Friday, June 26, 2015

Even Many Conservatives In Christianity Are Radicals in A Secular Context

Guess who the liberal theologian is talking about.

To use John Allen's own list in a slightly modified fashion, in addition to its strong support for labor unions the encyclical warns against the "downsizing" of social security systems, supports the combating of hunger and poverty by increasingly aggressive governmental action, favors a full-employment strategy, advocates protection of the earth's environment, calls for international aid programs that involve a larger share of a wealthy nation's gross national product, urges reduction in energy consumption while investing in renewable forms of energy, supports the opening of global markets to the products of developing countries, especially agricultural, calls for greater investment in education and more generous immigration policies, a strong internal authority "with real teeth," and closer, tougher regulation of markets and financial institutions.

Since I didn't change any words to make guessing harder, you know it's a pope because it's about an encyclical.  Which also makes it easy because there are fewer popes than presidents or prime ministers.  

The answer is that this radical economic and environmental agenda as condensed by Richard McBrien from the 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate from  my second least favorite of recent popes, Benedict XVI.   I'll ask you to consider the liklihood of a sitting U. S. president, the most liberal one we could hope to elect,  not even just the entirely disappointing Barack Obama, would lay out such goals for the economy and the environment and the entire society and world.  Which congress in our history would pass a program of bills to make that happen?  Which Supreme Court would let such a radical program of reform happen?     The answer to that is simple, none that could reasonably be imagined would do such a radical thing.  And the reason for that is, under the Constitution and law, both U.S. Law and that British common law that they are so ridiculous in bringing into it, are explicitly in service to Mammon, not to justice, not to the posterity which will depend on the preservation of the environment and the legal enforcement of economic justice. 

I would ask you to search, as well, for any alleged leftist government that has ever come close to delivering on such a radical agenda.  I will exempt the brief Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s which, I believe, may have made a real attempt to deliver on much of it if it had not been brought down by U.S. terrorism funded and supported by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and an effective part of the legal and media establishment.  Not to mention John Paul II.  A government which was, in that period, not so much now, saturated with ideas of liberation theology, including the participation of major figures in that effort as ministers.  

And remember this,  Benedict was/is regarded, with some reason, as an arch-conservative, the opponent of that even more radical liberation theology which his successor holds in much higher regard and the enforcer on a right wing line on issues of gender and sexuality.  I named him along with John Paul II as being two bad popes for the pastoral disasters that they did nothing to prevent or repair as they centralized church power in the Vatican, appointing some of the worst bishops and cardinals in recent history, many of whom are obviously opposed to the current pope, Francis.   

And what you can point out about the unexpected call for radical economic justice from such a right-wing pope is even more true of theologians in the Protestant, Jewish and, some would expect me to say "even" but I won't because it is a bigoted lie, Muslim theologians.   Economic justice, justice to the environment is mandated in scriptures.*  It is an insight that was held by the authors of scriptures centuries and millenia ago.  In the column I am posting today, McBrien, no inconsiderable expert in theology, himself and a frequent critic of the man as Cardinal Ratzinger and as pope, says that Benedict XVI was "the most gifted theologian ever to occupy the Chair of St. Peter".  As a student of the history of the papacy, McBrien's opinion on that is better that of most.   And, remember, he is a conservative, in terms of mainstream Christianity, there are far more radical views of what achieving the justice, the equality, the moral obligations contained in scriptures will require of us and of governments.  

Here is the rest of the column from August 10, 2009.

The first impression one has of Pope Benedict XVI's new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate ("Charity in Truth"), is that it is long and dense -- too much so in both categories to expect the document to be read by a significant minority of Catholics, not to mention other Christians and non-Christians.

The encyclical is very much the work of someone with many years of careful research, writing, and teaching in his background. Few would question the opinion that Benedict XVI is the most gifted theologian ever to occupy the Chair of St. Peter.

But what of this latest encyclical, apart from its length (some 30,000 words, which is equivalent to a small book) and the intellectual challenges it would surely pose to many non-specialist readers?

One well-regarded Vatican expert noted that there is something in the encyclical for "both left and right to cheer...and something for them to be grumpy about. Liberals will likely applaud Benedict's call for robust government intervention in the economy and his endorsement of labor unions, while conservatives will appreciate his unyielding opposition to abortion, birth control and gay marriage..." (John Allen, "Pope proposes a 'Christian humanism' for the global economy," The National Catholic Reporter on-line, 7/7/09).

I would register a mild reservation. There is far more in this encyclical for liberals to cheer than for conservatives to applaud. With a few significant exceptions, Caritas in Veritate is in the left-of-center tradition of Catholic social teachings, from the time of Pope Leo XIII's landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum ("Of New Things") in 1891 to the present..

To use John Allen's own list in a slightly modified fashion, in addition to its strong support for labor unions the encyclical warns against the "downsizing" of social security systems, supports the combating of hunger and poverty by increasingly aggressive governmental action, favors a full-employment strategy, advocates protection of the earth's environment, calls for international aid programs that involve a larger share of a wealthy nation's gross national product, urges reduction in energy consumption while investing in renewable forms of energy, supports the opening of global markets to the products of developing countries, especially agricultural, calls for greater investment in education and more generous immigration policies, a strong internal authority "with real teeth," and closer, tougher regulation of markets and financial institutions.

Pope Benedict XVI also comments on the current worldwide economic crisis, citing "the damaging effects...of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing, large-scale migration of peoples, often provoked by some particular circumstance and then given insufficient attention, [and] the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources" (n. 21).

To be sure, the encyclical also repeats the Catholic Church's moral opposition to abortion, contraception, and similar issues, but these concerns do not occupy a large portion of the document's overall content.

What is striking about this new encyclical is its unstinting and repeated praise for Pope Paul VI's own 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio ("The Progress of Peoples"), which in political terms was perhaps even further to the left than Pope Benedict's. 

In that encyclical Paul VI highlighted and deplored the gap between rich and poor nations, and reminded readers that the goods of the earth are intended by God for everyone. The new name for peace, he wrote, is "development" -- a theme which Benedict XVI elaborates upon with renewed emphasis and fundamental agreement.

Pope Benedict XVI even refers to Populorum Progressio as "the Rerum Novarum of the modern age" (n. 8) -- the now-classic encyclical from which all subsequent social encyclicals had taken their own measure.

Thus, Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno ("The Fortieth Year") appeared forty years after Pope Leo XIII's. Pope Paul VI's Octogesima Adveniens ("The Eightieth Anniversary") was published 80 years after Rerum Novarum, and Pope John Paul II's Centesimus Annus ("The Hundredth Year") provided a centenary observance of Leo XIII's encyclical.

Some commentators had criticized Pope Benedict XVI's previous encyclicals on charity for their failure to link it more clearly with the virtue of justice. He does so in this new encyclical, and early on in the document, where he insists that "justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it." The endnote reference is to both Paul VI's encyclical and to Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, n. 69.

Later in his new encyclical Benedict XVI cites Paul VI's apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi ("Of Proclaiming the Gospel," also known as "On Evangelization in the Modern World"), to the effect that Christ's charity, through works of justice, peace, and development, "is part and parcel of evangelization," and that the Church's social doctrine is "an essential element of evangelization" (n. 15).

More next week.

* For anyone who may have missed the posts about Marilynne Robinson's essays on the radical liberalism of the Mosaic Law, she makes that point brilliantly and conclusively about what is presented to be taken as the harsh and oppressive "Old Testament".   I hope to go into what is translated as "slavery" in the Jewish law, the law for which the pre-conversion Paul was a zealot and the Anglo-American version of slavery which is anachronistically imposed on the ancient Jewish culture.  But it will have to wait till after the frost.  I'm so swamped with work that I don't have the time to put it together.  

In the mean time, here is a version of another of Robnison's essays, the one in her book, When I Was A Child I Read Books,  Austerity as Ideology, posted in The Nation in a somewhat secularized version as, Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist.  Robinson, informed by her study of scripture and theology was against austerity long before it became a radical position among secularists I'm aware of.  Even while some of them were still fighting off pimples if not younger. 

1 comment:

  1. "justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it."

    I agree; although that alone is already so radical an idea it is a barrier to discussion. We equate justice with law, and law with punishment, and so justice is punishment of those who deserve it.

    Which automatically becomes anyone punished by the legal system, and so justice is done. It's a short step from there to justice is not charity, it is authority, and even brutality, and then the God of the "Old Testament" is a God of wrath and punishment and brutality, because somebody somewhere read the story of Elijah and the she-bears (probably from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," where I first heard of it), which proves the OT drips with blood and vengeance.

    Unless, of course, you read the law of Moses, and put it in context through the prophets, for whom justice is, as the Pope noted, inextricably bound up with charity. But then I heard Roxanne Gray on NPR this morning declaiming "forgiveness" as something that is available only when the one being forgiven has repented, or at least confessed their sin; and forgiveness, for Ms. Gray, equates to acting as if the offense never occurred and equally saying it no longer matters.

    Forgiveness, of course, is much harder than mere denial or buried memory. But as long as you aren't going to understand what forgiveness means in a Christian context (specifically the context of the shootings in Charleston, and the families of the victims), then you can make it any damned thing you please.

    That's so much easier than doing the work of forgiveness, which is the work of charity as Christians understand, which is ultimately the justice of God.

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