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In his new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis offers two keys to interpreting politics: first, love, and second, the principles of his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
Oct 10, 2020
By Bill McCormick, SJ,
In his new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis offers two keys to interpreting politics: first, love, and second, the principles of his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
The FIRST, love, permeates the text as the great theme of the parable of the Good Samaritan. As Pope Francis points out, “The parable is clear and direct, but it also evokes the inner struggle that each of us experiences as we come to know ourselves through our relationships with our brothers and sisters” (n. 69 ). By focusing on this inner struggle, he underlines that the main challenges we face in public life today are spiritual, not theoretical or technocratic. Jesus, writes Pope Francis, “does not ask us to decide who is close enough to be our neighbor, but rather that we ourselves become our neighbors” (n. 80).
According to Pope Francis, the challenge posed by the parable for politics is clear: “The decision to include or exclude the injured on the roadside can serve as a criterion for judging any economic, political, social and religious project” (n . 69). This is a high bar for politics, offered by a noble writing in Fratelli Tutti: “Good politics combines love with hope and with trust in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts” (n. 196), reiterating from Evangelii Gaudium that politics is “a high calling and one of the highest forms of charity, insofar as it seeks the common good” (n. 180).
This love manifests itself in politics in many ways. It leads to authentic populism: “What is truly ‘popular’ – since it promotes the good of the people – is to give everyone the opportunity to nurture the seeds that God has planted in each one of us: our talents, our initiative and our resources innate ”(n ° 162). Helps leaders see the world through the genius of their home cultures (# 144). It helps them to recognize the dignity of the human person and the many ways in which it is violated (n. 187). Above all, it helps them strive to realize all ideals that would otherwise be just words. But all these prescriptions must be rooted in the love that the Good Samaritan showed to the stranger on the roadside: “Everything, then, depends on our ability to see the need for a change of heart, attitudes and lifestyles” (n 166).
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The SECOND key that Pope Francis offers to interact with politics in the encyclical is a combination of the four principles of Evangelii Gaudium. These four principles can help us to live the love of the Good Samaritan (nos. 222-37). Pope Francis particularly invokes the principle of unity over conflict, which is closely linked to the principle of the primacy of the whole over the part.
Many commentators have noted that Pope Francis rejects nationalism. In fact, he points out that the many evils that divide and oppress the world today, although aggravated by globalization, are the product of “[n]arrow forms of nationalism ”(n ° 141). They have ancestral roots in “the propensity for selfishness that is part of what the Christian tradition calls ‘lust'”, which can only “be overcome with the help of God” (n. 166). But he does not propose as an alternative “an authoritarian and abstract universalism” (n. 100). It recognizes that our deepest ties are local and urges us to embrace them (n.142).
Dialectic tension
Pope Francis speaks often of the importance of culture, and here he emphasizes that the rootedness and love of one’s own culture is what opens us up to other cultures (n. 142-45). But he also wants us to see each culture as open to the universal: “It is impossible to be ‘local’ in a healthy way without being sincerely open to the universal” (n. 46).
This dynamic between the universal and the local leads Pope Francis to discuss subsidiarity more in this encyclical than in his other documents. Subsidiarity appears as the place where authentic solidarity occurs, “the conscious and careful cultivation of brotherhood” (n. 104). The “local must be welcomed with enthusiasm” because it is capable of “igniting mechanisms of subsidiarity” (n. 142). In other words, subsidiarity helps us overcome the tension between the part and the whole.
The gap between realities and ideals is a main motif in Fratelli Tutti and the third principle in Evangelii Gaudium (nos. 231-33). Pope Francis argues throughout the dialectical encyclical that some of the holiest principles of modern politics remain hollow slogans. For example: “We are still far from a globalization of the most basic human rights. That is why world politics must make the effective elimination of hunger one of its main and imperative objectives ”(Fratelli Tutti, No 189). Furthermore: “Equality is not achieved either by an abstract proclamation that ‘all men and women are equal’. Rather, it is the result of conscious and careful cultivation of brotherhood ”(n. 104).
Prioritizing realities over ideals raises the question of truth: “Charity needs the light of truth that we constantly seek” (n. 185). Pope Francis rejects majoritarianism, relativism, fideism and dialogue that do not seek the truth as an end. He emphasizes that charity is more than feelings, but that, in combination with truth, it offers an objective and universal orientation (n.184). Urges us to see that “[t] it is not necessary, then, to oppose the interests of society, the consensus and the reality of objective truth ”(n. 212).
Pope Francis’ principle that “time is greater than space” is perhaps his most subtle formulation of Evangelii Gaudium, but it also permeates Fratelli Tutti’s text. The Pope punishes populists who favor their own short-term advantage instead of seeking the good of the people (n.161). He proposes that politicians take time to reflect on their public service with a series of profound questions, including “What good did I accomplish in the position entrusted to me?” (No 197). Perhaps the most urgent thing is that it encourages us to see the kairos that the coronavirus pandemic has brought us: “Anyone who thinks that the only lesson they should learn is the need to improve what we were already doing, or to perfect the systems and regulations existing, is to deny reality ”(n ° 7). As Michael Czerny, SJ, said at the recent Catholic Immigrant Integration Initiative conference: “We can’t go back! Lord, deliver us from the temptation to return ”.
The four principles of Evangelii Gaudium are ways of living love exemplified by the Good Samaritan, but love itself has a role to play in overcoming these tensions in politics: “Charity, on the other hand, unites both dimensions: the abstract and the institutional, since it requires an effective process of historical change that encompasses everything ”(n. 164). Love fuels not only the desire for action on behalf of others in need, but it leads us to seek transformation in our ability to address those needs both individually and as a community. This may be one of the most extraordinary lines in the encyclical and in line with the words of the Pope in Evangelii Gaudium: “There are ecclesial structures that can hinder evangelization efforts, but even good structures only help when there is a constant life. movement. sustain and evaluate them. Without new life and without an authentic evangelical spirit, without the ‘fidelity of the Church to her own vocation’, any new structure will soon be ineffective ”(n. 26).
These are just a few examples of how the four principles operate in the encyclical. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis writes that the four principles “derive from the pillars of the Church’s social doctrine” (n. 221). A more detailed study of Fratelli Tutti could help to articulate in what sense these four principles emerge from the pillars of Catholic social teaching, that is, the common good and solidarity.
Pope Francis wants his encyclical to move us to action. Perhaps we can begin with Francis’ own words: “Every day we have to decide whether to be good Samaritans or indifferent spectators” (Fratelli Tutti, n. 69). We will make that decision not in the abstract, but each time we are faced with a stranger in need. –– America Magazine
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