After meditating on Thanksgiving, let us return to the theme I have been developing on the social teaching of the Church. Mind you, I do not intend a comprehensive treatment, but only to scratch the surface of a few basic points.
In my post last week, on Christ the King, I mentioned the first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, entitled Deus Caritas Est -- God Is Love. After breaking open the full Christian meaning of the term "love" (in which eros is central yet purified and fulfilled by agape), the Holy Father looks at the application of love (caritas, charity) in the social sphere.
The Pope is clear that the just ordering of society is the work of politics (that once noble word), and politics is the labor of laymen working together to best organize the common life of citizens. Yet the Church (those who bring the Gospel) has the irreplaceable task of informing the consciences of laymen so that they can overcome self-interest and special interests to make judgments truly in keeping with the common good, based on natural moral law and guided by the virtue of prudence.
Unfortunately, natural law has been ruled irrelevant or downright false by many of our modern decision-makers, yet without appeal to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" (as the Declaration of Independence puts it), the practice of politics becomes subject to brute power, with no appeal to ideals such as goodness, truth and right.
Similarly, when stripped of recourse to the natural law, the courts become vehicles of "raw judicial power," the term used by the dissenting Justice Byron White for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand.
If the highest court in the land could not say whether a child in the womb is a human life, then all manner of objective truth would be put into question, as it has been in the intervening 35 years.
But getting back to the Pope's encyclical.
Taking up the complaint that what the poor and oppressed really need is justice, not charity, and that charity can serve to delay the formation of just social structures by diverting the attention of society, Pope Benedict admits that there is some truth to this claim.
He insists, however, that there will never be a society so just as to negate the need for the charity of the Church (all Christians). He writes:
"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."
He also states:
"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.
"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."
These are some of the points we need to ponder in view of the current economic crisis and the various proposals of government bailout and intervention. What is truly just, what is truly for the common good? We as Catholic laymen have been thrust more deeply than we may have wished into these questions, yet as people of faith we cannot avoid them.
We are the ones who must act in the public realm to bring about the just structures of government and law for the benefit of our nation.
And in doing this, we must not neglect charity, caritas, love, which is an invitation from God to serve the most needy of his people.
Hi,
All you fathers out there please work to keep your marriage strong, healthy and secure!
Pray for guidance and look to enrichment resources. Don't give up!
Posted by: Marriage Help | October 10, 2009 at 11:35 PM