Charity In Truth

Since the latest encyclical by Papa Benedetto, Caritas in veritate , came out on Tuesday, the media spin has been predictable. Things have been taken out of context, the real message has been ignored & none of it surprized me.

Before I go any further I wish to make it clear that I am not about to give my analysis of the entire encyclical. Nor do I want to give the impression that I have read the entire thing yet. The reason for that is because it is such a rich document that it will take time to go through it & truly absorb all that is said.

But I do think the intruductory paragraphs give us the key to evaluate the entire document. The foundation if you will.

When I read the Introduction the 1st thought that crossed my mind is this is the Pope's latest salvo against relativism. He makes it clear that there is an absolute truth & that that truth can only be found in Jesus Christ. & he makes it clear that real "charity" & "truth" an inexorably linked.

The Pope does this when he says that "the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity" is this relationship of charity & truth. "It (charity) is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth."

"Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:22)." This reminds me of a question from the Baltimore Catechism, "Why did God make us?" "To know, love and serve Him. . . .". if we know the truth we know & love God, we know & love Jesus. & out of this love we want to know & do His will.

& what is God's will? "To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity." Evangelization is also thus linked to charity. This was the basis of everything Mother Teresa of Calcutta did. She served the poor to bring them to Jesus, not merely meet their physical needs. Evangelization is at the heart of every person's vocation, religious or lay person.

Evangelization is founded in truth & motivated by love (charity). & it is love & truth that "are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person." The Pope also makes it clear that because our sinfulness has impoverished our humanity we need to be purified & that that can only be done by Jesus, death & resurrection. "The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us."

"In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6)." & here we are at the end of the 1st paragraph. In 1 sentence we are again challenged with the fact that there is only 1 truth, it is absolute & that it can only be found in Jesus. & if we truly love God & our borthers & sisters then we will bring them this truth, ie Jesus, to them in everyone of our actions, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor etc.

& that is only a look at some of the riches in the 1st paragraph. & the rest of the introduction is just as richly loaded. I am not going to attempt to look at everything in them. I just want to make a couple of comments on it & a couple on some other things in the encyclical that the media is clearly ignoring. & it isn't because he says them here & forgets them. As I scanned the document I saw that he keeps going back to this foundation time after time.

Before I go on, I have to add 1 other thing about the Introduction.What I also saw in the openning paragraphs is that they were an exegesis on John 1 & 1st John 4. & the Pope is using that exegesis as the foundation for what lies ahead in the rest of the encyclical.

1 line that really stood out for me was "I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued." In this line he makes it clear that all of our actions must have an ethical basis. This basis he talks about is found in natural law. It is found in a profound respect for life. & as Papa Benedetto points out later that means no abortion, no embryonic stem-cell research, no anything that undermines the "culture of life". & that includes keeping environmentalism in its proper perspective as well. (par 48-51)

1 other thing the Pope says in the Introduction, that has to be kept in mind as you read the rest of the document is his statement of what the document is & isn't. That is found in the final pargraph of the Introduction. "The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11] " Did you get that? This document is not ment to give an absolute road map to specific actions. It is ment to be a set of guidelines by which we can judge our actions. & how do we do that?

As Papa Benedetto goes on to say, by listenning to the Catholic Church as she proclaims the truth. "She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations[12]."

The truth is neither liberal or conservative. It doesn't fit into any one political view. It challenges every political view to be sure that how you live it out is in conformity with the truth. It does reject some views, like socialism & anything that attacks the right to life, ie abortion, as solutions. But beyond that, much is left open to debate as to the best way to achieve how things are done. (Did you get that USCCB?)

As I end this post I have to look at 1 thing in the Conclusion (from par 79) that leapt out as I scanned the document. "Development needs Christians with their arms raised towards God in prayer, Christians moved by the knowledge that truth-filled love, caritas in veritate, from which authentic development proceeds, is not produced by us, but given to us." Anyone who regularly reads this blog will catch why that jumped out. As I said before, everything we do in our Pro-life efforts needs to begin & end with prayer. My Pro-life efforts are a part of my living out the call to "charity in truth" found in this document.

Again, I go back to the example of Mother Teresa. She began every day with prayer. she set aside time for Eucharistic adoration. It was that prayer time with the source of love & truth that enabled her to serve the poor, to live out in action the vocation of "charity in truth" God called her to.

Without the foundation of Jesus, nothing we do will bear any fruit. & without Jesus, there will never be authentic human development. & in the end, that is what the message of this document boils down to.