With the choice of his papal name, the new Pope Leo XIV puts himself firmly in the tradition of Catholic social teaching (CST) begun by Leo XIII’s seminal encyclical, Rerum Novarum (“New Things”), which has inspired a long train of encyclicals on CST. To underscore the point, Leo XIV has said since his selection, “In our own day, the Church offers everyone the treasury of its social teaching.”
But not all have been pleased with the quality of CST in the nine or ten encyclicals since Rerum Novarum. Complaints include the lack of philosophical rigor, confusion over the proper division of Church and State, a misuse of the concept of “justice,” and a failure to unequivocally condemn Marxism.
For that reason, there are many valuable takeaways from Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”). A work of both theology and political philosophy, it is relatively short, cogently written, philosophically sound, and profound in its simplicity. Yet, it is not usually included in the CST encyclicals. But it should be.
Eros and Agape
So, what’s so special about Deus Caritas Est? The encyclical is about charitable activity, helping those in need. Benedict, however, avoids the word “justice” as long as he can because justice has become faddish by secular and ecclesiastical writers alike. It is a crucial Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue, but it is overused and now means different things to different people.
What is social justice? Nobody really knows, but it sounds full of cachet. What is international justice? Few agree on its meaning, but it sounds sophisticated. What is racial justice? It’s hard to say because, as some believe, we are all racists. What is economic justice? It depends—are you a Marxist, a socialist, a capitalist, a libertarian, a radical leftist, a MAGA, an anarchist, or a Unitarian?
You get the picture.
Benedict avoids all that and says charity begins with—and is guided unambiguously by—agape love.
Deus Caritas Est is organized into two parts. Part I is all about love and takes its departure from 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
But before he explains what charitable love looks like, Benedict needs to distinguish it from erotic love. The Church has always recognized the importance of eros, even though the word doesn’t appear in the New Testament and only twice in the Septuagint. That’s not because the Church is out to “destroy” erotic love, as some would argue, but because it has become so distorted. That is one of the reasons the New Testament emphasizes agape love. In the early years of the Church, eroticism was often associated with mystery cults and religions that employed eroticism as a kind of “divine intoxication,” a means to “an ascent in ecstasy to God.”
So, far from rejecting eros, Christianity offers its “purification and growth in maturity.” Today, the erotic has become a commodity that is bought and sold to entertain and to excite lust. This, Benedict explains, has so debased eros that human dignity is in peril, and with it the definition of what it means to be human.
Can anything be more relevant? We seem to be going full speed back to a pagan era where the erotic is a substitute for the spiritual: The more secular the world becomes, the more debased sexuality dominates Western culture. The horrid—but accurate—title of a recent article in The Atlantic says it all: We now live in “The World Porn Made.”
Church and State
Part I of the encyclical sets the foundation for Christian charity, which must proceed from agape love, and that is what places Deus Caritas Est firmly in the tradition of CST. The real contribution of this encyclical, however, is not to set the record straight on agape and eros, as important as that is. Benedict explains the three-fold obligation of the Church as it developed early and as it still stands:
1) the ministry of charity (diakonia)
2) the proclamation of God’s word (kerygma-martyria)
3) celebration of the sacraments (leitourgia)
Even more, this charitable effort is available not only for those within but also those outside the Church, “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.” The Church’s ministry of charity, moreover, is directed not only to its own, but, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:31), to all.
“A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church.”
Benedict notes the absurd Marxist complaint that charity masks injustice and provides political systems an escape route to avoid massive political change. If I give you $5 so you can buy yourself a sandwich, say the Marxists, I am just avoiding a world revolution. Better to let you starve so we can transform the world. Benedict writes,
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.
The Marxist solution to helping the needy, then, is no response at all; instead, it is a call to violence and destruction. It has been a grotesque twentieth-century experiment, but, against all odds, there are still Marxists among us.
Benedict outlines the distinct obligations of the Church and the State, and it is here that Deus Caritas Est is so valuable: He suggests the Church too often oversteps its competence in making policy recommendations that are beyond both its responsibility and also its capability, whether immigration policy, climate policy, or economic policy, for example.
The Church’s primary responsibility is to teach its members the principles of the Church and of natural law, and to train them to exercise their reason and thus discover the best way to put those principles into policy. It is not the Church’s role to make specific recommendations on public policy, especially on those areas in which sensible people might disagree. But that’s not all: The Church needs to facilitate the “constant purification” of reason, since we “can never be completely free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interests.”
It is here that “politics and faith meet.” It is the obligation of the Church to serve as a “purifying force for reason itself,” and it is where Catholic social doctrine has its place. Benedict alludes to the Aristotelian-Thomistic definition of justice when he says, “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,” but “this cannot be the Church’s immediate responsibility.” He reiterates, “A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church.” Indeed, “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.” As Benedict bluntly asserts elsewhere, “The Church’s task . . . is not to play party politics.”
It is not difficult to read between the lines to see that Benedict is warning the clergy not to be seduced by the glamour of seeing their names on the front page of The New York Times, not only because it is not their role but also because they are unwittingly serving partisan interests.
Let’s state it more clearly and call a spade a spade: Aside from the Church’s heroic stance on abortion, many Catholic policy recommendations in recent decades have favored the interests of the Democratic party. When Pope Francis issued his encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si’, he instantly became the darling of the left wing of the Democrats. Many of us were left scratching our heads.
Properly Equipped for the Complex Work of Charity
We might add that it is not just a matter of what the Church should not do; it is a matter of what the Church is not equipped to do. It is the philosophers, economists, theologians, and intellectual historians, for example, whose intellect the Church forms, enlightens, and safeguards so they can craft sound public policies on crucial matters. Most clergy, even at the highest levels, are not equipped to do that. Potentially they could be—there are plenty of smart men in the hierarchy—but that would require a different academic and spiritual preparation, and it would take them away from their primary tasks.
The Church’s charitable work spans the globe and ranges from the Pontifical Council Cor Unum in the Vatican to the Catholic elementary school in the middle of urban blight. Benedict offers a sample list of saints who devoted themselves to charity and left behind traditions that continue their work: “Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, John of God, Camillus of Lellis, Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Giuseppe B. Cottolengo, John Bosco, Luigi Orione, Teresa of Calcutta to name but a few—stand out as lasting models of social charity for all people of good will.” As these saints show us, charity is a longing of the human heart, implanted by nature in the soul, where it may be ignored, denied, or cultivated. It is the Church’s duty to guide and cultivate that longing.
We might conclude on a musical note, with the progressive rock band Pink Floyd’s anthem for the needy, “On The Turning Away.” The song is a call to help the unfortunate but at the same time a caution that helping the “downtrodden” is complex. Those who have engaged in helping the truly poor—not just on a mission trip but for a lifetime—know it is very difficult: It often involves a psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, and economic Gordian knot that, to unloose, requires all the wisdom and guidance the Church has to give. The first stanza of the song states it well:
On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand