Pope Benedict XVI has issued an Apostolic Letter issued Motu Proprio on The Service of Charity (English translation on pages 13-19 of pdf) that many readers will find interesting, and some might even find troubling. John Allen of NCR reports on it here. These canonical prescriptions expand the control of the bishop over charitable organizations in his diocese and enter into force on December 10, 2012. Pope Benedict XVI claims that the Bishops “are charged with primary responsibility for carrying out in the particular Churches the service of Charity” (13, quoting Deus Caritas Est, no. 32). The introduction of this newest apostolic letter explains the goal of these new canon law provisions:
Although the Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops explored more specifically the duty of charity as a responsibility incumbent upon the whole Church and upon each Bishop in his Diocese, there was still a need to fill the aforementioned lacuna and to give adequate expression in canonical legislation to both the essential nature of the service of charity in the Church and its constitutive relationship with the episcopal ministry, while outlining the legal aspects of this ecclesial service, especially when carried out in an organized way and with the explicit support of the Bishops (13).
The introduction explains that the Church’s charitable activity “must avoid the risk of becoming just another form of organized social assistance” (14) and organized charitable initiatives “call for appropriate management” (14). While making a distinction between Caritas as an institution promoted by the ecclesiastical Hierarchy and many other initiatives which have arisen from the free enterprise of the faithful, nevertheless this document claims:
To the extent that such activities are promoted by the Hierarchy itself, or are explicitly supported by the authority of the Church’s Pastors, there is a need to ensure that they are managed in conformity with the demands of the Church’s teaching and the intentions of the faithful, and that they likewise respect the legitimate norms laid down by civil authorities (14).
The apostolic letter includes the following norms:
Article 1.1: The faithful have the right to join in associations and to establish agencies to carry out specific charitable services, especially on behalf of the poor and suffering. To the extent that these are linked to the charitable service of the Church’s Pastors and/or intend to use for this purpose contributions made by the faithful, they must submit their own Statuses for the approval of the competent ecclesiastical authority and comply with the following norms.
Article 1.3: In addition to observing the canonical legislation, the collective charitable initiatives to which this Motu Proprio refers are required to follow Catholic principles in their activity and they may not accept commitments which could in any way affect the observance of those principles.
Article 2.2: A charitable agency may use the name “Catholic” only with the written consent of the competent authority, as laid down by canon 300 CIC.
Article 4.1: The diocesan Bishop (cf. canon 414 3 CIC and canon 987 CCEO) exercises his proper pastoral solicitude for the service of charity in the particular Church entrusted to him as its Pastor, guide and the one primarily responsible for that service.
Article 4.3: It is the responsibility of the diocesan Bishop to ensure that in the activities and management of these agencies the norms of the Church’s universal and particular law are respected, as well as the intentions of the faithful who made donations or bequests for these specific purposes(cf. canons 1300 CIC and 1044 CCEO).
Article 7.1: The agencies referred to in Article 1.1 are required to select their personnel from among persons who share, or at least respect, the Catholic identity of these works.
Article 7.2: To ensure an evangelical witness in the service of charity, the diocesan Bishop is to take care that those who work in the Church’s charitable apostolate, along with due professional competence, give an example of Christian life and witness to a formation of heart which testifies to a faith working through charity. To this end, he is also to provide for their theological and pastoral formation, through specific curricula agreed upon by the officers of various agencies and through suitable aids to the spiritual life.
Article 9.3: It is the duty of the diocesan Bishop and the respective parish priests to see that in this area the faithful are not led into error or misunderstanding; hence they are to prevent publicity being given through parish or diocesan structures to initiatives which, while presenting themselves as charitable, propose choices or methods at odds with the Church’s teaching.
Article 10.1: It is the responsibility of the Bishop to supervise the ecclesiastical goods of the charitable agencies subject to his authority.
Article 10.3: In particular, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that charitable agencies dependent upon him do not receive financial support from groups or institutions that pursue ends contrary to Church’s teaching. Similarly, lest scandal be given to the faithful, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that these charitable agencies do not accept contributions for initiatives whose ends, or the means used to pursue them, are not in conformity with the Church’s teaching.
Article 11: The diocesan Bishop is obliged, if necessary, to make known to the faithful the fact that they activity of a particular charitable agency is no longer being carried out in conformity with the Church’s teaching, and then to prohibit that agency from using the name “Catholic” and to take the necessary measures should personal responsibilities emerge.
Article 15.1: The Pontifical Council Cor Unum has the task of promoting the application of this legislation and ensuring that it is applied at all levels, without prejudice to the competence of the Pontifical Council for the Laity with regard to associations of the faithful as provided for in Article 133 of the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus, the competence of the Secretariat of State’s Section for Relations with States, and the general competences of other Dicasteries and Institutes of the Roman Curia. In particular, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum is to take care that the charitable service of Catholic institutions at the international level is always to be carried out in communion with the various local Churches.
I am not an expect on canon law and I do not know what scandals or conflicts have led the pope to conclude that this is the best way forward. But I have some questions and concerns.
1. Why do the bishops have the primary responsibility for carrying out the service of charity? Is this a contested claim? What assumptions about the definition of the Church and the role of the Bishop are at work in this apostolic letter?
2. The letter says that this was proposed by the Cardinal President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum and that the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts was consulted (15). Was there any wider consultation? Was there consultation with current leaders or administrators from Caritas, Catholic Charities, religious orders?
3. What does the pope mean by “Catholic principles” in Article 1.3 or by “norms of the Church’s universal and particular laws” in Article 4.3?
4. If I am employed by a Catholic charitable organization, how is the bishop supposed to assess whether I “share or at least respect the Catholic identity” of my organization? Could my employment be terminated if I disagree with official Church teaching, even one that is authoritatively taught but noninfallible? What does it mean to “give an example of Christian life and witness to a formation of heart which testifies to a faith working through charity”? By what process, and upon what evidence, would such an assessment be made?
5. Would the inability to accept funds from foundations or organizations that do not fully share the Church’s moral vision unnecessarily limit the good work that Catholic organizations can do for the poor? For example, is Catholic Relief Services now prohibited from partnering with the Gates Foundation on a clean water project?
If these standards had been in place in 1933 Dorothy Day would not have been allowed to call her movement and newspaper “The Catholic Worker”.
Conor, thanks for bringing up this example. Can you say more about what part of Dorothy Day’s work would have fallen outside the boundaries here described? While I know about the Catholic Worker community in San Diego, I’m less familiar with the history of the movement. But whatever we say about 1933, I fear that this same kind of thinking will prevail in claiming that some charitable organizations today should not be able to call themselves “Catholic.” These arguments have come up recently in the actions against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as well as in Catholic health care in the U.S. context. It may have unintended consequences when we think about the money Catholic charities receive from the U.S. government, or how Catholic charities benefit from tax-exempt status here in the U.S. The implications seem far-reaching, and I fear that the real losers here will be the poor who depend on services provided by these charitable organizations.
A few quick first impressions…
1) The Pope needs a new writing team, if the goal is that Catholics outside the clergy and legal community might read his thoughts and instructions. Admittedly, speaking to a global audience can not be easy.
2) The concern here seems to be for control over the brand name “Catholic”, not for the needy. The needy would seem to be best served by encouraging anybody of any faith or non-faith to contribute to the needy’s welfare by any method that succeeds in replacing apathy with action. If we asked the needy for their advice, I’m guessing they might agree.
These are admittedly only first impressions. I include them here only to make the point that a first impression is quite often all any of us will get if our writing appears to be written by attorneys.
Thanks for the post. It raises a number of good points and questions. We need to have a deeper discussion about these questions. What is the goal of a Catholic charitable organization? What’s the relationship between faith and social action? What is the relationship between charity and justice?
1. There is a lot of back story to this decree that may not be evident to many of us, especially in the USA. Over the past decade, there have been tensions between the international confederation of “official” Catholic charities, Caritas Internationalis and the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. The autonomy of Caritas has been lessened in recent years and their former general secretary was not given approval for a second term. In most countries, the official Caritas group goes by Caritas (Caritas France, Caritas Jerusalem, etc) and there are diocesan and parish groups that use the Caritas name and logos.
Here in the USA, the Cartias members are CRS and Catholic Charities USA.
2. There are many positive things in this decree. The encouragement of creating charitable groups at all levels of the church, the invitation to bishops to be more active in this process, etc. We should find this encouraging.
3. One interesting question is to see how far this text can be applied to Catholic charitable groups that are not part of the Caritas family (such as CIDSE, Jesuit Refugee Service, etc). The “competency” of Cor Unum over these other groups is not always clear and there are many technical questions over what constitutes a Church organization and which body in the Vatican should oversee them (note art. 15 to see some of the tension there)
4. This is very much in line with Deus Caritas Est. The reaction by some in the European Catholic charities world to certain parts of DCE was not very positive–especially the prioritization of charity over justice . We should pay attention to how the European agencies respond to this text.
Thanks for posting this.
It seems to me that the changes announced in this Apostolic Letter have the potential to create enormous change for the better for Catholics and the poor whom they serve. This potential derives from the fact that these changes are establishing that Catholic charity must find its primary source and strength in the truth of the spiritual reality, particularly in Jesus Christ himself: as it says from the start, “practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ”.
There is a question about whether it will help or hurt the poor that Catholic charity workers will be required to “share, or at least respect, the Catholic identity of” the charitable work they are doing. The same question exists about the restriction of funding coming from sources that “pursue ends contrary to Church’s teaching”. I say this will help the poor. It may reduce the number of people working for a charity because they do not hold to this requirement, but as this happens that charity will also be freed from those workers whose perspective, motivation, or attitude laces the material good that they are doing with moral or spiritual harm. As to the funding question, by preventing funding coming from organizations who “pursue ends contrary to Church’s teaching”, Catholic charities will be protected from a kind of spiritual contamination that comes from partnering with those performing works of evil, and they will be open to receive a greater amount of grace.
I think all of this further drives the point home that Catholic charity should be first about “Catholic” – the faith and the truths revealed by it, and the primary importance of the spiritual life – and then about “charity”.
The foundation of our faith is found in a single word.
Love.
Love is not about us.
Love is not about our opinion, our beliefs, our theology. Love is not about making the world more comfortable for ourselves by bringing others in to conformity with our own perspectives.
Christian love is about surrender, through service to others. Love is a liberating death, an escape from the tiny confining prison cell of ourselves.
The most effective way to share this message with hungry people is to provide them with food by the most efficient and effective methods we can conceive, a process which seems likely to involve partnerships with those outside the Catholic community.
The focus should be food, not Catholic food. The focus should be the needy, not us.
Love expressed in practical activity is sufficient. Love is strong and stands on it’s own two feet, requiring no assistance. Insisting that ideology is essential is to show a lack of faith in the power of love.
Love alone is sufficient, if it really is love, if it really is surrender to the other, and not just yet another vehicle for self promotion.
Love does what is good for another.
If love is not about our beliefs or our theology, then we open ourselves to using the ends to justify the means. If it does not matter why or how we help the poor, they may still be helped, but in doing so we risk failing to love all those along the way; we risk doing a great deal of harm.
The first commandment is not, “Love your neighbor as yourself”, but is, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
Therefore real love must start with our love for God. Love for God must also be love for truth because just as God is love, so God is also truth (John 14:6). Because of this, our beliefs and our theology (our understanding of truth) make a great deal of difference.
Bottom line: if an institution is called Catholic, it makes a difference what and who it stands for because, whatever else it does, its first priority is to love God.
Hi Paul, we have the makings of a great debate here. To do my part….
I’ll propose that love is not about OUR ideology and OUR beliefs etc, because love’s not about US.
When we help another simply because they asked for help, with no other agenda, it feels great. It feels great because for once, if only for a moment, it’s not about us. It feels great because we have temporarily died.
I believe that this experience of love is a preview of coming attractions. It’s a sneak peak at what’s going to happen when we are no more. It’s a gift from God, a taste of death to ease our deepest fears. He knows we are incapable of grasping the enormity of death, and so he shows us what it feels like.
Look God says, “See? Feel it for yourself, death feels great, doesn’t it? Don’t sweat it!”
Words about love, including these, are not love. Ideology is not love. Beliefs are not love. Words and ideas about love are not love in the same way a photo of our mother is not our mother.
If we can examine words, ideologies and beliefs with a clear mind, I think we’ll see that these things usually divide people from one another, as is so true in the Catholic community today. Ideologies divide us because they are merely dead symbols, and not the living thing they point to.
This post, my ideology, will divide me from many readers, because it’s not the experience of love, but merely a pile of words about love.
Love is that experience we are given when we are either brave enough, or desperate enough, to surrender. When for whatever reason, we choose to die, and are reborn, if only for a moment. It’s the actual act of surrender that matters, not what we think or say about it.
What’s brilliant about the call to service is that it makes it so much more difficult to lie to ourselves about whether we are really surrendering. God’s apparently hip to what talented liars we are.
The first priority is to love God? Ok, then, we can love God by surrendering to those moments when the boundary between us and God is erased by the experience of love.
That homeless guy over there says he’ll give us God/Love, just for the price of a sandwich. Sorry, he says sandwich, not sermon. I can’t get him to budge on it. 🙂
Oh dear, too many words. Over to you!
Hello Phil, I am glad to hear your agreeable attitude about a good debate. I am glad we can have this discussion.
I agree that love is not about US in the sense of a self-centered purpose or objective. And when you describe performing an act of love as death, I take this to have the same basic meaning as the old adage, “dying to self”, which I recognize is an important aspect of sacrificial love. And I agree that words about love are not necessarily love itself.
But, if you mean to say that in real love all truth and all belief fade away and become irrelevant, I say you are wrong: this is not the teaching that has been handed on to us from the Apostles. Also, what you are describing seems to be a very emotion-based concept of love; but real love cannot be based on emotion.
In any case, it seems that the point you are trying to make is that Catholic charities should not be bothered with issues of theology or belief because these things are not central to helping the poor (i.e., the poor man does not care much who gives him a sandwich or why, as long as someone does). My point is that this line of reasoning cares more about the poor man getting his sandwich than about the Catholic faith that originally established that the poor have dignity and rights that must not be forgotten.
For a Catholic institution, such a disposition would be disordered for at least two reasons: (1) as Catholics, we MUST love God above all else, first and foremost – even above getting the poor man his sandwich; (2) there is a danger that we will cut the Church entirely out from our service to the poor, and this leads into the next point…
There is also the danger of secular humanism here. The danger primarily being secular humanism’s inherent blindness because it lacks God’s truth, revealed to us in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. I think part of the reason Pope Benedict has instituted these requirements is to separate out true Catholic faith from the sort of secular humanism that can sometimes disguise itself as true faith.
I await your response, my friend.
Thanks for the exchange Paul. I appreciate your time, enjoy your words, and thank the owners of this impressive site for bringing us together. Let’s see, beliefs….
I believe in love. Please understand, I’m not especially good at it myself, thus my interest. But I do believe in love.
I believe love is a living thing, a force, a power in this world which is not dependent upon our words about it.
If we stopped talking about love, if we threw away all our holy books, love would still be here, walking among us, breathing life in to us, and offering us a comforting taste of death any time we are willing.
I believe ideology has the same relationship to love as a photo of you has to you. The photo is useful, but it’s a dead thing, whereas you are alive. You have your own life, your own power, and are not dependent on the photo for your existence.
As evidence of the independent power of love, I offer you all the very fine people all over the world who are not Catholic. There are many non-Catholics who could teach many a fervent Catholic a thing or two about love.
As example, my wife is a far better person than I, and she’s not Catholic, not Christian, not religious, not even philosophical. Her love and almost around the clock service has no ideological component.
All that said, it’s indisputable that Christian ideology has helped millions of people move their lives towards love. Thus, I’m not suggesting dismissing or disrespecting anything that has proven this useful to this many people.
We might however soberly observe that ideology, as useful as it can be, often comes with a huge price tag.
We need look no further than our own Catholic community to see the bitterness and divisions that can arise from competing ideologies. We might reflect upon this pervasive conflict in our own community before we start telling everybody else that we alone have “the answer”.
In the wider world beyond our Catholic community, such ideological divisions rather often escalate beyond rhetorical warfare in to real shooting warfare. Making ideology paramount can be a dangerous business.
I believe the most convincing and persuasive way to share our Catholic belief that “the poor have dignity and rights that must not be forgotten” is to act upon that belief.
If we really believe that “the poor have dignity and rights that must not be forgotten” then we should acknowledge that there’s way more work to do than Catholics can do alone.
If a secular humanist wants to serve along side Catholics I believe loves says, the more the merrier. When Jesus was healing the lepers, I don’t think he was worrying about whether some secular humanist might show up and try to help.
That’s my take Paul. Please disagree in detail so we can keep going. 🙂
Sorry for all the words. I’m used to the forum format where there’s a bit more elbow room.
Hello Phil, what you are describing as “love” does not appear to me to be a Christian understanding of love. It is useless to talk about love without the “holy books” because these are what teach us what love really is. Furthermore, love cannot be disconnected from the Catholic faith because it is through the Catholic faith that the meaning of love is most revealed. Lastly, love cannot be esteemed higher than God because God is love. If God is love, then what particular religions say about who God is cannot (and will not) be lost in the final analysis.
In any case, I do not think the point from my last post has been addressed: what you are presenting is a line of reasoning that has lifted love of neighbor above love of God. Whatever this line of reasoning may be, it is not a Catholic one, therefore in order for a Catholic institution to retain its identity as Catholic, it must not subscribe to concepts like these. Hence, the Pope’s changes to the canon law.
You did make mention of the price tag of ideology and, “Making ideology paramount can be a dangerous business” – referencing violence in the name of ideology. I would point out that ideology does not create violence – it is what the ideology teaches that does. If you call the Catholic faith an “ideology”, then I would argue that the Christian message of love of enemies will always negate any advance towards physical violence in the name of religion.
Finally, I agree with you that the best way to share the Catholic belief that “the poor have dignity and rights that must not be forgotten”, is to act on this belief. Yet, as I have said, this cannot be the highest motivation or cause; love of God must be the highest cause.
I hope you are well, and I look forward to your response.
Hi again Paul,
I would like to do a better job of responding to your points, but am finding it difficult within this blog comment format due to lack of a quote function, lack of space etc. This is a great topic, and it could go on for some time. You’re a good spokesman for your point of view.
Please allow me to pause here for just a bit while I contact the editors and offer them a forum for this site. I hope to be back with you shortly.
Hi again Paul,
While I’m awaiting a reply from the editor, here’s a response to your last post. I will attempt a primitive quote procedure here, so I’ll do a better job of replying to your specific points.
You wrote,”It is useless to talk about love without the “holy books” because these are what teach us what love really is.”
How do we account for all those who excel at love, but don’t share our religion? One of the great things about Catholics is that we are a thoughtful reasoning people, and I believe if we use those skills to examine the evidence objectively, we’ll discover there are inspiring love leaders in all the major faith traditions.
I don’t dispute that holy books can be incredibly useful, but the evidence does not seem to indicate that any one book or interpretation is an essential required element in love instruction. Some get there without any ideology at all. Some people live from their hearts, not from their heads.
I see it more as Love broadcasting on many different cultural channels, so that that maximum number of people may receive the message.
You wrote,”Furthermore, love cannot be disconnected from the Catholic faith because it is through the Catholic faith that the meaning of love is most revealed.”
I hesitate to debate this any more than I already have, because it’s not my goal to undermine anybody’s beliefs or faith tradition. More generically I might suggest that if any of us have found a path which works for us, a path that is bringing us closer to love, go for it.
You wrote,” Lastly, love cannot be esteemed higher than God because God is love.”
Yes, exactly, we agree, God is love.
Personally, I find it helpful to make a distinction between the word “love” and ideas about love, and Love itself.
As example, while the word “Paul” is helpful in that it assists me in directing my comments to a particular person…..
The word “Paul” is clearly something entirely different than the actual living person that word refers to. We could dispose of the word “Paul” and you could change your name to Jim, or John, or Sam, and the reality of you the person would remain unchanged.
To me, just one view, ideology is largely an argument over words, what to name love, how to describe it etc.
We might benefit from shifting some focus away from descriptions of love, and towards the _experience_ of love.
To me, the word “love” is not God, but the experience of love is.
What is this experience? As I understand it, it is those moments when we surrender our separation from God/Love. It’s those moments when we die to “me”, and are reborn in God/Love.
Die is a big word. It implies at least a temporary end of “me”, and our interests, our agenda, our imaginary superiority, our rightness and so on. In death/love/God, it stops being about us, because for the moment, we no longer exist.
In my view, if ideology can help bring us to these moments, that’s great. But in the heart of those moments of surrender, our ideology is consumed, because it has served it’s function.
You wrote,”What you are presenting is a line of reasoning that has lifted love of neighbor above love of God.”
My line of reasoning proposes that love of neighbor is God.
Love = Death = God.
You wrote,”Whatever this line of reasoning may be, it is not a Catholic one…”
I’m content that readers come to their own conclusion about what to label this point of view.
Perhaps I might mention the fact that Jesus never claimed to be Catholic, and the word “Catholic” does not actually appear even once in the Bible.
http://catholic-talk.org/bible/index.cgi#search
Thus, I must admit I’m not overly interested in the debate about who is the “real Catholic”. And so there’s no need for me to take offense either, and I accept your comment without complaint.
You wrote,”therefore in order for a Catholic institution to retain its identity as Catholic”.
There is actually a rich diversity of opinion regarding what a Catholic identity involves. Please recall, there are a billion Catholics. Surely the Pope is an articulate spokesman for one of these perspectives, as you are yourself.
For me personally, a Catholic identity implies rolling up our sleeves and working together in love along side anyone who wants to serve the needy. Let’s just call it Christian love, and not worry so much about whether it’s called Catholic love, or Presbyterian love, or Baptist love etc.
You wrote,”Finally, I agree with you that the best way to share the Catholic belief that “the poor have dignity and rights that must not be forgotten”, is to act on this belief. Yet, as I have said, this cannot be the highest motivation or cause; love of God must be the highest cause.”
Didn’t Jesus say something to the effect that He would continue to walk among us, in the form of the least of us? I apologize for not having the direct quote handy, and welcome assistance with that.
Could serving the needy actually be literally the same thing as loving God?
Thanks for your comments Paul! I’m hoping we can find a way to make more room for such conversations, as you are raising very interesting questions, which we could likely explore together for months.
Hi Phil,
There are five main points in your last post that I would like to respond to. Unfortunately, this response is somewhat lengthy. I appreciate your efforts to have a forum set up…longer posts are more difficult to manage in this format.
1. I understand the distinction you are making between the word “love” and what love actually is: the word is only an identifier that points to the real thing. However, we should be mindful that though we both use the word “love” we may not necessarily be referring to the same thing by it.
2. You asked how do we account for all of those who excel at love but don’t share our religion. This is a big question, and it will take some room for me to give an answer.
I watched Star Wars a lot when I was young, and I once read an article in which George Lucas said the reason he introduced the idea of “The Force” in his movies was not to guide people towards a particular religion, but just to guide them towards SOME religion. He described how as a child he had looked at all the religions of the world and asked himself, “how can only one of these be right? What about the others?” He concluded that, “all religions must be right.”
Yet this conclusion does not correspond to Catholic teaching. When it comes to the question of other religions, I say this is first a question of personal belief. We will not be able to fully understand why there are real substantial, consequential differences between different religions until we have grasped what true belief, true faith, is.
When Christ was on this earth in person, on many occasions he spoke about belief. “Your faith has saved you” he said on multiple occasions. And the anguished man exclaimed to Jesus, “I do believe, help my unbelief!”:
| “…But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, ” ‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” | (Mark 9:22-24)
The point is this: apart from whether its teachings are in conflict with other religions or beliefs, do I first truly believe in what my faith says? It is only by starting here that we can understand why the answer cannot be, “All religions equally lead to God”.
So there is the foundational question of faith. With this foundation, then, “how do we account for all of those who excel at love but don’t share our religion”? There are a couple of explanations that I can think of. First, man is created in the image of God and he has some inherent understanding of truth and love. This type of love has existed in the world since God created us, and it still exists today. Secondly, the Catholic Church teaches that world religions vary – some are closer, some are further – in their reflections of truth, but that they all reflect some amount of truth. So, other religions, in as much as they reflect the real truth, will also show real love, which is of God.
3. You said, “There is actually a rich diversity of opinion regarding what a Catholic identity involves” and “For me personally, a Catholic identity implies rolling up our sleeves and working together in love along side anyone who wants to serve the needy”.
Certainly, serving the needy is a wonderful thing for Catholic identity to imply.
But I want to draw attention to this point. There can be “a rich diversity of opinion” among Catholics regarding questions of the faith, but “Catholic identity” is not defined primarily by me or you; neither is it defined by a group of Catholics taking a vote about what they think it is. Rather, Catholic identity is defined primarily by what the Magisterium of the Catholic Church says it is. There can be variance of opinion, but not in those areas where the Church has defined the Catholic belief. For example, Catholic identity cannot include a belief system that reverses the priority of the first two commandments because this is in direct contradiction with Church teaching.
This is my point here: what defines me as Catholic (my “Catholic identity”) is if I strive to live my life according to the principles taught by the Catholic faith. It is simply useless to allow that “Catholic identity” can mean anything that anyone who happens to have been baptized Catholic wants it to mean.
It is for these reasons that Catholic charities, in retaining their Catholic identity, must ensure that they operate according to the principles of the Catholic faith.
4. You proposed the question, “Could serving the needy actually be literally the same thing as loving God?”
Yes, I would agree that serving the needy can be how we love God. In the context of this discussion, however, I have to add that works alone are not enough – faith is essential.
Also, I believe the Scripture passage you are referring to is Matthew 25:40, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me”.
5. You said, “My line of reasoning proposes that love of neighbor is God” and “Love = Death = God” and “In death/love/God, it stops being about us, because for the moment, we no longer exist”.
I would caution you, my friend; what to you are saying here sounds more to me like pantheism: the belief that everything is God and God is everything – me, you, the world, our actions, the universe.
I look forward to hearing from you, and I am happy to continue the discussion!
Good day to you Paul,
The editors have asked that we keep our comments relevant to the articles, so I’m going to try to steer my ever wandering words back towards the topic of this page, and hopefully respond to the thrust of your last post as well.
We can start with the fact that the Catholic Church is a huge organization that serves a billion people, and any entity of this scale takes on a life of it’s own, and has to be managed.
I do appreciate that the Pope is the lead administrator of this enormous enterprise, and has a responsibility to tend to the needs of the organization itself, which he appears to be attempting to do faithfully in this case.
I also recognize that the Pope has a responsibility to tend to the needs of a very large number of Catholics who look to the Church for a consistent, reliable message which can provide comfort and certainty in an ever troubled and quite confusing human experience.
I really have no argument with any of the above, other than to point out that the Catholic experience is not limited to this realm of organizational structure and ideology consistency.
In my view, what I’ve described above is an entirely valid part of the Catholic experience, but not it’s entirety.
As evidence of my thesis, I offer you Jesus Christ, the founder of both the Catholic Church and Christianity at large. We might examine two important qualities of his leadership. We can learn not only from what Jesus said, but how he himself lived.
1) Jesus wasn’t an organization man. He didn’t spend his days managing a bureaucracy, formulating budgets, worrying about brand names, or presiding over a trillion dollar real estate empire. He is our founder precisely because he put his focus on larger things. He’s our founder because he was willing to heal anybody he could, whether or not they accepted his teachings.
2) Jesus was a revolutionary who chose not to follow faithfully in the footsteps of a 1,000 years of Jewish teaching and tradition. He chose instead to explode out of that tradition with a brand new message that probably seemed like a bunch of crazy talk at the time. And of course, he was willing to die in order to rock the boat and shatter comfortable convictions.
My point is this…
The Catholic experience is huge. It’s not just one thing, whatever thing we ourselves are most personally drawn to.
The Church continues to exist after all this time because of a holistic balance between the polar opposites of stability and revolution. It’s not one or the other, but both together, that keeps the enterprise alive.
Those who cherish stability are being sincere when they work diligently to protect the ideological consistency of the Church.
I believe their good work can be enhanced if they also keep in mind that the leader they are following was not a stability kind of guy, but a revolutionary, a creative genius, a bomb thrower, the destroyer of a comfortable consensus within his own community.
If some Catholics resist the Pope’s clamp down on charitable organizations, it may be because some fear that the revolutionary spirit of Catholicism, best represented by the founder himself, is being steadily strangled over the centuries by a bureaucratic mindset. Some worry that the living flower of Christianity will perish if it is embedded in ideological concrete. This has been the fate of many ideologies.
I believe our conversation is doing a pretty good job of representing the holistic balance that long term success for the Church depends on. Our exchange would lack vitality if it was limited to either your point of view or mine. It’s the dance between the two that keeps the conversation alive.
I hope I’m responding to your points, and thank you again for your willingness to explain your perspective, and listen to views that you don’t share.
If we keep this up, they’re going to start calling us Lennon and McCartney. Which one do you want to be? 🙂
Hello Phil,
Thank you for the notice; I will also try to remain focused on the topic at hand.
You have said a lot of things in this last post that are not in my view quite correct, but I do not think it will do much good for me to go into them piece by piece: we don’t have the room for it, and in any case I question whether you really see what I am saying. It is useless for us to go back and forth, saying the same thing, and I have been saying the same thing over and over again the past few days.
It comes down to this. You spoke of a fear that some people have that Catholicism is being “steadily strangled over the centuries by a bureaucratic mindset”. There may indeed be such a fear among Catholics, and it may be a well-founded fear, from a certain perspective. Yet I can say with certainty that if the Church is indeed being strangled in this way, then the answer is certainly not abandonment of the truths that it teaches. But what you have continually presented over the course of our discussion has been in favor of a sort of religious “melting pot”, where all religions and all belief systems lose everything that distinguishes them in favor of a single universal principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you (i.e., the second commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself”). I hope you are able to see that such a belief system is not the Catholic faith – it is secular humanism. If this is what you believe, I hope you understand that this belief does not make you Catholic.
To be a Catholic you have to believe that Jesus is the son of God, and this first of all requires you to believe that God exists. To be Catholic, you have to believe that it is good and right that each person love God above all else, pursuing him – and him alone – as the primary objective. Catholic charity (or anything else) only flows rightly when this is in place. You can be strongly convicted about serving the poor but this alone does not make one Catholic.
To further point out what I am trying to say, I will emphasize that you have called the Pope’s actions here a “clamp down”; you have described it as a strangulation of the spirit of Christ. But I say, on the contrary, the Pope’s actions here will free us up, allowing the Holy Spirit ( = God = Jesus) room to perform in us an even greater work.
This, then, is my stance: as God is omnipotent, so nothing will hold down the Holy Spirit if his people adhere to him above all else; if Catholic charities lose workers because of these new canon laws, the Holy Spirit will make up what we have lost with even greater grace, a grace that is inaccessible to us while we persist in impurity of heart.
So what is your stance?
And, I am sorry my friend to turn a jovial statement to a somber one, but there is nothing admirable that I can see in the beliefs of either Lennon or McCartney. If I take a name, I would strive to be a Thomas.
I hope you are well.
Hi again Paul,
I hope I do understand what you’re saying. What I hear is…
1) You and the Pope seem to be focused on controlling the definition of Catholicism.
2) You and the Pope seem to be proposing that the Catholic experience is fundamentally one of ideology, a question of belief.
3) You and the Pope seem to be saying that your beliefs are the only valid Catholic beliefs.
To respond to your points, as I understand them….
1) I apologize for reminding you again that Jesus Christ did not share an interest in controlling the definition of Catholicism, and never even said “I am a Catholic.” While the Catholic Church claims to speak for Jesus, Jesus never claimed to speak for the Catholic Church, or any other Christian denomination. And, as we’ve discussed, Jesus healed whom ever he encountered, without regard to their ideology.
All I’ve been suggesting is that we follow the example set by Jesus, which seems a pretty Catholic proposition.
2) Ideology and beliefs are surely an important part of Catholic teachings and culture, and some Catholics may find this to be their exclusive focus. However, it doesn’t automatically follow that because ideology may be the exclusive focus of some Catholics, it is therefore the only part of the Catholic experience that matters.
The Catholic Church contains a billion members precisely because it offers an experience much larger, broader and deeper than the personal preferences of any one member, or group of members.
As example, what renewed my interest in my own Catholic heritage were the grounds of the oldest Catholic church in America in St. Augustine Florida. For me personally it wasn’t the mass, a priest, the Bible, Church leadership, or ideology that spoke to me, but an incredibly tangible sense of peace that infuses the grounds of this particularly beautiful corner of God’s creation.
To illustrate, the squirrels on these grounds run up to you and take food right out of your hand. My wife and I are wildlife rehabbers, and know a lot about squirrels. The hundreds of squirrels that we’ve raised from birth and released in our own yard don’t run up to us and take food out of our hands. But squirrels we’ve never met at this Catholic church do. That tangible real world experience speaks to me in ways no sermon can.
Point being, there is a incredibly rich variety of such experiences available within Catholicism, and they aren’t all about ideology and beliefs.
3) I would propose that the majority of Catholics are in fact what is often called “cafeteria Catholics”. That is, they agree with Church teachings in many, but not all, respects. There is a near infinite variety of combinations of beliefs within any Catholic parish.
If a Pope were to insist that any Catholic who does not agree with him on every issue no longer be allowed on Church property, he would soon find himself leading a small congregation. Most of the donations would dry up, most of the Catholic churches would close, and the Church would become a much less influential and powerful organization.
That’s why, despite their conviction and sincerity, no Pope has insisted on literally enforcing their own definition of Catholicism on all Catholics. They wouldn’t be Pope if they weren’t realistic about the diverse nature of the Catholic community.
I propose that your understanding and experience of Catholicism is one part Catholicism, not the entirety. The same is true of my understanding and experience. In my view, whether we like it or not, the reality is that Catholicism contains a billion members, and is thus inevitably diverse.
Pope’s throughout history have accepted this diversity, in that they have not rejected donations and attendance by those who don’t agree with Church teachings in every respect. If the Pope’s can accept the reality of Catholic diversity, we can too, and still be good Catholics.
I hope I’ve addressed your points Paul. If not, please direct my attention to any issues you’d like to see further discussion of.
PS: Lennon and McCartney, whose personal failings are well documented, also famously sang…. All You Need Is Love. C’mon, that’s not bad for a couple of twenty something rock musicians. If you continue to object, I’m going to start calling you Ringo, and then you’ll be sorry. 🙂
Hi Phil,
For my part, I still cannot see how your proposals are not identical to secular humanism. Particularly, there is a conspicuous absence of any reference to the spiritual realities described by Catholic teaching.
It is true that not all of Catholicism is directly about doctrinal beliefs, but doctrinal beliefs do make up the core of what Catholicism is. There is no escaping this or getting around it: all Catholics must hold to the core doctrinal teachings of the Church, and these all require belief (faith). I am not talking here about my personal perspective or views – I am talking about what the Church has defined that all Catholics must believe. I will point to the Creed that we say at every Mass as a good rule of thumb.
Lastly, you have said several things in the past few posts about Jesus as he was when he walked this earth, but I think you have misrepresented him.
You proposed that Jesus was not an “organization man”:
I say that Jesus is a real King (John 18:33-36) and there will be no shortage of organization for any king ruling a kingdom. I say that Jesus lived as he did in part because that was what was required of him at that time for his kingdom, and that his lifestyle while on earth in no way means that the organization and hierarchy of the present-day Church is a distortion of his intentions.
You proposed that he was “a revolutionary who chose not to follow faithfully in the footsteps of a 1,000 years of Jewish teaching and tradition” and “chose instead to explode out of that tradition with a brand new message”:
On the contrary, I say that Jesus followed the Jewish faith more closely than any other Jew of his time, and that his purpose was in part to correct the human errors and distortions that had entered into that faith; that he came not to abolish the Jewish teaching, or abandon it, but to fulfill it: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).
You proposed that he “never claimed to speak for the Catholic Church, or any other Christian denomination”:
I say that Jesus irrevocably tied himself to the Catholic Church when he said to Peter, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17) and “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18).
You proposed that he “healed whom ever he encountered, without regard to their ideology”.
I say that Jesus healed whomever he encountered without regard to “ideology” not because he had no particular care about faith but because faith must be a free choice and cannot ever be coerced (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 160). Moreover, when we read the Gospels we see that healings are often accompanied by discussions about faith, mainly with the people receiving the healing.
I do not know if it will do much good for us to continue, because we seem to be at a deadlock. In case this is my last post, thank you for the lively debate, and God Bless.
And I think I like Ringo…that would be fine for me 🙂