The title of this blog borrows from a phrase used by the British novelist and Catholic convert, Evelyn Waugh: “There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art.” It is a hopeful and worthwhile idea and aspiration to believe that the human creation of art is a refracting of the truth as expressed in the person of the risen Christ.

This blog serves as a place to comment on and explore literature – or any other mode of art, such as film, poetry, visual art, and the like. Although the explorations and reactions here need not be centered on religious structures or ideas, it is assumed that the foundational core of the responses is a belief in the power and truth of Catholicism. Rather than this having the effect of a narrowing of perspectives, as some may claim, this standpoint is in fact one of freedom, for freedom is found fully only in truth – while a detachment from this bedrock of veracity, even in hopes of finding objectivity, is bound to end in hollow and incomplete untruth.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI: The Mystical and Literal Simplicity of Our Pope

Introduction

It is with purpose that my primary review is on this incredible text. Deus Caritas Est is the first encyclical by the present Pope, Benedict XVI. When you boil it down, the message is about the unifying power of love: unifying in the sense that God is love, and therefore all of existence hinges on Love; and also unifying in the sense that all of our actions, in relation to God, man, and society at large (politics), must be based on this same love.

The encyclical is split into two parts. The first deals with Love in creation and salvation history, and the second with the practice of Love by the Church in the world.

It is stereotypical to see the capacity and need for a “personal relationship with Jesus or God” as the domain of certain brands of Protestantism, while Catholicism deals with faith in terms of mystery, sacrament, and ritual – incense and ashes. The Catholic, the argument goes, deals with a inscrutable power that he may associate with, but in no sort of personal or inter-relational way. However, this is purely façade, and one need only read the late John Paul II, or the current Benedict XVI, to discover this. I’ll admit that I didn’t expect the present Pope to focus on this so much; his German stoicism, coupled with his concentration and background in theology, led me to assume that his approach to God and faith would be rather impersonal. I was way off the mark – way off.

The Encyclical’s Introduction

This line is from the opening page of the “Introduction” to the encyclical. It is so indicative of JPII and what I now know to be Benedict: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (7). Constantly throughout the text, Benedict keeps emphasizing that Christianity is about Christ, not just in theory, but in actual fact; it’s about the person of Jesus. Not only does this separate Christianity from modern fads and theories – from the “isms” of the modern world – but it also it gives us the appropriate lens in which to view the rest of what our faith teaches us. The person of Jesus died because He Loves us. This truth opens up the horizons in the past, present, and future: It is this same Love that created and sustains the universe; it is this same Love that nourishes and invites us to a personal relationship at this very moment; and it is this same Love that will ultimately invite each one of us to spend eternity with our Creator. The invitation is there, but the choice is our own.

Themes from the First Section: Love in Creation and Salvation History

I’ll just hit on some major themes throughout the encyclical. Benedict begins by discussing language, specifically the different words for love; two of the primary ones are Eros and Agape: sensual, emotional love versus emotionless, self-giving love. The argument runs that both are different aspects of the same central Love that is God. It is relatively common sense to understand that Eros cannot survive without something more than itself, without some sort of agape – it cannot be itself without something more. Eros desires eternity with a lover; but simple emotional love, even though it is powerful in the moment, cannot sustain itself in the midst of trial – or in the midst of time. Eros doesn’t have the selflessness that any and all love needs to sustain itself. Benedict discussed this; but he also discusses the fact that agape needs Eros: “When [Eros and Agape] are totally cut from one another, the result is a caricature or at least impoverished form of love” (27). Therefore, the passionate facet of love isn’t a nice “add on” to help sustain weak-willed human beings; it is part of the nature of God. This connects back to one of the main point: that God’s love is a personal love.

Continuing with the theme of “personal-ness,” Benedict explores man’s revelation of who God is through the Bible. Importantly, we can understand God through two different lens: the Hebrew and Greek traditions. As usual, there is no conflict between the two; instead, one helps illuminate and fulfill the other. “God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation – the Logos, primordial reason – is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love” (31). The actual chronological moment of God’s incarnation, His physical step into history, was conscious and meaningful, and we can learn something about His nature from it. God is both unchanging and eternal – alike Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover – but He is additionally personal and interested in each and every aspect of His creation – like the Lover in the Song of Songs, or the jealous God that walked with Moses. The world bridging the new and old Testaments was one of Greek and Hebrew philosophies, a world that saw God as calculating reason and logic, and a world that envisioned a God that could love and involve Himself in individual lives. Instead of having to choose between the two formulations of God and the world, the Christian rejects this “either/or” construction, choosing instead the “both/and:” God is both everlasting, unmoved and intensively in love with each and every one of us.

Another prominent theme in the text is idea that God, love, faith, and Christianity cannot be lived alone; instead, it is others-driven, for it is loving and living for others that we discover our true selves: “Communion draws me out of myself unto him and, thus, toward unity with all Christians” (37). In these constructions of the faith, movement toward the Good, toward God, is a movement toward life-lived-with-others, while sin is a movement toward solipsism, toward the negation of life. In this portion of the encyclical, Benedict moves from a discussion of God to a discussion of all Christians.

Boldly, Benedict announces that “love of God and love of neighbor have become one” (40). You cannot love God and refuse to love man. Since God exists Trinitarianly, in Communion Himself with Himselves, God’s love of Himself is in itself not selfish, since it is directed toward the other Persons of the Trinity. And as such, when we experience this love, we respond by loving; and in loving, we necessarily love others. But as Benedict did with Eros and Agape, he makes it clear that the argument runs the other way too. Refusing to love others will blind us to God: “Love of neighbor is a path that leads to the encounter with God and that closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God” (41). Perhaps honest-minded people who have sought to know God if He be knowable haven’t found Him because they have refused to love those sitting next to them.

The Second Part: Charity, The Church, and Society

The second portion of the book is less mystical; it deals less with the nature of God. Instead, it builds upon the nature the first half of the book outlined, and asks how a Church that preaches a God such as this must act in a world of flaws, poverty, and sin. That the Church must work in an organized fashion to bring Charity to a physically impoverished world underlines Benedict’s argument: “The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the sacraments and the Word” (55). This bold statement rejects any super-spiritual notion that seeks to see the Church’s function as solely transcendent. Benedict outlines the three responsibilities of the Church as distribution of the sacraments, preaching of the Word, and ministry of Charity (60). He claims that they presuppose one another, and so one cannot exist without the other. Certain types of Jesuits seem solely concerned with Charity; and I have heard many good arguments against this. But equally incorrect is the idea that we are to bring only spiritual guidance and support to the people of this world. Just as we are spiritual and material and humans, so must our enactment of Charity see humans as both.

But there is a limit to this – or, perhaps, ways of incorrectly interpreting this. The Church’s purpose isn’t to bring about the most just society. Benedict emphasizes this often. He seems to be responding to both Marxist theory, as well as certain brands of Liberation Theology. Just as America separated Church and State, Benedict claims that Vatican II clearly expressed the necessary “autonomy of the temporal sphere” (65). While the Church must be involved with man as physical being, since to ignore this would be to treat man incompletely, the Church’s goal is Charity and not pure Justice. “Justice is both the aim and intrinsic criterion of all politics” (66). So individual, organizations, and communities should work toward making society as just as possible; but while the Church may be involved in this process by offering and informing Her believers, and by informing society with a sense of a correct ethics, Her main purpose is not political. She can and should speak out against unjust societies, but it isn’t Her place to take arms against the oppressor.

From reading a bit of Gutiérrez (the Liberation Theologian), I’m sure he could respond with the following: a) man is political by the nature of either himself or his society, and therefore to remain absent from the political sphere is to not treat man completely; b) an organization can only be on the side of the oppressor or oppressed, and staying neutral often places us on the side of the oppressor.

However, we can respond to man as political without succumbing to the idea that the Church should or must make it Her goal to make all societies perfectly just. Justice is an important virtue, and it is connected to Charity and Love; but they are not the same. Second, not taking arms against an oppressor does not put you on his side. While certain historical cases may quite rightly implicate the Church as a sustainer of a very unjust society, this is not how the Church is supposed to act according to Benedict’s theology. Additionally, we need to remember that just because we claim the Church’s primary goal is not to bring about perfect Justice, this does not mean that individual Catholics should not be involved in just this aspiration.

Besides her charitable works, the Church also proves an indispensible facet of the political sphere, as Benedict makes clear: “[Faith] is…a purifying force for reason itself” (66). While the Church recognizes the power and authority of the State, She also recognizes that societies created by man have a tendency to corruption, as a result of human weakness and the ineffective means of reason to recognize if it is being compromised. Moreover, “the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life” (67). This makes it very clear that a Catholic should – in fact, needs to – bring his conscience, as formed through the teaching and revelations of the Church, to the political world, whether as a citizen or politician. The illusion of the purely positive march of the age of reason was shattered through the World Wars, the horrors of the communist revolutions, and through the secular understanding of our post-modern lack of meaning and morality.

In short, faith is integral to politics achieving its true end: justice. But the Church, as a structure, doesn’t provide the enactment of this justice. For one, this argues against, as well as provides a future defense against, certain reprehensible moments in Church history, moments in which the Church was influenced by money, politics, and influence. The medieval Church comes to mind: moments of corrupted indulgence-sellers, power-hungry popes, and their like. But more than a defense against this sort of vice, past or present, Benedict is pointing to a deeper truth about the nature of the temporal structure of the Church. Affirming the American idea of the separation of Church and State, Benedict sees the primary mission of the former as Charity, and the latter as Justice.

Personal Thoughts

I thought this encyclical was tremendous – beyond tremendous. Before personally delving into the complex simplicity of Benedict’s theology, I judged him on account of his nationality and age. I assumed his writing would be full of technical and opaque theologies, involved in the categorizing of monotonous and intangible, technical points. While Benedict is involved in putting things in their correct categories, carefully defining his more complex points, his writing is so alive; it visibly spring from a soul who has encountered the living God – a soul that understands that, when discussed correctly, there is nothing more exhilarating and pertinent as theology.

I find a distinct similarity, after reading this and Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, between our present pope and CS Lewis. They have a way of breaking apart complex issues in entirely recognizable and admirably comprehensible ways. But the mystery and complex of these issues don’t lose their fullest effect with these two thinkers. They are the Everyman’s theologians.

I was delighted to find a pattern in here that I have found reoccurring in my fiction and spiritual reading, as well as my personal reflections and prayers: that of Communism: that idea that life is life-with-others, that the nature of existence of reality is not solipsistic but relational. Just as the center of all existence, God, exists in Trinitarian-reality, so too are we invited to live life-in-relationship. In contract, sin is essentially a negation of God or goodness, and therefore a rejection of life as lived in relation. This is why I have come to see both pride and selfishness as so insidious to a life of faith. Unlike sexual immorality and other sins which often drive us together, albeit in a disordered fashion, pride and selfishness drive us further and further into the hell our of our desires and fancies – desires and fancies that are illusionary and terrifying. For both the positive and negative aspects of this reality and truth, read Charles Williams’ masterpiece, Descent Into Hell.

I look forward to conquering – or more appropriately, relishing – the rest of Benedict’s encyclicals.

3 comments:

  1. "German stoicism" - our pope is Bavarian, not Prussian! Remember our current view of Germans can be overly dominated by the political events of the Prussian state 1871-1945. But before that, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, Germany briefly held its place as a center of learning and culture. Think also of Vienna, Goerthe, Beethoven, Kant, Wagner... This also shows that an overly machinist picture of the Nazi movement is inadequate; Hitler was an artist, not a mathematician, as a young man. But I digress... back to your interesting post!

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  2. Introduction: yes, I love this about Benedict. His faith is so real, yet he is articulate enough to explain it in compelling terms. And he blows the modern exegists and theologians who try to explain away all the difficult 'stumbling blocks' out of the water!

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  3. The First Part: It's in light of this understanding of Benedict's that I now begin to appreciate his insistence on the importance of the liturgy, going back to his days as theologian and as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faithful. The press predictably approaches Benedict with its childishly inadequate and intellectually and historically shallow categories, calling him a rigid, conservative traditionalist out of touch with actual human experience. In reality of course, Benedict is probably the only prominent statesman who is not limited by materialistic realpolitik lens which sees all things in terms of economic arrangement, 'when you really get down to it.' Benedict so excitingly cries "No, no! Go ahead and really get down to what matters, and you'll find God, love, communion (koinonia)." I'm such a fan! He truly is the Benedict for our Dark Ages.

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