems consultant in San Francisco, is a member of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Russian Center, a parish of the Russian Catholic Church (one of the 21 Byzantine Catholic Churches in communion with the Holy See).
1998
