The pope's remarks on wealth distribution may as well have been written with us in mind, writes BREDA O'BRIEN
HERE’S A little quiz. Who, do you think, described Pope Benedict’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Charity in Truth, as resembling a duck-billed platypus, and the warbling of an untuned piccolo? Who accused it of being at times both incomprehensible and betraying a confused sentimentality? A clue. In the same piece, the author described Populorum Progressio, written by Pope Paul VI, and which calls for fairer division of the world’s wealth, as “an odd duck”, barely recognisable as being in continuity with the Catholic social teaching. So who was it? Some kind of maverick, disenchanted Catholic?
In fact, the author is George Weigel, a prominent US Catholic, and John Paul II’s biographer. He suggests that parts of the current encyclical were obviously penned by Benedict, and others by the Council for Justice and Peace, and it is the latter passages that he takes issue with. He finds these alleged interlopers utterly distasteful, especially the fact that there are more references to the distribution of wealth than to the creation of wealth. He is also appalled at the suggestion that the UN should be reformed and provide some form of world economic governance.
Weigel suggests that the pope, a “gentle soul”, let these appalling ideas creep in just to keep the peace in the curia. It would be funny if it were not so insulting. Mind you, it is not the first time that Weigel has taken issue with a pope. He attempted to persuade John Paul II that war in Iraq was essential and was very put out when John Paul declared war to always be “a defeat for humanity”.
Weigel liked bits of the encyclical. He claims that anyone “with advanced degrees in Vaticanology could easily go through the text of Caritas in Veritate, highlighting those passages that are obviously Benedictine with a gold marker and those that reflect current Justice and Peace default positions with a red marker”. He likes the pope’s reiteration of the centrality of marriage and the family, the emphasis on a human ecology that respects life, and tying religious freedom to development.
In short, he is a typical a la carte Catholic, who takes the parts of Catholic teaching that he likes and ignores the rest. Weigel would have no time whatsoever for anyone who treated Catholic teaching on abortion or marriage as an optional extra, but he feels free to take his little red marker to the pieces of the latest encyclical that he does not like, while all the time flashing his credentials as an uber-orthodox Catholic.
At least Weigel read the encyclical. In media terms, the only “religious” event in town on the day that the encyclical was launched was the memorial service for Michael Jackson. Given that the encyclical has no freshly controversial statements (real or imagined) about abortion, gay marriage or Muslims, coverage was relegated deep within the pages of most newspapers. It is a shame.
While no papal encyclical is easy reading, this latest text is by no means impenetrable, and at times, is striking in its clarity. “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.” And this passage might have been written with Ireland in mind. “The mere fact of emerging from economic backwardness, though positive in itself, does not resolve the complex issues of human advancement, neither for the countries that are spearheading such progress, nor for those that are already economically developed, nor even for those that are still poor, which can suffer not just through old forms of exploitation, but also from the negative consequences of a growth that is marked by irregularities and imbalances.”
And what about this? “These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social state.”
It was passages like this that led EJ Dionne, a Catholic columnist with the Washington Post, to suggest gleefully that the pope might tell President Obama at their first meeting that the president is just too conservative on some issues. It is important, though, to remember that while Catholic social teaching for over a century has endorsed workers’ rights, the need for a living wage and solidarity with the poor, and criticised again and again the excesses of capitalism, it remains concerned with something greater.
“Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.” The “charity” referred to in the title is love, and not just any old love, but the love of God for human beings that allows them to reach out in love to each other and to all humanity. That reaching out can happen in partnership with those who work for secular reasons, but the motivation is fundamentally different.
While people may cherry-pick various aspects of the encyclical to bolster economic and political biases, and be embarrassed by or angry at others, Benedict insists that Catholic social teaching is all of a piece. For example, while this encyclical contains possibly the strongest injunction to date to care for the environment, and to hand it on in a way that respects both the poor and future generations, he rejects population control.
Instead, he states that “morally responsible openness to life represents a rich social and economic resource”. Not only has a lack of such openness led to a demographic crisis in the developed world, but “it is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves”. While left-wing Catholics might be rubbing their hands in delight at passages from the encyclical, which might make neo-conservatives fume, in fact, attempting to read it as a vindication of either classic left-wing or right-wing politics is a mistake.
The pope is neither a socialist nor a neo-conservative. He is, oddly enough, a Catholic.