So then, how would you do it?
I have read part way through Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, and along the way I have read some of the commentary, from Catholics, about the content of the document.
There is one huge elephant in the room. Let us see if we can point our flashlights in its direction and identify it.
Suppose we create a scenario when many of the leaders of the past and present were to all sit at a round table, leaders representing empires, kingdoms, republics, all of varying political inclinations and economic inclinations, including democratic regimes and free-market economies. We would have conquerors, statesmen, leaders of causes, despots, tyrants, banal bureaucrats, men and women without faces. We would have tyranny well represented in its various forms from emperors and kings to dictators and soviet leaders, and we would have democratic compromise well represented, as well as a very few true free republicans. We would have Marxism and communism and Nazism, and aristocracy and theocracy and oligarchy and tribalism, and even a small representation of freedom.
We watch as for days they all wrangle about the best form of government, the best economic policies and systems, all to no avail and no resolution (because of course, they would all be un-armed) and then finally the door opens and the Pope walks in. The room falls silent. The Pope says simply, “you are all wrong, even though many of you have bits of the truth.”
There is a great pause in the conference room and finally someone speaks up. “So then, how would you do it?”
Caritas in Veritate is another addition, another clarification and enhancement, of a body of encyclicals and teachings that comprise a body of Catholic thought we call Catholic social teaching. It is the answer to the question at the end of our imaginary conference, ” So then, how would you do it?”
Does anyone think, for the remotest minute that this teaching is going to be implemented in totality anywhere, at any time, much less across the globe that Pope Benedict XVI is addressing?
There is a serious danger here of a presumption that many make in the spirited discussions that carry on all of the time between political factions and ideological opponents. That presumption is that there is a system that will save us from ourselves. That is the utopian dream that allows people to be taken over by tyrants of every stripe. There is no political messiah. If someone claims to be one, run the other way. Likewise, there is no economic messiah. There is one Messiah, who has come and started a Kingdom, and he specifically avoided temporal power and temporal political and economic strategies.
So what is the Pope up to? He’s answering our question. What would be the Catholic solution. But it is even less than that, because despite what it first appears it is very non-specific. If you track back every condition and every qualifier that he places on any piece of advice or moral admonition, it all goes back to those first introductory pages which pre-suppose what?
Man’s earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family.
(Caritas in Veritate, #7)
In other words, the orientation of the advice that the Catholic Church gives is toward faith in Jesus Christ and we all know that such faith is ultimately an individual decision, an internal decision, so that to hinge everything on the complete and total conversion of the entire world at one time as the key to setting straight all of its political, ecconomic and social inequities is absolutely spot on, but also in the realm of hope and speculation more than in the realm of real expectation in, lets’ say, the year 2009. But because it is truth, it is the real way, it is the responsibility of the Church to proclaim such truth without hesitation and in clarity, regardless of the real lack of expectation of its universal acceptance or implementation.
The entire discourse of Jesus regarding the paths and the relative numbers of those on the path to heaven vs. those on the path to hell, should be enough to shake us into reality, if we are somehow expecting that this document is something that will be implemented any time soon. What it does do is give guidance to those in the Church who are serious about the gospel and the social aspect of that gospel and want some direction as to where to apply our energies. It is a vision, no doubt about it, of what the world could and should be like under the light and truth of the gospel. But is it a blue-print for the re-organization of the world? Only if we assume that everyone is a Catholic.
There are other religions who have such a theocratic world vision, with one distinct ingredient missing. That ingredient is the freedom of conscience of Christianity, the freedom of religion taught by the Catholic Church. Can we imagine the world-wide caliphate of Islam? There are those who not only imagine it but are ardently working toward it, without the annoying hindrance of freedom of conscience. As it was in the early days of Mohammed and his successors, freedom of conscience in that scenario is freedom only live in subjugation or die for your own religion.
Let’s turn this about another way, setting aside faith for a moment, because faith can take on varying hues and meanings even within Christendom as it is now constituted. Let us just talk from the point of view of allegiance. As Christians, we are subjects of the King, Jesus Christ. We are sons and daughters, yes. We are priests and kings ourselves, yes. But ultmately, it is God whose will it is that we even exist, that we have the opportunity for redemption and reconciliation and the possiblity to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We owe our first allegiance to our King. Therefore, any world-wide application of the policies of the Kingdom presuppose the allegiance of at least the majority to the King. Without force, if we expect such a scenario to come to fruition, we need to get very, very busy signing up the people of the world in allegiance to the King. In the meantime, we can work and vote and practice in the existing circumstances of the world around us, but we know that as long as we are not the majority at any given time, the best that we can hope for is tolerance, and any number of variations of that on a sliding scale through to persecution. That is the real world as it is.
Why is that the real world? Well, just have a look around that imaginary conference table I spoke of earlier. Are there not many flawed, dangerous and evil men around that table? What is that, other than what we know as part of our wounded human nature?
If we, as Catholics, know what kind of society we would like to see, given Catholic social teaching, then in terms of realpolitik, must we not then cast about among the options available, among the various political and economic systems present and past, or combinations thereof, for the one that takes into account the real fact of human nature as it is, not as we would like it to be?
EDIT (July 18/09)- Here’s what I am talking about, right in the document itself;
Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin. The Church’s wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: “Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals”[85]
Caritas in Veritate(34)
(That footnote [85] is as follows;
[85] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 407; cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 25: loc. cit., 822-824.
Should we not look around at the scenario best suited for us as Catholics to spread the gospel so that ultimately, there will be a majority of us who belong to the Kingdom of God and then we will have the real possibility of implemeting the very Christian ideals that we see outlined for us by Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessors? And when we find the best scenario (not perfect scenario, for as we have pointed out, such a thing doesn’t exist) for us to accomplish our goals, in practical secular terms is it not then the wisest course to pursue that intermediate political goal, even as we act on our Catholic conscience?
The question that remains then, for most of us, who are not academics, and must live with the tyrannies that blind ideologies allow to spring up, is just what kind of system is most likely to ensure the protection of our Catholic conscience and the freedom to spread the gospel as aggressively as we can? The answer to that is outside of the scope of this document, in the realm of what the Church calls prudential judgement, but which is critical to our day to day living and acting as subjects of the King.